And You Think There’s No Serious Political Debate in France?

The American presidential campaign is finished. The winner of the Republican primary is Mitt Romney. Barack Obama will be re-elected for a four-year term on November 6, 2012. This is no Easter oracle. It’s what many American media have decided in observation of a race to the White House that is boring them to death. But only after a lot of amusement, and here’s why:

Everything started rather well. The slogan hammered home by Republicans throughout 2011 qualifying Barack Obama a “one-term president” hit the bull’s eye for many Americans, tired of seeing his calm, ironclad, somewhat “Bostonian” (aka snobbish) smile, in the middle of what for many has been experienced as a cataclysm; a far cry from the memory of the “Yes, We Can!” slogan, which allowed America to turn the page on the Bush years with dignity.

That’s why when the Republican primary kick-off took place in early 2011, everyone thought: “The show is on!” One after another, 12 contenders jumped into the free-for-all, which traditionally takes on the air of a wild Wyoming rodeo accompanied by the country music of Chris LeDoux or Michael Martin Murphy, sounding the banjo and guitar.

Discoveries, errors, bluffing and rebounds could all be expected, but the show exceeded the most daring expectations.

Here is the review of this joyous brawl that in the end is like a vintage wine, intoxicating for being worthy of the best “cheesy movies” and gripping with mediocrity for the media and voters alike.

Bad Boxer

• Candidate: Tim Pawlenty

• Republican Party

• 39th Governor of Minnesota

• Announcement of candidacy: May 23, 2011

• Withdrawal: August 14, 2011

• Has officially supported Mitt Romney since September 12, 2011

• Amount of funds collected for his campaign: $5,946,958.33

• Quote: “I have a wife who genuinely loves to fish. I mean, she will take the lead and ask me to go out fishing, and joyfully comes here,” the governor said before adding, “She loves football, she’ll go to hockey games and, I jokingly say, ‘Now, if I could only get her to have sex with me.'”

While at his best, the “anti-Obamania” enthusiast Tim Pawlenty was the first to be thrown off the electoral bull.

The former governor of Minnesota had been John McCain’s challenger for the Republican nomination against Obama in 2008. He believed in his nomination so much that he decided not to run for a third term as governor, a post he would have easily obtained. As a good pupil of the Internet age, Pawlenty was careful to announce his candidacy on his Facebook page on March 21, 2011. His book, published at the beginning of the year, was a success. He positioned himself as a “social conservative” which in local terms means he wanted to eliminate Social Security (which in the United States provides pensions principally for retired and disabled people) and Medicare (allowing those over the age of 65, as well as the underprivileged, to have some sort of health insurance) in order to relieve the federal budget.

He also wanted to prohibit abortion (except in cases of rape and incest), to ban civil unions between people of the same sex in addition to gay marriage, and reestablish “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” for homosexuals in the military, forcing them to either step down or mimic heterosexuality once again. Hopeful.

But the problem was that this contender was a bad strategist, poorly advised and an excessive spendthrift.

As soon as his candidacy was officially announced in Iowa on May 23, 2011 he splashed out the nice sum of $1 million for four televised spots denouncing Obama’s failure to straighten out the economy, which proved anxiety-provoking and not very original.

Worse yet, in June, just moments before a televised debate in New Hampshire, he went ahead and denounced “Obamneycare” (a play on words putting Obama’s highly contested health care reform in the same bag as a Republican one, Romney’s) before showing a lack of courage in the end, refusing to go onto the platform and confront Mitt Romney, who eagerly awaited him. His financial support was quickly withdrawn, as he was seen to lack virility when it comes to confronting the enemy head on.

Pawlenty finished himself off on Fox News at the beginning of August in a debate against one of his most dangerous challengers, the one and only Michele Bachmann, qualifying her “record of accomplishment and results” as “nonexistent.” Showing the bland side of her character, Bachmann settled for dealing a low blow, saying that he strongly reminded her of Obama. Bam! Exit Tim Pawlenty. Knocked down in the polls, he declared his dropout on Aug. 14, undoubtedly meditating on the popular proverb: “Till Virgin Mary’s Day straw turns into wheat, and after Virgin Mary’s Day – the wheat turns into straw!”

Bachmann Forever

• Candidate: Michele Bachmann

• Republican Party

• Member of the House of Representatives (Minnesota)

• Announcement of candidacy: June 27, 2011

• Withdrawal: January 4, 2012

• Doesn’t officially support any of the remaining candidates.

• Amount of funds collected for her campaign: $9,259,623.94

• Quote: “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under Democrat President Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it is an interesting coincidence.”

Michele Bachmann, inimitable.

Elected to Congress in 2006, she knew how to attract the interest of the media by virulently attacking then-candidate Obama, implying his lack of “Americanism.” Bachmann is a sort of “Big Bertha” of ultra-conservative ideas that has the sense of controversy but not of politics. One thing she shares with her Minnesota rival, who she fatally kicked in a sensitive place with heels, is the talent to attract dollars.

Her real advantage is also her Achilles’ heel: the famous tea party, a little galaxy of UFOs that invaded all the strongholds of the Republican Party, suffering from chronic acid indigestion ever since.

Quickly characterized as the “Tea Party Queen,” for which she even created a caucus (a group of supporters that designates delegates during primary elections) in her state of Minnesota, she proclaims its ideas loud and clear.

But alas, a heavyweight from the same camp hates her: Sarah Palin herself, the ever-present heroine of an America who not only believes in abstinence for others but personally applies this principle, and who believes Obama is the enemy of humanity and that China rather than Afghanistan is America’s greatest enemy.

In her autobiography published in November, unfortunately too late to recover her campaign, Bachmann writes that if she is the way that she is, it’s Jimmy Carter’s fault because she was one of Carter’s greatly disappointed followers during the time that her political ideology was being forged. Fortunately, not everyone who was disappointed in Carter followed the same intellectual progression, if we can in fact qualify what happened to Bachmann as intellectual progression. Already back in 2004, before the Senate, she declared that the “normalization” of homosexuality would lead to “desensitization,” and without flinching, gave the Lion King as an example of gay propaganda. “‘Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?’ The message is: I’m better at what I do, because I’m gay.” OK.

This wasn’t so funny when just a short time afterwards, Michele Bachmann commented on lesbian singer Melissa Etheridge’s cancer. “Unfortunately she is now suffering from breast cancer, so keep her in your prayers,” she said in November 2004. “This may be an opportunity for her now to be open to some spiritual things, now that she is suffering with that physical disease. She is a lesbian.”

But she made an even bigger blunder in an interview for the Minneapolis Star Tribune after returning from a press junket to Iraq in 2007. The newspaper asked her about her meeting with General Petraeus in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces and here was her response: “It’s absolutely huge,” she said. “I turned to my colleagues and said there’s a commonality with the Mall of America, in that it’s on that proportion. There’s marble everywhere. The other thing I remarked about was there is water everywhere. He had man-made lakes all around his personal palace — one for fishing, one for boating.” Very well.

The next year, Michele Bachmann made a brilliant contribution to modern science by declaring, “carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” Yes…

Then when interviewed by Chris Matthews on his show on MSNBC about a rumor concerning the “intimate relationship” between Barack Obama and his former pastor, she declared to the dumbfounded journalist that Obama had some very “anti-American ideas” and suggested that the liberals in Congress, including Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, should be put under the media spotlight because they have the same anti-American views. Oh the joys of McCarthyism.

The fall also saw the flourishing of the venomous flowers of Michele Bachmann, who asserted that the vaccine against HPV caused mental retardation, that the earthquake and cyclone that hit the East Coast of the United States were a message from God, and she even took pride in the fact that John Wayne was a native of her Minnesota…without realizing that the famous actor was in fact born in Iowa and the John Wayne she was speaking of was John Wayne Gacy, one of the most famous serial killers of the United States.

But her real moment of glory took place on November 30, 2011 during a meeting in Waverly, Iowa, where she declared she would shut down the American Embassy in Tehran if she became president. She didn’t know that it had been gone since 1980.

Bam! Exit Michele Bachmann in the beginning of January 2012. The laughter and tears were too much to retain enough voters; it was the end of the rope.

Doubtful Pizza

• Candidate: Herman Cain

• Republican Party

• President of the Central Bank of Kansas City

• Announcement of candidacy: May 21, 2011

• Withdrawal: December 3, 2011

• Supports Newt Gingrich

• Amount of funds collected for campaign: $16,861,686.74

• Quote: “The more toppings a man has on his pizza, I believe the more manly he is…. Because the more manly man is not afraid of abundance…. A manly man don’t want it piled high with vegetables! He would call that a sissy pizza.”

It’s now the Pizza King’s turn, and it’s not very kosher. The raging tea party, joyously led by Sarah Palin, acting as warm-up artist and turkey grinder from her distant Alaska, not believing that Michele Bachmann had a chance (too beautiful), needed another conquistador.

They believed to have found him in Herman Cain, former president of — we are not making this up —“Godfather’s Pizza.” And it all takes place in Chicago.

Cain, born in 1945 and child of Georgia, has done everything. A writer, radio show host and syndicated columnist, he has no less than a degree in applied mathematics, a Masters in computer science and a slew of high ranked positions in the banking and restaurant sectors on his résumé, and therefore a lot of money. He was appointed by Newt Gingrich in 1995 to serve on the Kemp Commission (a very serious commission named after its chairman, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, which sought to replace the existing form of taxation with a flat tax system). He was then appointed as Bob Dole’s special economy advisor for the presidential campaign, to name only a few items on his list of honors.

These were all reasons to proudly enter the primary running in May 2011. His charisma led him to briefly overtake Obama in polls in the fall of 2011. He was even declared as the man most covered by the media in 2011 by the Pew Research Center, a Washington think tank. But his candidacy is not the sole reason for this title.

Politico published a report stating that Herman Cain had been accused of inappropriate behavior by two employees during his tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the late 90s. Denial.

Then on Nov. 2, a third accuser reported an account of sexual harassment in his corporate apartment. Then a fourth charge was unveiled. Denying everything at first with his hand on his heart and away from his pants, even claiming not to remember the women, Cain had to admit shortly afterwards that these women had received compensation equaling a year’s worth of salary due to his behavior. Cain himself decided to unveil the name of a fifth accuser so that he could deny her public statements in advance. But this one made television rounds in order to refresh his memory.

On December 3, 2011, the Pizza King had to throw in the apron, saying it was just a temporary campaign withdrawal all while continuing to deny the allegations. But we haven’t seen him back in the kitchen since.

The Missionary in Taiwan…

• Candidate: Jon M. Huntsman

• Republican Party

• 16th Governor of Utah

• Announcement of candidacy: June 21, 2011

• Withdrawal: January 16, 2012

• Supports Mitt Romney

• Amount of funds collected for his campaign: $6,369,201.13

• Quote: None. He has no sense of humor.

As far as Jon M. Huntsman Jr. is concerned, he will have been a lamb and a shooting star in the Republican primary sky. The main reason being that he was not at the right place at the right time. He can even be considered a downright casting mistake made by his party. Rarely is a Republican candidate chased out by his own camp with such contempt.

In the shadow of the Statue of Liberty in June 2011, while announcing his candidacy, he in fact, proclaimed himself a moderate. That day, he also called for a campaign of “civility, humanity and respect.” Excuse me? Nobody reacted because nothing puts politics to sleep faster than poetry. Bam!

The exit from the scene is already imminent for this weak link. Huntsman comes from a family of billionaires and enjoys nothing less than tremendous personal popularity. Twice governor of Utah, he is experienced in foreign policy. He held diplomatic positions in both Bush administrations and was ambassador to China under President Obama. He speaks Mandarin fluently, having learned it as a young Mormon missionary in Taiwan. But being able to work with both the Republican and Democratic camps was his weak point. More moderate on social issues than most of the other candidates, he separated with the party on the question of homosexual civil unions, and being of the Mormon faith, he was a cocktail that most evangelicals wouldn’t drink.

He was therefore encouraged to leave the spot to the original, Mitt Romney, a hardcore Mormon, just as rich and better positioned to seduce the extreme electoral fringe.

Long Live the War! Long live Rock n’ Roll

• Candidate: Thaddeus McCotter

• Republican Party

• Member of the House of Representatives (Michigan)

• Announcement of candidacy: July 2, 2011

• Withdrawal: September 22, 2011

• Supports Mitt Romney

• Amount of funds collected for his campaign: $549,777.49

• Quote: “Death by media” (when he withdrew)

No more glorious, the other dampened firecracker that the tea party, hallucinating, took for a potential bomb: Thaddeus McCotter

But the warning signs were there. He represented his state of Michigan for a single term in the Senate, then a single term in the House of Representatives.* However, this guitar player had some good cards up his sleeve: his proximity to the formidable speaker of the House of Representatives and a decisive role in the passing of several important laws concerning social matters. He was a firm supporter of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and was one of the first to speak against the Paulson plan allowing for the massive acquisition of equities — $700 million — in the weakest financial institutions.

But none of this did much to make McCotter shine as a candidate beyond some rock music festivals which he’s so fond of. So there’s the report of the shortest candidacy to be had by any of the candidates. McCotter was down after only 84 days of futile battle.

Perry in No Hurry

• Candidate: Rick Perry

• Republican Party

• 47th Governor of Texas

• Announcement of candidacy: August 13, 2011

• Withdrawal: January 19, 2012

• Supports Newt Gingrich

• Amount of funds collected for his campaign: $20,507,677.16

• Quote: “The reason that we fought the [American] Revolution in the 16th century — was to get away from that kind of onerous crown, if you will.”

As for Rick Perry, he must be wondering why he decided to run in the primaries. Unless he suffers from memory lapses because that’s exactly how he acquired his international reputation, thanks to the buzz created during that famous televised debate in which he couldn’t remember the name of one of the government agencies that he wanted to close down.

Of course, he’s not a newcomer. He holds the title of longest serving governor of Texas, having succeeded George W. Bush in 2000 and re-elected twice. He is also the president of the Association of American governors. He is liked by social conservatives as well as the moderates of the tea party.

When he announced his candidacy on Aug. 13, 2011 in South Carolina, he could do so proudly, having a strong record of job creation in his state of Texas and a solid discourse on the preservation of social values.

The problem is that Perry was never appreciated by the Bush family and, by extension, the Republican establishment. But the worst is perhaps illustrated by the revelation in the Washington Post in October 2011, that for years, Perry and his family rented a hunting ground called “Niggerhead,” and that he found little objection to leaving the inscription for years on a huge stone at the entrance and receiving a load of visitors from the party. His open mindedness is also displayed when he found it outrageous that “gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.”

Goodbye…

Buddy Who?

• Candidate: Buddy Roemer

• Independent

• Governor of Louisiana

• Announcement of candidacy: July 21, 2011

• Withdrawal: February 23, 2012

• Doesn’t support anyone (in fact, no one has asked him)

• Amount of funds collected for his campaign: $510,502.00

• Quote: “BREAKING: Somebody who died in 1987 is beating me in Iowa. #invisibleman #LetBuddyDebate.”

And the honor of being the last one dismounted goes to Buddy Roemer, the only independent of the losing cast.

Elected for the first time in 1980 as a Democratic representative of Louisiana, he was re-elected in 1982, 1984 and 1986. An avid supporter of Ronald Reagan, he was elected governor of Louisiana in 1988 and changed teams in 1991 to support his re-election. He was defeated in the Republican primaries.

The next twenty years were a political desert for him. After the failure of 1991, he founded the Sterling Group, specializing in the international trade of plastic materials. He unsuccessfully attempted to return to politics in 1995 by adopting a much more conservative tone. This was a failure. In 2004, he attempted to run for a senate seat but was left in the dust without anyone even noticing him.

For 20 years, Roemer was never invited to any political gathering or debate. His new attempt at a comeback in 2011 raised no eyebrows in the media and much less among politicians. He waited until February 23 of this year to withdraw from the primary race but by that time it had already been forgotten that he was a runner.

And the four finalists are…

After this last candidate’s fall from the ground floor, four remain standing and they are the most ferocious: Mitt Romney, considered very likely to be nominated during the Republican convention next August to run against Barack Obama; Rick Santorum, who is determined not to give up for the moment and is starting to really irritate Romney’s staff who, sparing him nothing, have been digging through old business during the past few days in hopes of finding some skeletons**; Ron Paul the troublemaker that has been nicknamed the “intellectual godfather of the tea party”; and the steadfast Newt Gingrich, one of the strongest influences in the conservative circles in Washington and, whatever happens with him, a force to be reckoned with.

The story of the band of four is another issue. And this time it’s not so funny. Next time, please put the children to bed.

(To be continued…)

*Editor’s Notes: Thaddeus McCotter is a five-term congressman.

**Rick Santorum dropped out of the race on April 10, 2012.