Thursday, July 15, 2004
Lately, with alarming frequency, said trouble can be summed up with headlines like this one:
Eager to fill the seat being vacated by Sen. Peter G. Fitzgerald (R - Ill.), who is retiring at the end of his term, Illinois Republicans are apparently in a twist right now, desperate to anoint a viable candidate with the election only four months away — all because Jack Ryan, the winner of the GOP primary, had to pull out of the race over a sex scandal. (Ya hear that, folks? A Republican sex scandal. Wake up! Pay attention!)
For some fool-ass reason, the party had hoped that Mike Ditka — the Pro Football Hall of Famer, head coach of the Super Bowl XX champion Chicago Bears, and a man with no public policy experience whatsoever — would fit the bill, but Ditka concluded (thank God) that he wasn't the man for the job. As Iron Mike himself put it:
"There was a moment when I said, 'God, I'd like to take this and run with it,' and then I said, 'You know, put your head on straight and think about what you're getting into.' ... I don't know how I would react on the Senate floor if I got in a confrontation with somebody I really didn't appreciate or maybe didn't appreciate me."While this is one of the most ludicrous proposals I've heard in a long time, I can't fault Ditka for being on the receiving end of it, and I have to say I even admire the big lug for having the common sense and self-awareness — and, as it turns out, a penchant for interior monologue — to put an end to this nonsense before it got out of hand.
This same thing happened last fall here in California, when Richard Riordan, the former two-term mayor of Los Angeles, announced that he was withdrawing his name from the gubernatorial recall election because he knew there was no way he could beat actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man with no public policy experience whatsoever. And we all know how that turned out.
The trouble with Republicans, as I've been getting around to saying, is that they don't seem to be interested in whether or not a candidate can do the job, but only in whether he can get the job. In which case the only question that needs to be answered is, "How popular is he?" Because once he's in, he can be whatever the Powers That Truly Be — the puppet masters, the pollsters, the special interests, the lobbyists, the PACs, the big corporations, what-have-you — want him to be. And the less he actually knows about politics and government, the better, because then he's less likely to get any big ideas of his own about what's fair or right or truly in the best interest of his constituents.
Let's face facts: George W. Bush got elected president because his name doesn't look or sound all that different from George H.W. Bush. Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected governor because he's the Terminator. And Iron Mike Ditka would have gotten elected to the Senate because more Illinoisans know who he is than know who their current representatives are.
But Ditka — God love him — made a goal-line stand based on his own convictions, and now Illinois Republicans have to go into their hurry-up offense to beat the game clock.
