The year was 2004, and yours truly was a sophomore in college campaigning in Pennsylvania and Ohio for George W. Bush’s reelection effort. Knocking doors, dropping leaflets, making phone calls… the whole panoply of volunteer activities. I probably should’ve been at a Halloween party (or any sort of college party), Save Jerseyans, but I had been bitten by the political bug and felt very strongly that John Kerry would’ve made an absolutely terrible president of the United States.
I remember the things that the Left said about Dubya back then. They called him a butcher (over Iraq), a moron, a racist (by Kanye or whatever he’s called now), and even a Nazi.
Mitt Romney faced similar abuse when he ran in 2012. It was then-Vice President Joe Biden himself who infamously warned a black audience that Romney and Republicans wanted “to put y’all back in chains.”
Both men now enjoy a truce with the forces who unrelentingly attacked their character for decades. Dubya hit all the feels in Media Land by discussing his friendship with Michelle Obama, easily one of the nastiest partisans on the planet. Mitt Romney casts vote after vote in the U.S. Senate seemingly designed to piss of his former defenders, most recently throwing his full backing behind Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson who gave child predators crazily-light sentences and can’t define what a woman is. Both men – especially Mitt – have made it a point to broadcast their loathing for Donald Trump.
Some of it is jealousy. I think there is a class of senior Republican statesmen – Bush, Romney, the late John McCain to name the three most obvious examples – who resent the fact that the GOP base loved (and continues to the love) the Donald more than it ever loved any of them. The “great men” of the party have been replaced in the hearts of GOP voters by a former Democrat real estate tycoon from New York who doesn’t play by the rules. Their rules.
But I think there’s something else going on here, folks. I’ve long suspected it, and I’m not referring to “Low T” though I wouldn’t be surprised especially in Mitt’s case. “Ideological differences” also supply an inadequate answer. Yes, both guys were never movement conservatives, but Donald Trump isn’t exactly a disciple of William F. Buckley.
Most people want to be loved. Said more accurately, most humans don’t want to be hated. We all know the feeling; it’s uncomfortable to feel the stinging scorn of one or even a handful of people let alone thousands or millions of critics. Now imagine that you’re aging, and have a massive ego, and find your thoughts increasingly turning to your legacy and “how you will be remembered.”
Dubya doesn’t want to be remembered as an accused war criminal. Mittens doesn’t want to go down in history as the rich guy who got his ass handed to him by Barack Obama. They want to be remembered fondly as senior statesmen who represent – in their minds, and the minds of those who either believe their bullshit or want others to believe it for political ends – as living vestiges of a better, more civilized past. I can’t get inside their heads, but I strongly suspect they’re giving precious little thought to the consequences of their actions. That’s the future. They’re focused on putting their respective pasts into a more favorable context.
I know both men couldn’t care less about their former supporters who, like me, defended them at family dinners, office water cooler queue and Ohio phone banks from all of the evil accusations lodged by Leftist detractors. The Left writes the history books. Their opinion matters far more than yours or mine to tired old men who want to be loved.
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Matt Rooney is founder and editor-in-chief of SaveJersey.com, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and host of ‘The Matt Rooney Show’ ever Sunday evening 8-10PM on Philadelphia’s Talk Radio 1210 WPHT.
