In yesterday’s Impromptus, I gave the Romney campaign some free advice. And you know what they say about free advice. Well, here’s some more.
Obama and his team are talking nonsense about outsourcing and other economic matters. Romney should say, more or less straightforwardly, “These people are total ignoramuses when it comes to business. They know nothing. They wouldn’t know a real payroll if it bit them in the butt. Free enterprise is completely foreign to them. They know ACORN, they know lawsuits, they know ‘community organizing,’ whatever that is. But they know nothing about an economy, and this is the knowledge we desperately need now.”
What’s more, “they have no sympathy for the employer — for the job-creator or wealth-creator. More than anything, we need the boot of government off the employer’s throat. Government cannot employ and provide for everyone under the sun. We need a private sector. The Obama people have no respect for that. Indeed, they seem to regard businessmen and entrepreneurs as the enemy.”
Obama, you may remember, worked for a brief time in the “corporate world” — and said he felt like “a spy behind enemy lines.” Is he still of the same mindset?
In general, I think Romney should be utterly unapologetic in this campaign. He wrote a book called No Apology. He should be good at it. What should he be unapologetic about? Everything, basically: his views, his life, his business career, his church, his wealth — everything.
The country is in dire straits. I think it would welcome frank talk and clear thinking. A “return to basics,” a re-embrace of fundamentals.
And about race, Romney should be absolutely fearless, or as fearless as possible. They’ll call him a racist. So, what else is new? It’s what the Left does, as other people breathe. Every conservative worth his salt should be used to it — and proceed undeterred.
Okay, then, Mittster.
‐I can see it now: Romney turns to Obama in debate and says, “We need businessmen, Mr. President. If we didn’t have them — whom would you lawyers sue?”
‐John Dos Passos published a collection called The Theme Is Freedom. That could well be the Romney theme for 2012. I have a suggestion — something fairly audacious, a little weird: I think Romney should use his convention speech to dissect The Life of Julia, the little film, or whatever it was, that the Obama campaign put out.
Julia is a woman who is sort of married to the government. The federal government partners with her at every stage. For example, when she is 31, “Julia decides to have a child.” Just like that. There is no husband, apparently. The government seems to be her true husband.
Democrats and Republicans now have starkly different views of life in America — of what it should be. Romney should use his speech to talk about them. And he could take The Life of Julia as his text. What sort of country do Republicans want Julia to live in? How does that contrast with the Democrats’ vision?
A little strange, as I said, but one could do worse . . .
‐This is a little strange, too: An interviewer asked me last week what Romney should say in his inaugural address. That is getting ahead of ourselves, way ahead of ourselves. But I answered the question anyway.
I think he should say, something like, “Decline is a choice. We don’t have to be weaker, poorer — of less consequence in the world. We can decide to be those things. But we don’t have to be. Our future is something for us to determine. We are not at the mercy of impersonal, inevitable, historical forces. We can shape our destiny. If we want to be a social-welfare state, with a shrunken military, we can be that. The point is, we have choices to make. What kind of America do we want?”
You get my drift.
I also think that Romney should say that America’s principles and values are God-derived. Who was it who said, “Liberal democracy is but a political reading of the Bible”? I can’t remember, but there is truth to it. Romney should talk about this openly — and if the New York Times and others have cows, let them. Most people, I think, would sit still for such talk, and even nod along with it.
You don’t like these ideas for an inaugural address? Okay, Romney can air them in his convention speech — if you don’t like my Life of Julia lark. I have plenty of ideas. And little responsibility for action . . .
‐According to pundits, Americans are supposed to faint at the sight of Ann and Mitt Romney on a jet ski. It is supposed to be the equivalent of their running over urchins in a gilded carriage. Americans are supposed to break out in The Internationale. Well, I don’t buy it — don’t buy it at all.
To be continued, perhaps in essay form . . .
‐Reading the news out of Egypt, I had a memory. A professor of mine was Richard Mitchell, one of the world’s leading authorities on the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1979, as the Khomeinist revolution was taking place, State Department officials and others called Mitchell to ask, “Will it happen in Egypt, will it happen in Egypt?” No, no, said Mitchell: Relax.
I wonder what Mitchell, who is deceased, would say today. Has the Khomeinist revolution reached the most important Arab state, more than 30 years later?
‐You may have seen a funny story: An Islamist group in Egypt issued a warning against eating tomatoes. What’s to warn about? Well, if you cut a tomato open, you’re liable to see a cross. Therefore, a tomato is a Christian food.
I have called this a funny story, and so it is. The world gets plenty of laughs out of Islamist looniness. But the laughing stops when violence occurs.
By the way, is a starfish a Jewish food? Masonic? (You see how quickly I reverted to laughter — maybe to gallows humor.)
‐An Indian golfer named Jeev Milkha Singh won the Scottish Open last weekend. According to this article, his father was “an Olympic 400-meter runner.” Wow. It’s hard to think of two more different activities within sports: 400-meter running and golf.
When I was a kid, I was amazed by a similar fact — bear with me: Alexander Kipnis and his son Igor were both famous musicians. Père was an operatic basso, singing Boris Godunov and so on; fils was a harpsichordist, playing Scarlatti et al. It’s hard to think of two more different activities — or two more different performers — in music . . .
‐A little language? A little politics and language? I know a campaign that uses “Democrat” as an adjective — “Democrat policies,” “Democrat candidate.” They know better, but they’re trying to be boobish, thinking potential voters will like it better.
I received a piece of PR from the campaign the other day, in which someone slipped and wrote “Democratic.” Made me smile. It’s hard to keep the act up, 24/7 . . .
‐Let me return to sports, for a closing item. I used to hear Jeff Hart say, across an editorial table, “You really can’t compare athletes across eras. Joe Louis versus Muhammad Ali. Cy Young versus Roger Clemens. Bobby Jones versus Jack Nicklaus. Bill Tilden versus Pete Sampras. All an athlete can do is dominate his era. All he can do is beat the opponents before him.”
I don’t know that Roger Federer is the greatest tennis player of all time. (He recently won his seventh Wimbledon.) But he’s certainly one of them, and, moreover, one of the greatest athletes of all time.
Writers on both sides of the Atlantic have been quoting David Foster Wallace, the late American novelist. Check it out:
Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws. Good analogues here include Michael Jordan, who could not only jump inhumanly high but actually hang there a beat or two longer than gravity allows, and Muhammad Ali, who really could “float” across the canvas and land two or three jabs in the clock-time required for one. There are probably a half-dozen other examples since 1960. And Federer is of this type — a type that one could call genius, or mutant, or avatar. He is never hurried or off-balance. The approaching ball hangs, for him, a split-second longer than it ought to. His movements are lithe rather than athletic. Like Ali, Jordan, Maradona, and Gretzky, he seems both less and more substantial than the men he faces. Particularly in the all-white that Wimbledon enjoys getting away with still requiring, he looks like what he may well (I think) be: a creature whose body is both flesh and, somehow, light.
Pretentious drivel, of the kind all too often written about athletes? I’d say so, but my problem is, I’ve seen Federer . . .
Have a good one!
To order Jay Nordlinger’s new book, Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World, go here. To order his collection Here, There & Everywhere, go here.