Tag Archives: Romney

The People Around Him…

We’ve been on the road, stopping at a couple of charming Bed and Breakfasts in the North Carolina mountains, so I haven’t been blogging with my usual frequency. I also haven’t been glued to my usual sources of political news.

Even so, I have seen the British press’s less-than-admiring coverage of Romney’s visit to England–ranging from a big headline “Mitt the Twit” to “worse than Sarah Palin” to “Do we have another Dubya on our hands?” One columnist described Romney as “devoid of charm, warmth and sincerity.”

Since this visit was initially intended as an extended photo-op–former Olympic savior visits England to cheer on this year’s games–it has been something of a PR disaster.

The most troubling observation by the notoriously sarcastic Brits, however, was the comparison to Dubya. And it is troubling not because Mitt, like George W, constantly displays these “not ready for prime time” moments. Let’s face it, no one is ready to lead the free world. Obama wasn’t, Clinton wasn’t, Reagan wasn’t. (Granted, most of them managed to hide that fact more adroitly.) Even the shared arrogance that leads to these “what were you thinking” moments isn’t the most disturbing characteristic they share.

It’s the people with whom they surround themselves. And actually, on that score, Dubya was better.

When candidates demonstrate that they come up short on knowing, for example, the intricacies of the capital markets, or–in Herman Cain’s memorable formulation–the name of the President of “Ubeki-beki-stan”–most of us understand. The Presidency requires expertise in more subjects than it is fair to expect any candidate to master. So we look to the advisors the candidate has chosen to rely upon. Who is he listening to? How sound are the people around him?

Dubya had some good people (Colin Powell, the early Condoleeza Rice) whose counsel he simply ignored. Their nuanced approach was overpowered by the Dick Cheney/John Bolton/neocon contingent–the purveyors of a Manichean worldview where good and evil were clearly labelled and all the answers were easy ones. (The questions, unfortunately, were generally the wrong ones.)

Romney has chosen to surround himself with the absolute worst of these. Most knowledgable foreign policy experts–Republican and Democrat alike–consider John Bolton crazy. But there he is, at the center of Mitt’s foreign policy team. Most legal scholars will readily admit that Robert Bork is brilliant–but consider his approach to the constitution far out of the mainstream of legal thought (at best) and twisted/dangerous at worst. Bork is advising Mitt on potential Supreme Court nominees.

I could go on, but the bottom line is that for whatever reason–perhaps an effort to solidify the support of the extremist GOP base, perhaps because he actually agrees with them, perhaps because he really doesn’t know better–Romney has surrounded himself with the worst of the Bush Administration’s leftovers. He is listening (presumably) to the people who took us to the edge of depression, who blithely led us into a war of choice in the most unstable and dangerous part of the world, and who still haven’t learned from their mistakes.

A lot of pundits, focused on the horse race, have noted Romney’s frequent gaffes, and attributed them to the absence of good staff work. Fewer have asked the question: if Romney’s campaign people are inept, what can we expect of the people he’d depend upon in the White House? And if the answer to that question is “the worst of Bush’s advisors”–we’d better hope that the Koch brothers and their ilk don’t manage to buy this election.

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The Art of the Dog Whistle

Poor Mitt Romney. He’s wooden and inauthentic on the campaign trail, and yesterday, his attempt at a ‘dog whistle’ to those uncomfortable with Obama’s “otherness” simply betrayed his very curious lack of self-awareness.

A ‘dog whistle,’ for those unfamiliar with the phrase, is use of language and/or allusions that send a message to a targeted constituency without communicating that message to the public at large. George W. Bush was a master at it: he would use biblical phrases that were familiar and meaningful to evangelical Christians but unfamiliar to most of us to send a signal that he was one of them–without alerting anyone who might have a problem with so explicit a declaration of faith.

In an interview with Larry Kudlow yesterday, Mitt “went there” by opining that Obama’s beliefs are “foreign to American experience.”

Mitt, Mitt, Mitt. This might work if you were one of the dramatically declining number of Americans living the life of Opie in Mayberry, but in case you hadn’t noticed, your beliefs and experiences aren’t exactly part and parcel of the “American experience”–whatever that means these days.

Very few Americans are married to someone who drives “a couple of Cadillacs.” Fewer still claim a tax deduction of 77,000 for upkeep of their “dressage” Olympic horse, or install car elevators in one of their multiple homes.

Your devotion to your church probably does reflect American religiosity, but most denominations don’t share a belief that Jesus visited the continental U.S. after he rose from the dead, or that his visit and further instructions were inscribed on gold plates that were subsequently discovered buried in Palmyra, New York.

Let’s face it: neither you nor President Obama are typical Americans. Obama is a member of a racial minority; you are a member of a religious minority. You grew up privileged, he spent a good part of his childhood abroad.  In both cases, your experiences have shaped who you are. In neither case have your atypical backgrounds made you “foreign” to the American experience. Both of you are part of the increasingly diverse fabric of this country.

Dog whistles only work when you are clearly a member of the group you are signaling–and the other guy just as clearly isn’t.

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Southern Electioneering

The other day, I mentioned how few bumper stickers I’ve seen this election season. That observation has held as we have driven south, through Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas.

As every academic knows, you can’t draw valid conclusions from an inadequate sample. But a couple of the things I have seen are consistent with a theory–espoused by several pundits and even by John Boehner–that this election is all about Obama. (Boehner, you may recall, was asked by a voter for a reason to like Mitt Romney. Boehner basically responded that it wasn’t’ necessary to like Romney–it was enough to loathe Obama.)

On our drive, we’ve seen signs for a Congressional candidate promising to “Stop Obama Now.” And we’ve seen a couple of “NoBama” bumper stickers. That’s it. Not a single pro-Romney sign or sticker, and very few pro-Obama ones.

To some extent, of course, every election featuring an incumbent is a referendum on that incumbent, but in this election, that truism is super-charged by the incumbent’s complexion. I was stunned by the intense hatred of Obama that emerged the day after the election–well before he was inaugurated, before he had done anything. The emergence of the “birthers,” the crazies who insist he was really born in Kenya, that he’s really a Muslim (with a radical Christian pastor!)–all efforts to avoid using the “n” word–are hard to miss. But it isn’t only the obvious racists. There are a lot of people who are simply uncomfortable with a black President.

Is it possible to simply disagree with Obama’s policy choices? Of course. Will many people vote for Romney because they are good Republicans, because they don’t like the direction the President wants to take the country? Of course. To suggest that all or even most opposition to the President is racist would be ridiculous–just as denying the substantial racism that does exist would be ridiculous.

One way or the other, the “referendum effect” will be particularly potent this year, because as John Boehner conceded, it’s hard to actually like Mitt Romney.

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Absence of Strategy

Eugene Robinson makes a point that many political junkies are pondering:

Romney has spent the better part of a decade running for president. Did it never occur to him that if he ever won the Republican nomination, surely there would come a time when he was under pressure to release multiple years’ worth of tax returns? Did he think everyone would forget that it was his own father, George Romney, who set the modern standard for financial disclosure? Did he not recall that when he was being considered for the vice presidential nod four years ago, he furnished tax returns spanning more than two decades to the John McCain campaign?

There are two parts to this puzzle. One, of course, is the tantalizing question of what is in those tax returns? The general conclusion at this point is that it must be something really damaging, else why would Romney prefer being criticized for lack of transparency rather than incur whatever criticisms would follow disclosure.

The second part of the puzzle is actually more damaging. As Robinson notes, Romney has been running for President for what seems like forever–surely he and his campaign staff knew he’d be asked to provide tax information that has become a routine and expected part of candidate disclosures. In the decade he’s been running, he surely could have tailored his taxes so as to avoid major issues when they were ultimately made public. This lack of foresight is ultimately more troubling than whatever tax avoidance or other issue might emerge from disclosure of his tax returns.

Among the qualifications for the nation’s highest office, an ability to think strategically–to see the likely long-term consequences of a course of action, and plan accordingly–is vitally important.

If a candidate can’t even think ahead sufficiently to act in his own self-interest, how can we trust him to steer a course for the country?

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Politics and Pathology

There is a spectrum we all recognize in political debate: first is fact—verifiable, objective reality. Then there is spin—a partisan interpretation of that reality. And then there’s propaganda—flat out lying.

All politicians engage in spin that sometimes crosses the line into propaganda. The Romney campaign, however, seems constantly to operate in “propaganda” mode.

What are the differences?

Under “spin,” we might list things like Romney’s constant complaint that Obama hasn’t negotiated a “single trade agreement.” The President has revived agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama that had been stalled in Congress, but these aren’t technically new agreements. Romney promises to see the Keystone XL Pipeline built and implies that its construction would mean more oil for America, although pipeline owners have been clear that the oil is meant for Asian markets. Accusing the President of “apologizing for America” requires taking a lot of words out of context, but even this stretch probably falls within the typical political spin cycle.

Other pronouncements, however, are categorically, demonstrably untrue.

Perhaps the most egregious lie is that Obama has been a big spender—that under his administration, spending is “out of control.” Actually, as Rex Nutting reported in MarketWatch (a web site affiliated with that known liberal outfit The Wall Street Journal), you’d have to go back to the Eisenhower Administration to find a rate of federal spending growth lower than that of the Obama Administration. That conclusion holds even if you include the stimulus, which was passed by Bush but spent during Obama’s first year in office.

Romney repeatedly says the President “promised to bring unemployment below 8%,” but reporters have been unable to find a single instance of Obama making such a statement. He insists that repealing Obamacare will reduce the deficit, in the face of widely accepted Congressional Budget Office calculations demonstrating that repeal would vastly increase the deficit. Romney’s claims about job creation at Bain were so outsized he has had to walk them back.

There’s Romney’s widely criticized campaign ad featuring a recording of President Obama’s voice making a boneheaded remark about the economic meltdown—a recording conveniently “clipped” to remove the lead-in phrase: “Mr. McCain even said….” When confronted with this clear distortion, Romney admitted the President was quoting McCain, and laughed it off; worse,  he has continued to run the blatantly misleading spot.

More recently, Romney “quoted” The Escape Artist, a book about the Obama Administration, for assertions the book never made—the author has been making the rounds of political television rebutting Romney’s “quotes” (and happily suggesting that people buy the book to see for themselves).

There are plenty of other examples of persistent mendacity; so many, in fact, that there are a couple of websites cataloguing them. But the lies that mystify me are not those obviously motivated by political ambition and/or a calculation that a weakened media won’t notice. What mystifies me are the unforced, totally gratuitous lies.

Remember when Romney said he’d been a hunter in his youth? And then had to walk that assertion back when reporters could find no record of the permit he claimed to have held? Or his insistence that his father, George Romney (whom I greatly admired) had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King? His “memory” of that event was only corrected when photos surfaced placing the elder Romney somewhere else on the date of the supposed march.

Romney’s habitual, almost compulsive make-believe is provoking considerable comment. Time Magazine recently ran a pop-psychology article titled “The Root of Mitt Romney’s Comfort with Lying.”

Lying of this magnitude, I submit, is not political. It’s pathological.

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