Wrong From the Right Side

So the spin cycle, having run through and eliminated GOP candidates both potentially interesting (Perry) and flat-out ridiculous (Cain), is now left with the semi-anointed front runner Mitt Romney, two men too weird to elect and too stubborn to quit (Gingrich and Paul) and former Pennsylvania Representative Rick Santorum.

Since the chatterati figures they will have to deal with Mr. Romney during the general election and they know they've trained news consumers to get bored quickly, they are now forced to pay attention to Mr. Santorum and elevate him as the "not Romney" of the moment. This has produced some interesting information about Mr. Santorum, who portrays himself as a conservative fellow and is, naturally, painted by media coverage to have done everything but pledged to repeal the 19th Amendment.

In an interview with the website CaffeinatedThoughts.com (shown here at Think Progress), Mr. Santorum says that one of the things he would do as president would be to talk about "the dangers of contraception in this country, the sexual libertine idea." He says that a number of our social ills stem from the decoupling of sexual activity from its procreative purpose. Obviously, sites which disagree with Mr. Santorum's politics have jumped all over this as a tool to paint him as an ignorant, dangerous medieval-minded boob.

But no few conservative sites have downchecked Mr. Santorum for remarks like these. Ace of Spades, a recent winner at the Conservative Political Action Committee blog awards, suggests that such a statement is the same kind of "I know better than you" arrogance conservatives don't like from those on the left. Ace, AoS site contributor Drew and Washington Examiner writer Gene Healy, among others, point out that this kind of talk is an excellent way to help re-elect President Obama. As Healy says, "If you like what the feds did to the housing market, wait till you see what they can do for your marriage."

If Mr. Santorum were elected, these and other writers wonder how much attention he would pay to far more pressing problems faced by our nation, such as debt in the trillions and entitlement programs that will go bankrupt long before I have enough gray hair to qualify for them. Even if he wanted to address those problems, would his political opponents or a controversy-hungry 24/7 media beast ever turn away from a possible President Santorum's "pelvic policy preferences" long enough to focus on that work? Of course they would. You remember how GOP leaders and news media all agreed in 1998 to hold off on the Monica Lewinsky matter and let President Clinton run the country.

But aside from the practical issues, the problem with this kind of idea is that society-shaping isn't the president's job. It's not any elected official's job, for that matter, although New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg seems to have a hard time remembering that in the middle of banning salt and fat use and driving restaurants out of business. Society-shaping is not the government's job at all.

Aside from his linkage of the problem to contraception, I probably agree more than disagree with Mr. Santorum about the negative effects of libertinism on our society. It's promoted men who beget children rather than father them, poverty among single women forced to figure out how to both care for children and get a job and Hugh Hefner's delusion that he's anything other than a creepy old man. I agree our society needs to think about how its sexual mores affect people in ways it has left heretofore unconsidered. But initiating such a conversation ain't the Prez's gig.

Technically, I guess, it's mine -- not just as a member of the clergy, but as a member of that society. The job of the president and other elected officials is to run the government and try to spend my money and yours in the least ridiculous way possible (Hint: Boosting tax writeoffs for people who make more than $170,000 a year doesn't qualify). Your job and mine is to try to create a society that respects and values each other and takes care of folks who can't manage to take care of themselves. Conservatives like Mr. Santorum can't legislate the first and liberals can't legislate the second -- at least not very well in either case. The most they can do is supplement those attitudes among people while we as a society try to inculcate them.

Am I suggesting that old-fashioned private agencies and groups, like charities, churches and secular helping agencies could do better than a majority of similar programs run by the government? I'm not certain -- in fact, in some cases I think they probably wouldn't -- but I do believe those cases are much fewer than a lot of folks on left and right seem to believe. And that the people who also run things like the post office and the department of motor vehicles should at the very least re-submit their résumés to show why we should entrust them with our health, the safety of our children and caring for the poor, among other things.

Once they manage to figure out a way to stop stealing from our great-grandchildren to fund our own lifestyles and pay back what they've already taken, then maybe I'll believe they're grown-up enough to talk about sex and what kinds of ingredients the cook at my restaurant should be using.