LOOKING FOR RONNIE

As the Republicans head relentlessly toward the electoral cliff in 2008, it can hardly be surprising that conservative baby boomers are compelled to wish for the magical and even mystical reappearance of a Reagonesque figure to lead them back to the oligarchic promised land of big government, evil empire battling, and righteous sucker-gaming of Christian fundamentalists.

If this sounds somewhat like what Bush 43 and Cheney Inc. have already delivered, you can ponder the ironies embedded in wishing for the same policies to be re-packaged in a slicker package, and set in a package able to re-vivify the participation mystique. Okay, participation mystique is a 2$ term. For these purposes its gloss refers to the unconscious process of projecting idealizations on a charismatic figure and next having a powerfully unconscious group magnetized around the leader's acceptance of this projection. This is sometimes referred to as a magical participation because the group's investment is cast on the personality of a leader and this projection is then completed by the leader's effective confirmation of the intrapsychic fact; to whit: 'I accept the group's idealization; I am that grand leader able to fulfill the wishes of the group.' This can be described as hero worship; it's the force behind soccer riots, joy weeping boyband fans; and, it's behind almost all uncritical assertions spoken as unyielding, absolute, 100% support of anybody.

The anthropologist Levi-Strauss, in coming up with an apt term for a group phenomena, noted that leadership of the 'tribe' often showcases this fusion of the group psyche to the personality of the leader, (eg. chief, king, president.) It's easy to intuit what kinds of leaders in history have been especially captured by the group's fusion with their personality. Such leaders literally can do no wrong. It's negative manifestation flips the participation into an absolute antipathy where the leader can do no right. In the negative realization of magical participation the idealization is wholly negative and the 'anti-leader' becomes akin to the devil and the opposing group hates the charismatic leader completely.

Outside of the sphere of magical participation lay all the ways groups identify with leaders, ambivalently. In this respect ambivalence is, at least, a sign of some kind of critical relationship with, and evaluation of the leader.

A lot of political pragmatics framed by 'social psychology' are wrapped up between the non-ambivalent and ambivalent poles that demarcate the psychological identification with leaders and the implicit weak or stronger idealizations of the leader, or aspirant to leadership. The techniques of political persuasion both consciously and unconsciously plug into the social psychological variety found in the polity.

The absence of ambivalence is a hallmark of idealizations at work in the psyche of people and groups. For example, it is not surprising to note how the geopolitical threat posed by radical Islam can be set to unambivalent language that is in turn employed to amplify the factor of fear and the idealization of the threat so that it comes to exist (in the mind) in absolute, certain, existential terms. Such an enemy is the devil and the Godly, so-to-speak, must vanquish this enemy for all time.

Some want a leader who will willingly capture this wish and fulfill it. Despite the grit of historical events and facts, to this day, Reagan captures this very projection and is viewed by those so magically inclined as the one who vanquished the Soviet communist evil empire.

Our current President has provided a parody of a leader willing to make this unconscious bargain with followers but unable to manifest the right psychological stuff. Consider only the way he inhabits his body, struts, looks in a flight suit. Compare his physical appeal with that of the last few Presidents who were able to galvanize magical participation, Reagan, Kennedy, both Roosevelts.

No Republican candidate, including likely nominee Fred Thompson, right now has this right stuff. Thompson in fact is greatly advantaged by the unconscious wishes of the Republican base. He needs a Rove in his corner. He needs somebody to up the fear factor.

But I don't think it will work. The polity is deeply ambivalent, even depressed (in the Kleinian sense.) Reagan himself faced an ambivalent polity but his phallic power was precisely the antidote to this ambivalence and the cultural current of an era exhausted by the post-Viet Nam malaise and the counter-culture.

This said, only people today over the age of 35 or so, even remember the satisfactions provided by casting their unconscious wishes upon Reagan. The Republicans have stupidly buffered out much of the younger generation, hispanics and soccer moms. I doubt there is much mileage left in their being the party of white men over the age of 35.

The genius, of a sort, behind promoting an endless war against radical Islam while not fueling the kind of ambivalence evoked by putting the country on a war footing, has flipped into a catastrophic come uppance. Yes, Andrew Card really did remark that Republican rule might extend for fifty years. Hidden in this remark is the idea that a magical participation compelled by idealizing the manliness of Republican warriors would surely depose the ambivalent giirly Democrats for two generations.

Yet, as it has turned out, Bush has been unwilling to unleash a testosterone fueled combat able to vanquish the devilish jihadist, let alone 50,000 or so dead-enders in Iraq. Ironically, the Powell doctrine was the one with the best psychological potential: an overwhelming force deployed to shock and awe evil back into its box.

Consider today the lose-lose situation the Republicans are faced with. We are told victory is the only option, yet no Republican candidate dares to describe the policy which would allow the US to march toward victory. Although originally Cheney Inc. thought that the permanent occupation of Iraq would be handed off to a successor neocon warrior, it is readily apparent today that no candidate of either party can be elected in 2006 based upon a wish to remain in the killing fields of Iraq.

That this is not possible is the elephant stomping about in the room. It's not even possible to declare Aikenesque victory and leave; not possible to tack on five or ten years to the project timeline; not possible to phase a withdrawal and blame the Democrats for loosing the war.

Actually, I have no idea what a Republican can run on as far as the war against terrorism goes, since they've made a mess of it.

But I don't expect the Republican Presidential candidates to issue realistic, thus ambivalent, detailed policies about how they should be entrusted with this fight. I have no doubt the 2008 campaign will be the ugliest, most devisive, most desperate, domestic battle-royale for power ever.

On the part of the Democrats, The Hillary is the wrong candidate in an almost complete psychological sense. She's already the subject of a feverish negative magical participation. Just in terms of warrior cred, Obama is too skinny in a number of ways, Edwards too pretty and too thoughtful, and, the rest of the bunch doesn't cut the unconscious mustard. Only Obama has charisma yet he strikes me as being aloof and callow too.

Should Bush embrace the phased withdrawal doctrine of The Hillary, he'd still hand off the taint of cut-and-run to his Republican successor. Meanwhile, the Democratic candidates would sing en-mass, "we told you so." Under these circumstances Cheney inc. can't bomb Iran and they should be praying every night that nothing happens to Sistani or Sadr and they should double those prayers and pray that Israel keeps the bunker busters and low-yield nukes in their bunkers.

I doubt even a Ronnie could save the Republicans.