That [O’Donnell] is a major party candidate for national office, that she is among the brightest stars of a constellation of like-minded cranks — some of them already in office — tells you all you need to know about this moment in our political life. Welcome to the United States of Amnesia.
Somehow we have forgotten the lesson we spent most of the last decade learning at ruinous cost, that faith-based governance, foreign policy by gut instinct, choosing leaders on the basis of which one we’d most like to watch television with, simply does not work.
Some say this is a conservative revolution, but this is no conservatism Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater would have recognized. At least their ideology adhered to an interior logic. This ideology adheres to a perverse illogic which posits that the less you know, the more authentic you are. So what triumphs here is not conservatism but rather, mediocrity. The Know Nothings and Flat Earthers are ascendant. …
Some of us are reminded how candidate Bush kept calling Greeks "Grecians." Some of us remember how the electorate shrugged off that evidence of looming gaps in his basic knowledge because he had a folksy way. Some of us remember how that came out.
Others apparently don’t. Others are ready to travel that road again. It brings to mind an old saying: We get the leaders we deserve.