Mary Grabar - Story and Politics

Republicans, especially those within the ranks of the establishment, have insisted that during this general presidential election, it is upon the policies—not the person—of Barack Obama that they will set their sights.

This judgment is understandable enough.

For one, Obama is a Democrat. As such, he has the juggernaut of the so-called mainstream press behind him. Republicans, that is, are at a considerable disadvantage in the public relations war.

Also, and at least as importantly, the Democratic occupant of the White House has been universally hailed as America’s “first black president.”

Considering that decades worth of leftist propaganda courtesy of the media and the Democratic Party has succeeded in creating the popular perception that Republicans don’t like blacks, it would be all too easy for Mitt Romney and company to be portrayed as “racist.”

Of course, Romney and his supporters are already depicted as “racist.” And as time draws nearer to Election Day, charges of “racism” promise to accelerate in both frequency and intensity.

There is another reason why Republicans may want to reconsider playing things too close to the vest.

Simply put, the voter does not live by policy alone.

The economy is the most important issue for the electorate, so talk of debts and deficits is imperative. However, most of us don’t get too terribly excited about numbers, and when those numbers are in the billions and trillions, the average person will not relate to such abstractions.

But if economic (and other issues) are situated within the context of a story, then otherwise dead facts can be brought to life.

Actually, even this is an understatement of the power of narrative in politics. Obama, for instance, spoke scarcely of facts at all in the election of 2008. Rather, he espoused glittering (yet entirely vapid) rhetorical generalities and scored a decisive victory over his opponent.

What Obama knows is what all great orators and rhetoricians have always known: the heart is much easier to move than the head.

It seems that if they didn’t know it before, Republicans are now beginning to discover this as well. This, at any rate, is what can reasonably be taken away from two recent developments: Ann Romney’s speech at the Republican National Convention and Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary, 2016: Obama’s America. Together, these two phenomena may very well have swung the election decidedly in Mitt Romney’s favor.

Ann Romney’s speech at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night situated her husband’s campaign within a larger narrative context of his life. That is, while we have known about Mitt Romney the politician, we now know about Romney the person. D’Souza’s film, on the other hand, serves the invaluable function of doing for Obama what Mrs. Romney’s speech did for her husband.

Mrs. Romney took a wrecking ball to the story of Romney “the vulture capitalist,” the “tax cheat,” the cool, merciless gazillionaire that the Obama campaign has labored long and hard to craft. She humanized her husband by recounting the tribulations and joys of their long life together. Ann introduced to the world Mitt the loving father of five wholesome boys and grandfather to ten children; the devoted husband of a wife to whom he has been faithful for 43 years, through good times and bad; the grateful son who recognized his parents’ gifts for the divine blessings that they were by working tirelessly—and successfully—to bring them to fruition.

Contrary to what Obama and his allies in Washington and the media would have us believe, the Mitt Romney of whom Ann Romney spoke most definitely does not put profits before people.

While Ann Romney is telling her husband’s story, Dinesh D’Souza continues to tell Obama’s in an ever increasing number of cinema theaters around the country. And the two stories couldn’t be more different.

D’Souza does not dispute Obama’s claim that he was born in Hawaii. However, he tries to show that although the President was born in America, he is not of it. Rather, Obama views the country with the same kind of skepticism, even indignation, with which the Third World subjects of colonial rule—like his African family—view America. Obama’s utterances and deeds since taking office, D’Souza contends, make perfect sense when considered against the backdrop of his “anti-colonial” vision. We learn that these policies are not the products of Obama’s incompetence. They aren’t even the fruits (or poisons) of conventional Democratic politics. They reflect Obama’s obsession to rectify the injustices to which formerly colonized peoples in the Third World had been subjected by Westerners.

Republicans should continue with their talk of policies. Yet they must be equally ready to tell good stories.

Mary Grabar

Mary Grabar is a writer and college English teacher, whose parents escaped from Slovenia in 1959 and spent a year in a refugee camp in Austria. They immigrated to Rochester, New York, when she was two.

Her views have been formed by experiences as an immigrant during the racial violence in Rochester in the 1960s and then at her alma mater, Benjamin Franklin Junior-Senior High School.

She tried to be a liberal, but then quickly realized that it was an exclusive club. Her conversion to conservatism was cinched when she returned to school in the master's program in English in the 1990's.

In spite of the hostility of most of the faculty and the torture of having to wade through postmodern nonsense, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2002.

Mary Grabar is a frequent Columnist at Town Hall.com and writes articles for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Newspaper.

Visit Mary's Website and her other Website: The Literate Citizen

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