In this he differs from his competitors. Mitt Romney is the very model of a modern venture capitalist. Mike Huckabee is the very model of a modern evangelical. Rudy Giuliani is the very model of a modern can-do executive. They are impressive modern men all. But John McCain is a not-so-modern type. One might call him a neo-Victorian ”” rigid, self-righteous and moralizing, but (or rather and) manly, courageous and principled.
Maybe a dose of this type of neo-Victorianism is what the 21st century needs. A fair number of Republican and independent voters seem to think so, if one can infer as much from their support of McCain at the polls. But, amazingly, a neo-Victorian straightforwardness might also turn out to be strategically smart.
McCain has been the only Republican candidate who hasn’t tried to out-think the process. Perhaps out of sheer necessity, after his campaign imploded last summer, he simply picked himself up and made his case to the voters in the various states.
Meanwhile, the other G.O.P. candidates are creatures of our modern age of analysis and meta-analysis, and their campaigns have sometimes been too clever by half.
Great analysis and I think he’s on to something…
As someone commented recently, there are perhaps all of five “national greatness” Republicans in the commentariat left out there now, and two of them are the “conservatives” on the op-ed page of the Times.
Interesting, because though Henley is not “modern” he was “modernist”. I appreciate this portrait of McCain. Perhaps that’s because I’m neo-Victorian myself in many ways. Modernism is fraught with theological problems (we are not really masters of our fate, or captains of our soul – as Christians we make Jesus the latter and ask him to be the former). But that is not the point of this article. I think the point is that McCain is honest and honorable, in a way we’ve not seen in politicians in a generation.
for me, it is attractive to see a non-Baby Boomer option (I’d rather Obama)
The self-absorbed locust-like behavior of my fellow boomers has made many institutions (church, bus, politics) just painful to see