“Taking Chisel To Granite”: Penn State Could Have Learned From Washington About Statues
The sad controversies of Penn State have shown us that there is one thing politicians in Washington do right. Well, do right most of the time. Official Washington is smart enough to know what the folks at Penn State sure didn’t — you don’t build statues or monuments to people who are still alive. At Penn State, they thought it was a great idea to erect a statue of football coach Joe Paterno when he not only was still alive but still coaching. Nobody could have imagined when they dedicated the Paterno statue in 2001 that it would have to be removed in ignominy and shame, by workers hiding behind a hastily-built fence, only 11 years later.
But they should have known they were taking chances when they decided to honor somebody whose legacy was still being writ. They should have listened to Robert Shrum, who said Sunday on Meet the Press: “We shouldn’t put up statues of living people. You’re going to make yourself a hostage to fortune. And that’s what happened here.”
If they had paid attention to how Washington builds its monuments, they would have seen an abundance of caution, a willingness to let the passions of the day subside and history render its considered verdict. Just look at the edifices that dot the Mall. George Washington died in 1799, universally acclaimed as the greatest American. But it was 49 years before work began on the Washington Monument, and it was not completed until 85 years after the first president’s death.
Thomas Jefferson, one of the greatest of the Founders, died in 1826. It was 117 years before his Memorial was dedicated. Abraham Lincoln saved the union. But he was in his grave for 57 years before he got a Monument in his name. Franklin D. Roosevelt was beloved as the president who guided the country through a Great Depression and a world war. He did get his likeness on the dime, replacing Winged Victory, while passions were strong. But that was recognition of his work on what became the March of Dimes and the battle against polio. He didn’t get a memorial for 52 years, until 1997. And those eager to honor Martin Luther King Jr. had to wait 43 years after his assassination before his statue was unveiled in West Potomac Park.
The patience is often tested, particularly when passions are strongest. A center for the performing arts had already been approved by President Dwight Eisenhower three years before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Given the slain leader’s support for the arts, it was a no-brainer to affix his name to the new center in 1971. But waiting for history has served the country well. For the most part, the United States has avoided what is commonplace in dictatorships such as Iraq and the Soviet Union, where citizens could get dizzy watching statues of Saddam, Lenin and Stalin go up and come down.
Despite the pressure of those with personal nostalgia and political agendas such as those rushing to name buildings after Ronald Reagan and build statues of him while he was alive, the American model is to wait until contemporaries are dead before taking chisel to granite. Just think of the one major exception in the capital. Is there anyone who doesn’t regret the hasty decision to name the FBI headquarters for its longtime director J. Edgar Hoover? The decision was made in 1972 only 48 hours after Hoover’s death, and long before historians began sorting through some of the less salutory aspects of the director’s tenure.
By: George E. Condon, Jr., National Journal, July 24, 2012
“Speaking In Code”: Race And Ethnicity Never Far From Presidential Campaign
The racially offensive remark by an unnamed adviser to Republican Mitt Romney– if the painfully thin Daily Telegraph story is to be believed — is likely to be described as the injection of race, ethnicity and nationality in what has been a colorblind campaign.
While the comment may be the most blatant reference to President Obama’s background in the 2012 race, it is hardly the first. Or the last.
“We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special,” the adviser reportedly said of Romney, who arrived in London Wednesday. “The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have.”
Romney was born and raised in Michigan. Obama’s story is far more complicated. His mother was white and born in Kansas. His father came from Kenya. Obama was born in Hawaii and spent part of his childhood in Indonesia. He is Christian, but crazy rumors persist that he is Muslim with ties to terrorists. All of this allows the president to be easily characterized as different, exotic, less American and more foreign. As “other.” And Romney and his supporters have not shied from those types of descriptions.
In one recent example, former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu told reporters in a call arranged by the Romney campaign that “I wish this president would learn how to be an American.” Sununu later walked back his remarks, saying “The president has to learn the American formula for creating business.”
Romney himself said of Obama’s approach to the economy in a speech last week in Pittsburgh: “His course is extraordinarily foreign.” He has repeatedly said Obama “doesn’t understand America.”
Romney and his team are certainly entitled to make robust criticisms of the president and his policies. There is a legitimate debate in this campaign over the role of the federal government and what kind of country we want to live in. Constant references to “America,” a word laced with images of patriotism and amber waves of grain, are nothing new to the campaign trail, where candidates are trying desperately to connect with voters.
But in this campaign, these criticisms are not made in a vacuum free of the politics of race and identity. Hillary Clinton ran into this tripwire during the 2008 Democratic primary when she said Obama’s support was waning among “hard-working Americans, white Americans.”
It would be far more enlightening for Obama’s critics to say exactly what they mean instead of speaking in code.
By: Beth Reinhard, National Journal, July 25, 2012
“Vote Republican Or The Economy Gets It”: The GOP Threat Behind All The “Fiscal Cliff” Talk
Greg Sargent has a fine post today about how Scott Brown has picked up on the Romney campaign’s effort to spin a mendacious take on the “you didn’t build that” quote, making it a double lie by tying it back to Elizabeth Warren (whose actual words were being paraphrased by what the president actually said). Indeed, Greg puts his finger on the broader message that both Republicans are trying to send:
The whole ”didn’t build that” dust-up is important, because the larger falsehood on display here — that Obama demeans success — is absolutely central to the Republican case against Obama. The Republican argument — Romney’s argument — is partly that Obama’s active ill will towards business owners and entrepreneurs is helping stall the recovery, so you should replace him with a president who wants people to succeed.
What makes this “vote Republican or the economy gets it” tactic devilishly effective is that its major premise—Obama hates “job creators”—doesn’t have to be true to wreak political damage so long as its minor premise—if “job creators” think Obama hates them they’ll stop creating jobs—is credible. And so it all turns into what amounts to blackmail: people like Mitt Romney are not “confident” in Obama’s stewardship of the economy, and if they don’t get ther way in November, they’ll tank the economy. This is also the threat behind all the “fiscal cliff” talk: we’re being told the financial markets will panic if there’s any chance the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy will lapse or that Pentagon spending will be cut at the end of the year. Somehow or another, the prospect of a Republican victory that will lead to very deep federal spending cuts, reductions in consumer buying power, and the elimination of many thousands of public sector jobs isn’t said to be a problem.
Now this is a very, very old game, certainly as old as the threats issued by business leaders at the behest of Mark Hanna in 1896 that votes for William Jennings Bryan would lose employees their jobs, or the eternal threats of non-unionized companies that they’d rather close their doors than submit to the indignity of collective bargaining. In reality, companies stay in business and investors keep investing not because they have the elected officials they’d prefer, but because they are making money. With profits being at near-record levels (even with the apparent recent softening), I don’t think we are really in any danger of capitalists “going Galt” because their executives’ marginal tax rates went back up to where they were when they were also doing very well in the late 1990s, or because their vast moral worth is being underappreciated by Barack Obama or Elizabeth Warren.
Still, the more aggressively ideological business leaders won’t lose a dime by issuing threats, so they and their political allies will keep doing so, reinforcing the GOP’s many efforts to convince persuadable voters that somehow or other, their jobs or their nest eggs depend on a Republican victory in November.
BY: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer,Washington Monthly Political Animal, July 23, 2012
“Making Things Up”: Romney’s First Foreign Stumble?
It’s treacherous for a US presidential candidate to travel overseas — lots of opportunities for mis-chosen words and getting drawn into other countries’ domestic politics. With Mitt Romney about to leave on his big trip abroad he may already have had his first big foreign stumble. At a GOP fundraiser in San Francisco last night, Romney said that Australia’s foreign minister had warned him that foreign leaders see the US in decline and — at least in Romney’s telling — was hoping for Romney-like policies to make things right.
That at least was the version of the comments that appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald. A similar version, but without the full quotes, appeared in the AP.
Quoting Romney: ”And this idea of America in decline, it was interesting [Carr] said that, he led the talk of America being in decline. See that’s not talk we hear about here as much as they’re hearing there. And if they’re thinking about investing in America, entrepreneurs putting their future in America, if they think America’s in decline they’re not gonna do it.”
Whether or not the SMH got it right is one question. The Hill notes that the pool reports did not have Romney clearly characterizing the comments as a warning.
And now, Australia’s Foreign Minister’s office has come forward to shoot down Romney’s characterization of the discussion, calling Romney’s interpretation “not correct.”
You cannot take a shoot down like this at face value in any case. Whatever Carr said, he almost certainly didn’t expect Romney to turn around and use it as ammo in a political speech. Allies don’t want to get publicly embroiled in a US election — especially on the wrong side of an incumbent who they believe is more likely than not to get reelected. So he’d be under a lot of pressure to walk away from Romney’s comments, even if Romney was accurately characterizing them. On the other hand, maybe Mitt just made it up or gave it — probably the most likely option — a negative spin the retelling. One way or another, it will be interesting to see how Romney navigates this sort of stuff when he’s overseas.
By: Josh Marshall, Editor and Publisher, Talking Points Memo, July 23, 2012
“The Exotic Manipulation Of Numbers”: The Secret In Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns
To paraphrase Rhett Butler, I don’t give a damn if Mitt Romney releases more of his tax returns. I expect to learn nothing from them, aside from the fact that he is very rich and has paid less in taxes than he has acknowledged. He has probably taken advantage of all the loops and dodges in the tax code, piling trusts on top of trusts, securing wealth for Romneys yet unborn — gelt unto the third generation, little taxed, slightly taxed or taxed not at all.
“Let me tell you about the very rich,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote. ’Scuse me, Scotty, let me tell you about them: They don’t pay much in taxes.
This is what the average person would learn if all of Romney’s tax filings hit the light of day. He has so far divulged just his 2010 return and the estimate for 2011, and the Obama camp, smelling blood, has demanded more. The din has reached such a level that even some conservatives are entreating Romney to reveal additional filings. They are not, however, imploring their candidate to identify his bundlers — for this might actually reveal who has their hooks into him. The filings, I promise you, will show loopholes and financial black holes that make taxable income disappear. What we will not see is anything revelatory or, as some insist, genuine insights into the character of the candidate.
Certainly, this has been the case in the past. Richard Nixon disclosed his taxes preceding the 1968 presidential campaign. He reported hefty earnings averaging $200,000 in his years as a New York lawyer, but there was nothing in the forms relating to occasional bouts of drunkenness, paranoia, excessive self-pity or a proclivity to listen to the telephone conversations of others.
Similarly, Bill Clinton, in his pre-White House filings, showed a gross 1990 income of $268,646, but the box (32a) relating to possible extramarital relations in the Oval Office was left blank. No doubt it was an oversight.
George W. Bush’s tax forms were as vacant as he was of any suggestion that he moved his lips when he read and would, if given the chance, tank the economy and lead the nation into two wars, mismanaging both.
By and large, the tax filings tell you nothing you don’t already know. But the refusal to release them is a different matter. In Romney’s case, this is his one and only stand on principle, an odd example of political bravery. He has flipped on abortion, gun control and, of course, health-insurance reform, his signature achievement as governor of Massachusetts. But not on releasing his taxes. Others have been recalcitrant. Ronald Reagan didn’t want to do it (he charged his daughter Maureen interest on a loan) but ultimately did.
In general, presidential and vice presidential candidates have released their returns. Maybe this was because most of them were public servants whose salaries were already known and whose wealth was modest. Others, though, were persons of considerable wealth — Lloyd Bentsen, John Kerry, John Edwards — who laid it all out on the table. (I wonder if Edwards, if he still had presidential prospects, would have deducted his latest child.)
It’s impossible to know what Romney is not revealing. But it is instructive to contrast him to his father, George, who was an auto executive and governor of Michigan. When George Romney ran for president in 1968, he released 12 years of income tax returns. But he was essentially salaried — his remuneration set either by statute or by a board of directors — and so really he was divulging little. Maybe more important, he actually made something (cars) or did something (governed). His son not only manufactured nothing but earned his wealth the new way — by financial manipulation, leveraging and such. On paper, it could look ugly.
For Mitt Romney, there are no assembly lines, no factories or mines — just back offices and computer terminals and such esoterica as the infinitesimal difference between what the Libor rate should be and what it is. He was loyal to no company, no industry — just to his investors. The making of such money is concealed, based on the exotic manipulation of numbers and the disregard of people. Only a relatively few know how to do this sort of thing, and they don’t much like to talk about it. Romney, as we already know, is one of those people. He hides his taxes not because it would reveal anything new about him, but because it would reveal what he has always known about us: We’re suckers.
By: Richard Cohen, Opinion Writer, The washington Post, July 23, 2012
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