Media tagged Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as boring just as he announced Monday that he is the latest Republican to seek the White House in 2016.
“Scott Walker is sort of a bland guy. That’s the point,” the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza wrote. “Don’t expect Walker to wow you — on the debate stage or on the stump. The not-wowing is the point.”
The point, Cillizza explained, is that by marketing himself as an average, everyday Joe, Walker has built for himself an image that many middle class voters can get behind. So Walker’s supposed blandness isn’t necessarily a bad thing, he explained.
“One thing working in Walker’s favor in terms of selling the bland approach is that many Republicans have an almost visceral revulsion to the glamour that they see President Obama and his eight years in office representing,” he wrote. “We tried the superstar, you can hear Walker saying, and look what we got out of it. How about this time around we pick a workhorse rather than a showhorse.”
Over at Chris Hughes’ the New Republic, the message was the same: Scott Walker is just plain boring.
“Walker’s biggest liability may be this: He is incredibly dull. Not just plodding-speaker dull, though he’s often that, too, but an actually boring person,” TNR’s Brian Beutler wrote in an article titled “Scott Walker Is the Most Boring Presidential Candidate Ever.”
“Mitt Romney is nobody’s caricature of a party animal, but he could legitimately boast of being an industrial titan, a fixer, and a man of the world. Hillary Clinton isn’t particularly charismatic, but her life story is filled with dramatic tension, and nobody who masterminded #Benghazi can be credibly dismissed as boring,” he added.
Though Walker’s supposed vanilla image may help him somewhat in the GOP primaries, it’ll likely be a problem for him in the long run, Beutler suggested, breaking somewhat with Cillizza.
“It’s the one thing that makes him viable. But it also raises two of the most important but overlooked questions hovering over his just-launched campaign: Is Scott Walker too boring to be elected president? And if he wins, will he be the most boring man to ever occupy the White House?” he asked.
Mother Jones meanwhile had a take of its own, suggesting that Walker’s bland, everyman image should make him fit right in with the rest of the boring 2016 candidates.
“So what can we say about him that’s new and interesting? Nothing, really,” Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum wrote in an article titled “Yeah, Scott Walker Is Boring. But It’s Not Like He’s the Only One.”
“[Y]es, Scott Walker is boring. Maybe he’ll get better with practice. Or maybe boring goes over surprisingly well with voters. Oddly enough, most world leaders aren’t really very charismatic,” he wrote. “I’ve never quite figured out why that is. And in any case, if Walker wins he’ll be going up against Hillary Clinton, who’s never going to win any awards for charisma either.”
Clinton is not alone in lacking charisma, he continued, adding former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., to the list of people who are only “who are only slightly more interesting than Walker.”
“And all of them will have Donald Trump on the stage, who’s going to make boring look really, really good by comparison. Should be a fun show,” he added.
For the New York Times, which has in the past taken a few failed shots at the Wisconsin governor, Walker’s biggest primary challenge could be overcoming his earlier missteps, including the time he “punted” on questions about evolution and whether he thinks President Obama is a Christian.
“Mr. Walker has plenty of time to assuage these concerns. The debates could be especially important,” the Times reported Monday. “But he has not made much progress so far, and additional mistakes will fit the narrative that he is unprepared. Though he doesn’t have much room for mistakes, he has a surprisingly clear road forward if he can avoid them.”
If nothing else, the newspaper suggested, Walker could pull big support from familiar Republican elites, including libertarian-leaning brothers Charles and David Koch.
