Lose One for the Gipper

We are wit­ness this cam­paign sea­son to some­thing that has not hap­pened in a long time — a nation­wide inter­nal fight among Repub­li­cans. Democ­rats do this all the time. Repub­li­cans usu­ally have more dis­ci­pline. Why is it hap­pen­ing? Why is it hap­pen­ing now?

Ronald Rea­gan insti­tuted an Eleventh Com­mand­ment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fel­low Repub­li­can.” This edict served the party well, and, sur­pris­ingly, it lasted for some three decades. I cat­e­go­rize this as a “sur­prise,” because politi­cians are inher­ently an ambi­tious, ego­tis­tic, and self-​​centered bunch. It takes a spe­cial kind of chutz­pah to run for elected office, and to believe any­one wants to vote for you. Peo­ple with that much ambi­tion and inflated self-​​esteem nat­u­rally feel it’s their right to use what­ever under­handed tools will help them get ahead.

We see these Type-​​A per­son­al­i­ties in the busi­ness world all the time. The same sorts infest pol­i­tics. Only a very pow­er­ful force can con­strain and chan­nel these dri­ves into a direc­tion that is use­ful to goals beyond indi­vid­ual aggrandizement.

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Rea­gan saw the key. Or per­haps one of his advis­ers did, and Rea­gan had the good sense to embrace it. From all the per­sonal reports I’ve read, Rea­gan was a gen­uinely kind and car­ing man. His pub­lic per­sona was very close to his pri­vate per­son. Self-​​effacing and gen­er­ous, kind and grand­fa­therly, a man prone more to pulling together those he cared for than to throw­ing the kind of bombs that are so symp­to­matic of today’s pol­i­tics. Yet he had no patience, and no mercy, for those who threat­ened the peo­ple or causes he cared about.

The key to chan­nel­ing Type-A’s into a coher­ent body is to con­vince them they’ll all do bet­ter, indi­vid­u­ally, when they all do bet­ter as a group. Reagan’s Eleventh Com­mand­ment turned the nat­ural ire and socio­pathic cru­elty of a Type-​​A per­son­al­ity far out­ward, not toward those who would be iden­ti­fied as imme­di­ate com­peti­tors — for exam­ple, oppo­nents in a pri­mary or in the Iowa cau­cuses — but toward the ulti­mate enemy — the Other Party.

The way to get ahead in this world­view was not by stomp­ing on Repub­li­can pri­mary oppo­nents, but by prov­ing you were best at attack­ing the Democ­rats. This cre­ated a ris­ing tide to lift all yachts. When a Repub­li­can suc­ceeded — when any Repub­li­can suc­ceeded — all other Repub­li­cans would ben­e­fit, because they’d all move up in the world. And none of them had grudges or feuds against any oth­ers, no scores to set­tle, no resent­ments to fes­ter, because suc­cess had been achieved only at the expense of the True Enemy. This elim­i­nated both the need for, and the effec­tive­ness of, any inter­nal strife.

This even made it pos­si­ble to occa­sion­ally work with The Enemy, if the result of coöper­a­tion would ben­e­fit the nation, because ben­e­fit­ing the nation would, of neces­sity, also ben­e­fit Repub­li­cans — and, there­fore, all those ambi­tious Type-A’s. This is why Rea­gan and Tip O’Neill were able to cre­ate an his­toric deal on sav­ing Social Secu­rity. Rea­gan and con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans were made to look mag­nan­i­mous and forward-​​thinking. (Rea­gan imme­di­ately turned it to his own pur­poses,  by steal­ing the Social Secu­rity trust fund to finance what were then the biggest deficits in world his­tory — but that’s a topic for another time.)

But the Rea­gan Com­mand­ment has fallen away as a new gen­er­a­tion of young Mon­gols has moved in. Rea­gan is rightly praised (nearly wor­shiped) by Repub­li­cans as a mon­u­men­tal fig­ure in Party his­tory. But many of today’s hot prop­er­ties — Eric Can­tor, Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, as exam­ples — were either too young or too incu­ri­ous about his­tory to really under­stand the Rea­gan phe­nom­e­non. They see Rea­gan as an office to achieve, not as a goal to emu­late. The want to scale the same heights, and, in their Type-​​A ambi­tion and arro­gance, they imag­ine they can. They haven’t the first clue as to how he did it.

So we now have Trump and Palin and Bach­mann and Ryan all going after each other. Palin and Bach­mann have openly attacked Rom­ney. Paw­lenty has referred to “Obam­n­ey­Care” in an attempt to tie Rom­ney to Pres­i­dent Obama. Uncrowned Bach­mann cam­paign direc­tor Ed Rollins went after Palin, which prompted Palin-​​friend Greta van Sus­teren to pub­licly ask for Rollins’ head. They are claw­ing at each other, which blunts their assault on Obama. For Democ­rats, this for­get­ful­ness of Reagan’s Eleventh Com­mand­ment is a gift, for it is divid­ing the Repub­li­cans into war­ring fac­tions. The slimy bril­liance of any would-​​be Frank Luntz is turned pri­mar­ily to the pri­maries. Oh, the Repub­li­cans will pull together again for the gen­eral cam­paign. But they’ll be bruised and splin­tered, with inter­nal win­ners and losers, in ways they have not been for thirty years.

The Party of Rea­gan is no more, and its death will leave Repub­li­cans weaker. For­tu­nately for the Democ­rats, Repub­li­can strate­gists are unlikely to embrace my analy­sis. Per­haps some­one who actu­ally under­stands Reagan’s strate­gic genius will one day re-​​emerge. But that day is not this day.

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