“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
“Insecure And Delusional”: Donald Trump’s Racist Hassling Of President Obama
Ridicule Donald Trump if you will. But he has, in his self-aggrandizing, delusional way, earned his own place in history.
It’s not in the way he would like. Trump appears to imagine that he is some financial and political genius, someone who alone knows how to run businesses and by extension, government. Not so much: It doesn’t take any special smarts to make a lot of cash during an historic real estate boom, and Trump in recent years has focused mainly on attaching his name to buildings and events—usually in gaudy letters. Nor has Trump displayed anything close to thoughtfulness or sophistication when it comes to politics or public policy.
Trump, whose primary goal is promoting his own name, is indeed achieving that goal. He is establishing himself as the poster adolescent for the segment of the American public that just can’t, or won’t, accept that the country is no longer run entirely by rich white men like him. In the hateful campaign to define President Barack Obama as “other” in some way—absurd insistences that he is Muslim, not American, or a socialist—Donald trumps the crowd.
Trump was clearly pleased at his pivotal role in forcing Obama to release his long-form birth certificate—an undignified and demeaning move that the president should never have had to make. But there were enough people in denial over the fact that we have a mixed-race president that Obama, unfortunately, was pushed to release the document. Trump was thrilled at his own power in the situation, but that was not enough.
In the most recent, and really, most pathetic display of Trump’s irritation with Obama’s existence as president was Trump’s ballyhooed “bombshell” announcement this week. Was it Obama divorce papers? Some other “evidence” that Obama is not really one of us? No—it was, laughably, a TV hucksterish pledge by Trump to donate $5 million to the charity of Obama’s choice if the president releases his university records, including his applications. Trumps wants the documents by 5 p.m. on October 31, suggesting this might have something to do with Trump’s Halloween costume.
It’s no surprise that Trump thinks everything and everyone can be purchased. It’s getting a little tiresome that he thinks he’s raising legitimate questions about Obama’s academic record. Obama went to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. Trump seems to think that Obama got where he was—Ivy League schools and perhaps even the presidency—through some elaborate web of lies and affirmative action. That’s not just insulting, it reveals the egomaniacal Trump’s true insecurities.
There have been a lot of misstatements and outright lies thrown around in this campaign, but Trump could set an example by revealing one truth. And that is that he just can’t stand the fact that an African-American man with an exotic name is smarter and more successful than he is. It’s part of what will hopefully be a last-gasp wave of racism and fear of “other” in American society. And in history books yet to be written, Trump will be included. And it won’t be flattering.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, October 25, 2012
“What America Will We Pick?”: The Cleavage Between Those Who Have Held Power And Those Who Are Beginning To Attain It
This election is only tangentially a fight over policy. It is also a fight about meaning and identity — and that’s one reason voters are so polarized. It’s about who we are and who we aspire to be.
President Obama enters the final days of the campaign with a substantial lead among women — about 11 points, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll — and enormous leads among Latinos and African Americans, the nation’s two largest minority groups. Mitt Romney leads among white voters, with an incredible 2-to-1 advantage among white men.
It is too simplistic to conclude that demography equals destiny. Both men are being sincere when they vow to serve the interests of all Americans. But it would be disingenuous to pretend not to notice the obvious cleavage between those who have long held power in this society and those who are beginning to attain it.
When Republicans vow to “take back our country,” they never say from whom. But we can guess.
Issues of race, power and privilege are less explicit this year than they were in 2008, but in some ways they are even stronger.
Four years ago, we asked ourselves whether the nation would ever elect a black president. The question was front and center. Every time we see the president and his family walk across the White House lawn to board Marine One, we’re reminded of the answer.
The intensity of the opposition to Obama has less to do with who he is than with the changes in U.S. society he not only represents but incarnates. Citing his race as a factor in the way some of his opponents have bitterly resisted his policies immediately draws an outraged cry: “You’re saying that just because I oppose Obama, I’m a racist.” No, I’m not saying that at all.
What I’m saying is that Obama’s racial identity is a constant reminder of how much the nation has changed in a relatively short time. In my lifetime, we’ve experienced the civil rights movement, the countercultural explosion of the 1960s, the sexual revolution, the women’s movement and an unprecedented wave of Latino immigration. Within a few decades, there will be no white majority in this country — no majority of any kind, in fact. We will be a nation of racial and ethnic minorities, and we will only prosper if everyone learns to give and take.
Our place in the world has changed as well. The United States remains the dominant economic and military power; our ideals remain a beacon for those around the globe still yearning to breathe free. But our capacity for unilateral action is diminished; we can assert but not dictate, and we must learn to persuade.
Obama’s great sin, for some who oppose him, is to make it impossible to ignore these domestic and international megatrends. Take one look at Obama and the phenomenon of demographic change is inescapable. Observe his approach to international crises in places such as Libya or Syria and the reality of America’s place in the world is unavoidable.
I’m deliberately leaving aside what should be the biggest factor in the election: Obama’s policies. It happens that I have supported most of them, but of course there are legitimate reasons to favor Romney’s proposals, insofar as we know what they really are — and the extent to which they really differ from Obama’s.
In foreign affairs, judging by Monday’s debate, the differences are too small to discern; Romney promises to speak in a louder voice and perhaps deploy more battleships, but that’s about it. Domestically, however, I see a clear choice. I consider the Affordable Care Act a great achievement, and Romney’s promise to repeal it would alone be reason enough for me to oppose him. Add in the tax cuts for the wealthy, the plan to “voucherize” Medicare and the appointments Romney would likely make to the Supreme Court, and the implications of this election become even weightier.
Issues may explain our sharp political divisions, but they can’t be the cause of our demographic polarization. White men need medical care, too. African Americans and Latinos understand the need to get our fiscal house in order. The recession and the slow recovery have taken a toll across the board.
Some of Obama’s opponents have tried to delegitimize his presidency because he doesn’t embody the America they once knew. He embodies the America of now.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 25, 2012
“The Ugly Strain Of GOP Racism”: Right Wing Fumes As General Colin Powell Endorses President Obama
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed President Barack Obama for re-election this morning, crossing party lines — and setting off an ugly reaction from the right wing.
Powell, a retired four-star general who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the George H.W. Bush administration before becoming George W. Bush’s top diplomat, told CBS’s “This Morning” that “I voted for [Obama] in 2008, and I plan to stick with him in 2012. I’ll be voting for he [sic] and for Vice President Joe Biden next month.”
Powell credited President Obama for stabilizing the financial system, ending the war in Iraq, and beginning to end the war in Afghanistan. By contrast, Powell criticized Romney’s economic plans and expressed concern that Romney is a “moving target” on foreign policy.
“The governor who was speaking on Monday night at the debate was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier,” Powell said. “So I’m not quite sure which Governor Romney we would be getting in terms of foreign policy.”
“Sometimes I don’t sense that he has thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have,” Powell added. “And he gets advice from his campaign staff that he then has to adjust and modify as he goes along.”
Predictably, many on the right could not accept that Powell — who maintains that he is still a Republican despite endorsing both of Obama’s presidential runs — could have serious policy reasons for supporting the president. Instead, the fringe came up with the same answer that they embrace to explain almost every Obama-related event: it’s all about race.
A brief scan of right wing message boards and media figures reveals the ugly strain of racism that lurks barely beneath the surface of many hyper-partisan criticisms of the president. Note that no Caucasian is ever labeled as a racist for endorsing a white candidate.
Some mainstream Republicans were also critical of Powell’s endorsement. Arizona Senator John McCain went on Brian Kilmeade’s radio show this morning and slammed Powell’s decision, saying “General Powell, you disappoint us and you have harmed your legacy even further by defending what is clearly the most feckless foreign policy in my lifetime.”
This is an especially interesting critique, given that Powell is the man who stood before the United Nations in 2003 and made the disastrously faulty case for an invasion of Iraq. Powell considers the incident to be a “blot” on his record that will always be “painful” to him. If anyone would understand the value of restraint — which McCain and his colleagues in the Republican foreign policy establishment tend to consider “feckless” — it would be a man like Powell, who has seen firsthand what type of damage Romney and his foreign policy team can do.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, October 25, 2012
“A Dangerous Scenario”: The Million Wingnut March Of “Volunteer Poll Watchers”
There’s been a steadily building discussion, albeit shrouded in some mystery, about the potential impact on Election Day (and to some extent, before it) of right-wing “volunteer poll watchers” who are promising to descend on minority neighborhoods to make sure the Pink Elephant threat of “voter fraud” does not transpire.
Much of the talk centers on True the Vote, a Houston-based, Tea-Party aligned group that is claiming it will deploying a million such volunteers. These patriots, it seems, have all been trained to spot the nefarious (if imaginary) efforts of ACORN, the New Black Panther Party, and other representatives of the 47% to stuff the ballot box with the votes of illegal immigrants, welfare bums, and others who do not understand that “constitutional conservatism” is the only legitimate governing ideology for America.
True the Vote clearly does not represent an idle threat. Well before election day, reports are surfacing that it (or its state affiliates, like the Ohio Voter Integrity Project) is challenging the registration status of voters in battleground states based on changed addresses, residences listed on tax rolls as commercial property, and student addresses.
But it’s the specter of Election Day (or perhaps in-person Early Voting locations) that should trouble everyone, regardless of partisan affiliation. It’s hard to imagine a more dangerous scenario than that of hundreds of thousands of self-righteous suburban wingnuts showing up in poor and minority neighborhoods to hassle would-be voters, with Fox News cameras on hand to record any random examples of Solid Citizens experiencing resistance from annoyed locals.
And if we head towards Election Day with Obama still enjoying a clear lead in the polls, you have to figure True the Vote’s shock troops will be loaded for bear, viewing themselves as the last desperate defenders of “their” country against the barbaric hordes of looters and baby-killers who are already plotting to herd them into concentration camps during Obama’s second term, after they close the churches and shut down radio talk shows. At a minimum, we can expect “poll-watchers” to come up with enough “documented” example of “voter fraud” to support a general post-election effort to de-legitimize the results.
Demos and Common Cause have published a report analyzing the threat of chaos and outlining steps to combat it. And over at The Democratic Strategist, James Vega, J.P. Green and I have distilled four distinct strategies for dealing with voter intimidation and conservative media exploitation of precinct chaos.
In general, the best antidote against this madness, other than alert cadres of progressive poll-watchers and a police force willing to enforce the right to vote, is simple awareness. Perhaps True the Vote is issuing empty threats. But there’s no excuse for this becoming a November Surprise.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 28, 2012
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