'CheneyMan' And 'SuperFrau'
Tunku Varadarajan, 06.08.09, 12:00 AM ET
The extent to which we're in an Age of Worship can be gleaned from a howler at the D-Day commemoration, in which Gordon Brown--woefully overpromoted as Britain's prime minister--referred to Omaha Beach as "Obama Beach."
Yes, in different circumstances this would qualify as a mere slip of the tongue, and be left at that; but the ignominious YouTube avatar of that moment has turned Brown into a species of hack comedian, causing the world to snigger and cackle. Watching him say "Obama Beach" again and again--inherent cruelty makes one hit "replay"--one learns, right away, of his state of mind.
Brown stands within earshot of a morally imperious American president: And he is nervous, subservient, provincial, a mere Brown in the cosmopolitan world of Obama, our bridge-builder to the Muslim World, our interlocutor across civilizations, redeemer of our faith in America, a salver of wounds and a teacher--Mwalimu, in the Swahili of his forefather--of all good things. Mwalimu Obama made Schoolboy Brown stumble, and it was piteous to behold.
When a politician is worshiped to the extent that Obama has come to be, those who answer to a different liturgy, a different creed, are reduced to a kind of impotence. That is the state today of the Republican party, which cannot counter his charisma, his rhetoric, his prosody. The Republicans should, by sense and by logic, seek to counter his ideas, for this is where he is weakest. But here, too, although weak, he is not vulnerable; his halo disarms his opponents, not merely shielding him from attack but turning attack on him into an option that is unseemly.
Can one name a single extant Republican politician of any real stature who has sought to take him on, let alone take him down? One cannot. (Newt Gingrich, lest anyone mention him, has been reduced to making picayune points about Sonia Sotomayor.) The only man who has done so--a man who is, arguably, the only effective opposition politician in America--is Dick Cheney. And he, of course, speaks with the fearlessness of one retired, one who has ascended to a realm beyond the reach of the new messiah. "CheneyMan" is the Republican superhero, but like all superheroes, CheneyMan exists in a world outside the boundaries of the possible. It is not that he isn't effective in some inspirational way; it is that he, like other superheroes, is only theater.
Sobering it is--and amusing, too--that the only other politician to take it to Obama is another who cannot challenge for American office. I speak of Angela Merkel--SuperFrau--who is not only not in thrall to the Great Wordsmith, but is offended by his ideas and actions, and indignant that she, too, should be expected to genuflect at the altar. She has spoken her mind on Obama's reckless stimulus, and on his hectoring insistence that others beggar themselves as Americans are now doing, that others see him as his faithful see him--as the man who has a monopoly on deliverance.
Dick Cheney and Angela Merkel. Two politicians not without their own flaws, their own dogma, their own excess of self-belief . Dick Cheney and Angela Merkel. Two politicians who go where others fear to tread.
What would the Republicans do without them?
Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at NYU's Stern Business School and a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, is executive editor for opinions at Forbes. He writes a weekly column for Forbes. |
