The following brief opinion piece by conservative commentator Lou Sanandres appeared in the Weekly Standard, one of the leading conservative magazines in the United States. The Weekly Standard is owned by News Corporation, the same company that owns Fox. Though the Weekly Standard regularly posts annual losses in excess of $1 million, Rupert Murdoch, News Corp’s CEO, has repeatedly said there are no plans to either sell or shut down the magazine.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Parmenides first argued that nothing can come from nothing. Shakespeare’s King Lear knew it. I know it. You know it.
I’ve heard faint rumblings in conservative circles that Noa Kalakaua, charlatan presidential candidate du jour, could actually be a viable alternative to the underwhelming candidates still battling for the Republican nomination. “He’s from the University of Chicago,” these people say as if the school’s reputation for churning out brilliant free marketeering economists somehow changes the fact that Kalakaua is not a politician, has no platform whatsoever, and is completely ill-equipped to run this country.
Arguments that Kalakaua’s academic credentials mean he should carry the conservative mantle are foolish blather. Remember, nothing comes from nothing. The phrase, first argued by Parmenides, the ancient Greek philosopher, is now often used in description of the laws of conservation of mass and energy. It’s as true in science—where you can’t generate mass or energy from nothing—as it is in politics. You simply cannot create a viable presidential candidate from a person who has no domestic or foreign policy experience.
Kalakaua, who won Fox’s American Idol and now hosts a TV show, would not be the first candidate to run for public office—even for the presidency—without what’s widely believed to be the requisite experience. Kalakaua, though, is one of the first to do it without articulating a platform, without actually believing in or arguing for something.
Kalakaua hasn’t made a firm pronouncement on anything. He doesn’t have a stance on abortion. He doesn’t have a stance on Iraq. I’m sure he knows all about the looming crises with Medicare and Social Security, but he doesn’t seem to think either of them are worth talking about. He hasn’t expressed any plans for reforming an ever worsening public school system. If you dig really deep into his campaign literature (which consists primarily of a website designed to help promote his TV show), you’ll see that he seems to vaguely favor term limits for members of Congress—or to at least to be slowly moving in that direction.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but I’ll say once again that nothing comes from nothing. Mr. Kalakaua doesn’t have the credibility to get elected. Given that, he doesn’t have the credibility to make term limits a part of his campaign. Gifted politicians have failed in their bids for term limits. Eventually he will have to build his campaign around something. When it comes to term limits, though, there’s nothing there. It will, and please mark my words, never ever happen.
Any candidate foolish enough to campaign on that issue will go nowhere. That’s exactly where Mr. Kalakaua is going. He brings nothing to the table. Any suggestion that he is or can become a viable conservative candidate is foolishness.
Nothing can come from nothing.
