Manly Men

Forget terrorism, socialism, wahhabism, totalitarianism...hell, forget all the -isms.

Nope. According to Ruth Marcus of the WaPo, it's men who are the problem:

I have a new theory about what's behind everything that's wrong with the Bush administration: manliness.

Well - i'ts a theory.

Marcus continues:

"Manliness" is the unapologetic title of a new book by Harvey C. Mansfield, a conservative professor of government at Harvard University, which makes him a species as rare as a dissenting voice in the Bush White House [Or any other White House? - Ed.]. Mansfield's thesis is that manliness, which he sums up as "confidence in the face of risk," is a misunderstood and unappreciated attribute.

As noted elsewhere in this space, this is true both while men are growing up, and after, throughout society. But I digress:

Manliness, he writes, "seeks and welcomes drama and prefers times of war, conflict, and risk." It entails assertiveness, even stubbornness, and craves power and action. It explains why men, naturally inclined to assert that "our policy, our party, our regime is superior," dominate in the political sphere.

Though manliness is "the quality mostly of one sex," Mansfield allows that women can be manly, too, though the sole example he can seem to come up with, and deploys time and again, is Margaret Thatcher. "Is it possible to teach women manliness and thus to become more assertive?" he wonders, but not really. "Or is that like teaching a cat to bark?" Me-ow!

Woof back, and for the most part it's true. Here's a shocker - men and women are different (exceptions exist; Margaret Thatcher was a tough, decisive executive, and Bill Clinton was a consensus-monger who felt your pain), and those differences affect not only how the different genders operate in executive roles, but whether they get elected to office at all.

More on that in a bit:

"The problem of manliness is not that it does not exist," Mansfield concludes. "It does exist, but it is unemployed." Well, um, excuse me, but I think -- it's just my opinion, now, maybe you disagree, and I'm sure we could work it out ["Meow?" "Um?", "excuse me?", "now, maybe you disagree?", "maybe we could work it out but...?" - OK, WaPo, spill it; "Ruth Marcus" is really Jeff Fecke, right? - Ed] -- Mansfield has it exactly backward. Manliness does exist. The problem is that it's overemployed -- nowhere more than in this administration.

Forecast calls for dim-bulb stereotypes.

Think about it this way: Is a trait exemplified by reluctance to ask directions -- "for it is out of manliness that men do not like to ask for directions when lost," Mansfield writes -- really what you want in a government deciding whether to take a country to war?

The stereotype is the stuff of comedy; men ask directions. They are just less prone to dawdling over getting airtight consensus before taking action.

This has its ups and downs, of course. But would John F. Kennedy have been better off waiting for the French and Belgians and Sudan on board before facing down Kruschev and Castro?

The undisputed manliness of the Bush White House stands in contrast to its predecessors and wannabes. If Republicans are the Daddy Party and Democrats the Mommy Party, the Clinton White House often operated like Mansfield's vision of an estrogen-fueled kaffeeklatsch...No wimpiness worries now. This is an administration headed by a cowboy boot-wearing brush-clearer, backstopped by a quail-shooting fly fisherman comfortable with long stretches of manly silence -- very "Brokeback Mountain," except this crowd considers itself too manly for such PC Hollywood fare. "I would be glad to talk about ranchin', but I haven't seen the movie," Bush told a questioner.

Balance?

There are, no doubt, comforting aspects to the manly presidency; think Bush with a bullhorn on top of the smoldering ruins of the twin towers. After a terrorist attack, no one's looking for a sensitive New Age president. Even now, being a strong leader polls at the top of qualities that voters most admire in Bush.

True. And beyond that, it's something a nation needs.

Quick: name a matriarchal society that has succeeded. Ever.

No, not a "society led by women"; Margaret Thatcher saved Britain, and Golda Meir was no slouch either.

Show me a society run by women in which the primary, dominant values were feminine? Because in fact there are matriarchal societies on this earth, societies where women run the family and where their values dominate the discourse. They are small and largely non-influential. Why?

I've asked this question in person before; the answers vary, usually something like "The patriarchy stifled it!" Well, yeah. More powerful, aggressive societies that value consensus less than decision moved in and took over.

Look at the inner city; the gangs are run by young men (uneducated ones with no moral grounding, in this case), as are the vast majority of the cops who do battle with them. The social service agencies that work to clean up the mess are run, or largely influenced, by women.

The notion that men exist to provide protection for women (personally, as a group, as a society and as a nation) rankles the "gender identity" feminists, even though (and because) the idea is an integral concept of western society, enshrined in various ways in the laws, religions and traditions of most of the world's people (and all of their successful societies).

But the manliness of the Bush White House has a darker side that has proved more curse than advantage. The prime example is the war in Iraq: the administration's assertion of the right to engage in preemptive and unilateral war; the resolute avoidance of debate about the "slam-dunk" intelligence on weapons of mass destruction; the determined lack of introspection or self-doubt about the course of the war; and the swaggering dismissal of dissenting views as the carping of those not on the team.

So vote for someone else.

Mansfieldian manliness is present as well in Bush's confident -- overconfident -- response to Hurricane Katrina (insert obligatory "Brownie" quote here).

Er - "manliness" caused Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin to drop the ball? Prompted generations of New Orleans governments to be corrupt and worthless?

And the administration's claim of almost unfettered executive power is the ultimate in manliness: how manly to conclude that Congress gave the go-ahead to ignore a law without it ever saying so; how even manlier to argue that your inherent authority as commander in chief would permit you to brush aside those bothersome congressional gnats if they tried to stop eavesdropping without a warrant

Actually, that's less a matter of "manliness" than of "Article Two of the Constitution.

And let's not forget that the "kaffee klatch"-mongering Clinton was the trailblazer when it comes to expanding wiretaps.

Mansfield writes that he wants to "convince skeptical readers -- above all, educated women" -- that "irrational manliness deserves to be endorsed by reason." Sorry, professor: You lose.[Glib language in "support" of an unsupported conclusion? I knew it! It is Fecke! - Ed] What this country could use is a little less manliness -- and a little more of what you would describe as womanly qualities: restraint, introspection, a desire for consensus, maybe even a touch of self-doubt.

One of the first things a male learns - if he's lucky - is that when you're faced with a bunch of bullies, self-doubt is the last thing you want to show.

Women rarely learn this (hence the popularity of women's self-defense classes, which start by teaching the attitude that most boys learn bright and early). One of the great virtues most men grew up being taught was to try to keep it that way.

Posted by Mitch at March 22, 2006 05:30 AM | TrackBack