...When King asked the candidates to describe themselves in a single word, Paul chose consistent; Santorum, courage; Romney, resolute; and Gingrich, cheerful (judging from his expression, that last one was either a joke or a euphemism for sneering). It’s telling that all of those qualities contain an element of dismissiveness—a willingness, for better or worse, to ignore danger or distractions or reality. On the basis of this debate, though, the one word that best describes all of the candidates might have been contemptuous.
It wasn’t just the attacks on President Obama, though there were plenty of those, in the most alarmist of keys. “This President obviously has a problem with standing up to Iran in any form,” Santorum said. “Ladies and gentleman, he isn’t going to stop them.” (That did get cheers.) Gingrich said we were “looking at an abyss,” and suggested that teachers these days were evil (“if a foreign power did this to our children, we’d declare this an act of war”) and that General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who’d talked about the possibility that Iran was making rational calculations, was pitiably naïve. (“I just can not imagine why he would say that.”) Romney portrayed the United Auto Workers as a gang of robbers, public employees as overpaid “servants,” and John King as an annoyance. (Romney: “You know, you get to ask the questions you want, I get to answer the questions I want.” King: “Fair enough.”) Paul said that he doubted people would accept the moral or constitutional case against war, but might mind how expensive it was. Santorum made the Salt Lake City Olympics sound like a boondoggle, rather than the Greatest Games Ever. He also talked about how tough it had been for him in Pennsylvania, since, “All my rich seniors moved to Florida and Arizona.”
It wasn’t just the attacks on President Obama, though there were plenty of those, in the most alarmist of keys. “This President obviously has a problem with standing up to Iran in any form,” Santorum said. “Ladies and gentleman, he isn’t going to stop them.” (That did get cheers.) Gingrich said we were “looking at an abyss,” and suggested that teachers these days were evil (“if a foreign power did this to our children, we’d declare this an act of war”) and that General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who’d talked about the possibility that Iran was making rational calculations, was pitiably naïve. (“I just can not imagine why he would say that.”) Romney portrayed the United Auto Workers as a gang of robbers, public employees as overpaid “servants,” and John King as an annoyance. (Romney: “You know, you get to ask the questions you want, I get to answer the questions I want.” King: “Fair enough.”) Paul said that he doubted people would accept the moral or constitutional case against war, but might mind how expensive it was. Santorum made the Salt Lake City Olympics sound like a boondoggle, rather than the Greatest Games Ever. He also talked about how tough it had been for him in Pennsylvania, since, “All my rich seniors moved to Florida and Arizona.”
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