The Expectations Game and the Presidential Debates

"Have we been telling you that our guy's great? Well, actually, he kinda sucks."

Both sides play expectation games - better to be underestimated and have your middling performance seen as a victory (Sarah Palin vs. Joe Biden) than to be expected to dominate and stumble. But this could be a case study. Following up on Chris Christie's bluster,

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says on CBS’ "Face the Nation" that Romney is going to do "extraordinarily well" in the debate and that after Wednesday night, "this whole race is going to be turned upside down."

Paul Ryan insists, in essence, "No, Romney's not a great debater, has never debated a single opponent, the President has been on a public stage for six years [don't ask what Ryan has been doing], and the debate's actually a pretty minor event."

The GOP vice presidential candidate calls President Barack Obama "a very gifted speaker" who’s been on the national stage for several years.¹

Ryan also is making the point that Republican nominee Mitt Romney has never been in a one-on-one presidential debate.²

Ryan tells "Fox News Sunday" that the race is close and he expects it will stay that way until Election Day on Nov. 6.

I suspect that from Christie's perspective, Romney needs to excel in order to change the trajectory of his campaign, so he's expressing what he hopes to see. Ryan, on the other hand, wants an debate that isn't completely embarrassing to Romney (an outcome nobody expects to occur) to be taken as a draw, and anything better than that to be perceived as a victory.

Meanwhile, the President's campaign is advancing a less blustery version of Christie's message - Romney's a great debater who repeatedly beat his opponents in the primaries. (Compare and contrast, for example, the banter of boxers in a title match.)
---------------
1. And Romney has been doing exactly what for the last couple of decades of his life, starting with his Senate race against Kennedy? A shrinking wallflower, he.

2. A pretty thin distinction. He's been in one-on-one debates when seeking both state and national office.

The Grass is Always Greener....

You know what's amazing to Michael Gerson? That the Republican saviors of the party who ran for office and tore each other apart, often revealing themselves in the process to be deserving of little more than rubber noses and clown paint, no longer look as good as the wunderkind who haven't yet gone through the wringer.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rob Portman are among the more accomplished, knowledgeable, ideologically balanced political figures in American politics. The same could not be said of Rick Perry, Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann.

Gerson is smart enough to acknowledge that it's "easier to appear qualified and dignified" when you're untested, but fantasizes,

But there is more at work in this obvious stature gap. Part of the explanation is structural. Presidential candidates are largely self-selected, which favors ambition and self-regard above, well, all other traits. A vice presidential field results from a party’s consensus on talent and competence.

So... J. Danforth Quayle, George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney... no ambition or self-regard, simply the best their party had to offer (like Spiro Agnew). If Gerson believes the same holds true in both parties, I wonder if he's still crying in his coffee about Al Gore's disappearance from the national stage, or if he dreams of an alternate universe in which John McCain had not picked the stellar, non-self-promoting Sarah Palin and had instead picked the stellar, non-self-promoting Joe Lieberman as his running mate.

Gerson is engaging in a typical sort of wishful thinking, never mind the actual facts, in which we can easily predict which of a party's rising stars will be a presidential candidate four years from now. Because four years before-the-fact everybody knew that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would be their party's nominees. If, that is, "everybody" means "nobody". Just like four years before-the-fact everybody knew that Jeb Bush would run for President, but he lost his first run for governor, his brother won in Texas and.... Yep, it's all 100% predictable.

Gerson hopes that, of all people, Mitt Romney chooses Chris Christy as his running mate. Odds are that, if he's not muzzled, by the end of the campaign they would be measuring him for the clown suit and rubber nose that Romney's primary competitors worked so hard to earn. Gerson likes Christie's bombast, and the fact that he's not a moron:

At the same time, Christie would represent a move to the ideological center. He is not a global warming skeptic. He supported an assault weapons ban in his state. He is an immigration moderate and has friendly relations with New Jersey’s Muslim community.

Actually, support for an assault weapons ban puts Christie not in the center, but to the considerable left of Obama. Acknowledging science, that immigration has both pro's and con's, and that not all Muslims are evil? It merely means that his IQ is at or above room temperature. Gerson's damning his party of choice with faint praise.

What other choice would cause Republicans to pray for 10 vice presidential debates?

They can pray for ten, they would get one. With Joe Biden, trademark bemused smile on his face, not getting even slightly ruffled by Christie and calling him out on such things as... his mediocre jobs record and the massive deficit his state now faces. And even if we were to fantasize that Christie would somehow "put Biden in his place", in the same manner that Lloyd Bentsen put Dan Quayle in his, remind me what impact that debate had on the Presidential contest again? Oh yes... absolutely none.

Ross Douthat's Fantasy Primary

Ross Douthat defends the fact that Santorum is still afloat in the Republican primaries,

Even the elevation of Rick Santorum as the last not-Romney standing testifies to the Republican electorate’s relative sobriety. For all his follies and failings, Santorum is a more plausible presidential candidate than most of this season’s alternatives — more experienced than Cain and Bachmann, more substantive and eloquent than Perry, more principled than Gingrich.

Douthat's damning of Santorum with faint praise reminds me of the old joke, "In heaven, the food is French, the police are British, the engineers are German, the lovers are Italian...." Douthat would be making pretty much the same claim no matter who else was left in the race (except Gingrich). Douthat also reveals his dream candidates, purporting that other than Jeb Bush, whose disastrously incompetent brother "tarnished [his] (last) name", the only reason they're not running is that "the current presidential campaign arrived too soon for them to be entirely seasoned."

If the current race pitted Jeb Bush against, say, Mike Huckabee and Mitch Daniels, nobody would be talking about how the party has gone off the rails.

Why not? To borrow from Douthat's style book, Huckabee has all of the economic sense of Herman Cain, and all of the aptitude for foreign policy of Michelle Bachmann. Mitch Daniels seems to inspire all of the enthusiasm of Jon Huntsman - Douthat lectures, "Republican voters probably should have given Jon Huntsman more consideration", but fails to explore why they did not. Jeb Bush has what... two terms as governor in Florida in which he didn't mess anything up too badly and the family name? What's not to love.

If it were being held two years hence, and featured Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, the excitement on the Republican side would rival what the Democrats enjoyed in 2008. But those four, and others like them, decided they weren’t ready yet.

Although I understand why Douthat wants to fetishize those four as wonderful up-and-coming leaders, fantasy often collides with reality in a most unpleasant fashion. Rick Perry was a great presidential candidate, the guy who was going to clear the field of the weaklings, until he actually started a campaign:

As The New York Times's Ross Douthat said when Perry first entered the race, quoting a Texas competitor, "Running against Rick Perry is like running against God."

I suspect Douthat in part wants to build a Frankenstein candidate - Christie's bombast, Jindal's wonkishness, Paul Ryan's ability to spout absolute nonsense and be taken seriously, and Marc Rubio's assumed charisma. But had they run, I would not be half surprised if Douthat were writing the very same editorial, but damning Santorum with somewhat modified faint praise, something along the lines of, "For all his follies and failings, Santorum is a more plausible presidential candidate than most of this season’s alternatives — more experienced than Christie and Rubio, more substantive and eloquent than Jindal, more principled than Ryan."