There’s a clever but typically shallow article in the Times today, "The Invasion of the Alpha Male Democrat," written by the clever but typically shallow Ryan Lizza. I quote at length:
the swearing-in ceremony on Thursday was notable for another milestone in gender politics: the return of the Alpha Male Democrat.
The members of this new faction, which helped the Democrats expand into majority status, stand out not for their ideology or racial background but for their carefully cultivated masculinity.
“As much as the policy positions is the background and character of these Democrats,” says John Lapp, the former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who helped recruit this new breed of candidate. “So we went to C.I.A. agents, F.B.I. agents, N.F.L. quarterbacks, sheriffs, Iraq war vets. These are red-blooded Americans who are tough.”
Mr. Lapp even coined a term to describe these manly — and they are all men — pols: “the Macho Dems.”
…The roots of the Macho Dem strategy can be found in the party’s 2004 losses when Democrats decided that their post-9/11 candidates needed to exude strength above all else.
“Presidential politics, but also the rest of national political leadership, has a lot to do with the understandable desire of voters for leadership, strength, clarity and sureness,” says Jim Jordan, John Kerry’s first presidential campaign manager. “Frankly, in the post-Vietnam era, Democrats have come up short by those measures too frequently.”
Adds the Democratic strategist James Carville, “The fact that the party has come across as less — I don’t want to say less masculine — but certainly less aggressive than Republicans, is true.”
It’s obviously true that machisimo sells in politics, and I suppose it’s okay for the Times to write about the Democrats exploiting that, but I can’t get away from the feeling that this article thinks it’s sensible, rather than fairly stupid, that machisimo should stand in for "leadership, strength, clarity and sureness." There’s something in the tone that takes it as a given that we should want to elect these men for having thick necks and bad haircuts and for knowing how to use power tools.
Also, I’m somewhat disturbed by the illustration for the piece, which seems to contrast the nebbishy little Jewish guys — Schumer and Emanuel — with all the WASP he-men. As the article makes clear, Schumer and Emanuel are, in fact, ruthless politicians, but the picture tells a different story, and one that I, as nebbishy little Jewish guy, find rather offensive.
Finally, can you really be said to have "coined the term" when all you’re doing is putting words together in the way that they’re usually put together? There’s no pun in "Macho dems." There’s no word play. It’s just the adjective one uses to describe a particular attitude applied to the people who are exhibiting it.
