“A Man Is Known By The Company He Keeps”: John Sununu And Mitt Romney Are Not So “Strange Bedfellows”
The saying goes: A man is known by the company he keeps.
If that is true, what does the company Mitt Romney keeps say about him?
This week Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama again, as he did in 2008. That apparently set John Sununu, a co-chairman of the Romney campaign, on edge. Powell’s endorsement couldn’t possibly be the product of purposeful deliberation over the candidates’ policies. In Sununu’s world of racial reductionism, Powell’s endorsement had a more base explanation: it was a black thing.
On Thursday, Sununu said on CNN:“When you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or whether he’s got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama.” He continued: “I think when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him.”
Talk about damning with faint praise. In other words, Sununu was basically saying that he was applauding Powell’s inability to see past the color of his own eyelids.
Sununu is the same man who said that the president performed poorly in the first debate because “he’s lazy and disengaged.” He is also the same man who said of the president in July, “I wish this president would learn how to be an American.”
Could Sununu be unaware that many would register such comments as coded racism? Or was that the intent?
To understand Sununu, it is important to understand his political history.
For starters, he is no stranger to racism controversies. When George H.W. Bush selected him as chief of staff in 1988, The New York Times reported:
“Mr. Sununu’s selection was shadowed by concern among some key Jewish leaders. The 49-year-old New Hampshire Governor, whose father is Lebanese and who takes pride in his Arab ancestry, was the only governor to refuse to sign a June 1987 statement denouncing a 1975 United Nations resolution that equated Zionism with racism.”
But that wasn’t his undoing. It was his actions. In 1991, Sununu became enmeshed in a scandal over using government planes for personal trips.
After the embarrassment of the incident, Bush ordered Sununu to clear all future flights in advance. What happened later you must read for yourself, and it is best stated by Time Magazine in a July 1, 1991, article:
“If Sununu hadn’t exactly been grounded, he had certainly been sent to his room. But Bush underestimated the depth of Sununu’s ethical obtuseness and his zeal at finding a way around the rules. Like a rebellious adolescent, Sununu sneaked down the stairs, grabbed the car keys and slipped out of the White House. After all, the old man had only said, ‘Don’t take the plane.’ He didn’t say anything about the car.”
The piece continued:
“Overcome by a sudden urge two weeks ago to buy rare stamps, Sununu ordered the driver of his government-paid limousine to drive him 225 miles to New York City. He spent the day — and nearly $5,000 — at an auction room at Christie’s. Then he dismissed the driver, who motored back to Washington with no passengers. Sununu returned on a private jet owned by Beneficial Corp.”
By the end of 1991, amid sagging poll numbers, Bush began to see Sununu as a drag and unceremoniously relieved him of his post. As The Times reported then, Sununu was made to plead for his job before he was pushed out anyway:
“Mr. Sununu and the White House portrayed the departure as voluntary. But it followed meetings in which Mr. Bush listened to Mr. Sununu’s arguments that he should stay on and then decided to follow the advice of top-level Republicans who urged the removal of his chief of staff.”
R. W. Apple Jr. wrote in The Times after the move that Bush’s “indirectly soliciting and then promptly accepting” Sununu’s resignation had made it abundantly clear what actually happened.
Sununu has apologized, somewhat, for his racial attack on Powell’s motives. But what should we make of all this?
We have a very racially divided electorate. As The Washington Post reported Thursday, “Obama has a deficit of 23 percentage points, trailing Republican Mitt Romney 60 percent to 37 percent among whites, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News national tracking poll.”
The report pointed out that nearly 80 percent of nonwhites support Obama, while 91 percent of Romney’s supporters are white.
I worry that Sununu’s statements intentionally go beyond recognizing racial disparities and seek to exploit them.
What does that say about Romney, and what does it say about his campaign’s tactics?
Remember: A man is known by the company he keeps.
By: Charles Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, October 26, 2012
“Why Race Is Still An Issue”: The Gorgeous Hybrids Of The Melting Pot
Perhaps it was too optimistic to think that the election of Barack Obama in 2008 meant that we were in, or at least entering, a post-racial society. Whatever racial elements were at play in the last presidential election, the tension and even anger now seems even more pronounced.
An ABC/Washington Post poll shows greater racial polarization among the electorate this year than in 2008, the first year an African-American became a credible presidential candidate, let alone the president. The tracking poll shows the president lagging behind Republican Mitt Romney among white voters by 23 percentage points—far more dramatic than the seven percentage points by which Obama was behind in the white vote in 2008, and even the 12 points by which he eventually lost the white vote that year.
Meanwhile, former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, apparently piqued at former (Republican) Secretary of State Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama, suggested that the respected general was making a decision based on some sort of racial solidarity. Said Sununu on CNN:
When you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to look at whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or he’s got a slightly different reason for endorsing President Obama. I think when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him.
Sununu walked back the statement later, but it’s still disturbing. This is not some random angry person making anonymous comments on the Internet. This is a former senior White House adviser and a former governor, someone who is now advising Romney’s campaign.
Whites aren’t required to back a black candidate to prove they are not racist, any more than Powell and other African-Americans have to vote for a nonblack candidate to prove they are taking into account issues other than race. There is an argument to be made that really hating Obama because you don’t like his healthcare or economic policy represents an advancement in race relations. But the numbers suggest something deeper is still at play. African-Americans, for example, have been even harder hit by unemployment than whites, and have similar American concerns about foreign policy and education. If race were truly not an issue, the numbers would be a little more closely aligned among racial and ethnic groups.
Nor has the attack on Obama as “other” dissipated in the slightest since his election. Sununu himself has commented that Obama needs to be more of “an American,” and absurd rumors persist about Obama’s place of birth or religion. The tragic irony is that Obama, aside from the sheer example of his status as president, is hamstrung when it comes to actually talking about race, since on a political level, it’s more threatening coming from an African-American than a white candidate or official. Bill Clinton could talk about race in a way that sounded more palatable to white America. And yet Obama, if he were to engage in a frank discussion of race, would surely be castigated as divisive.
It’s common, historically, for social advances to be met with an immediate pushback before things start to settle in for the better. The abolition of slavery was followed by Jim Crow laws. The civil rights movement of the ’60s also was met with a backlash, though the fundamentals endured. There’s been a lot of social and demographic change in this country over the last 50 years, even over the last 25 years, and it’s perhaps a lot for some people to absorb. When the Tea Party candidates proclaimed they wanted to “take our country back”—and carried signs featuring the female former House Speaker, the gay former committee chairman, and the mixed-race president, that was no accident.
It does appear that some of the pushback is generational, and not necessarily coming from a position of pure bigotry. If you’re much older, it may be difficult just to get your head around all the changes that have occurred in your lifetime. A white man who is now 70 grew up with a different example—guys like him ran the country, and his country pretty much ran the world. Neither of those things is true anymore, and neither is likely to change. And while it’s not a defense of racism or xenophobia or unilateralism, it is an explanation of why it might be hard for some older people to adjust.
I have two young brothers, both of whom are mixed-race. One of them plays soccer at his school, and our father recently told me of watching Matty join in a pre-game huddle with his teammates. There they were—black, white, mixed-race, Cambodian—and they were all yelling, “Uno! Dos! Tres! Quatro!” to psych themselves up for the contest ahead. It was a lovely hybrid of the metaphorical melting pot and what former New York City Mayor David Dinkins used to call the “gorgeous mosaic” that makes up our country. We may end up taking one step back on race relations for every two we take forward. And eventually, maybe we just grow out of it.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, October 26, 2012
“Newtonian Self-Aggrandizement”: Newt’s Nastiness Comes Back To Haunt Him
The campaign of Mitt Romney, the Rip van Winkle of presidential politics, finally awakenedthis week with a savage counterattack against Newt Gingrich, the man who against all odds is threatening to wrest the Republican nomination from Romney.
In a conference call Thursday sponsored by Romney’s campaign, two surrogates of the former Massachusetts governor let fly with a barrage against Gingrich that was shockingly harsh even by today’s caustic standards.
“For Newt Gingrich, in an effort of self-aggrandizement, to come out and throw a clever phrase that has no other purpose than to make him sound a little smarter than the conservative Republican leadership,” said former White House chief of staff John Sununu, “is the most self-serving, anti-conservative thing one can imagine happening . . . just the latest in a pattern of anti-principled actions that really irritated his own leadership and produced 88 percent of the Republicans in Congress voting for his reprimand.”
“He’s not a reliable or trustworthy leader,” former Missouri senator Jim Talent said of Gingrich’s labeling the House Republican budget a “radical” proposition. He “says and does those kinds of things because he’s not reliable as a leader.”
Self-serving. Self-aggrandizing. Anti-conservative. Anti-principled. Hints of corruption, hypocrisy and bizarre and destructive behavior. These were brutal descriptions, and yet there was something poetic about the belated Romney assault on Gingrich. The attacks were terms were popularized by Gingrich himself in his rise to power.
Nearly two decades ago, Gingrich’s political action committee, with the help of GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz, issued a now-famous memo telling Republican candidates which words they should use to describe their opponents. Among them: “anti,” “betray,” “bizarre,” “corrupt,” “destructive,” “disgrace,” “shame,” “lie,” “pathetic,” “radical,” “self-serving,” “selfish,” “shallow,” “shame,” “sick,” “traitors.”
“These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast,” this Gingrich-endorsed memo explained. “Remember that creating a difference helps you. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.”
With that memo, and with the slashing style of politics that brought Republicans to power in the House for the first time in generations, Gingrich did more than anybody else to set the tone in Washington. Now, in a form of rough justice, the savagery has come full circle and is being used against its sponsor.
Romney and his surrogates — many of whom served under Gingrich in the House — are portraying Gingrich as erratic, unreliable, hypocritical and a betrayer of friends and principles. They are contrasting that with Romney, a “leader” and champion of “reform” — terms that Gingrich’s memo, based on focus-group research, coached Republicans to use to define themselves.
Gingrich has followed his own philosophy over the years, making an art of name-calling. He once said that Democrats created a “sick society” and were the “enemy of normal Americans.” Democratic congressional leaders were “sick” and had a “Mussolini-like ego” that led them “to run over normal human beings and to destroy honest institutions.”
He called the Clintons “counterculture McGovernicks.” More recently, he accused President Obama of having a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview and called him “the most serious, radical threat to traditional America ever to occupy the White House.” Gingrich said schools should use children as laborers instead of “unionized” janitors — all phrases rich in the “contrasts” that Gingrich’s team advocated in the 1990s.
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones recently dug up a 1978 Gingrich quotation lamenting that “one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty.”
Thanks to Gingrich, this is no longer a problem, in either party. Embracing Newtonian Nastiness, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) called Gingrich “too erratic,” “too self-centered” and lacking “the capacity to control himself.” Former congressman Guy Molinari (R-N.Y.) called Gingrich “evil” and the prospect of him becoming president “appalling.”
Then came the Romney-hosted teleconference.
Gingrich “says outrageous things that come from nowhere, and he has a tendency to say them at exactly the time when they most undermine the conservative agenda,” Talent reported.
Gingrich “is more concerned about Newt Gingrich than he is about conservative principle,” Sununu contributed. The “off-the-cuff thinking . . . is not what you want in the commander in chief.”
Now, Gingrich said he doesn’t want to be “the attack dog in the Republican Party.” But it’s a bit late for purity. He’s Newt Gingrich, and he approved this message.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 9, 2011
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