Political Virility
By Jay Nordlinger

Many years ago, Chris Matthews--now famous on TV--hit on an interesting formulation: He said the Democrats were the “mommy party” and the Republicans the “daddy party.” That is, the Democrats were “nurturers,” concerned with health policy and daycare. The Republicans were “protectors,” taking care of national security and other manly matters. This notion is obviously galling to some. But Matthews was on to something, and we now find ourselves in a “daddy party” time.

 

Republicans have seldom shied from an embrace of manliness. The New York Times recently ran a report on the new Bush re-election headquarters. It explained that the offices display two large photos: one of President Bush “sweating and looking rugged in a T-shirt and cowboy hat”; another of Ronald Reagan “also looking rugged in a cowboy hat.” Yup, that’s the Republican Party.

 

Of course, George W. Bush is famous for his “compassionate conservatism.” He is capable of great tenderness of expression, much of it related, no doubt, to his triumph over alcohol and his religious awakening. But Bush as hombre has been the dominant theme of his post-September 11 Presidency.

 

Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, likes to tell a story about Bush out in Iowa, early in the 2000 Presidential campaign. A group of Hell’s Angels rode into town, and Bush simply waded into them, hugging them, bonding with them, relishing them. Not every American politician could manage this, without affectation. Bush was also, in that campaign, known to have a much better time with the rough ’n’ ready cameramen in the back of the plane than with the (much more effete) reporters who also accompanied him.

 

His ranch in Crawford says a lot, too. President Clinton enjoyed swilling with the swells on Martha’s Vineyard (except for 1996, when a poll instructed him to go camping out West). President Bush, much to the dismay of the White House press corps, would rather spend August in boiling central Texas, wielding a chainsaw.

 

Bush’s personality grates on some. On many. He is accused of machismo, belligerence, cowboyism. For Europeans, in particular--and for European-like Americans--he is the very model of the swaggering, heedless, vulgar right-winger. He said he wanted bin Laden “dead or alive.” About Saddam holdouts in Iraq, he declared, “Bring ’em on”--meaning, our boys are ready to confront them. This prompted a hue and cry among Bush’s critics. As the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank commented, “It’s the sort of thing that sounds pretty shocking,” although “often this sort of Old West rhetoric appeals to the American people.”

 

In a June 2002 speech, Bush gave his description of the country he leads: “I like to use the word ‘tough,’ because we are.” “Tough but compassionate,” he has said on other occasions, a phrase that may apply as much to himself as to the country. In his State of the Union address of 2002, he said something remarkably blunt, even astounding: “For too long, our culture has said, ‘If it feels good, do it.’ Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: ‘Let’s roll.’” (Of course, this is an evocation of the famous words spoken aboard Flight 93 on September 11.)

 

The last couple of years have been replete with Bush toughness--tough talk, tough action, toughness in a tough job. “They’ve got a problem on their hands,” he said of the terrorists. “We’re gonna find ’em. And if they’re hidin’, we’re gonna smoke ’em out. And we’ll bring ’em to justice.” He is quite taken with this “smoking out” business. Standing in the White House with the governor of Louisiana, he said, “I know the governor likes to hunt rabbits down in Louisiana. Sometimes those rabbits think they can hide from the governor. But, eventually, he smokes ’em out and gets ’em. And that’s exactly what’s happening to Mr. bin Laden and all the murderers that he’s trying to hide in Afghanistan.”

 

He can be cocky, certainly--sort of defiant-cocky, righteous cocky. In March 2002, he told an audience, “Obviously, as you well know, we found some of them [the terrorists] bunched up in the Shahikote Mountains [of Afghanistan]. And we sent our military in. And they’re not bunched up anymore.” Badda-bing.

 

So, that’s our President. What of our Vice President? Is he, too, a “daddy politician”? You bet, as Donald Rumsfeld would say. Cheney is a laconic Westerner, exuding an aura of competence, strength, and dependability. You get the feeling that things are going to be all right if Cheney is on the case. Like his boss, he talks straight, in matter-of-fact tones. His detractors enjoy reminding us that he received a deferment in the Vietnam War—he is on the liberals’ list of “chicken hawks.” But few serious people consider him anything other than a prime example of the toughminded conservative.

 

Then there is the Secretary of Defense himself. Donald Rumsfeld is almost a riot of manliness, and his moment indeed arrived on September 11. He was in his office--briefing congressmen on, among other things, the threat of terrorism--when Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon’s walls. Against the advice of some, he rushed to help the wounded. Not long after 9/11, I talked to some friends of his, in preparation for a piece. One of them said, “Look, we’re not playing pitty patty anymore. We have a foe that’s proven deadly. People look for a different kind of person to run Washington--as far away from the Clinton type as you can get.”

 

Rumsfeld, it is true, is the anti-Clinton. We see this in his authenticity, his trustworthiness, and his frankness. He is so direct, he practically assaults the modern, spin-accustomed ear. Rumsfeld freely uses what my colleague Kate O’Beirne has dubbed the “K-word”--kill. When a reporter asked him why U.S. forces were using such heavy bombs in Afghanistan, the Secretary replied: “They are being used on frontline al-Qaeda and Taliban troops to try to kill them.” Oh.

 

Rather unexpectedly, Rumsfeld became a kind of sex symbol as the weeks and months after 9/11 unfolded. Women of all sorts were open about their attraction to him. On CNN, Larry King was moved to ask him about his new status as a heartthrob. “Oh, come on,” said Rumsfeld. “For the AARP, perhaps. I’m pushing 70 years old.” But that was beside the point--or maybe it was the point itself. Rumsfeld is, in fact, a throwback: to a time of crewcuts, stiff upper lips, and moral clarity. He seems a character out of a World War II flick. Clinton, by contrast, was more a Richard Gere kind of leader. Where Clinton feels pain, Rumsfeld is more likely to inflict it--on the country’s enemies.

 

Sometimes viewed as insouciant, the Defense Secretary is resolutely clear-eyed about war. Over and over, he describes it as a “dirty job,” a “tough, long, grinding, dirty business.” Columnist Maureen Dowd twits him as “Rip Van Rummy”--a guy who went to sleep sometime in the ’70s and woke up to find himself in government again. The old values, however, are in. Of necessity.

 

Rudolph Giuliani is another man whose stock has risen. After September 11, he loomed as a hero to the entire country, and his legendary toughness seemed exactly right. This was a man who took charge of hell on earth and bucked a shaken city up. He had never been a cuddly mayor--but the people of New York hadn’t wanted a cuddly mayor. They wanted crime defeated and their city livable once more. To be sure, Giuliani has had some less-than-heroic moments. He held a press conference to announce that he was separating from his wife; he told both the world and her at the same time. On a lighter note, I might mention that Giuliani, as mayor, enjoyed dressing in drag. He did this on several festive, campy occasions. It takes an exceptionally manly man to appear in make-up, wig, frock, and pumps and still keep his reputation.

 

Since September 11, many Americans have rediscovered the virtues of manliness in office. The Democrats have a job to do if they’re to challenge the “daddy party” in this respect. They’ve been making an effort. Richard Gephardt, the former House minority leader and current Presidential candidate, has been acting macho--or at least blustery--on the stump. He has been pounding lecterns, shouting, making his veins bulge. Gephardt seems to have lifted a page from Al Gore, whereby if you rant and rave, you’re a man--indeed, an “alpha male.” In his third debate versus Governor Bush, Vice President Gore strode across the stage and got right in the face of his opponent. Barbara Bush, mother of the Republican nominee, later commented, “I thought he was going to hit George.” It was a bad move on Gore’s part: He simply looked like a bully--and a pretender, at that--rather than a tough guy. Bush’s parry of him--an incredulous nod--was masterly.

 

Again, the Democrats will have to acquire a bit more testosterone if they’re to compete with the GOP. This is, indeed, no time for “pitty-patty.” As for the Republicans, if they had any more testosterone, they’d be The Incredible Hulk. House Speaker Denny Hastert was a wrestling coach, for crying out loud. That’s almost overkill!

 

Why We Need Macho Men

By Steve Sailer

 

With many Republicans excited by the possibility that former Mr. Olympia bodybuilder and current Terminator 3 star Arnold Schwarzenegger may run for governor of California, the connection between masculinity and leadership charisma needs examining. Why does the prospect of being governed by Schwarzenegger, who did for steroids what Timothy Leary did for LSD, seem so much more right and fitting than the notion of being led by an unmanly star like, say, David Spade of “Just Shoot Me?”

 

The rise of feminism and political correctness has left us with little vocabulary for discussing why, all else being equal, humans prefer masculine rulers. Our pundits have a hard time accounting for the almost subrational reasons why some politicians, such as George W. Bush, are widely seen as natural leaders and others, like poor old Al Gore, aren’t.

 

Before the 2000 Presidential election, political scientists predicted a big Gore victory because the country was enjoying peace and prosperity. The experienced, intelligent, hardworking Vice President cruised into the first Presidential debate with a nice lead over his opponent. Yet, when much of the public paid close attention to the two men for the first time that evening, Gore quickly began to sink in the polls.

 

Conservative commentators spun out millions of words trying to explain, with little success, why many average folks had found Gore disconcerting and phony sounding. His notorious muscular stiffness clearly contributed, but Gore also displayed a minor speech defect peculiarly unfortunate in a man running for Commander in Chief. Earlier in the campaign, my wife pointed out to me Gore’s barely noticeable tendency to hiss his “s” sounds. I ran our impressions by Harry Shearer, who voices a dozen and a half characters on “The Simpsons,” including the evil billionaire Mr. Burns and his devoted gay male secretary Smithers. He replied, “It’s not a lisp, as in ‘lithp.’ Rather, it’s a sibilant problem, in which the sibilants are pronounced in a thinner, more ‘hissy’ fashion than is normal among American males.” It’s not fashionable to notice this, but this “lissssp” makes Gore sound prim, even homosexual, especially in contrast to the folksy masculinity of Bush’s Texas accent.

 

According to experiments conducted by J.Michael Bailey, chairman of the Northwestern University psychology department, showing that audiences can fairly accurately distinguish straights from gays by voice alone, the “lissssp” is one of the three main clues.

 

Although the pundits were clueless, experts on what Camille Paglia calls “sexual personae” picked up on the impression his “lissssp” made. After the first debate, comedian Billy Crystal joked that Gore sounded like a “gay waiter.” Shearer said that he sounded like a “gay robot.” Paglia herself complained about Gore’s “prissy, lisping, Little Lord Fauntleroy persona, which borders on epicene.” Of course, Gore is a happily married father of four, but his pronunciation quirk tends to confuse first-time listeners. And effeminate traits simply don’t fit many voters’ image of a President.

 

Modern intellectuals feel that voter discrimination in favor of manly men is wrong and shouldn’t be discussed in polite company. Less sophisticated peoples suffer no such compunction. Traditional societies often ritually attribute to their kings masculine qualities so extravagant that they’d seem outlandish even in a Schwarzenegger movie.

 

In Evelyn Waugh’s 1932 novel Black Mischief, the English adventurer Basil Seal delivers a eulogy to tribesmen gathered in a jungle clearing to cremate Seth, the late emperor of the fictitious African state of Azania. Seth had been a flighty young Oxford grad, but his subjects wanted to hear instead that they had been governed by what Africans call a “Big Man.” Therefore, Seal’s funeral oration “was no more candid than most royal obituaries. It was what was required”:

 

Seth’s name was a name of terror.… Thousands fell by his right hand. The words of his mouth were like thunder in the hills. Weep, women of Azania, for your royal lover is torn from your arms. His virility was inexhaustible, his progeny numerous beyond human computation. His staff was a grown palm tree. Weep, warriors of Azania. When he led you to battle there was no retreating. In council the most guileful, in justice the most terrible, Seth the magnificent is dead.

 

To explain why people look to Big Men for leadership, it’s useful to compare the Big Man to another masculine, yet radically different, archetype: the nerd. Picture a Cro-Magnon tribe on the Ice Age steppes. The leader of the wooly mammoth hunters is a primordial Big Man, while the guy who stays home and expertly chips flints for the hunters’ spears is an early nerd.

 

Where are Big Men and nerds found in the modern world? Consider the life of George W. Bush. As a fraternity president, he no doubt assigned audio-visual nerds to hook up the frat house stereo to boom out “Louie Louie.” As a fighter pilot, he flew F-102 Delta Daggers designed by engineer nerds. As managing general partner of the Texas Rangers ball club, he sold the city of Arlington, Texas on a new stadium deal worked out by finance nerds. As President of the United States of America, he gave a rousing speech to an American Enterprise Institute audience promoting a plan to democratize the Middle East largely sketched by Iraq Attaq nerd Paul Wolfowitz (who, in case you are wondering about his nerd credentials, has a degree in math).

 

Big Men have the “situational awareness” that the Air Force prizes in fighter pilots; Big Men tend to focus broadly but shallowly. Nerds, in contrast, concentrate narrowly but deeply. Big Men are at their best when they are improvising in the flow of a discussion, hunt, battle, or basketball game. Bush is at his most impressive in fairly small meetings. Nerds work best asynchronously.

 

In other words, Big Men say the right thing to the right people at the right time. Nerds don’t. As a card-carrying nerd, I vividly recall walking along after a college history class, reflecting on the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when a Big Man friend passed by with a “Hey, what’s happening?”

 

Well, the Austro-Hungarian Empire clearly wasn’t happening, but what was? About five minutes later, I came up with a clever, by then useless, reply--which I could never seem to remember whenever somebody asked me, “Hey, what’s happening?”

 

I bet that never happened to George W. Bush.

 

Big Men tend to be more masculine than nerds in physical and emotional traits like muscularity, self-confidence, and aggressiveness. These may be related to the levels of testosterone in their bloodstream (and also the number of androgen receptors they have to interact with these male hormones). All these characteristics can be boosted by taking artificial androgens. In 2000, journalist Andrew Sullivan credited the revival of his career to his injecting prescription testosterone. In an article about the manly molecule in the New York Times Magazine, he explained how the shots made him more of a Big Man: “My appetite in every sense of that word expanded beyond measure. . . . I can squat more than 400 pounds. Depression, once a regular feature of my life, is now a distant memory. . . . Soon after I inject myself with testosterone, I feel a deep surge of energy. My attention span shortens. My wit is quicker, my mind faster, but my judgment is more impulsive.”

 

Perhaps the foremost reason for the popularity of Big Men is that they are decisive. No paralysis through analysis for them. Like Harry Truman, President Bush does not shirk making life and death decisions. He seems to wear the burdens of responsibility lightly.

 

The downside is that quick decisions are more likely to be wrong decisions, especially because Big Men are inclined, like Old Testament patriarchs, toward wrath. (Once again, this personality trait can be artificially juiced. Bodybuilders refer to their violent episodes as “’roid rage.”)

 

Still, the public is often willing to tolerate an increased chance of snap judgments, especially in foreign policy, because they understand that their leaders aren’t making decisions in a timeless void, but are under competitive pressure from the Big Men (and imperious women) heading other countries.

 

Thus, voters often feel it’s more important for their President to make some choice now rather than the perfect choice later. If he mulls and ponders too long, he risks letting an enemy take the initiative. One could hardly expect someone as unscholarly as the President to anticipate all the ramifications of invading Iraq. Yet, regardless of whether his overall assessment of the situation turns out to be right or wrong, by not dithering he seized the whip hand--thus denying it to Saddam Hussein.