“Spinning For Dollars”: Romney Campaign Has To Do All It Can To Obscure And Deny Reality
Convention season has been brutal for the Romney campaign. Romney has trailed Obama, not by a lot but significantly, for months; the RNC was supposed to bounce him into the lead. Instead, Romney didn’t get a bounce — but Obama did. It’s far from over, but at this point Obama is the clear favorite to win.
Those are the facts. So why is the Romney campaign spinning furiously in an attempt to deny them? Well, I have a theory; it’s obvious, but I haven’t seen it elsewhere. It’s about the money.
OK, it’s true that part of this may be the carryover from conservative epistemology more broadly, in which truth is what’s ideologically convenient, never mind the evidence. But there’s also a very rational reason to try to pretend that things are going better than they are.
Bear in mind that Romney’s one big advantage is a huge pile of cash. Much of this pile comes from committed right-wing zealots, like the Koch brothers. But a good chunk comes from business interests, Wall Street in particular, that historically try to buy influence with whoever they think will win. They like Romney better than Obama — he doesn’t look at them funny — but they’ve placed a very big bet on the Republicans this time compared with previous occasions, and they have to be feeling nervous.
If they come to the conclusion that they invested in a loser, they will try to cover their position by rushing a lot of cash to Obama in the final weeks of the campaign. And that will blunt the one big advantage Romney still has.
So the Romney campaign has to do all it can to obscure and deny reality, lest perceptions that their candidate is a lemon turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, September 10, 2012
“Politicians Who Don’t Like People”: The Danger Of Looking At Past Presidents’ Personalities And Extrapolating To General Principles
New York magazine’s John Heilmann makes an interesting point about Barack Obama in this interview (via Andrew Sullivan):
JH: Obama is an unusual politician. There are very few people in American politics who achieve something — not to mention the Presidency — in which the following two conditions are true: one, they don’t like people. And two, they don’t like politics.
KC: Obama doesn’t like people?
JH: I don’t think he doesn’t like people. I know he doesn’t like people. He’s not an extrovert; he’s an introvert. I’ve known the guy since 1988. He’s not someone who has a wide circle of friends. He’s not a backslapper and he’s not an arm-twister. He’s a more or less solitary figure who has extraordinary communicative capacities. He’s incredibly intelligent, but he’s not a guy who’s ever had a Bill Clinton-like network around him. He’s not the guy up late at night working the speed dial calling mayors, calling governors, calling CEOs.
Despite the phrase “doesn’t like people,” Heilmann isn’t saying that Obama is some kind of misanthrope; there’s a whole spectrum of introversion and extroversion. But let’s assume this is a reasonably accurate assessment. Does it matter? You can look at Clinton and say his appetite for schmoozing is in part what made him successful. On the other hand, George W. Bush is a people person too. There’s a famous story about him from when he was pledging DKE in college, and one day they asked the pledges to name as many of their group as they could. Most could only come up with five or six names, but George named all 55 pledges. But you know who else didn’t really like people? Ronald Reagan. He was dynamite in front of an audience, but had few friends and was estranged from some of his own kids. And come to think of it, an unusual number of people who have lost presidential campaigns in recent years (Kerry, Gore, Dole, Dukakis) were skilled at some aspects of politics but obviously tolerated the endless fundraisers and handshaking without actually enjoying it.
Mitt Romney, interestingly enough, doesn’t really like people but tries to pretend that he’s more like Clinton than like Obama. I think this is part of what’s so grating about Romney. It isn’t just that he’s awkward at all the glad-handing politicians have to do. Lots of us (myself included) wouldn’t be any good at that. It’s that he’s awkward at it but thinks he’s convincing us that heloves it. Just can’t wait to get to the next fish fry to sit down and shoot the breeze with the folks. This is probably my favorite Romney video of all time, from his 1994 run for Senate. He comes into a restaurant, looks around at a rather grim group of elderly diners just trying to have a meal, and says loudly to no one in particular, “My goodness! What’s going on here today? Look at this! This is terrific!” It’s beyond painful: http://www.tubechop.com/watch/529289
It does seem that a love of people can be very helpful in becoming president, but it’s far less important once you get to be president. As Heilmann notes, members of Congress were used to getting massaged by Clinton, and they don’t get that treatment from Obama. But would anything in his term have gone better if he had spent more time on that? Legislatively, Obama has been pretty darn successful. He succeeded in one big area where Clinton failed (health care reform). And even Clinton couldn’t have convinced today’s Republicans to be any less obstructionist than they have been.
Maybe this shows the danger of looking at past presidents’ personalities and extrapolating to general principles about what makes for a successful presidency.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 10, 2012
“Arithmetic For Billionaires”: Romney Is Rich, But Can He Add?
Mitt Romney is a very wealthy man with a proven capacity for avoiding taxes – but can he do simple arithmetic?
In the wake of the Democratic convention, the Republican candidate again promised to “cut the deficit and get us back on track to a balanced budget.” He even hinted that his own party bears some responsibility for ballooning federal deficits and debt. “We’re going to finally have to do something that Republicans have spoken about for a long time and for a while we didn’t do it. When we had the lead, we let people down,” he said the other day, presumably referring to the last Republican president, whose name must never be mentioned, and the Congressional leadership during that administration.
And “for a while” presumably refers to the past 30 years or so.
Romney also says that he watched none of the speeches at the Democratic convention. He obviously missed the one that might have helped him figure out exactly what his party has been doing wrong. “I hear Bill Clinton spoke for like, 50 minutes?” he snarked at a public appearance on Friday. Yes, the former president spoke for just over 49 minutes – and he articulated a message that could enlighten Romney. Clinton’s lesson might be titled “Arithmetic for Billionaires.” He could start with an accurate assessment of the origins of the national debt level currently carried by the U.S. Treasury. As Clinton noted, the federal debt roughly quadrupled during the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administration, from just under a trillion dollars to four trillion.
When Clinton became president, that debt was rising rapidly with annual deficits of $400 billion. His first budget raised taxes, almost entirely on the wealthiest taxpayers, by restoring a top bracket of 39.5 percent. Not a single Republican in Congress voted for that 1993 budget, with many of them predicting that raising taxes on the rich would result in economic catastrophe. They were wrong, of course.
The economy boomed, incomes rose at every level, millions began to climb out of poverty, and the rich became richer too (although many of them never forgave Clinton for demanding that they pay up for the festivities of the Reagan era). Clinton booked four balanced budgets and began to pay down the national debt. The debt would have been paid down entirely, preparing the nation far better for the crash that we ultimately faced, had that unnamed Republican not succeeded Clinton with reckless tax cuts and extremely expensive wars.
By the time President Nameless left office, the nation was deeply in debt and on the brink of a catastrophe that wasn’t merely rhetorical. Now along comes Romney, with his sidekick Paul Ryan, telling voters that they will cut the deficit and balance the budget. Yet as Clinton noted, they propose still another round of tax cuts for the wealthiest households – including their own and those of their most generous supporters – that would cost the Treasury at least $5 trillion. And they insist on increasing the defense budget by hundreds of billions, too.
What Clinton asked is how the Republican nominees propose to pay for those lavish favors to themselves and their friends. Doing the arithmetic himself, he came up with three possible answers: They will raise taxes on the middle class by taking away mortgage, charitable and other deductions, so that billionaires can have another tax break. They will cut federal spending so deeply that infrastructure, education, science, technology, and health care will be ruined for the future. Or they will do nothing, and explode the debt, just as their predecessors have done repeatedly over the past three decades.
Whether in their own 40-minute addresses to their party convention or elsewhere, neither Romney nor Ryan has offered a plausible solution to Clinton’s arithmetic problem. They talk about spending cuts and tax reform, but without any specifics. The footnote to their budget claim says only, as Clinton put it: “See me about that after the election.” Clearly the Republicans intend to push off difficult questions about their budgeting, just as Romney intends to push through without releasing his tax returns. But those evasions may prove very difficult to sustain through the four upcoming debates.
Sometime before November 6, someone will ask Romney and Ryan to do the arithmetic.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, September 8, 2012
“The Case Of The Missing Ex-Presidents”: GOP Repudiate’s It’s Past For Sins Against Republicanism
Tom Toles’s typically terrific editorial cartoon in today’s Post highlights a fundamental difference between today’s Democratic and Republican parties: The Democrats welcome their former presidents to their conventions; the Republicans don’t. The reason isn’t just that Bill Clinton is the best campaign speaker since World War II and George W. Bush is far less rhetorically compelling. It’s also that the Democrats are comfortable with their past while today’s Republicans repudiate theirs.
Clinton and Jimmy Carter have been fixtures at Democratic conventions since their presidencies ended, though Carter, whose presidency Democrats, like most Americans, don’t remember all that fondly, is usually trotted out nowhere near prime time. You have to go back all the way to Lyndon Johnson to find a Democratic ex-president who wasn’t included in convention proceedings: In 1972 (the only convention that occurred while Johnson was out of office and still alive), the debates over the Vietnam War, like the war itself, were still raging, and Johnson’s appearance would have proved hugely divisive at the convention that nominated George McGovern.
But what sins against Republicanism did today’s two Republican ex-presidents, George H.W. Bush and his son George W., commit? Both were mainstream Republicans of their times. Papa Bush presided over the death of Soviet Communism, and even if he wasn’t really responsible for its demise, you’d think that would be worth at least an appearance. But then, Papa Bush also raised taxes, which appears to have cast him into an ideological wasteland for today’s anti-tax Republicans.
As for the son, he promoted and signed into law massive tax cuts for the rich and did nothing to rein in the banks even as they did everything they could to magnify the risk they posed to themselves and everybody else. In other words, he followed Republican economic doctrine to the letter. He chose to wage a war of choice in Iraq, a war also sought by his party’s neo-conservatives. You might think that the fact that each of these policies ended in disaster would be reason enough for the Republicans not to invite W., but for the fact that these are still the policies that the party embraces (tax cuts for the rich, repeal of Dodd-Frank and attacking Obama for not doing more in Syria).
Bush’s banishing looks more like a case of ideological deviation than real-world catastrophe. He supported a path to legalization for illegal immigrants. He expanded Medicare to include a prescription drug benefit. (Obamacare, which the Republicans universally vow to repeal, provided more funding for that benefit.)
In other words, what’s wrong with the Bushes is the same thing that was wrong with Senators Richard Lugar and Robert Bennett, longtime party stalwarts whose routine bids for renomination were denied by Republican primary and caucus voters: they haven’t kept up with the party’s race to the right. The GOP base has banished the previous generation of Republican leaders for their lack of revolutionary zeal.
The tea partyization of the GOP has a lot in common with a sustained revolution, such as, to cite the paradigmatic example, that in France, where the Marats and Dantons, yesterday’s leaders, were cast aside for and by the even more zealous Robespierre and his ilk. The Republicans are Jacobins, and Jacobins don’t invite their old presidents back. When you’ve moved as far to the extremes as today’s GOP, even your own former leaders are the ancien regime.
By: Harold Meyerson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 6, 2012
“Dual Eligible’s”: Cut Medicaid And You Cut Health Care For The Elderly And Disabled
Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan have been adamant that their Medicare proposals won’t affect people over 55. That may be true. But their Medicaid proposals sure will. A lot of health care for the elderly comes from Medicaid. We call those people “dual-eligibles”, because they qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid. Some dual-eligible are younger disabled people, but about two-thirds are 65 or older. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports:
Dual eligibles as a share of total Medicaid enrollees ranged from a low of 10 percent in Arizona and Utah to a high of 26 percent in Maine, due to demographic differences and policy preferences across the states. Similarly, spending on dual eligibles as a percentage of total Medicaid spending ranged from a low of 18 percent in Arizona to a high of 59 percent in North Dakota.
Lots of Medicaid money goes to the elderly. Cut Medicaid, and you likely cut some of that. Here’s more:
One quarter (25%) of Medicaid spending for dual eligibles went toward Medicare premiums and cost-sharing for Medicare services in 2008. Five percent of spending for duals was for acute care services not covered by Medicare (e.g., dental, vision, and hearing services). Another 1 percent of Medicaid dual eligible spending was for prescription drugs, a percentage that has fallen significantly since coverage for nearly all prescribed drugs for duals was shifted from Medicaid to Medicare Part D in 2006. The remaining 69% of Medicaid spending was for long-term care services, which are generally not covered by Medicare or private insurance.
That Medicaid money is going to Medicare premiums! It’s also going to actual care. Cut Medicaid, and you likely cut some of that.
It’s about time someone pointed that out. The health care proposals of Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan will absolutely impact some elderly people way earlier than a decade. Unless they’ve changed their minds again.
By: Aaron Carroll, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 7, 2012
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