{"id":15138,"date":"2012-01-18T11:08:09","date_gmt":"2012-01-18T16:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=15138"},"modified":"2012-12-26T16:07:40","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T21:07:40","slug":"american-politics-oedipus-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/01\/18\/american-politics-oedipus-complex\/","title":{"rendered":"American Politics’ Oedipus Complex"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Article:<\/strong> Oedipus Rex Complex<\/a><\/em> by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times.<\/p>\n

The Text:<\/strong> American politics bristles with Oedipal drama.<\/p>\n

Sons struggling to live up to fathers. Sons striving to outdo fathers. Sons scheming to avenge fathers. Sons burning to one-up fathers. Sons yearning to impress fathers who vanished early on. Sons leaning on fathers. Sons using fathers as reverse-play books.<\/p>\n

John McCain was the raffish and rebellious Navy flier son of a stern four-star admiral who commanded the Vietnam theater where McCain was a P.O.W. Al Gore was the wooden good son of a Tennessee senator who was a fiery orator.<\/p>\n

Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama had to climb the ladder without the huge benefit that J.F.K., W., Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman Jr. had \u2014 the obsessive support of wealthy and well-connected dads.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In November, the senior Jon Huntsman, a billionaire chemical executive, tried a last-ditch effort to buoy his son\u2019s campaign in New Hampshire by rounding up other wealthy donors to pony up money for a major advertising campaign for \u201cJunior,\u201d as the candidate is still known in Utah.<\/p>\n

Mitt is leaving Iowa far stronger than he arrived. It\u2019s daunting, so soon after \u201cJunior\u201d Bush crashed the Bush family station wagon into the globe in an effort to both avenge and outshine his dad, to gear up for another Republican presidential candidate whose r\u00e9sum\u00e9 copies his famous Republican father and whose relationship with dad sculpts his outlook.<\/p>\n

Like W., Mitt Romney studied his father\u2019s mistakes so he wouldn\u2019t repeat them. Because George Romney, who achieved success as a car company executive and Michigan governor, jumped into the 1968 presidential race without the proper preparation on foreign affairs and a concrete position on Vietnam, his son is always overprepared.<\/p>\n

The son is programmed because the father of the Rambler was rambling, impulsive and too candid, losing his footing in the race when he told an interviewer that he suffered a \u201cbrainwashing\u201d in 1965 from military commanders and diplomats in Vietnam that compelled him to support the war, before snapping out of it.<\/p>\n

While his father was often described as a force of nature, Mitt is more like a sea of Styrofoam.<\/p>\n

Both Al Gore senior and George Romney were blunt and tough, sticking to core convictions even when it hurt them. By contrast, their less charismatic sons were more malleable, pandering to the right and playing chameleon. Gore p\u00e8re lost his Senate seat because he refused to back off his opposition to the Vietnam war. Romney p\u00e8re lost his presidential dream after the brainwashing claim because his verbal missteps made critics question his intellectual heft.<\/p>\n

As Eugene McCarthy quipped, brainwashing was too strong a word: \u201cAll that was needed in the case of George Romney was a light rinse.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the fathers suffered for being authentic \u2014 they were both right that America could not defeat Communism with a war in Vietnam \u2014 the sons have suffered for seeming too inauthentic.<\/p>\n

Does Mitt Romney cringe a bit when he accuses the first African-American president of trying to create \u201can entitlement society,\u201d raising the specter of welfare lines in inner cities, given that his father was such a bold champion of civil rights and solving racial problems in the inner cities that it got him in trouble with Mormon Church elders?<\/p>\n

Does he wonder what his dad, who spoke out against the futility of an earlier misguided war, would think of his assertion that President Obama\u2019s move to end the Iraq war represented an \u201castonishing failure\u201d?<\/p>\n

Unlike W., who loved his father but chafed at his long shadow, preferring to present himself as Ronald Reagan\u2019s heir, Mitt had a clear-cut case of hero worship for his dad. While W. never asked his father\u2019s advice on invading Iraq, even though Poppy Bush had experience routing Saddam, Mitt loved getting yellow legal pads full of advice from his dad when he vainly tried to unseat Senator Ted Kennedy. W. rarely talked about his father when he campaigned, wanting to be seen as his own man and a true Texan and conservative.<\/p>\n

Even though Mitt is far more conservative these days than his moderate dad, he loves talking about his parents on the trail, recounting the time they took him in the Rambler for a cross-country drive to see monuments. He has called his dad \u201cthe real deal\u201d and the definition of \u201ca successful human\u201d and explained his political ambition as \u201ca family gene.\u201d He has a poster of his dad\u2019s gubernatorial campaign, with the slogan \u201cKeep Michigan On The Move With A Working Governor,\u201d hanging in his campaign bus.<\/p>\n

Ann Romney was also nuts about George Romney, who proxy-wooed her while his son was a Mormon missionary in France. At a final rally in Des Moines on Tuesday morning, Mrs. Romney said she was thinking of her husband\u2019s father. \u201cWe would never,\u201d she told the crowd, \u201chave had this happen if not for George Romney.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was the one,\u201d she concluded, \u201cwhose shoulders we are standing on.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Article: Oedipus Rex Complex by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. The Text: American politics bristles with Oedipal drama. Sons struggling to live up to fathers. Sons striving to outdo fathers. Sons scheming to avenge fathers. Sons burning to one-up fathers. Sons yearning to impress fathers who vanished early on. Sons leaning on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nAmerican Politics' Oedipus Complex - Prose Before Hos<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Article: Oedipus Rex Complex by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. The Text: American politics bristles with Oedipal drama. 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