“Your appearance is comical to me.” – Martin Prince
The last week or so saw Michael Steel’s chairmanship of the Republican National Committee go from merely entertaining to sublimely revealing. If he were doing this as a performance art project it would be the Mona Lisa of performance art projects. But he seems to take himself quite seriously and what makes the whole thing so enlightening is the reaction of Republican leaders to Republican style leadership.
Steele has, in essence, run the RNC the same way the Bush Administration ran the country: poorly. To be more specific, he appears to enjoy his public role a lot more than he does the boring details (via) of what is essentially a managerial job, views book riches resulting from his official position as a given right, and seems immune to any kind of awareness about how foolish he appears to others. And there’s no sign of him slowing down. He’s managed all this in less than twelve months on the job, and in an off year at that. There’s no telling to what heights of the absurd the pressures and rigors of an actual election year might push him.
It’s not all for show, of course. Steele is nominally in charge of one of only two major political parties in the most powerful country on Earth. His decisions, good and bad, literally have global importance. So in theory we should be asking what kind of impact his Bush-esque style of leadership will have on election results. But it’s far too early in the year to pretend that serious analysis of November is possible. It seems safe to say that Steele’s leadership won’t help the Reds, but whether or not it will matter is an entirely different question.
So in the meantime we can all sit back and relax, confident that the man leading the Republican Party is no hypocrite. He studied their methods very carefully and has applied that winning formula to the Party itself. That some of the Party’s other leaders are objecting is only natural. Bush the Younger’s approval ratings got into the low 20s at one point. Entrenched and incompetent leadership is a bitch, and in this case it couldn’t happen to a more self destructive group of people.
