Mitt Without the Middle

Many Americans are searching for someone like Ronald Reagan. Someone who can, with one grand gesture, tell Americans how wonderful their country is, how powerful and superior.

What a beautiful springtime for President Obama. Every time he turns on the television he gets to watch the Republican presidential candidates destroying one another. How their advertising spots portray the Democrats as inept, weak or — horror of horrors! — liberal. Instead of debating the economic crisis or national security policy, they prefer to talk about contraception, abortion or the positive significance of the church in society. In brief, they highlight how they are dividing the Republican Party and the public perception of a party drifting ever more toward the right. By doing so, they are handing the political center over to Obama on a silver platter. These are moderates who, in the United States as elsewhere, are the ones who determine the outcome of elections.

This primary election has especially damaged Obama’s likely general election opponent, Mitt Romney. In Massachusetts, Romney governed as a moderate Republican who significantly raised taxes (even on gasoline!) and closed tax loopholes in order to reduce the state’s budget deficit, much to the displeasure of his more conservative party colleagues and many businessmen. He even supported a woman’s right to abortion. His greatest accomplishment, however, came in 2006 when he put through his healthcare reform act, a law that made it mandatory for everyone to purchase health insurance. He accomplished this with bipartisan help and the support of all affected stakeholders statewide. Obama considered Romney’s plan so praiseworthy that he used it as a model for his own national health insurance plan.

A Mainstream Candidate With No Supporters

Thirty years ago, Romney would have been the perfect mainstream candidate as a businessman and moderate conservative able to unite voters of practically every persuasion. He would have had outstanding chances of winning the presidency. Today, by contrast, a mainstream candidate such as Romney can’t even sell himself to his own party, a party that has drifted so far to the extreme right.

Romney’s appeals were rejected by a majority of arch-conservatives, the religious right and above all by low-income workers. They continued supporting the ultra-conservative Rick Santorum even long after it was apparent he had little chance of gaining the nomination.

That poses a huge problem for Romney. In order to gain the nomination, Romney had to change his positions on abortion, healthcare and taxes so radically that even he would probably no longer even recognize them himself. If he hopes to win against Obama in November he will have to resurrect all the promises he made during the primary that were designed to attract moderate voters. But that will have repercussions: first of all, he will do so at the risk of alienating the religious and far right voters whom he had to work so hard to convince he was one of them. And second, the Democrats will have a field day reminding the nation how often he flip-flops on important issues.

But Obama is also on the defensive. Economic conditions are still lackluster, many voters are disappointed with how little Washington has changed under Obama’s leadership and a sizable majority thinks the country is on the wrong track. That’s understandable because America is not only losing jobs to low-wage nations, it is also losing considerable influence in other global areas. Most Americans still do not approve of a president who prefers to negotiate with the world rather than dictate to it. They find Obama’s concept of leading from behind — successfully employed in the Libyan military engagement and other international actions — to be inappropriate behavior for a superpower.

Unlike Obama, many Americans still have not grasped the fact in a multipolar world dominated by enormously prospering emerging economies, the shining aura and limitless opportunities of the last remaining superpower are rapidly diminishing and that the United States is becoming more and more dependent on developments in other regions — developments the U.S. can only marginally influence and control, if it can do so at all.

So Americans are on a quest to discover another Ronald Reagan. Someone capable with one sweeping gesture of telling Americans how magnificent their nation is and how powerful and superior it remains. It’s these feelings of uniqueness and exceptionalism that warms America’s heart. Santorum may have been too extreme for the American people, but during the primary campaign he showed that he had what it takes to be such a heart warmer.

It’s not Romney. If it were, he would already have won the nomination regardless of how many times he’s changed positions on abortion. That’s why his lack of principles will probably be his undoing. For Obama, on the other hand, it promises to be a really beautiful autumn.