The Republican Party needs Marco Rubio on its 2012 ticket.
Conventional wisdom among the media elites (and their self-reinforcing polls) is that President Barack Obama is unbeatable. It's an odd, even disconnected, line of thought, considering $4 gas, high unemployment and an economy that continues to slump.
None of Obama's policies have worked. Indeed, a case can be made that stimulus spending has only served to shrink the private (i.e., job-creating) sector while the country goes deeper into debt. Challenged on constitutional grounds, Obamacare's leading effect has been to further drive up costs and trigger waivers for Democratic Party interests.
Even with this mess, the GOP's field of presidential hopefuls has failed to get traction. The reason isn't so much policy -- the 2010 congressional elections were a clear repudiation of the Democrats' tax-and-spend agenda -- but, rather, the Republicans' inability to match what one observer calls "cultural charisma."
"The problem Mr. Obama poses for Republicans is that there has always been a disconnect between his actual performance and his appeal," Shelby Steele wrote last week.
"What gives Mr. Obama a cultural charisma that most Republicans cannot have? First, he represents a truly inspiring American exceptionalism: He is the first black in the entire history of Western civilization to lead a Western nation -- and the most powerful nation in the world at that. And so not only is he the most powerful black man in recorded history, but he reached this apex only through the good offices of the great American democracy.
"Thus his presidency flatters America to a degree that no white Republican can hope to compete with. He literally validates the American democratic experiment, if not the broader Enlightenment that gave birth to it."
If Steele, a fellow at Stanford University's conservative Hoover Institution, were white, such assertions would be branded borderline "racist." But because Steele is African-American, he is free to speak an inconvenient truth.
Steele and others have noted how the media and the intellectual elites have given political cover to Obama from day one. Some have argued that a similarly (in)experienced white politician would never have cruised to the White House the way Obama did in 2008.
Calling Obama "an extraordinary personification of the American Dream," Steele says this "powerful racial impressionism works against today's field of Republican candidates. This is the impressionism that framed Sen. John McCain in 2008 as a political and cultural redundancy -- yet another older white male presuming to lead the nation."
Despite occasional disappointment on the left and smoldering frustration on the right, "racial impressionism" allows Obama to float above the political hurly-burly. The man may be flawed, but the myth remains intact.
Given the "cultural charisma" that media/education/entertainment elites attach to this president, the current Republican lineup is at a distinct disadvantage. The only way the GOP can gain a level playing field is to identify a candidate who can match the myth and nullify Steele's "racial impressionism."
Marco Rubio, whether he wants it or not, is that candidate. And we're not just talking about the bounty of 29 electoral votes his home state of Florida would deliver.
In sweeping to his U.S. Senate victory in 2010, Rubio tirelessly trumpeted "American exceptionalism." He alone had the street cred to talk about his parents living the dream as Cuban immigrants who toiled at menial jobs so their son could go to law school and rise to the pinnacle of Florida politics. Rubio, sometimes emotionally, relates his personal story to rapt audiences in overflowing banquet halls like those where his father was a bartender and his mother a maid.
Rubio's claim that such a meteoric rise is possible "only in America" may be a bit over the top, but his point is well-taken, and well-received everywhere he goes. To dismiss his success story is to marginalize Obama's as well.
If Rubio's detractors want to denigrate him as inexperienced, they must square that charge with Obama's thin resume. Fact is, Rubio's handling of touchy subjects ranging from Medicare to immigration to the budget is far more serious and coherent than anything Obama has read off a TelePrompter. On any number of foreign and domestic issues, Rubio stands with a majority of voters.
Equally important, and in a delicious bit of irony, partisans who reflexively attack Rubio run the risk of appearing racist themselves.
As Steele puts it:
"Anyone who runs against Mr. Obama will be seen through the filter of racial impressionism, in which white skin is redundant and dark skin is fresh and exceptional."
Constrained by the straitjacket of political correctness, few pundits will come out and say that. But you know they think it and believe it.
Until Republicans can counter the mythology of "racial impressionism" with a culturally charismatic candidate of their own, the party will continue to play second fiddle to The One.
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
