Last year, as if to pass a now obligatory Republican litmus test, John McCain made the fatuous claim what while a prisoner of war in Hanoi, he drew strength from catching wind of a inspiring new Governor of California named Ronald Reagan (who was at the time spending an inordinate amount of time trying to get Herbert Marcuse fired from UCSD). The Republican primary debates and the recent election for RNC Chairman turned into slobbery grovel-fests before the memory of Reagan. Daddy knows best and I love Daddy most.
Recently published excerpts from former VP daughter Elizibeth Cheney’s 1988 college senior thesis (Colorado College) offer another point of triangulation in understanding this oedipal Right. In the thesis, Cheney seems to examine every major war in US history and side with the actions of the then President against any and all Congressional opposition, not so much because the President is right (indeed she becomes an apologist for a dizzying array of Presidential policy from various political orientations), but because he’s President.
This condition of being so desperately ill-suited for fatherlessness perhaps explains the distinctive mid-election reorientation toward Mommy.
