The Doddering Dingus Defeatist

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Secret truths seem to make their way to the surface in unguarded moments, whether helped along by too much alcohol or too little sleep. “I am confident, with the leadership and the backing of the American people, President Obama will turn this country around,” said the 2008 Republican candidate for president, Sen. John McCain, in a speech meant to endorse Mitt Romney. After the crowd laughed, and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley corrected the doddering dingus, McCain recovered slightly, “Excuse me … excuse me … President Romney, President Romney!”

Less than 24 hours thereafter, McCain told another South Carolina crowd, “He [Romney] will rebuild the moral of America and he will restore America. I guarantee you he will not lead from behind like Ronald Reagan. He will lead from in front.”

McCain says many stupid things, intentional or otherwise. But his unguarded moments likely reveal what in his heart McCain believes to be true: That the damage done to the nation under Obama is no worse than under a McCain presidency had the 2008 election gone his way and, more importantly, that the same can be said of the man he supports for the highest office in the land – Mitt Romney.

McCain’s reference to Reagan’s “leading from behind” reveals a seething contempt for the Gipper’s brand of small-government conservatism.

That dripping contempt was on display last July during the debt-ceiling debate when Tea Party House members temporarily blocked the routine increase of the nation’s debt. “The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or government shutdown will ensue and the public with turn en mass against Barack Obama,” said the outraged McCain from the well of the Senate, “a Republican House that refused to raise the debt ceiling would somehow escape all the blame. Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced-budget amendment and reform entitlements and the Tea Party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordore.”

Comparing House Tea Party members to the mythical Hobbits that populate J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was instructive as well. Tolkien began the first installment of his Christian allegory during the dark days of the Second World War, when Hitler’s Third Reich held sway over much of Europe and employed super weapons – V-1 flying bombs and supersonic V-2 rockets – against London’s civilian population. In those days, Nazi Germany seemed an unconquerable, existential enemy in the mold of Tolkien’s Dark Lord Sauron.

The villains, monsters and diminutive heroes of Tolkien’s books represented shades of the human character; creatures of unspeakable evil and those with a capacity to fight for good in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

But a minor character in the novel stands out: Denethor, the Steward of Gondor – a ruler consumed by grief after losing his favorite son in the epic struggle against evil. With no heirs, Denethor falls into a state of profound despair and fear.

“Go forth and fight! Vanity.” says the desperate Denethor, “For a little space you may triumph on the field, for a day. But against the Power that now arises there is no victory . . .” Denethor sets himself on fire and dies.

McCain is the Denethor of American politics and personifies the profound despair among GOP elites that battling omnipresent Progressivism is pointless. That’s why McCain has trouble distinguishing Mitt Romney from Barack Obama. And McCain’s despair is infectious as New Hampshire’s GOP primary results clearly show.

“There’s always been tension within the Republican Party between the kind of Bob Taft wing and the Eisenhower wing of the [Republican] party,” said McCain after Obama’s, I mean Romney’s New Hampshire victory. “But I think it’s still a significant minority of the Republican Party, and I think that Mitt Romney really reflects the views of most of the Republicans.”

The battle for McCain, therefore, is not with Obama and the ideas of income redistribution or expanding the power of the state at the expense of individual liberty. It’s with the “significant minority of the Republican Party.” And the most vocal members of this minority is the House Tea Party contingent – the “Hobbits.”

That he once used the term to mock the Tea Party shows McCain is blind to the moral significance these characters play in Tolkien’s metaphorical fairytale. The battle for McCain and his fellow Obama, I mean Romney, Republicans is not moral but material. That’s because liberty – like honor, love, and metaphor – is invisible. Controlling the nation’s wealth, and its redistribution, on the other hand, is a tangible and enticing talisman of power.

“Fairy Tales are more than true,” said G. K. Chesterton, “not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” Soulless materialists like McCain will never understand that higher truth; and so, GOP defeatists battle to become top dragon.