Discontented Republicans Search On for Mr. Right
Jules Witcover

Today's Republicans are an unhappy bunch. Not only do they not like President Obama; they don't seem to care much for the choices they have for a 2012 candidate to run against him.

Every week seems to bring another flavor. With nine active hopefuls already joining the marathon of televised debates, and more to come to help the faithful make up their minds, the quest for Mr. or Ms. Right still goes on.

The latest object of their affections was Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a portly character right out of "The Sopranos" with only two years behind him leading the Garden State, but with a quick in-your-face tongue and manner.

Despite Christie's repeated declarations that he is not running for president, the clamor continues. His acceptance of a very high profile invitation to speak at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library only fed the ardor, with one woman in the audience pleading with him to change his mind. He appealingly replied that he understood her emotions but hadn't yet felt them for himself.

In lieu of any serious reflection upon Christie's qualifications to lead the country or the free world, some in my business have turned the conversation to his startling avoirdupois. As the lyric goes in the song "Mr. Five By Five," Christie "don't measure no more from head to toe than he do from side to side." William Howard Taft is resurrected as evidence that obesity is no barrier to presidential election.

Ever since former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, a conspicuous loser in 2008, entered the 2012 race as a patched-up true conservative, the makeover hasn't seemed to catch on. GOP eyes have glanced longingly at other possible entrants, from Sarah Palin to Haley Barbour, Donald Trump and Rick Perry.

Barbour finally declined, Trump took a turn around the dance floor before doing the same, and Palin still hovers on the perimeter. As for Perry, he finally jumped in, but after an initial flash of approval he has begun to slip in the polls after debate appearances judged to be subpar.

Into the limelight for the moment has come former pizza impresario Herman Cain, on the strength of winning 37 percent of a Florida straw poll that left both Perry, who competed, and Romney, who didn't, in the dust. Thus do such meaningless news-media weather vanes drive what should be serious deliberation over picking a president.

There is such a plaintive yearning for a real leader that some of the entrants are relying on real or imagined associations with deceased icon Ronald Reagan to breathe some life into their own candidacies.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, soundly dispatched from his Senate seat by the voters in 2006, has been a frequent practitioner of this particular art. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich regularly casts himself as a full partner not only of Reagan but also apparently of Bill Clinton, claiming partial credit for the budget surplus the Democrat left to be squandered by his Republican successor, George W. Bush, the unmentioned elephant in the room.

The notion that any of the Republican wannabes, or even the apparent not-wannabe Christie, will metamorphosize to the next Reagan seems most improbable. Perry may come closest, with his combination of tall-in-the-saddle masculinity coupled with an airy dismissal of facts readily accepted by other earthlings, such as climate change and human evolution. Reagan never let blatant misstatements or misapprehensions impair his romance with the public.

The Republican establishment, or what's left of it after the incursion of tea party influence, is now wrestling with whether it will have to make do with Romney as the best alternative. Each new entrant into the field triggers another look at him as well. Compared to the lot so far, he comes across as steady if not inspiring. It's a political version of the tortoise and the hare, and nobody either fears or adores the turtle.

With at least three more months to go before the sham competition ends and the real voting begins in the early state caucuses and primaries, the Republicans who so earnestly and intently believe Obama must go have the passion. But they don't yet have the paramour on whom to bestow it.