The Country Thinker

These men have more in com­mon than fash­ion sense.

Thoughts on Politics

By the end of today there is the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­ity that Rick San­to­rum will emerge as the odds-​​on favorite to win the GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. Iron­i­cally, this is partly due to the fact that Repub­li­can vot­ers have viewed him as the worst of the con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates in the field. Every other can­di­date who claimed to be con­ser­v­a­tive had their shot at the top, and fell by the way­side for one rea­son or another. San­to­rum just hap­pened to be the last one to be given a shot to be the anti-​​Romney. (Hunts­man never claimed to be a con­ser­v­a­tive, as far as I’m aware.)

So as the con­ser­v­a­tive base ral­lies around San­to­rum, I want to give the same warn­ing I gave to another group about a dif­fer­ent sweater vest-​​clad individual—be care­ful what you wish for. Just as I warned Ohio State fans that Jim Tres­sel wasn’t the squeaky-​​clean coach they believed, I’m going to warn con­ser­v­a­tives that San­to­rum isn’t the con­ser­v­a­tive you think he is. Tres­sel left Ohio State in dis­grace, and the program’s rep­u­ta­tion has been badly tar­nished. If Rick San­to­rum becomes Pres­i­dent San­to­rum, don’t be sur­prised if you end up with the same result as the last time he was in office—the Repub­li­can Party in tat­ters, con­ser­vatism in dis­re­pute, and inde­pen­dents flee­ing to any can­di­date with­out an R beside their name.

Return­ing to Jim Tres­sel, Buck­eye fans imme­di­ately fell in love with col­lege football’s Mr. Sweater Vest when he arrived in Colum­bus. A born-​​and-​​bred Ohioan who coached at Youngstown State before com­ing to Cow­Town, he replaced John Cooper, who did a respectable job, but com­mit­ted the unfor­give­able sin of los­ing repeat­edly to arch-​​rival Michi­gan. With Tres­sel Buck­eye fans felt the native son would “get” Ohio State foot­ball in a way that Cooper never did. And Ohio State fans assumed that Tres­sel would con­tinue the program’s unblem­ished record of com­ply­ing with NCAA rules.

But there were prob­lems from the start. Shortly after tak­ing the helm of the Buck­eyes, Youngstown State’s foot­ball pro­gram was sanc­tioned by the NCAA for, among other things, “lack of insti­tu­tional con­trol” over the Pen­guin foot­ball pro­gram. Who was most respon­si­ble for main­tain­ing insti­tu­tional con­trol dur­ing the time period at issue? Jim Tres­sel. Buck­eye fans, blinded by Tressel’s early suc­cesses on the grid­iron, didn’t even notice. In spite of his soiled record, Tressel’s rep­u­ta­tion as a “clean” coach grew.

Tres­sel became untouch­able after he led the Buck­eyes to the national cham­pi­onship with a con­tro­ver­sial over­time win over the Miami Hur­ri­canes. But even that crown came with a blem­ish; star run­ning back Fresh­man Mau­rice Clarett left the pro­gram under alle­ga­tions of improper ben­e­fits and eco­nomic non-​​performance. (A teach­ing assis­tant admin­is­tered Clarett’s exams orally and swore that he actu­ally passed all of his tests. Red flag!) Buck­eye fans looked past the Clarett incident.

Through­out his tenure as head coach, Tres­sel, in my esti­ma­tion, pushed the legal lim­its as to what the pro­gram could get away with. For exam­ple, “Pro­fes­sor Tres­sel” con­sis­tently taught a two– credit pass/​fail class on Foot­ball The­ory each fall dur­ing the sea­son. Nat­u­rally most of his play­ers took this course, which I’m sure was extremely rig­or­ous. This didn’t vio­late NCAA rules, but nonethe­less, most coaches don’t do it because of the shady per­cep­tion from the prac­tice. But OSU fans didn’t seem to mind.

Sim­i­larly, Ohio state’s grad­u­a­tion rates were dis­mal under Tres­sel. Again, this isn’t a rules vio­la­tion, but hav­ing watched col­lege foot­ball my entire life, you learn to spot com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics among the pro­grams that end up in trou­ble. Poor grades and coach-​​professors are two of them. But Ohio State fans ignored these red flags, and the sweater vest grew into a sym­bol of a foot­ball pro­gram run under the high­est of standards.

The rest of the story is his­tory, as they say, and I don’t want to revisit the spe­cific events that led to his ter­mi­na­tion. For those unfa­mil­iar, let’s just say that sev­eral Buck­eye play­ers broke a num­ber of rules, and Coach Tres­sel lied and cov­ered up the prob­lem. The scan­dal broke in late 2010, and Tres­sel con­tin­ued to lie dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion, which bought Ohio State enough time to play in its bowl game in early 2011.

Tres­sel was finally fired, and none of the play­ers involved returned to the field for the Buck­eyes. And while the spe­cific vio­la­tions weren’t ter­ri­bly egre­gious, nonethe­less, Ohio State’s foot­ball pro­gram has been sanc­tioned by the NCAA for the first time in its sto­ried his­tory. Sup­pos­edly squeaky-​​clean Mr. Sweater Vest left a pro­gram long viewed as an exam­ple of how to “win the right way” with a seri­ous black eye. (For more trans­gres­sions under Tres­sel, see here.)

Return­ing to the sweater vest-​​wearing man du jour, I have the feel­ing that con­ser­v­a­tives will end up with the same sense of dis­ap­point­ment after a San­to­rum admin­is­tra­tion as Buck­eye fans felt after Jim Tres­sel was fired. It begins with the rep­u­ta­tion. Just as Tres­sel had a rep­u­ta­tion as a “clean” coach, San­to­rum is pre­sent­ing him­self as a prin­ci­pled, con­sis­tent con­ser­v­a­tive. Unfor­tu­nately for Mr. San­to­rum, we have a track record to review.

As has been recited many places other than here, San­to­rum voted for the entire George W. Bush deficit spend­ing blowout, mean­ing if he’s a fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tive, he’s a born-​​again con­ser­v­a­tive (pun intended). San­to­rum defends him­self by say­ing that he really didn’t want to vote for all that stuff like Every Child Left Behind, but he had to be a team player.

That’s not prin­ci­pled, Mr. Sen­a­tor. That’s partisan.

Sen­a­tor Santorum’s blind sup­port for the Bush agenda led to him get­ting thrown out of office in 2006, los­ing by the largest mar­gin by a sit­ting Sen­a­tor in U.S. his­tory. Indeed, his sup­port for W con­tributed to the huge Demo­c­ra­tic wins in 2006 and 2008 and the brand name of the Repub­li­can Party being described by some pun­dits as “worse than dog food.” In an off-​​hand way, Santorum’s lack of prin­ci­pled con­ser­vatism while in Wash­ing­ton led to Obama’s vic­tory in 2008. Yes, you read that right. I’m say­ing Rick San­to­rum is as respon­si­ble as any­one for get­ting Barack Obama elected by fail­ing to be a prin­ci­pled con­ser­v­a­tive when he had the chance.

Yes, San­to­rum is talk­ing a lot of con­ser­v­a­tive talk these days. When it comes to social issues I actu­ally believe him. But if you lis­ten to him care­fully, there is a lot of “tin­ker­ing” pro­posed in his plat­form. For exam­ple, he wants to elim­i­nate cor­po­rate taxes for com­pa­nies in “man­u­fac­tur­ing,” how­ever you might define that word. That is not a prin­ci­pled free mar­ket con­ser­v­a­tive pro­posal. That is the kind of indus­trial policy-​​talk we expect from Obama and the Democ­rats, not a “con­sis­tent con­ser­v­a­tive,” and it’s the sort of polit­i­cal allo­ca­tion of cap­i­tal that led to the hous­ing bubble.

In the end, I see a lot of par­al­lels between con­ser­v­a­tive sup­port­ers of Rick San­to­rum and Ohio State fans dur­ing the Tres­sel years. Both groups have attrib­uted char­ac­ter­is­tics to a man in a sweater vest that the man has not lived up to. My pre­dic­tion is that con­ser­v­a­tives will feel as let down by a San­to­rum admin­is­tra­tion as Buck­eye sup­port­ers feel about Jim Tres­sel. After all, he dis­ap­pointed once, so don’t be sur­prised if he does again.

This arti­cle is also posted at Polit­i­cal Real­i­ties.