FLOHPA, Romney, and the Imminent Dusk

Conventional wisdom has it that whichever Presidential candidate wins two out of three of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania is really likely to win the election. In fact, the last candidate to win the Presidency without winning FLOHPA was named John F. Kennedy.

This is not good news for Mitt Romney. The numbers will vary a little from day to day, but as I write this, Nate Silver is predicting all three states for President Obama, with likelihoods of 97% in Pennsylvania, 83% in Ohio, and 68% in Florida. Those aren’t close. If Obama wins every state where Silver gives him an 80% chance, he wins. If he wins every state Silver says he’s got better than a 2/3 chance, he gets 329 electoral votes. He’s closer to winning North Carolina (39%) than to losing Florida (68%), his weakest current win.

But the news gets worse for the challenger: there are remarkably few undecided voters. This isn’t to say that it’s impossible for Governor Romney to make a comeback, but he needs help. Even a series of excellent debate performances is unlikely to be enough. Obama needs to do something stupid, either in the debates or in his job, per se. And Romney needs to avoid the foot-in-mouth performances of recent weeks. Good luck with that, Mitt.

Here’s the thing: Huffington Post’s analysis of a host of polling data gives Obama over 50% in Pennsylvania. That means that a fair number of people who have already made up their minds will have to actually change their minds if Romney is to win the state. In Ohio, it’s currently 49-43; Florida is 49-45. That means that if no one currently intending to vote for the incumbent actually switches sides, Pennsylvania is off the table, and Romney would need to win 88% of the undecideds to take Ohio, and 83% to win Florida. The chances of that happening: well, certainly extant, but not great. The Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS News poll (shown above): well, it’s all over but the shouting.

Of course, it is possible to lose two out of three of the trio of battleground states with the most electoral votes and still pull out the election. If President Obama were to win only those states HuffPo describes as “Strong Obama,” he’d win Pennsylvania and Ohio and lose the election, with 265 electoral votes. By HuffPo’s calculus, there are seven states that will decide the election: if Obama wins New Hampshire, he’s guaranteed at least a tie; if he wins any of the others—Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia—with or without New Hampshire, he wins a second term. Of these, Obama currently leads in all but North Carolina… actually, he leads there, too, but by a miniscule margin well within the margin of error. Obama is currently running at 49% in five of the swing states, 48% in one, and 47% in the other. Romney has a 47, five 45s, and a 44.

Talking Points Memo tells an equally if not more grim story for the challenger, with Obama currently at 49.9% in Pennsylvania and 49.8% in the other two FLOHPA states. Romney needs over 99% of undecideds in the Keystone State, 97% in Ohio, and 96% of Floridians. That’s a Herculean task for a candidate who isn’t exactly playing the game flawlessly.

True, there’s the Rasmussen poll, the most right-leaning survey that anyone takes even a little seriously. But even that gives Obama 237 “safe” electoral votes to 181 for Romney, with 15 votes leaning towards Romney and 105 toss-ups. 76 of the 105 show Obama with a lead. In other words, if the Rasmussen poll were precisely accurate (and it has traditionally over-estimated Republicans), Obama would cruise to a comfortable 313-225 victory.

It’s no wonder the Romney team is clinging to fictions about polling samples and such. According to this silliness, Romney in fact has a comfortable lead. Look, Rasmussen (!) has it 313-225 for Obama, albeit with some of that margin a little uncertain. The Fox News (!) poll has Obama/Biden with a 5-point lead nationally. I can’t find a state-by-state analysis from them, but their overall polling fits right in with everyone else’s, all of which show Obama with a small-to-moderate, not insurmountable, lead. The NBC/Wall Street Journal (!) poll gives the President a five-point lead among registered voters and a six-point lead among likely voters. Everyone… well, virtually everyone, agrees.

If you need a dentist or a plumber or a mechanic, you go to a professional. We can argue about which one is best, but when every single one of them tells you that you need a root canal or a new toilet or a carburetor, I really don’t care what your friend Bob down the street says, especially if he’s a restaurant manager or a football coach or an insurance salesman. Things could change in this election; they have in the past. John Kerry made a late run, for example, although it turned out to be not quite enough. But to say that Romney is currently ahead by 6-10 points is lunacy. Period.

This whole affair does fit remarkably well with recent trends in Republican thinking, however. They don’t trust economists about the economy, scientists about science, teachers about teaching. And whereas the Pentagon has certainly earned our distrust over the years, there are those Congressional buffoons (cough… cough… Paul Ryan… cough) who accuse the military brass of lying when they say they need less money down the road. So it’s no wonder they don’t trust professional pollsters, either. Many things that used to be true have been turned on their head in the last half-generation of politics; foremost among them: Republican recognition of the notion that experts know whereof they speak. But global climate change really exists, teaching to the test doesn’t really educate our children, and waterboarding really is a war crime… and it doesn’t matter what the preachers and the political hacks have to say about it.

Still, it’s a minority of the GOP that gives this particular silliness any credibility. Even the chronically if not acutely moronic Erick Erickson gets this one right. Sure, he’s skeptical that his guy is as far behind as the polls say he is, and it’s easier to rally the troops for a close race than for one in which your candidate is getting crushed. But his commentary leaves no doubt that whereas he may be guilty of a little wishful thinking, he’s not in the tin-foil hat brigade on this one:

I do not believe the polls are all wrong. I do not believe there is some intentional, orchestrated campaign to suppress the GOP vote by showing Mitt Romney losing. I actually believe that Mitt Romney trails Barack Obama. I think Republicans putting their hopes in the polls all being wrong is foolish.

I do understand Republicans’ frustration. After all, Obama ought to be eminently beatable, and the GOP chose the most electable of their bevy of second-teamers… well, not counting Jon Huntsman, who is actually a grown-up, but who, predictably, was gone by February. Of course, we’ve been here before, in the other direction. George W. Bush’s first term was even worse than Obama’s, but the Dems chose the “electable” John Kerry, a stinking rich Massachusetts pol who, unlike his primary opposition, didn’t have much in the way of core values. And they lost. Perhaps, Gentle Reader, you might notice something interesting about that description.

We’re left with two major points. 1). This race has shifted, largely because of Mitt Romney’s ineptness, from being about the incumbent’s record to being about what an utter disaster the challenger is. That’s good news for Mr. Obama. 2). It isn’t over. That’s good news—the only good news—for Mr. Romney. I unabashedly steal the closing reference from a piece by Jason Linkins and Elyse Siegel on the Huffington Post: for the Romney campaign, to quote Bob Dylan, “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”

Mitt Romney and the 47% Comments

I got a few hundred words written about the two Presidential candidates’ responses to the situation at the American Consulate in Benghazi earlier this month (well, that incident in particular among several). On the one hand, we had the Obama administration’s absurd claim that the crisis was created, or at least catalyzed, by a hack movie-maker whose amateurish effort had been on-line for months. On the other hand was the incompetent and narcissistic posturing of Candidate Romney, whose allegations, even had they been true (which, of course, they weren’t: this is Mitt Romney we’re talking about, after all) would have been ill-timed, ill-considered, un-presidential, and dangerous.

Before I had a chance to finish, however, came The Leak. You know the one: about how Romney can’t win the support of 47% of the population because they don’t pay taxes. A friend posted a status on his Facebook page: “So...after Mitt's Libya debacle last week, and the now-famous ‘secret tape’ release on Monday...is anybody else wondering what David Axelrod's gonna do with his third wish?” Yeah, pretty much. The scary thing is that this revelation had virtually no effect on Romney’s prospects: the bottom line is that independent voters (by which I include myself, along with other members of either party who are honestly willing to consider a candidate from across the aisle) 1). have largely already made up their minds, and 2). are voting for either Not Obama or Not Romney.

Stated otherwise, the fact that Nate Silver still gives Governor Romney a reasonable chance of winning in November (albeit that chance dropped from better than 1 in 5 to less than 1 in 6 in the couple of days it took me to write this piece) is attributable almost in its entirety to President Obama rather than to the GOP nominee himself. Obama’s positive/negative ratings throughout the campaign season—dating back to last November—have been largely even or negative… until recently, when those of us with cynical dispositions might be thinking not so much about his performance per se as how he compares to the other guy who wants the job.

Somewhat predictably, the President’s lowest ratings (42/50) occurred in December, when the posse of Republican candidates were all making headlines with their own spin on why the country was circling the bowl. The bad news for the Romney campaign—other than the fact that their candidate is Mitt Romney—is that Obama now has not merely an overall positive rating (50/44), but that for two consecutive weeks he’s hit the 50% plateau, where he hadn’t been for a very long time. Yes, the timing corresponds to that of the Democratic convention, so there’s probably a bump from that: his favorables went up 6 and his unfavorables down 3 during convention week. By contrast, Obama took a two-point favorability dip during the GOP convention—but there was no increase in his unfavorability rating, and Romney gained virtually no ground as a result.

What all this means is that Romney’s only hope is to keep the attention on Obama. I’m not sure I agree with Peggy Noonan that this is a year in which “Republicans couldn’t lose” (but are losing), but I think there’s no question that there is (or at least was) a greater opening for a GOP challenger now than there was 12 years ago, when George W. Bush was nonetheless elected. (And to my friends on the left who think Bush and his minions “stole” that election: it shouldn’t have been close enough to steal. Shut up and move on.)

Obama has had some successes that we can all agree on: the fact that Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi aren’t around anymore is a good thing. We can argue about how much credit should go to Obama, and about the downsides of those successes (further strained relationships with Pakistan, for example) but those are certainly victories that happened on his watch. The American automobile industry is in better shape now than in many years. Still, whereas many of us are glad DADT is a thing of the past, Obama’s leadership on the issue made him as many enemies as friends. Same for the Affordable Care Act, and for, in fact, the majority of what I and others might think of as accomplishments.

Moreover, the left is unsatisfied. I’m no Socialist (although I confess that I am somewhat disappointed that I have yet to be called one by an idiot right-winger), but the fact that a single-payer health system was never on the table even as a bargaining chip boggles my mind. Guantánamo is still open; DOMA is still the law of the land; Obama’s Iraq and Afghanistan policies are virtually indistinguishable from Bush’s.

More fundamentally, whereas Romney is surely disingenuous in many of his attacks on Obama’s policies—he’s hardly the first candidate to run against an incumbent with that strategy—there are some things that aren’t so good right now, and about which we can all agree. The unemployment rate, especially for minorities, and the deficit are unacceptably high. Yeah, yeah, I know: the GOP-led House won’t pass any jobs bills, and they are petulantly refusing to do what any rational person would do and raise taxes. They claim their Infallible Leader is Ronald Reagan, but it’s really Grover Norquist. I get all that, and I agree with the overwhelming majority of it. But the sign on Truman’s desk didn’t read “The buck stops with the Speaker of the House.”

Luckily for the Obama campaign, Romney is nothing if not hubristic. All he had to do following the events in Benghazi, for example, was to do precisely what he did after the shootings in Aurora: express condolences and look serious. “Much as I disagree with President Obama on many issues, I trust that all Americans blahdeblahblahblah…” Then, wait a few hours and do an interview where you’ll surely be asked about the situation. Respond by starting with sympathy and then allow as how the situation might possibly be avoided, and that you hope the rumors you’re hearing turn out to be false. Nope. He had to get out there with a statement that was rightfully interpreted as an attempt to score political points off a tragedy. Way too soon, and way too inaccurate. By the way, is anyone else a little bemused by those who grudgingly admit the “apology” was issued well before the attack, but whine that it was not taken down soon enough afterwards… after all, it’s not like those folks had anything else on their minds but updating their fucking website, right?

But, revenons à nos moutons. The Leak. Let’s stipulate two things: 1). the tape was attained through inappropriate means, and 2). what candidates—all candidates—say to supporters would probably shock and appall most of us. But this isn’t a law court. There is no evidence that the tape was edited, nor have I seen any claims from the Romney camp that it was. In other words, whereas making and distributing the tape was unethical by those who did so, using it as a means of learning more about candidate Romney by the rest of us is thoroughly reasonable.

So here’s the transcript of that now-(in)famous section:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that's what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

Sigh. I mean, really, where to begin?

With the fact that people who pay no federal income tax still pay taxes: state and local taxes, including the notoriously regressive sales tax, property taxes (directly or indirectly: if you don’t own your home, your rent pays for the landlord’s taxes); the also regressive payroll tax (I’d say “don’t get me started on this one,” but it’s too late); various excise taxes; etc.?

With the recognition that the 47% in question is comprised substantially of active duty service personnel, students working to pay their way through school, the elderly? With the intriguing statistic that 96% of Americans (including, say, Paul Ryan) have received direct government assistance? (That’s not counting things like roads and schools and police: things from which all of us benefit.)

With the fact that the states with the highest percentage of folks not paying federal income tax are overwhelmingly red? Of the 14 states with the highest rates of non-payers, Romney will win 11, including the top 3, even in the event of an Obama blowout.

With the blithe and condescending portrayal of half the population as self-described victims unwilling or unable to take responsibility for their lives?

Or is it with the face-melting chutzpah that suggests that Romney will somehow win over 94% of the remaining 53% in order to win? Those are Josef Stalin numbers.

The claims in Romney’s speech are, in short, substantively preposterous and politically inept: not merely because, as Meghan McCain (among others) points out, you’ve got to assume that there’s a camera-toting mole somewhere in your operation, but more importantly because you’re begging for money to help you win and essentially conceding defeat at the same time. It almost makes it worse that there’s a legitimate observation under all the camel dung of Romney’s rhetoric: too many people don’t pay federal income tax, because our wealth is so unevenly distributed that nearly half the population doesn’t make enough money to have to do so.

The fact that Romney is making political arguments I disagree with will shock you, Gentle Reader, precisely as much as my suggestion that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. But that he would be this utterly incompetent as a candidate is really mind-boggling. Because here’s the deal: either Romney actually believes the drivel he’s spewing (possible, but unlikely), or he thinks his audience doesn’t know any better (really insulting to a carefully selected hoity-toity crowd), or there’s a nudge-nudge-wink-wink schtik happening here, with the candidate and his (imminent) donors engaging in a rather disturbing coded intercourse (a term I choose quite consciously) replete with disingenuous claims which are actively twisted into a particularly nasty truthiness. I’m not sure which of these scenaria is the most disturbing.

Mitt Romney is an arrogant buffoon, a self-entitled jerk, and a pathological liar. And even after all that has become obvious to anyone paying even a modicum of attention, he’s still got about a 1 in 6 chance of becoming the leader of the free world. Not the biggest endorsement of Mr. Obama, is it?

The Ryan Nomination, Part I: Deflating the Myth

I realize that I’m late to this party, but I wanted to spend a little time discussing the imminent nomination of Paul Ryan as Vice President. The main reason for this, apart from the writing process itself and the accompanying necessity of organizing one’s thoughts, is to argue that yet again the corporate media is too lazy to do its collective job. Instead, we get warmed-over platitudes first uttered over cocktails by a “source.” Actual analysis? Forget it. Facts? Are you kidding? Anyway, today’s piece is on Ryan as man and myth.

True, much of what I’m about to say has already been written or spoken by the independent press and/or left-leaning commentators, but the folks at the networks, the news magazines, and the major newspapers haven’t necessarily caught on. The standard mantra was, à la CBS, “Romney surprises with Ryan as VP nominee.” There are also literally dozens of variations on the theme of “Mitt Romney Goes Bold” (Boston Globe). Charlie Mahtesian of Politico parrots with apparent approbation Representative Ted Poe’s remark that “The vice presidential debate between Paul Ryan and Joe Biden will be like Einstein debating Forrest Gump.” (That would be Biden as Forrest Gump, a role he apparently usurped from the last GOP veep nominee.) Even the Daily Kos credit Ryan with “conviction and raw intelligence.” He’s a “deficit warrior” (The Hill). Romney even earned “Ethics Hero” status from the usually astute Jack Marshall for the Ryan selection “because it makes an unequivocal statement about the priorities in the election and the years ahead: close the deficit, reduce the debt, and take the United States off the road to Greece and inevitable insolvency.”

OK, I’m saying this once. BULLSHIT.

Anyone really surprised by selection of Ryan should be required to STFU until after the election. Plutocrats stick together. My money was on Ryan all along. Nor was this anything like a bold choice. Any other potential candidate—I mean among the legitimate contenders, not the Michelle Bachmann types—would have brought an equivalent though not identical package of assets and weaknesses. Yes, selecting Ryan foregrounds the economy as the central issue for the Romney/Ryan campaign, but where else were they going to look? The trajectory of the economy may be a whole lot better than it was when President Obama took office, but both unemployment and substantial deficit spending remain serious problems.

Remember, too, that the announcement followed closely on Governor Romney’s disastrous foreign tour in which he managed to piss off the English, the Palestinians, and a fair number of Israelis (he didn’t, however, alienate the Poles; an aide did that). And there’s not a lot to run against: there are some legitimate questions about Mr. Obama’s prosecution of the War Powers Act, but those aren’t likely to be raised by a Republican without sounding shrill and partisan. Beyond that, the Iraq War is winding down, there has been a steady and relatively uncontroversial (whether it should be so or not) policy with respect to Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, and—whether he deserves the credit or not—Mr. Obama oversaw the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Moreover, whereas the Bush administration did considerable chest-thumping about how there were no terrorist attacks on the United States (except, you know, that one) the Obama administration has no need of the qualifier: there have been no successful attacks, period. So, there’s not a lot of room for Mr. Romney—not a specialist in foreign policy—to mount a campaign in those terms. It’s much easier to complain about the deficits that no Republican cared a whit about while George W. Bush was in the White House.

Paul Ryan is a corrupt, prevaricating, hypocrite. He thinks rules are made for other people, and he smirks about his self-perceived superiority. In this way, of course, he is essentially indistinguishable from virtually any politician of either party, especially his own. But Ryan has a reputation: as an intellectual, a policy wonk, a deficit hawk. He is, of course, none of these things. He is, to use a term that has apparently been trotted out by Senator Chuck Schumer since I started working on this piece (Schumer wasn’t the first, of course), a fraud.

I’m not saying that Ryan is an idiot. He isn’t. He’s certainly got a lot more on the ball than Sarah Palin, and let’s be real: Joe Biden isn’t exactly a genius. Ryan is smart enough and amoral enough (he learned those Ayn Rand lessons well) to be scary. But he’s no intellectual giant, either, even if he has long been touted as such by the right-wing punditocracy. I was reading a blog piece the other day by Dan Bauer, the managing editor of the school newspaper at Allegheny College. In analyzing the methodology employed by Newsweek to determine its list of “most rigorous schools,” Bauer points out that the “rigor” in question amounts to a ratio of self-perceived workload to student aptitude. In other words, “The ranking isn’t saying that Allegheny is rigorous because it’s difficult; it’s rigorous because the Daily Beast thinks it’s too much for your low test scores to handle. In short, according to Newsweek, we’re nothing but whiners of average intelligence.”

Does that description sound like Paul Ryan to anyone but me? Did he go to Allegheny? (Actually, he went to Miami of Ohio, considerably larger than Allegheny, but very much like it in history, orientation, and—dare I say—academic rigor.) There is, in fact, nothing in Ryan record that suggests extraordinary intellect. Even the thoroughness with which he is routinely credited is an illusion, as I’ll discuss in a moment. For now, let’s just admit that if you spend your time surrounded by the likes of Jon Kyl and Louis Gohmert, the average guy on a barstool is going to look pretty smart by comparison. Hell, my money’s on the stool itself in a battle of wits against those guys.

Let’s face it: there are few really smart Republican elected officials. ‘Twas not always thus: in my youth there were Everett Dirksen, Barry Goldwater, John Lindsay, Jacob Javits, Mark Hatfield, and James Buckley. Lamar Alexander, John Sununu and John McCain qualified before they, to quote the sage political guru Charles Barkley, “lost their damned minds.” I didn’t agree with those guys all the time (or, even often), but you knew you were dealing with a grownup with some savvy that extended beyond the merely political. Who’s left? Dick Lugar, who was defeated in a primary run this year. And… um… uh… Seriously, I have trouble naming another Republican currently in office (and Lugar is about to not be) whom I’d describe as both sane and intelligent. Maybe Marco Rubio? Chris Christie?

Importantly, Ryan’s budget, his signature piece of work, is deeply flawed. I’m not talking about its priorities, which I think are dead wrong (even Fox News admits it would result in a tax increase for the poor and a huge windfall for the rich), but which for the moment are beside the point. I’m not even talking about the fact that it doesn’t actually cut the deficit: Howard Gleckman of Forbes (Forbes!) writes that “CBO’s March, 2012 baseline projects a deficit in 2022 of about 1.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Ryan’s ‘Path to Prosperity,’ which became the framework for the House budget, brought the 2022 deficit down to exactly the same 1.2 percent.” (Note also that Ryan himself “hasn’t run the numbers” to predict when there might be a balanced budget.)

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No, I’m really talking about the Ryan plan’s gaps, its assumptions, its unspecified new revenues totaling $5 trillion (!), its projections based on the wildest of speculation. I’m no economist, but I do know something about methodology, and to say that this document is grounded in fairy dust is probably to give it too much credit. Paul Krugman is an economist. Here’s his analysis: “None of this has any basis in reality; Ryan’s much-touted plan, far from being a real solution, relies crucially on stuff that is just pulled out of thin air — huge revenue increases from closing unspecified loopholes, huge spending cuts achieved in ways not mentioned.” In short, I suspect the famous cartoon by Sidney Harris (at left) may well have been drawn with the Paul Ryan budget in mind.

There’s the reduction of non-Social Security and non-Medicare spending as a percentage of GDP to a point below that of current military spending, which Ryan pledges to actually increase. There’s the projection of ridiculously low unemployment: 2.8%! For his numbers to work at all, in other words, Ryan must assume an unemployment rate lower than it’s been in half a century… lower, indeed, than the 3% “optimal” rate I learned about in Economics 1. But, hey, that wasn’t Ryan’s personal number: Rachel Maddow reported when the budget was first released that the unemployment projection came from the Heritage Foundation, the fun folks who projected enormous job growth as a result of the Bush tax cuts. Yeah, that worked out great. The projection, of course, suggests two fabulous if illusory advantages: more workers means more taxable income, fewer unemployed means fewer expenditures on unemployment compensation, welfare, etc. Maddow derisively but, alas, accurately, described the Ryan plan 18 months ago as “this magic Republican budget” founded on one essential principle: “belieeeeeeeeve.” She added that:

I doubt that actual numerically-based, fact-based information will penetrate the smoochie-smoochie love bubble surrounding Paul Ryan right now. He has done a remarkable job of romancing the Beltway media. There’s this little cult of him being brave and bold, and doing a very difficult workout every morning. But what Paul Ryan has just introduced is not a feature on “Grit vs. Glamor” in today’s GOP. It’s the official Republican Party Budget for 2012. And the numbers in it are so wrong they are occasionally funny. The Beltway media says Paul Ryan should be taken very seriously. Since this is the official Republican Party budget for 2012, taking him seriously should also include taking seriously his numbers, which in many cases make no sense.

I hate it when she’s right.

There’s another myth that Representative Ryan is, unlike the guy at the top of the ticket, consistent. That may be true, but not in the way the fawning Beltway types mean. He is indeed consistent: not in terms of real fiscal conservatism, balanced budgets and such, but in terms of advocating for the corporatocracy. It’s not just the Ryan budget that’s as phony as a three-dollar bill: it’s the pretense that he gives a damn about the deficit. He does not. A charitable description would be to say that he became a born-again deficit hawk on January 20, 2009. A more cynical one would be to suggest that his personal chance for advancement is predicated on the gimmick of debt control. This is the guy, remember, who voted for unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, voted for the prescription drug mandate, voted against allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. His proposal to privatize Social Security would have cost $2.4 trillion over ten years, and even the Bush administration called it “irresponsible.”

Ryan’s goal isn’t a balanced budget. His “holy grail,” as Gleckman describes it, is “low taxes and small government, not fiscal balance.” That is, of course, an intellectually honest position—one with which I disagree, but it’s honest—or, rather, it would be if Ryan believed in even that. He doesn’t. It’s not “small government” to increase military spending. (This is the guy, you may recall, Gentle Reader, who accused the military brass of lying when they agreed that their budget could be cut by a little less than half a trillion dollars over ten years.) It’s not “small government” to intrude into personal, legal, medical decisions, as he has often advocated. It’s not “small government” to increase taxes on those who can afford it least without concomitant increases on the more well-to-do.

Paul Ryan is, in short, neither a deficit hawk nor a libertarian. He is, as Nate Silver’s analysis points out, a partisan hack, plain and simple. He is, by Silver’s calculus, the single most ideological vice presidential nominee of either party since (at least) the beginning of the 20th century: he’s more conservative than Dick Cheney or Dan Quayle, far more conservative than the most left-leaning Democratic nominee, John Garner, was liberal. By contrast, Joe Biden is only the 11th most liberal candidate of the 18 Democrats on the list, and the 17th most ideological of the 31 candidates. (Not all candidates are listed for either party, by the way. My suspicion is that those listed served in the House or Senate, those not listed were governors, mayors, etc., but I’m not sure of that explanation.) The DW-Nominate scale puts Ryan well into the conservative wing, even relative to other Republicans: more conservative, in other words, than Louis Gohmert, Darrell Issa, and Eric Cantor, and in the same general ideological position as Michelle Bachmann.

Having a budget is an accomplishment. Having one that doesn’t make sense is not. Again, I’m not arguing its priorities; I’m arguing its math. If Paul Ryan were an academic, there’d be a word for him: sloppy. His positions are so abstracted by a presumed faith in unsupported (if not unsupportable) hypotheses that his conclusions are meaningless at best. He is the pseudo-scholar, the one who starts with a conclusion and searches frantically for supporting evidence. He’s the guy whose infomercial shows up on the cable stations at 2:00 a.m. (or perhaps on public television during pledge week). To say that he is all smoke and mirrors is to give him too much credit.

The choice of Paul Ryan as vice presidential candidate, in other words, is crass, cynical, and absolutely what we would expect from a supercilious jackass like Mitt Romney. The pretense of a solution is far worse than no solution at all, whether we’re talking about cyber-bullying or the ballooning national debt. Ryan may, however, be the best available Republican for the job. That tells you all you need to know about today’s GOP.

Next up (well, maybe not next, but soon): how the Ryan candidacy will affect the election. Hint: not much.

Mitt Romney’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

To say that Mitt Romney would rather forget the last couple of days is like saying that Chick-fil-A isn’t likely to be catering a lot of gay weddings in the near future.

Let’s see… there was the inane (both ethically and politically) comment by an aide that Governor Romney was better able than President Obama to understand the special relationship between the UK and the US because he’s white “We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special. The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have.”

Then there was the interview with NBC’s Brian Williams. Asked about his impressions about whether “they [the London authorities] look ready,” Romney responded:

You know, it’s hard to know just how well it will turn out. There are a few things that were disconcerting: the stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials. That, obviously, is not something which is encouraging. Because in the Games—there are three parts that make Games successful. Number 1, of course, are the athletes: that’s what overwhelmingly the Games are about. Number 2 are the volunteers: and they’ll have great volunteers here. But Number 3 are the people of the country: do they come together and celebrate the Olympic moment? And that’s something which we only find out once the Games actually begin.

These comments got the locals pretty peeved, and Romney endured snark from Prime Minister David Cameron (“We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. Of course it's easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere.”) and public humiliation by London Mayor Boris Johnson (“There's a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we're ready. Are we ready?”).

Plus, of course, the notoriously puerile British press got their collective skivvies in a twist, with the likes of the not-exactly-leftist Mail’s James Chapman tweeting merrily along, using the hashtags #romneyshambles (a play on the “omnishambles,” an apparently trendy British version of SNAFU) and #mitthitsthefan, and dropping such lines as these:

Diplomacy Romney style: casts doubt on Britain’s Olympic preparations; says last thing he wants is for US to be like Europe. Way to go Mitt!

Serious dismay in Whitehall at Romney debut. ‘Worse than Sarah Palin.’ ‘Total car crash’. Two of the kinder verdicts.

Another verdict from one Romney meeting: ‘Apparently devoid of charm, warmth, humour or sincerity’

Oh, and let’s see what else: he took questions from the British press but not from American journalists, may have forgotten the name of Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, referred to the back garden of #10 Downing Street as the “back-side,” and revealed what should have been an ultra-private meeting with the head of MI6.

He couldn’t have done much worse if he’d referred to the Queen as “the crazy old bat with the funny hats.” As a means of proving that Governor Romney has the gravitas to be President, this was something less than an unqualified success.

Does he deserve the public thrashing he’s now receiving? Some. Not all. Yes, the whole “Anglo-Saxon” thing qualifies as stupid, boorish, and offensive. But it was an aide, not the candidate, and if the campaign was a little slow to get ahead of the story, at least they managed to get out a statement that distanced Governor Romney from something some idiot on the staff said to a reporter (perhaps the staffer didn’t understand that writers for the higher-end British papers, unlike the overwhelming majority of their American counterparts, are actually good at their jobs).

“Back-side” was a slip of the tongue, and no one should get more than a short-term snicker out of it. Ducking the American press was petulant, but I’m guessing he regrets it now, given how he’s been treated by the fourth estate east of the Atlantic. Referring to Miliband as “Mr. Leader” didn’t seem odd to me until the British press chortled about it. Knowing that the meeting was going to occur, someone on Team Romney needed to check protocols to prevent their guy from becoming a walking joke. But I’m afraid I can’t get too worked up over it.

True, even acknowledging a meeting with MI6 is a lapse worthy of Scooter Libby. The idea that a spy chief would meet with a mere candidate for office—not even a President-elect—is troubling for the British. That Romney can’t keep his mouth shut when he wants to strut his self-importance: that’s troubling on this side of the Atlantic, as well. But it’s not as if Governor Romney had described the substance of the conversation.

The real furor, of course, came in response to 2002 Salt Lake City CEO Romney’s comments about the Olympics. OK, I love my British friends, and I detest Mitt Romney with every fiber of my being. That said, the controversy over Romney’s remarks to Brian Williams is largely attributable to British authorities’ getting righteously indignant over the idea that there might be problems with their arrogant, inefficient, and venal supervision of the Games. Then the British press went jingoistic in an older sibling sort of way: we’ll beat them up, but you can’t.

Mr. Romney said three things that got him in trouble: 1). We don’t know yet how things will turn out. True statement. Next. 2). Stories about a private security firm not having enough people and customs workers going on strike are “disconcerting.” You mean they aren’t? 3). It remains to be seen whether the British people will rally around the games. Another true statement. Sure, Boris Johnson can attract a crowd in the upper 5-figures to a patriotism-fest on a beautiful day. But the significant traffic problems before the games even begin, the absurd security provisions, the nauseating capitulation to every whim of corporate sponsors, the scheduling that prevents some athletes from attending the opening ceremonies… all these things and more suggest that the average Londoner will be very happy to see the end of the Games.

Certainly, everyone—and I do mean everyone I talked to in London when I was last there, in January 2011, looked forward to the Olympics with far more disgust and trepidation than pride and anticipation. All that could change, of course: which was Governor Romney’s point. We don’t know.

OK, fine, as both a de facto representative of this country and as a former Olympic executive himself, Mr. Romney would have been well served to have been a little more positive: “there have been some problems attributable to the world economy, and there are always unforeseen eventualities, but I have every confidence blahdeeblahblahblah…” But I’m afraid I can’t get terribly upset when Governor Romney finally answered a direct question with a direct answer, even if the clearly scripted response wasn’t as diplomatic as it might have been.

And even if a few hyper-sensitive souls in England got butt-hurt in the first degree.

Context Matters. Still.

One of the (to me) depressing trends in the relationship between journalism and politics is the ever-increasing Balkanization of news coverage. It is now possible for candidates for the highest offices in the country to avoid aggressive questioning by granting face time only to those who can be trusted to ask softball questions and do half your spinning for you. And, whether it’s the fault of the hosts, the producers, or the politicians, you don’t see the talking-heads shows on the left or the right with guests who won’t adhere pretty much to the host’s political philosophies. For example, the standout sequence for me in Ben Wallace-Wells’s interesting and well-written profile in Rolling Stone of liberal TV host Rachel Maddow was this:

Viewers like to see Maddow on the attack: “People want to see the home team winning.” Oftentimes, the home team is all they want to see. “If there's a Republican, you'll see all these tweets,” [TRMS producer Bill] Wolff says. “Get that Republican off my screen!”

To say things are as bad or worse at Fox News is the equivalent of noting that the sun rises in the east. (To be fair, Bill O’Reilly puts forth at least a token effort, if only to be able to outshout his “guests.”)

The result is that far too many citizens, and far too many voters bear a considerable resemblance to the folks at the left, led along by their respective mouthpieces to, ultimately, the destruction of the democratic system. Plato, writing in the world’s first great democracy, said that “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” But engagement isn’t enough (no, I’m not suggesting that Plato didn’t know that): we need to listen to opposing views, but, more importantly, we need to be honest in our appraisals. That, to be polite, isn’t happening.

I wrote last week about the Romney campaign’s willful distortion of remarks made by President Obama at a speech in Roanoke. Of course, neither side has a monopoly in this arena. No, Obama didn’t mean business owners have no claim to their own success. But neither did Governor Romney mean anything sinister by his comment that he “[likes] to fire people”: in context, he clearly is saying only that consumers ought to be able to change providers (in this case in terms of health care) if they’re not getting good service. But both the other GOP contenders at the time and Team Obama have trumpeted the out of context remarks in a cynical display of faux anti-cynicism.

True, it’s hard to put a positive spin on Ann Romney’s “we’ve given you people all you need to know” arrogance, but it’s not much worse than Michelle Obama’s “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.” (It’s “not much worse” rather than “no worse” because Mrs. Obama subsequently clarified her comments—it’s up to you, Gentle Reader, to decide whether the re-statement was either honest or sufficient; Mrs. Romney, to my knowledge, has made no attempt to sound a little less like the walking embodiment of every stereotype the 99% have about the 1%.)

And so we come to a news story by Lou Colagiovanni on Examiner.com under the headline ”Mitt Romney vows to ban pornography by installing a filter on every U.S. PC.” Well, if there’s anything likely to lose you votes, it’s interfering with the free flow of porn. As is the case with many such non-story stories, what is hinted at fits easily into the narrative the candidate’s opponent would like to construct: in this case, Romney the repressive moralizer.

If you look at the comments section on the Examiner site or on the Americans Against the Tea Party Facebook page, you’ll see that the general readership has fallen in line, baa-ing all the way. I can’t even pick out the most ridiculous comments, because there are so many… and so few commenters bothered to read the article, much less look at the linked video.

Notice the AATTP line, “Did you know Mitt Romney has vowed to install pornography filters on all new U.S. computers? Press ‘like’ and ‘share’ if you will not be supporting Romney and his bizarre social agenda!” And the Colagiovanni article proclaims,

In 2007 Romney exposed some of his more extreme positions while speaking during a town hall meeting in Ottumwa, Iowa at the Hotel Ottuma. One such position which Mitt rarely discloses now is his deep desire to make it mandatory for pornography filters to be added to all new computers entering The United States.

In specific Romney said, “I want to make sure every new computer sold in this country, after I'm president, has installed on it a filter to block all pornography.”

You will see here, Gentle Reader, precisely the same dishonest editing that gave us “If you’re a business owner, you didn’t build that.” If you actually watch the video linked at the side of the page (which Colagiovanni and his editors are justifiably confident that you won’t do), here’s what Governor Romney actually said:

I want to make sure we enforce our obscenity laws. And I want to make sure retailers don’t sell adult video games to kids. And I want to make sure every new computer sold in this country, after I'm president, has installed on it a filter to block all pornography, and that parents could click that filter and make sure their kids don’t see that stuff coming into their computer. [Emphasis mine.]

So what Governor Romney said in a speech five years ago wasn’t advocating censorship at all. Rather, he was taking a perfectly reasonable position that parents ought to be able to exercise some control over their kids’ computer habits. Is it naïve to think kids won’t just access their minimum daily requirement of smut elsewhere? Perhaps. But suggesting that there’s stuff on-line that you don’t want your 10-year-old seeing—and that there ought to be reasonable, voluntary means, requiring an active decision to “click that filter,” of keeping Junior from seeing it—strikes me as being a long way from an infringement on personal liberties.

Why the hysteria? Because actually bothering to find out what the “other guy” actually said takes… geez… almost a minute. Because we’re becoming increasing programmed to believe the worst of whoever it is we’re not going to vote for. Because, as we saw in the coverage of the “Dark Knight” tragedy in Colorado, being splashy at the expense of being accurate has no apparent repercussions (I didn’t hear anything about Brian Ross getting fired, did you?).

Democracy relies on an informed, thinking citizenry. It’s time to separate the sheep from the (Judas) goats.

Responding to Aurora: Doing It Wrong and Doing It Right

By the time you read this, Gentle Reader, we may know something of the demographic profile, and/or the motives of James Holmes, the suspect (a.k.a. he did it) in last night’s shooting at the midnight showing of the new Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises,” in Aurora, Colorado. As I write this, however, it would be claiming more knowledge than we have to say that details are sketchy.

It appears that Holmes (left) was in the process of dropping out of the medical school at the University of Colorado. He was described in the by now all-too-familiar “quiet and easy-going” terms that tend to be trotted out post facto in these cases. He was apparently reclusive, and his mother is on record saying she’s not surprised by his actions: “You have the right person,” she says. He had access to weapons and protective devices and knew how to use them; apparently he was also able to rig a sophisticated booby trap in his apartment. Oh, and he painted his hair red out of some sort of metaphysical kinship with the Joker. That’s it.

That is the sum total of what we—meaning the public—know as I write this (I keep checking back with news sites in case there might be more). Authorities may have acquired more insights by now, but they haven’t yet released any additional information, and it is still far too soon to be upset by that. There were also unconfirmed reports—that one of Holmes’s weapons was an assault rifle, for example. (EDIT: This is now confirmed, by the way.) So I am going to adopt a novel approach, apparently unknown to politicians, pundits and journalists alike: I’m not going to speculate. Yeah, I know. Crazy, right?

One of the first Facebook posts I saw on this story was introduced by the page-owner who posted it by linking Holmes to the militia movement. Thankfully (I guess), that post has since been taken down—and, alas, I’ve forgotten which site it was or I’d happily embarrass them here. There is still a full-throated allegation (not a whiff of corroboration that I can find) that Holmes is linked to the Black Bloc and, possibly (?) by extension (?) to the Occupy movement.

More disturbingly, because from someone regarded as a journalist, there was this utterly irresponsible speculation by ABC’s Brian Ross:

There’s a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado Tea Party site as well, talking about him joining the Tea Party last year. Now, we don’t know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it’s Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.

What!?! You’re going on national television with this?

Four years ago, I was returning from a Study Abroad trip to Dublin and London with 14 students in tow. I was stopped by Homeland Security and trotted off to a room in the airport that looked like a cross between a classroom and a hospital waiting room. After a delay of 20 minutes or so, during which time I was told to “stand over there” and subsequently to sit down, and during which time I was asked nary a question, I was released. When I asked if this was now going to become a common occurrence, I was told, “I don’t know. You have a common name.” OK—I’ll leave off the exegesis on how my first and last name might be common, even in combination, but a not terribly common middle name and a suffix (I’m a “III”), not to mention a passport number, ought to narrow the field a little. Fact is, yes, there are a lot of folks out there with a name a whole lot like mine: there are six listed in the phone book in my city of 30,000 or so.

Same goes for James Holmes. If you’re even going to mention this bit of information without something substantive to suggest this is the Jim Holmes you’re talking about, you’re not a journalist; you’re a gossip. But even Ross’s glaring lapse of judgment could have been attributed in part to “heat of the moment”; not so Alan Colmes, who posted the “story” on his website under the headline “ABC News Links Colorado Shooter To Tea Party.” No. No, they didn’t. Ross may have crossed the line, but he didn’t pretend to have found a link, just a possible one. Moreover, the story is still up on alan.com, without correction, over five hours after ABC apologized for the bad reporting.

I’m going to leave aside the all-too-predictable back-and-forth that these horrific events always engender about gun control: “See? This is what happens when it becomes too easy to get guns and tear gas and… and… and…” “No, this is what happens when no one in the audience had a gun to defend themselves with.” “Yeah, firing at a shadowy figure in a crowd of panicking people in a dark, smoked-filled room: that’s safe.” And on and on.

Nor do I want to talk except apophasistically about the notorious Erick Erickson tweet that “I bet it wasn’t the Lutherans” who perpetrated the killings in Norway last year. You see, ol’ Erick would have lost that bet… sort of.

Rather, I turn to the equally inevitable “they asked for it” drivel that spews from fundamentalist preachers and idiot Congressmen. The shooter wasn’t some messed-up guy with (probably) indiscernible motives… no, this heartbreaking turn of events was caused by the fact that “we have been at war with the very pillars, the very foundations of this country.” Except for the whole Founding-Fathers-not-being-all-that-religious thing, this is a good argument. Actually, no, strike that. This country could have been created by religious zealots, and this kind of argumentation would still be stupid.

The quotation above—yeah, that’s Curmie’s very own Congresscritter, the ever-embarrassing Louis Gohmert. Representative Gohmert “kind of [likes] his [i.e., God’s] protective hand being present.” This is a reasonable enough statement of religious faith, but very strange under the circumstances, don’t you think? I suspect there are a few families in Colorado right now wondering about what happened to God’s protection.

But let’s not veer off into theological discussions. What matters here is that we find out happened before we fully articulate our response. Authorities seem to have ruled out Islamic terrorism. Good. But that leaves us with 50 million minus 1 possible motives. Too much of what passes for political thought today consists of forming a conclusion and then fashioning a “truthy” scaffolding to try to support it. It really does work better to start with the facts.

Conversely, I am more than a little re-assured that both contenders for the Presidency handled this situation well. Policy differences matter, but only if the less formal but no less important ceremonial functions are also performed. In situations like this, the President is indeed the Mourner in Chief, and Mr. Obama nailed it. Here’s most of his remarks:

We’re still gathering all the facts about what happened in Aurora, but what we do know is that the police have one suspect in custody. And the federal government stands ready to do whatever is necessary to bring whoever is responsible for this heinous crime to justice. (Applause.) And we will take every step possible to ensure the safety of all of our people.

We're going to stand by our neighbors in Colorado during this extraordinarily difficult time. And I had a chance to speak with the Mayor of Aurora as well as the Governor of Colorado to express, not just on behalf of Michelle and myself, but the entire American family, how heartbroken we are.

Now, even as we learn how this happened and who’s responsible, we may never understand what leads anybody to terrorize their fellow human beings like this. Such violence, such evil is senseless. It’s beyond reason. But while we will never know fully what causes somebody to take the life of another, we do know what makes life worth living. The people we lost in Aurora loved and they were loved. They were mothers and fathers; they were husbands and wives; sisters and brothers; sons and daughters, friends and neighbors. They had hopes for the future and they had dreams that were not yet fulfilled.

And if there’s anything to take away from this tragedy it’s the reminder that life is very fragile. Our time here is limited and it is precious. And what matters at the end of the day is not the small things, it’s not the trivial things, which so often consume us and our daily lives. Ultimately, it’s how we choose to treat one another and how we love one another. (Applause.)

It's what we do on a daily basis to give our lives meaning and to give our lives purpose. That’s what matters. At the end of the day, what we’ll remember will be those we loved and what we did for others. That’s why we’re here.

I’m sure that many of you who are parents here had the same reaction that I did when I heard this news. My daughters go to the movies. What if Malia and Sasha had been at the theater, as so many of our kids do every day? Michelle and I will be fortunate enough to hug our girls a little tighter tonight, and I’m sure you will do the same with your children. But for those parents who may not be so lucky, we have to embrace them and let them know we will be there for them as a nation.

So, again, I am so grateful that all of you are here. I am so moved by your support. But there are going to be other days for politics. This, I think, is a day for prayer and reflection.

So what I’d ask everybody to do, I’d like us to pause in a moment of silence for the victims of this terrible tragedy, for the people who knew them and loved them, for those who are still struggling to recover, and for all the victims of less publicized acts of violence that plague our communities every single day. So if everybody can just take a moment.

(Moment of silence.)

Thank you, everybody. I hope all of you will keep the people of Aurora in your hearts and minds today. May the Lord bring them comfort and healing in hard days to come.

Governor Romney did well, too. I couldn’t find a complete transcript of his remarks, but here’s the video; some highlights follow:

Our hearts break with the sadness of this unspeakable tragedy. Ann and I join the President and First Lady, and all Americans, in offering our deepest condolences for those whose lives were shattered in a few moments, a few moments of evil, in Colorado….

Today we feel not only a sense of grief but perhaps also of helplessness. But there is something we can do. We can offer comfort to someone near us who is suffering or heavy-laden….

Grieving and worried families in Aurora are surrounded by love today, and not just by those that are with them and holding them in their arms. They can also know they’re being lifted up in prayer by people in every part of our great nation. Now and in the hard days to come, may every one of them feel the sympathy of our whole nation and the comfort of a living God.

There will be justice for those responsible, but that’s another matter for another day. Today is a moment to grieve and to remember, to reach out and to help, to appreciate our blessings in life.

Each one of us will hold our kids a little closer, linger a bit longer with a colleague or a neighbor, reach out to a family member or friend. We’ll all spend a little less time thinking about the worries of our day and more time wondering about how to help those who are in need of compassion most. The answer is, that we can come together; we will show our fellow citizens the good heart of the America we know and love.

Well done, sir.

Don’t worry, Gentle Reader, Curmie isn’t going to go all soft and fuzzy on you. But one of the functions of the Presidency is to be an appropriate voice of calm reassurance in times of sorrow, to represent us all in our cumulative grief. Both men passed with flying colors today. No “bring it” belligerence; no partisan jabs about gun control or whatever; no assumption of “facts” we don’t really know. I’ll never vote for one of them, and I’ll hold my nose voting for the other, but today they both did us proud.

The fact is, Gentle Reader, this guy Holmes doesn’t represent me even if we’d vote for the same person or worship at the same church. If he turns out to be an atheist, that doesn’t mean that atheists are the problem, any more (or less) than Baptists are the problem if that’s what he is. His politics can be from the left, right, or center, and he doesn’t represent any of the good people some of whose views he shares. Even if he had help, he’s a lone wolf. Our society lives on, saddened but intrepid.

Further Follies of the Romney Campaign

President Obama made a speech last Friday in Roanoke. Here’s part of what he said:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President–because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.

It’s better, no doubt, out loud with a good speaker like Mr. Obama putting some passion behind it, but it’s pretty much a boiler-plate argument that suggests that a functioning society and a complex economy are good things, and that there are ways government can help. Yeah, there are a couple of places that could have been worded a little better, and the National Review’s Yuval Levin may have a point that the quotation makes it sound like “Obama thinks he is running against a band of nihilistic Ayn Rand objectivists who champion complete and utter radical individualism.” Ultimately, however, there is absolutely nothing the least bit controversial about the President’s remarks.

That is, until the whores fine folks at Fox News got ahold of it and edited out the context. We ended up with a single short quotation: “If you've got a business, you didn't build that, somebody else made that happen.” In other words, the demonstrative pronoun “that,” by which Obama clearly meant “roads,” “bridges,” and (subsequently) “the Internet,” is transformed to mean “[your] business.” Then, following their time-honored M.O., Fox reported about “business groups” who “criticize Obama about government’s role in success.” And the meme was picked up by every Fox talking head: wouldn't want anyone to think critical thinking is a good thing, after all. SOP for Fox, in other words.

And it’s no surprise that similar bottom-feeders like Rush Limbaugh quickly got into the act. It’s what these people do: lie, distort, manufacture phony outrage, and peddle their snake oil to an ovine audience too stupid, too incurious, and too intellectually lazy to question their palpably misleading swill.

There is, in short, no story here. Saying that Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and their ilk are lying bastards is like saying nose tackles tend to be larger than jockeys. The problem is when people the rest of us are trying to take seriously—Mitt Romney, for instance—start regurgitating this nonsense. There are plenty of reasons not to vote for Romney, but his apparent belief that Fox News is any more accurate than Pravda has to be pretty high on the list.

Romney knows better. He knows that government has a function, and that any functioning civilization relies on both individual and collective achievement: he’s not Ron Paul, after all. But, true to his sleazy form, he pretended to be sore offended by the President’s remarks: “Our economy is driven by free people pursuing their ideas and their dreams. It is not driven by government and what the president is doing is crushing economic freedom.” No, he’s not. Shut up.

As Benjy Sarlin of Talking Points Memo reports,

Romney suggested Obama was telling business leaders they didn’t deserve credit for their own companies.

‘To say something like that is not just foolishness, it’s insulting to every entrepreneur and innovator,’ Romney said. He recounted how a friend, Jimmy John Liautaud, built a successful sandwich business from the ground up.

‘I do not give government credit for having built that, I give free people credit for having built that business,’ Romney said.

Romney has used Liautaud as a role model before, telling college students to simply borrow $20,000 from their parents to start up a business, because every family in America has that kind of disposable capital for each of their kids, right?

Romney is using a classic straw man argument, taking righteous umbrage at something he either knows Obama didn’t say, or didn’t bother to find out whether Obama said it. At least, however, he left the truly disgusting oratory to John Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire, G.W. Bush chief of staff and GOP National Chairman, and current and on-going asshat. Sununu launched into a tirade about the Obama campaign’s prodding Romney to release more tax returns:

It just shows how stupid the Obama campaign is to think that someone who has been a public businessman all his life and governor of Massachusetts—if he didn't pay his returns, you don't think the IRS would be knocking at his door?

If that were true the IRS would have knocked at his door and we would all know about it. So by definition in running that ad, the Obama campaign has once again demonstrated that they are clearly and unequivocably [sic.] a bunch of liars.

I’m not arguing that the Obama campaign hasn’t been dishonest, but this episode doesn’t prove it. First off, Romney didn’t release tax information when running for senator or governor, so there hasn’t been a lot of public scrutiny. More to the point, no one seriously suspects that Romney’s tax returns will show anything illegal. Rather, they might reveal politically embarrassing information: indeed, it is difficult to disagree with George Will—no leftist, he—in the suggestion that “the costs of not releasing the returns are clear; therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs to release them.”

Unfortunately for Governor Romney, his henchman Sununu is very much like his candidate: smart (but not as smart as he thinks he is) and extraordinarily smug. Sununu’s rhetoric got away from him this morning, and he (in Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon’s words) “veered into Birther-lite territory when he told Fox News that President Obama is not American enough. ‘I wish this president would learn how to be an American,’ Sununu said.” Yeah. He said that.

I do not dispute the sincerity of Sununu’s subsequent apology, nor do I doubt for a moment that he was referring, as he later clarified, to economic policy rather than “Birther-lite territory,” as Seitz-Wald would have it. But that’s almost worse. There is nothing unreasonable about the President’s comments, nothing that the two former New England governors wouldn’t endorse enthusiastically if the opponent were a Tea Partier rather than a Democrat.

There is nothing un-American about Barack Obama’s political philosophy or his policies. We can reasonably disagree about their effectiveness or advisability, but they are firmly and unequivocally within the mainstream of American political discourse: I’d guess that somewhere between 20 and 30% of the population wishes President Obama were a little closer to the Socialist bogeyman that disingenuous gasbags like Romney and Sununu try to portray him as being. “Un-American”? Un-American is calling the President of the United States “Un-American.”

Mitt Romney's Week: Part II

And so… on to Part II of the unfolding saga of Mitt Romney’s week.

A couple of days ago, the Boston Globe published a story—not the first of its kind, but the biggest, latest, splash—suggesting that Romney hadn’t, in fact, left Bain Capital in 1999 when he said he did, but rather in 2002. [Campaign adviser Ed Gillespie is now saying that Romney “retired retroactively” in 2002. With friends like this…] Why does it matter? Well, a number of decisions in that 1999-2002 timeframe are central to the depiction of Bain as the poster child of vulture capitalism: shutting down businesses, laying off workers by the thousands, outsourcing jobs to China and elsewhere.

Romney, at least in his candidate persona, doesn’t want to be associated with that, and he has countered allegations from the Obama campaign and others by insisting that he had nothing to do with what the company did after February of 1999.

The evidence, frankly, is somewhere between contradictory and inconclusive. A few things are clear:

1. As David Corn demonstrates in an article in Mother Jones, Bain had begun its outsourcing operations at least by 1998.

2. No one seems to dispute that Romney was the sole stockholder and CEO of Bain, at least nominally, until 2002. He received a six-figure salary, independent of payments made to him in his capacity as owner, well after 1999. It is unclear—to me, at least—whether these were deferred payments. They could have been. They also might not have been. Proclamations in either direction tell us only about the predilections of the speaker, not about the truth of the situation.

3. The original intention, at least, was that Romney would continue at Bain on a part-time basis while running the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, and that he was merely taking a leave of absence. It didn’t work out that way, at least as far as the “leave of absence” played out: he never returned to Bain.

4. There’s a difference between being the CEO and managing the company. Whether that is a relevant distinction is less clear.

5. Romney’s denials are littered with the same weasel-words—“I don’t recall” and such—as his denial of the prep school hair-cutting incident. That doesn’t mean he isn’t telling the truth. It does mean that he doesn’t sound like he’s telling the truth… or, rather, that he’s running his rhetoric through a Clintonesque parsing program, providing an escape hatch for every declarative sentence.

6. The Obama team’s accusations are ethically unsupportable (based on what we actually know) and politically inept. You represent the President of the United States. It goes way past “unseemly” to accuse anyone, let alone a legitimate candidate for the Presidency, of a felony without a hell of a lot more evidence than you’ve got at your disposal. But I suppose expecting political campaigns to measure up to the standards of common decency is asking a bit much. Political astuteness, however, ought to come a little easier. Yes, you’ve put Romney on the defensive. In July. And you’ve done so with an accusation that 1). sounds hysterical, 2). might not conform to the facts, 3). abandons any claim, present or future, of taking the high road in the campaign, and 4). has the potential to blow up in your face, with Romney pointing out how desperate you were to change the subject from your guy’s track record.

At the very least, let the David Corns and Rachel Maddows do the heavy lifting. You stand on the sidelines and say, “There certainly seem to be some unanswered questions here. We urge Governor Romney to provide the necessary documentation to answer them.” But that would mean that Axelrod et al. couldn’t do their rabid Rottweiler imitations. Pity.

But to say that we don’t know everything we need to know to make an intelligent appraisal of the facts is to err more on the side of understatement than of hyperbole. And the coverage shows this. Fact-checkers like FactCheck.org, to my mind the best such service (although I don’t always agree with their conclusions, of course), concludes that there is no evidence that Romney did anything criminal, or indeed that he was indeed an active manager at Bain even when his signature appears on all those SEC filings. Others, like the Washington Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler, the Columbia Journalism Review’s Brendan Nyhan, and Fortune’s Dan Primack, agree.

Yet the 35 common-sense questions raised by TJ Walker of Forbes, hardly the bastion of frothing-at-the-mouth anti-capitalism, go unanswered. You can read the entire list, of course, but here are some highlights (obvious typos corrected):

1. Are you contending that an individual can simultaneously be the CEO, president, managing director of a company, and its sole stockholder and somehow be “disassociated” from the company or accurately classified as someone not having “any” formal involvement with a company?

2. You have stated that in “Feb. 1999 I left Bain capital and all management responsibility” and “I had no ongoing activity or involvement.” It depends on what the definition of “involvement” is, doesn’t it? Clearly you were involved with Bain to the extent that you owned it. Are you defining “involvement” in a uniquely specific way that only means “full-time, active, 60-hours-a-week, hands-on manager?” ….

5. You earned at least $100,000 as an executive from Bain in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings according to filings with State of Massachusetts. Can you give an example of anyone else you personally know getting a six figure income, not dividend or investment return, but actual income, from a company they had nothing to do with?

6. What did you do for this $100,000 salary you earned from Bain in both 2000 and 2001?

7. If you did nothing to earn this salary, did the Bain managers violate their fiduciary duty by paying you a salary for no discernible reason? ….

15. Isn’t it possible that if Bain had made an investment during 1999 to 2002 that you felt was truly odious, for example ownership of a legal Nevada brothel, that you could have and would have used your authority to veto such a decision?

16. If, in fact, you did not veto any major investment decision during your 1999 though 2002 ownership, doesn’t that imply your broad consent of management’s decisions?

17. According to the Boston Globe, “In a November 2000 interview with the Globe, Romney’s wife, Ann, said he had been forced to lessen, but not end entirely, his involvement with Bain Capital.” Did your wife misspeak? ….

23. Every time a reporter asks you “why were you listed by Bain in SEC documents as the CEO in 2000-2002″ You respond that everyone knows you were no longer the active manager after Feb. 1999 and that you owned stock in Bain but did not manage anything. That may well be, but that doesn’t answer the question as to why Bain listed you as CEO, president and managing director. Why won’t you answer a simple question that involves basic facts that are undisputed?

24. Why do SEC documents claim you were Chief Executive Officer, President, and Managing Director of Bain Capital 2000 and 2001 if you were merely the sole owner?

29. When asked “did you attend board meetings for Bain after 1999″ you responded by saying “I did not manage Bain after 1999,” or that you didn’t attend any meetings involving things like firing people. This seems to suggest the possibility that you did attend Bain meetings in 2000 and 2001 that did not involve hiring or firing people or where you made the final decisions on investments. Is that possible?

30. If not, why not just give a blanket statement that you never attended a single board meeting for Bain after Feb. 1999?

31. If Obama owned slum apartments in Chicago that horribly mistreated poor people and didn’t provide them heat or running water, but Obama hired a real estate management firm to manage the building and collect rent, do you think it would be fair to criticize him for being a hypocritical slum lord who showed no compassion for poor people?

35. In general, don’t full-time hired managers often seek the “advice” of absentee owners and then do everything they can to implement that “advice?”

There may well be legitimate answers to these questions (I’ve omitted a couple from Walker’s list that I think are either over the top or already answered), but we haven’t heard them yet. When I rented out the house I inherited from my father about the same time all this stuff about Bain was going down, I hired a real estate manager to handle the details for me. They selected the tenants, collected the rent, and handled minor problems like a malfunctioning dishwasher or a mouse spotted under the sink. They had power of attorney. That doesn’t mean they didn’t have both an ethical and a legal obligation to remember whose house it was.

I was not merely consulted about whether to re-paint, cut down the big maple that was dying but not yet dead, or re-carpet the upstairs bedroom. Rather, they made a recommendation and I made the decision: because I was going to be the one paying for it. I understand that there are legal distinctions between this arrangement and the one Romney had with Bain, but I confess that I find it difficult to believe that the two situations were functionally very dissimilar. More to the point, while my involvement in decision-making was undeniable, it took about an hour a year. All this claptrap about how busy Romney was—“too busy to celebrate his anniversary” and other hogwash—is ultimately irrelevant. If I’m about to invest a few million dollars of a company’s money, and that company is owned by one person: I’m going to give him a call, even though I know “he’s busy,” just to make sure he’s on board. If the Bain people didn’t, they’re idiots… and Romney hired them, making him… well…

One more thing: FactCheck.org found a few months ago that Romney’s claim to having created 100,000 jobs is not merely “unproven” and based on the work of many people whose initials aren’t WMR, but relies on figures… wait for it… after Romney claims to have left Bain. Staples is a big corporation now. Bain helped it out a decade or more ago. That means Romney created the job of every current Staples employee. Really, that’s how his mind works.

Romney, like all politicians, wants to have it both ways. He wants credit for anything that happened on his watch, even if it happened despite him; he accepts no responsibility for anything bad, even if his fingerprints are all over the disaster. Thus, it’s Obama’s fault that the national economy isn’t doing better than it is, but Romney is blameless that Massachusetts ranked 47th in the country in job creation while he was governor. Sure, Mitt.

The best-case scenario for Romney, in political terms, at least is that he really wasn’t involved at all in Bain’s operations after February of 1999. That would mean that he entrusted a fortune to people who made no attempt to contact him (or he, them) about key decisions, even though he was the sole owner and CEO. This is the business acumen Romney would bring to the White House if elected? I’ll pass, thanks. Unlike the brouhaha over more recent uses of the Romney fortune, there’s no suggestion of a blind trust here. Nor is there any suggestion that Romney disagreed then—or now, for that matter—with any of Bain’s decisions.

He created a culture at Bain that led inevitably to the decisions that are now under attack. He hired the people who made them. He was CEO and sole owner. To expect to avoid culpability (or praise, no doubt, from some) for those decisions is the height of arrogance.

That said, the Obama campaign’s mud-slinging is as depressing as it is petulant. Somewhere in How-to-Run-a-Political-Campaign school, there must be a course called “It Isn’t Slander if We Do It.”

How this contretemps will play out, and to whose advantage, has yet to be determined. It is plausible that there’s more to the charges than we currently know, and/or that the Obama team will make the allegations stick. It’s also plausible that Romney could benefit, by getting this potentially embarrassing episode out of the way in July, and/or by making the reckless shrillness of the Obama campaign an issue: “look at what they’re willing to do to stay in power.” More likely, no one will decide whom to support based on this incident. Those on the left are ready to believe the worst of Romney; those on the right will defend him because, well, at least he isn't Obama.

This has already become a race between two versions of hubristic, two versions of ethically insupportable, two versions of ultra-partisanship devoid of even the sense to recognize that the people who are ultimately going to decide the election—those yet uncommitted—are going to be more likely to be turned off than impressed by glib histrionics. It is already an election about who deserves our vote less, not more. It’s only July. I despair.