Mitt's gonna clean up the toxic cesspool

After the Columbine shootings in 1999, Peggy Noonan wrote an insightful column. Excerpt:

The boys who did the killing, the famous Trench Coat Mafia, inhaled too deep the ocean in which they swam.

Think of it this way. Your child is an intelligent little fish. He swims in deep water. Waves of sound and sight, of thought and fact, come invisibly through that water, like radar; they go through him again and again, from this direction and that. The sound from the television is a wave, and the sound from the radio; the headlines on the newsstand, on the magazines, on the ad on the bus as it whizzes by--all are waves. The fish--your child--is bombarded and barely knows it. But the waves contain words like this, which I'll limit to only one source, the news:

. . . was found strangled and is believed to have been sexually molested . . . had her breast implants removed . . . took the stand to say the killer was smiling the day the show aired . . . said the procedure is, in fact, legal infanticide . . . is thought to be connected to earlier sexual activity among teens . . . court battle over who owns the frozen sperm . . . contains songs that call for dominating and even imprisoning women . . . died of lethal injection . . . had threatened to kill her children . . . said that he turned and said, "You better put some ice on that" . . . had asked Kevorkian for help in killing himself . . . protested the game, which they said has gone beyond violence to sadism . . . showed no remorse . . . which is about a wager over whether he could sleep with another student . . . which is about her attempts to balance three lovers and a watchful fiancé . . .

This is the ocean in which our children swim. This is the sound of our culture. It comes from all parts of our culture and reaches all parts of our culture, and all the people in it, which is everybody...

Now, in a new values ad, Mitt Romney references that piece. Check this out:

So: Mitt's against pornography, drugs and stuff. Sorry, but this makes me deeply cynical. I know the point of ads like this is not to propose doing this or that policy thing to fight the toxic ocean in which our kids swim. What policy can do is very limited. The point of this ad, and others like it, is to convince people that the candidate shares their values. Well, okay ... but who are the US presidential candidates who are soft on porn and drugs? Anyway, I'm more concerned with what presidents can do something about -- the Iraq war, health care, immigration, the judiciary -- than with these cultural issues over which they have little practical power.

One big mistake the conservative movement has made is thinking that we can achieve cultural results we like by focusing primarily, even exclusively, on politics. As Claes Ryn put it:

Modern American conservatism has been enthralled by politics. It should be obvious to all by now that this has been a debilitating preoccupation. Society’s long-term direction is not set mainly by politicians. It is set by those who capture a people’s mind and imagination. Conservative politicians and policy wonks have failed to reverse any of the main deleterious social trends of the last half-century not because they have lacked financial resources but because efforts like theirs have limited efficacy in the first place. While they have gobbled up millions and millions of donated dollars, the activities that shape the deeper sensibilities and desires of Americans have continued to be dominated by people trying to dismantle what remains of traditional American and Western civilization.

Look, it's true that most people don't vote on policy and logic, but rather on gut-level impressions of a candidate and his character. Still, this ad strikes me as laughably patronizing. I'm glad ol' Mitt is for The Children, but come on.