Tag Archives: Romney

Out of the Mouths of Pundits

Peggy Noonan had a column a day or so ago in the Wall Street Journal in which she methodically detailed the ineptitude of the Romney campaign, and mused about what it might take to get that effort back on track. Much of what she had to say was familiar, conventional campaign wisdom to those of us who’ve spent lots of time in and around political contests, but it was her next-to-last paragraph that really struck me. Noonan wrote:

A campaign is a communal exercise. It isn’t about individual entrepreneurs. It’s people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: victory.

That is demonstrably true–and not just true about political campaigns, but about the country’s political and social life. That said, it is a truth that has become, more or less explicitly, the hotly contested framework of this Presidential race.

Although the GOP took the President’s “you didn’t build that” remark out of context, Romney and the Republicans have made disagreement with what he actually did say the central theme of their message.

The President (and Elizabeth Warren, and others running for office this cycle) insist that “we are all in this together,” that citizens depend upon each other and our common institutions in myriad ways, large and small. The businessperson who succeeds deserves respect and admiration for his diligence and enterprise, but we also need to recognize the enabling role played by government: Mr. Successful ships his goods on roads provided by the taxpayer; he depends for security on police and firefighters supported by our taxes; he hires workers trained in our public schools. Ms. Businessperson sells those goods in markets that would not exist but for a legal and economic infrastructure that creates the rules and stability without  which people do not have the confidence–or often the wherewithal–to consume. (People in third world countries are not inherently less entrepreneurial, but even if they create a better mousetrap, there are few people able to buy it.)

Recognizing the importance of social infrastructure does not diminish the value of success or hard work, as the Romney campaign has charged. To the contrary, it is the refusal to recognize our essential interconnectedness and interdependence that is not only arrogant, but dangerous and short-sighted.

The GOP’s chosen message has been “it’s all about us, the job creators. There are makers and takers, and we are the makers. And we did it all by ourselves.”

The Democratic message this cycle (with apologies to Ms. Noonan) has been “A country is a communal exercise. It isn’t about individual entrepreneurs. It’s people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: a fair shake for everyone.”

As the President said at the Democratic Convention, it’s about citizenship.

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A Peek in the Mirror

Ross Douthat is a conservative columnist at the New York Times (given David Brooks’ frequent forays into non-ideological common sense, it would not be inaccurate to say he is THE conservative columnist there). This morning’s column displayed an interesting combination of obtuseness and dawning recognition of political reality.

Douthat joins other conservatives who simply cannot fathom why Romney isn’t walking away with this election. He goes through several possible reasons–identifying “villains” like the “liberal education establishment” that has shifted the culture to the left–before settling on the likely culprit. And that culprit is…George W. Bush! He’s the one who destroyed the party’s brand!

Now, Bush clearly deserves a good deal of blame for the electorate’s distrust of GOP competence. But nowhere does Douthat suggest that the ham-handed Romney campaign with its wooden candidate might have something to do with the current status of the race. And only at the very end of his column does he grudgingly admit that the party doesn’t seem to have learned anything from the disaster in Iraq and the rape of the middle class by the bankers and other Masters of the Universe.

Conventional political wisdom tells us that “it’s the economy, stupid!” So Douthat and other conservative pundits are mystified by the increasing likelihood of a second Obama term.  What seems to have escaped them is yet another timeworn political adage: “you can’t beat something with nothing.”

You can’t beat a sitting President with a deeply flawed candidate whose only persuasive argument is that he isn’t Obama. And you can’t beat a party that reflects the ideas and aspirations of a diverse and ever-changing electorate with a party composed mainly of rigidly ideological old white guys.

As the GOP keeps reminding Obama, you can’t blame George W. Bush for everything.

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Those Tantalizing Tax Returns

As everyone on the planet knows by now, Mitt Romney is not going to release more than one year of his tax returns.

And as every parent on the planet knows, there is nothing–nothing!–that will intensify children’s interest in something like being told they can’t see or do it. And come to think of it, adults have a similar tendency to fixate on what is seemingly out of reach.

In the last few days, we’ve had two examples of this phenomenon: hackers who claim they have obtained copies from PriceWaterhouseCooper have threatened to release the returns if they aren’t paid a ransom; and Larry Flynt (yes, he of Hustler ‘fame’) has offered a million dollars to anyone who will deliver the returns to him.

You’d think they’d get together….Maybe they still will.

These new efforts come on the heels of what may be the biggest political gambling operation outside Intrade–a robust market in rumors about what could possibly be so damaging in those returns. It is intriguing. Romney’s intransigence about his tax returns adds one more element to the shady public persona he has projected. (A Facebook friend recently asked “Is anyone else waiting for Romney to offer a great deal to put you into a 2012 Malibu?”) What can he be hiding that would hurt him more than the secrecy does?

It isn’t only the refusal to release his taxes. As the Presidential campaign goes on, it becomes more and more apparent that Romney’s entire strategy was to make the election a referendum on the incumbent. That wasn’t a bad idea; with the economy still sluggish, and many people still very uncomfortable with Mr. Obama’s perceived “otherness,” making the choice all about the President made some sense. (When you add in Mr. Romney’s own wooden demeanor and general lack of warmth and likability, it makes even more sense.)

Making the election about Obama does not relieve the Republicans of the duty to run an actual candidate. But that’s what they’ve done. Even the media–obsessed with the “horse race” and generally oblivious to policy–has complained about the absolute absence of specifics to back up the vague platitudes coming from the Romney-Ryan ticket. The message has been “fire Obama and we’ll do better,” but there has been no explanation of how–no description of the steps Romney would propose to take, or how his administration would differ from either Barack Obama’s or George W. Bush’s.  We are left with “trust me.”

If you are going to center your campaign on a message that essentially says: “Voters, you need to fire the incumbent and replace him with a more trustworthy person who is a better manager,” then at an absolute minimum you at least need to demonstrate that you are that trustworthy, competent person. You can’t also ask us to take your own character and capacity on trust. But that is exactly what Romney is doing by refusing to release his tax returns.

He is asking voters to fire Obama and hire an empty suit.

Whatever is in those tax returns must really be damaging.

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Are We Better Off? You Betcha!

Pundits have begun asking Democrats how they will answer the Gipper question: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Dean Baker’s response is perfect: Suppose your house is on fire and the firefighters race to the scene. They set up their hoses and start spraying water on the blaze as quickly as possible. After the fire is put out, the news reporter on the scene asks the chief firefighter, “is the house in better shape than when you got here?”

A serious reporter, Baker notes, would ask the fire chief if he had brought a large enough crew, if they had enough hoses, if the water pressure was sufficient. The analogy is obvious: serious reporters would ask whether the stimulus was large enough, whether it was properly designed and implemented, and whether  other measures might have been taken that weren’t.

Baker’s analogy is on point. But even if we persist in asking the question, I think the only honest answer is yes. We are better off–although we certainly aren’t well off. As a Facebook friend noted the other day, you are definitely better-off if you live in Kokomo, or in any other city  where the local economy depends on the continued vitality of the auto industry.

People are also better off if they have retirement accounts;  recent financial reports confirm that these accounts have more than recovered from the huge hit they took in 2008–they’ve not only made up the lost ground, but surpassed previous levels. Job creation has been agonizingly slow, but slow beats hell out of the month-after-month huge losses that characterized 2008. We still have young men and women in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan, but far fewer than were there fighting ill-conceived wars when Obama took office–and those who are still there are coming home.

As Joe Biden likes to say, Osama bin Ladin is dead and the American automobile industry isn’t.

So let’s be honest. We are all better off, in a multitude of ways, now that the administration has stopped the hemorrhaging and begun the slow process of recovery.

But if we are being honest, we also have to admit that better isn’t good. Unemployment remains unacceptably high; the economy is not only growing too slowly, globalization means that it is vulnerable as never before to missteps in Europe and elsewhere. There are thorny questions about what to do about Iran and Syria. The planet is heating more quickly than even the most pessimistic science had projected. And Washington seems incapable of engaging in a rational discussion of these and other pressing national issues.

The pundits ought to be asking both candidates and their campaigns for the specifics. (In the case of the Romney campaign, especially, those specifics have been all but invisible.)

What, exactly, do you propose to do about [fill in the blank]? Don’t give us gauzy, dismissive promises (“I’ll create 12 million jobs; I’ll repeal ‘Obamacare'” “I’ll save Medicare”). Tell us precisely how you propose to get from where we are–which is demonstrably better than where we were, but still not good–to where we need to be. If you are promising to defund Planned Parenthood, tell us where the low-income women who depend upon it for breast screenings will be able to get those services. If you are promising to repeal the Affordable Care Act, tell us which of its provisions, if any, you will spare–and how, in its absence, you will slow the growth in medical costs that have been strangling our economy. If you are promising to protect Israel from Iran, tell us how many young men and women you are willing to put at risk to do that, and why you prefer a military incursion to diplomatic efforts. If you propose to balance the budget by closing loopholes, tell us precisely which “loopholes” you are targeting.

Most important of all, do tell us how your proposals are any different from the decisions that set the house on fire in the first place.

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Putting Its Worst Face Forward

Every day, a new headline paints a picture of today’s Republican Party. It’s a party the Republicans of my era wouldn’t recognize.

First we had Senate candidate Todd Akin asserting that victims of “legitimate” rape don’t get pregnant. (We have “lady parts” that “shut stuff down”…).

Then we had the GOP Rep. from Tennessee who explained that AIDS can’t be transmitted through heterosexual sex. (Tell that to the folks in Africa…)

This morning, Arizona newspapers announced that infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio would be speaking at the Republican Convention.

Arpaio, who is under investigation by various law-enforcement agencies including the Department of Justice, is best known for his anti-illegal immigration fervor, which tends to extend to the harassment of perfectly legal citizens who have the misfortune of looking Latino. He is also known for maintaining horrific jail conditions, including the erection of a “tent city” that has been compared to a concentration camp, in which he held people pending trial. (Not convicted felons, just people accused of something.) He has also reintroduced chain gangs, pressured inmates to donate organs….Not to belabor this, but he isn’t exactly a poster boy for enlightened criminal justice policies. Most recently, he has become the face of the “birthers,” insisting that President Obama was born in Kenya.

Arpaio’s racism and brutality aren’t exactly a secret. And while he is popular with others of his ilk, his approval rating in Arizona is around 37%–higher than we might wish, but hardly at a level to explain the decision to give him a role at the Republican Convention.

Republican officeholders have tried to distance themselves from Akin, but they undermined that effort with a platform plank confirming their agreement with his position. (That plank: adamant opposition to abortion, with no exception for rape or incest.) I haven’t heard of any efforts to push back against homophobia, or the profound ignorance most recently expressed by the Representative from Tennessee. And now, they extend an invitation to speak at the Convention to a man who is utterly loathed (and with good reason) by every Latino who has ever heard of him.

Add to all of this the Romney campaign’s decision to double-down on a welfare ad that every credible news source agrees is flatly untrue–an ad that is basically a very loud “dog whistle” to racism–and the picture that emerges is pretty ugly.

Some strategist in the GOP has evidently concluded that Romney’s only path to victory is through the mobilization of the old, angry white guys who “want their country back” from the rest of us.

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