Authenticity?

Daniel Henninger:

Fashions come and go when the American voter goes shopping for a new president. In 1912 they chose the reformist Princeton egghead, Woodrow Wilson, over two heavyweights, incumbent William Howard Taft and a former president, Teddy Roosevelt. In 1976, weary of Watergate, they picked a peanut farmer. Four years later, Hollywood sophistication was no obstacle, but by 1992 anonymous Southern governors were back into fashion.

George H.W. Bush established the benchmark for his presidency with an offhand remark, "Oh, the vision thing." Who'd have thought that the presidential accessory that would prove most popular in this election would be authenticity?

Way back in April, four months into the November 2008 presidential campaign, the Washington Post announced, "There are things in politics that money can't buy, and chief among them is the quality of authenticity." The subject was Mitt Romney, and ever since, this campaign has had a thing for authenticity. If John McCain is the beaming victor the evening of Nov. 4, he should thank Mr. Romney.

Political authenticity isn't easy to define. Some would say the words are mutually exclusive. Others say that authenticity is a matter of whether a politician operates out of something real inside or is making his politics up as he goes along. Perhaps the easiest test for authenticity in an electorate of more than one million voters is the one Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart applied to hard-core pornography: "I know it when I see it."

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The bad news we know. After the Washington Post dinged Mitt Romney's authenticity in April, the AP's Ron Fournier was still writing in December of "nagging doubts about his authenticity." Iowa's caucuses arrived and despite hundreds of statewide appearances and TV commercials, Mitt lost to Mike Huckabee. Sure, the evangelicals lifted Gov. Huckabee over the top, but Arkansas's own Huck put across a personal authenticity, however ersatz, that Mitt couldn't match.

I find Mr. Romney's authenticity problem odd. As a person, he seems decent and gracious. One may assume that the lifelong exercise of his religion consists of persistent and steady virtue. He looks genuinely discomfited when his debate partners go to the mud pots. But he is compulsively variable in his political life. The Michigan economic pander worked -- in Michigan. One can hardly wait to see what gets promised to Super Tuesday's 21 states. Mr. Romney doesn't deny his political flexibility; he sincerely regards it as an attribute, as reason for electing him.

Rudy Giuliani's bid for authenticity is born out of his prosecutor days. He's been nails tough and unbendable -- first as a federal prosecutor and then as New York's mayor. But ex-prosecutors run the risk of unloosing a whiff of personal fanaticism that makes some people uncomfortable. Think Patrick Fitzgerald. Can an Inspector Javert be president?

Authenticity in politicians may be a notion more honored than rewarded. Ask Fred Thompson. Bill Clinton won two terms with a personality closer to a Southern tent preacher than, say, Dwight Eisenhower's majestic steadiness. John McCain has been riding the Straight Talk Express for eight years, like the man who never returned. The press's tuning forks revered the senator's maverick authenticity until he got too close to George Bush's unpopular war. That put his campaign into a tailspin last year.

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Bill Clinton is one of the least authentic persons I have ever seen. The man took polls on where to take a vacation. His practice of the politics of fraud is on display now in the race he is helping Hillary run against Obama. On the other hand, George Bush is Mr. Authentic, and that is what many hate about him. He does not have Romney's or Bill Clinton's "flexibility" of passions. It is interesting that many in the media like that "virtue" in Clinton, but think it is a vice in Romney. I think the reason is that one can appear more genuine in his phony authenticity.

McCain carries his image as a crusty old poot OK, but his problem last summer was not his position on the war. That is probably the only thing that saved him from complete oblivion. It was his immigration position that knocked the props from under his candidacy and he has since tried to puts some shims under it by saying he "gets it" on border protection. That is probably unauthentic though. What he gets is that he can't get what he really wants until the voters get border protection.