The Republican hero search is harder with none in the current crop measuring up: put simply, the GOP needs an adult

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Few U.S. heroes, none in politics: Farmer
By John Farmer, March 30, 2014

It’s not the first time things have been this bad — when not a single institution or individual in politics, business or industry enjoys widespread approval in the country. Other than our military men and women, there’s not a hero in the lot.

It’s not a casual condition. We have problems at home and in the wider world with Vladimir Putin. We could use a hero, someone or something to rally around and capable of igniting a policy consensus the country might support. But no one and nothing fills that role.

Certainly government in Washington doesn’t. Deservedly or not, Washington is under fire — from the conservative right for sure, but also, if less noticed, from the liberal left as well.

President Obama’s poll numbers have been on a four-month plunge to a toxic 43 percent, last I looked, primarily reflecting liberal disenchantment with him. But Congress fares worse. You’d need a mine shaft to reach its approval numbers, now barely above single digits.

You’d think at least one party would eke out a bit of an edge. But not so. In this hold-your-nose climate, Democrats and Republicans are about equally in disfavor; only the ranks of independents are growing.

Hillary Clinton seems to be doing all right in the premature presidential run-up to 2016. But her standing could owe more to the absence of credible, well-financed Democratic challengers, and maybe even more to her husband’s incredibly durable popularity, than to any real clamor for Hillary herself.

Among Republicans, the presidential lineup resembles another parade of flawed pretenders — Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal, et al. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who buffooned his way through the 2012 GOP primaries, is reassessing his prospects, something only a totally hapless GOP could welcome.

One theory insists tea party support is key to the Republican presidential nomination. Could be. But its approval ratings are in the toilet, too.

What our politics needs is new blood, some say. You’d certainly think that might help. But look what’s happened to the latest "new blood," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Elected last November with more than 70 percent of the vote, de Blasio has plummeted to the mid-40s. Liberals are tough to tranquilize when disappointed.

Everywhere it’s buyer’s remorse, and not just in politics.

The media get a bad rap all around; nobody’s happy with us. We’re too liberal or too conservative; withhold the facts; or publish more than is good for national security or the nation’s psychic well-being. Even the media are beating up the media.

Wall Street’s on a tear and corporate profits have hit new highs, but neither bankers nor business barons rate a standing ovation. And that’s understandable when week in, week out one big bank after another gets fined for one misdeed or another, and cash-rich corporations are mostly keeping the cash for themselves rather than investing and hiring.

And all the while the middle-class incomes stagnate.

How’d we get in this fix? It’s been some time in the making and, truth to tell, we’ve been there before. Recall the disarray of late 1960s and ’70s, with assassinations, urban riots, Watergate and the great oil crisis, when it seemed the country was spinning out of control with no one in command.

We were in the grip of events beyond anyone’s control in those days. But the disarray and disgust we’re experiencing today is something of our own making.

As the political arts have changed — becoming more technologically sophisticated and awash in money and hit men-style consultants — they’ve become darker, flooding the airwaves, particularly cable TV, with hourly ads demonizing the opposition.

Obama is foreign-born, a European socialist or too eager to surrender to our enemies. Mitt Romney was a serial tax evader who despised the poor. House Speaker John Boehner is a buffoonish pawn of the tea party. No one has a good word for anyone, which makes it hard for voters to find a figure to rally around.

We’ll get out of this leadership vacuum as we did in the ’60s and ’70s. Democrats will rally around someone in time, maybe even Obama — but not before the midterm elections — or more likely Hillary Clinton as 2016 approaches. For Republicans, their hero search seems harder. None in the current crop measures up. Put simply, the GOP needs an adult, which ultimately could fix the focus on a seemingly reluctant Jeb Bush. 
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