Starving The (Security) Beast

In a memorandum (text, here) yesterday, staff to the minority on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wrote Democratic members "The fast pace and lack of clarity surrounding the attacks leads some to wonder if Republican Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and his majority are prioritizing election-year gains over uncovering the truth behind the violence in Libya."

Do you really have to wonder?    The House committee chaired by Representative Issa (R-Ca) today began its hearings into the recent attack on the American consulate which left Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.   Issa has promised an investigation conducted on a "bipartisan basis" but

The Chairman and his staff failed to consult with Democratic Members prior to issuing public letters with unverified allegations, concealed witnesses and refused to make one hearing witness available to Democratic staff, withheld documents obtained by the Committee during the investigation, and effectively excluded Democratic Committee Members from joining a poorly planned congressional delegation to Libya.

The staff to the Democrats on the Committee explained that funding for security had been cut by the GOP-controlled House, with a portion of the reduction restored by the Democratic Senate.   As Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote yesterday

For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department’s Worldwide Security Protection program — well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration’s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration’s request.) Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans’ proposed cuts to her department would be “detrimental to America’s national security” — a charge Republicans rejected.

Ryan, Issa and other House Republicans voted for an amendment in 2009 to cut $1.2 billion from State operations, including funds for 300 more diplomatic security positions. Under Ryan’s budget, non-defense discretionary spending, which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to embassy security.

Even now, Republicans are loathe to admit they made a mistake in exposing American diplomatic personnel to a terrorist attack.  Asked by CNN's Soledad O'Brien whether it (is) true that you voted to cut the funding for embassy security," Utah's Jason Chaffetz responded

Absolutely.  Look we have to make priorities and choices in this country.   We have... 15,000 contractors in Iraq.  We have more than 6,000 contractors, a private army there, for President Obama, in Baghdad.  And we're talking about can we get two dozen or so people into Libya to help protect our forces.  When you're in tough economic times, you have to make difficult choices.  You have to prioritize things.

That's quite a sacrifice for Republicans- supporting private contractors in a combat zone to supplement a war begun and waged by a Republican President.   They're doing it "for President Obama" as something of a favor to him.

But provide security for living human beings- worse yet, public employees?  That, we cannot have.

The FBI or Issa's witch hunt committee may uncover serious malfeasance on the part of State Department employees on some level.  Meanwhile, the GOP gets its wish, a government which failed to prevent a tragedy and thereby opened the public sector to criticism, which Republicans will gleefully exploit to cut essential government spending further.



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Still, Opportunity



During last week's presidential debate in Denver, President Obama stated

When it comes to corporate taxes, Governor Romney has said he wants to, in a revenue-neutral way, close loopholes, deductions — he hasn't identified which ones they are — but thereby bring down the corporate rate. Well, I want to do the same thing, but I've actually identified how we can do that.

And part of the way to do it is to not give tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas. Right now you can actually take a deduction for moving a plant overseas.

Former governor Romney replied in part "The second topic, which is you said you get a deduction for getting a plant overseas. Look, I've been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you're talking about. I maybe need to get a new accountant."

First, pundits expressed wonderment at Obama's failure to jump on Romney's quip "I maybe need to get a new accountant."   Perhaps he could have asked Romney for the name and number of his accountant so that he, too, might be able to pay at a rate of 13.7%.  "While you're at it," Obama might have mentioned, I'd like to consult your financial consultant, so that maybe Michelle and I could make $21.7 million too; I know a lot of other Americans would like to get in on that."

Of course, in terms of policy (rather than politics), how Mitt Romney made his millions is more significant than how much he got, though reactions from the debate demonstrate that in politics, style trumps substance.

Fact-checkers eagerly analyzed Obama's contention that companies receive tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, which prompted Romney's denial that such an IRS preference exists.   The consensus, it appears, is that companies receive a deduction for moving expenses for shifting jobs anywhere, abroad or domestically.

Jobs moved from one community to another- as private equity firms like Bain Capital practically specialize in- disrupt communities (permanently damaging some), slash benefits for its employees, and slash the jobs of other employees. Nevertheless, the damage done to the country is eclipsed by offshoring.    That is one way, the guy who claimed Wednesday a President should be "fighting for jobs for the American people" was right in the center of the drive to destroy the American workforce.   The Washington Post in June found

Mitt Romney’s financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.

During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

During this Administration, congressional Democrats have twice (twice!) attempted to lure jobs from abroad- and both times been thwarted by the Gas and Oil Party.  In October, 2010

Senate Republicans, aided by four Democrats and Connecticut's Joe Lieberman, torpedoed the proposed law, which sought to stimulate U.S. jobs with a tempting two-year tax break for businesses that brought overseas jobs back to the country and a new tax on products imported back to the U.S. from companies that ship production out of the country. The bill also would also have made it illegal for off-shoring companies to deduct expenses that they incur when shipping jobs overseas.

Almost two years later, a similar effort failed in Congress.  ABC News reported

Under existing law, employers may take tax deductions for the costs associated with moving jobs out of the country. The proposed legislation would have eliminated that, and used the resulting new revenue to fund a 20 percent tax credit for the costs companies run up “insourcing” labor back into the U.S. The bill failed by 56-42. A count of 60 was required to end debate and move to a final vote.

"A count of 60 was required" by the GOP leadership in the Senate, which has demanded that cloture be approved before practically any Democratic initiative.   All 53 Democrats, joined by New England Republicans Snowe, Collins, and Brow,n voted to impose cloture while all other Republicans voting (42) voted to keep jobs in foreign countries.

Let's take inventory.   The two efforts aimed at enticing corporations to bring jobs back to the country Republicans love so dearly garnered the support of 106 Democrats and the opposition of five Democrats, and the support of four Republicans and the opposition of 82 Republicans.

Certainly, it was the responsibility of Barack Obama to make this point in some fashion.  But not only did the President neglect to describe GOP obstruction of his struggle to help the country, he didn't even slam Congress.  That is political malpractice from a President facing re-election with at least one chamber controlled by the opposition party.

It wouldn't have taken much for President Obama to echo the words of the Senate Majority Leader, who noted "It's fairly easy to see why Republicans are blocking our bill to stop outsourcing.  They're obviously defending their presidential nominee, who of course made a fortune by shipping jobs overseas."    Harry Reid understands that Mitt Romney is vulnerable on outsourcing and the tens of millions of dollars he made off the misery of American families, and the Obama campaign needs to understand it, too.




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This Door Swings Only One Way


Paul Krugman, of course, was right Sunday when he told the audience of This Week

there's a contempt for the whole process. There's a contempt for us people, because he's thinking the news media will not cover me on this, as long as they say it forcefully they'll say I won, which is more of the ways...

And James Carville, of course, was wrong Sunday when he told the same audience

Look, they asked one time Lee Trevino, great golfer, who was having trouble with putting and they asked him if he thought he needed a new putter and he famously said, no, it's not the arrow it's the Indian. OK. It's not Jim Lehrer. President Obama was sitting right there. He would have confronted Governor Romney on any number of issues and drawn the distinction.

To the wealthy, perhaps, everything in life can be compared to the their favorite leisure time, athletic-free, activity.     Krugman, though, noted "But isn't our job, at least partly, to actually never mind that the quality of the theatrical performance but to ask about, were there untruths spoken in that debate and there were a lot."  Neither Krugman nor anyone has let Obama off the hook.

Not even Salon's Alex Pareene, who conceded he "had no issues" with the "anything goes" format but observed

Not counting follow-ups (SIMPSON-BOWLES, god help us), these were the questions: “How would you create jobs?” “How would you fix the deficit?” “Entitlements?” “Are there too many regulations or not enough regulations?” (The dumbest question of the night!) “Obamacare?” “Do you guys have a rhetorical disagreement about the impossibly amorphous concept of ‘the role of government’”?” And finally “how would you fix partisan gridlock?”  He laments "immigration, reproductive health, LGBT civil rights, the environment, campaign finance, the drug war, and voting rights: None of you matter as much as Simpson effing Bowles!"

Jim Lehrer's most famous encounter of all time was the hapless one with President Bill Clinton, fresh off revelation of his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, who on three occasions asserted either "there is no sexual relationship" or "there is no improper sexual relationship."   Lehrer, apparently unaware that Clinton was replying only that there was nothing currently going on as was evident) let the Big Dog off easy, as he did Romney, whose lies had less to do with grammar than with substance.

No whining is necessary, however. Instead, moderating debates should follow the pattern of officiating in most sports.   In football, a faulty pass interference call against the defense on one play often is followed by a faulty pass interference a few plays later against the offense.  In that spirit, the questions in the second debate, as in the first debate, should be skewed, but in the opposite direction.   (This would be in a following debate, but is analogous; as in a football game, it is against the same opponent, with victory the goal.)

The second debate is scheduled to include both domestic and foreign policy issues.   Therefore, "How would you create jobs" might be replaced with "how would you bring jobs back from overseas";  "How would you fix the deficit" with "How would you stimulate the economy"; "Entitlements" with "Earned Benefits" (or at least "Social Security, Medicare, and Social Security"); "Are there too many regulations or not enough regulations" with "Does government do enough to protect consumers from predatory lenders, unsafe drugs, or rapacious defense contractors"; "the role of government" with "the role of the multinational corporation";  and "how would you fix partisan gridlock" with "how would you respond to a congressional party drawing up strategy on the day of your inauguration to obstruct your agenda."  And my favorite substitution: "Simpson-Bowles" with "Contraceptive Choice Project, on the impact of birth control on incidence of abortion."

It could happen! And it could snow in Miami tomorrow.

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Make 'Em Disprove It


On Mitt Romney's website, geared to elicit donations, we learn he wants to "make permanent, across the board 20 percent cut in marginal rates," "eliminate the Death Tax," and "cut the corporate tax rate to 20 percent."   As a share of the economy, income taxes are lower than they have been at any time since 1950:  the estate tax already applies only to estates worth over $1million; on balance, the effective GDP tax weighted average is slightly lower in the U.S.A. than in the other nations of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation (OECD)

No matter, because in the debate Wednesday night Etch-A-Sketch was freed to connect with independent voters.    He thus somersaulted into  "First of all, I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don't have a tax cut of a scale that you're talking about. My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I'm not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high- income people."

Having already denied that he is for cutting the taxes he tells conservative audiences everywhere he wants to slash, the born-again for-now liberal claimed "I want to bring down the rates down (sic), at the same time lower deductions and exemptions and credits and so forth so we keep getting the revenue we need."  At least twice he returned to the theme, claiming "what I do is I bring down the tax rates, lower deductions and exemptions... getting us to a balanced budget" and "my plan is to bring down rates but also bring down deductions and exemptions and credits at the same time so the revenue stays in."

Sure, sure it is.   E.J. Dionne notes "Obama did return repeatedly to a central point: Romney's vagueness in his proposals on taxes and health care.  He charged that Romney was hiding the details of those plans because they would prove unpopular with and harmful to the middle class."   President Obama hinted at the deductions Romney is thinking of when the President pointed out (emphasis mine)

Well, for 18 months he's been running on this tax plan. And now, five weeks before the election, he's saying that his big, bold idea is "never mind." And the fact is that if you are lowering the rates the way you describe, Governor, then it is not possible to come up with enough deductions and loopholes that only affect high-income individuals to avoid either raising the deficit or burdening the middle class. It's — it's math. It's arithmetic.

The President went in a slightly different direction when in the same response he argued

The only way to pay for it without either burdening the middle class or blowing up our deficit is to make drastic cuts in things like education, making sure that we are continuing to invest in basic science and research, all the things that are helping America grow. And I think that would be a mistake.

Getting revenue out of eliminating loopholes sufficient to lower deficits significantly can come only by goring the ox of the middle class, as Romney won't admit.   And if he maintains the deductions/exemptions, either the deficit will balloon or spending for popular items, such as research, education, and law enforcement will be dropped.

Most likely a Republican presidency will do what all Republican presidencies do- lower rates and avoid closing loopholes.   There will be fewer revenues, deficits will expand exponentially, and that president will leave the mess to the next Democratic president to clean up. But we don't know that- and, according to Romney's own testimony, preferences in the tax code will be reduced.

Why not take Mitt Romney at his own word?    The strategy ought to be:  no more Obama hinting-around.  No more Mr. Responsibility.  Or as one Republican performer once put it, No More Mr. Nice Guy.   Start asserting:  we've run the numbers and discovered that Mitt Romney plans to eliminate the home mortgage interest deduction.  When the media stars start squealing, tell them our experts are better than your experts.  If history is any guide, they will write it off as "he said, she said."

When fact-checkers come a knockin', tell them, as Romney told the Des Moines Register, "Fact-checkers on both sides of the aisle will look in the way they think is most consistent with their own views."   When Romney denies he wants to eliminate the popular break for homeowners, respond  "see, we told you he'll change his story back-and-forth so he doesn't have to tell the truth."

It won't happen that way, of course.    The corporate wing of the Democratic Party, currently led by Obama-Clinton (but including Ed Rendell, Mark Warner, and others), is loathe to offend the media, notwithstanding the lust of the GOP for the task.  (Romney's confrontation with Jim Lehrer was passive compared to Newt Gingrich's tactics in the primary debates.)  Additionally, the President wants to be seen as the responsible and congenial deficit-reducing moderate soaring above partisan bickering, all the better (he believes) to gain media support and Republican acquiescence in the bold, transformative center-right policies he plans for a second term.



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Letting Romney Off



Debate host Jim Lehrer asked President Obama and former Governor Romney last night "do you believe there's a fundamental difference between the two of you as to how you view the mission of the federal government?"  The President responded (and ask someone to awaken you midway through):

The first role of the federal government is to keep the American people safe. That's its most basic function. And as commander in chief, that is something that I've worked on and thought about every single day that I've been in the Oval Office.

But I also believe that government has the capacity — the federal government has the capacity to help open up opportunity and create ladders of opportunity and to create frameworks where the American people can succeed. Look, the genius of America is the free enterprise system, and freedom, and the fact that people can go out there and start a business, work on an idea, make their own decisions.

But as Abraham Lincoln understood, there are also some things we do better together.

So in the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln said, let's help to finance the Transcontinental Railroad. Let's start the National Academy of Sciences. Let's start land grant colleges, because we want to give these gateways of opportunity for all Americans, because if all Americans are getting opportunity, we're all going to be better off. That doesn't restrict people's freedom; that enhances it.
And so what I've tried to do as president is to apply those same principles. And when it comes to education, what I've said is we've got to reform schools that are not working. We use something called Race to the Top. Wasn't a top-down approach, Governor. What we've said is to states, we'll give you more money if you initiate reforms. And as a consequence, you had 46 states around the country who have made a real difference.

But what I've also said is let's hire another hundred thousand math and science teachers to make sure we maintain our technological lead and our people are skilled and able to succeed. And hard-pressed states right now can't all do that. In fact, we've seen layoffs of hundreds of thousands of teachers over the last several years, and Governor Romney doesn't think we need more teachers. I do, because I think that that is the kind of investment where the federal government can help. It can't do it all, but it can make a difference, and as a consequence, we'll have a better-trained workforce, and that will create jobs, because companies want to locate in places where we've got a skilled workforce.

It was, of course, a question in the wheelhouse of almost any GOP candidate, a vague, general question designed to elicit vague, general answers, the kind Republicans specialize in.   Still, a blogger at DailyKos notes that Obama's response could have included the explanation that

Private actors are looking out for themselves, not for you.  Government agencies are run in the public interest, or at least they have a duty to be (regulatory capture is a big problem, but the solution is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater).  Competitive markets work great in many cases, but many essential services are difficult for the private sector to efficiently provide--without either wasteful duplication or monopolistic rent seeking.

All completely true and important, but every bit as boring as Obama's response.  As long as Barack Obama  chose his debate theme as the need to impose austerity to tackle the deficit, he might have reminded voters- or better yet, his opponent- of Mitt Romney's debt-ridden role at Bain Capital.  He should have used Matt Taibbi's description in Rolling Stone five weeks ago of Mitt Romney as

fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth...

A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself.

This "gambit," Taibbi explains

stands as an emblem for the resiliency of the entire sociopathic Wall Street set he represents. Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it's dusted itself off, it's had a shave and a shoeshine, and it's back out there running for president.

Taibbi identifies Romney as cozy with Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, and the other "hucksters" who have been conducting

decades-long campaign in which the old, simple, let's-make-stuff-and-sell-it manufacturing economy was replaced with a new, highly complex, let's-take-stuff-and-trash-it financial economy. Instead of cars and airplanes, we built swaps, CDOs and other toxic financial products. Instead of building new companies from the ground up, we took out massive bank loans and used them to acquire existing firms, liquidating every asset in sight and leaving the target companies holding the note. The new borrow-and-conquer economy was morally sanctified by an almost religious faith in the grossly euphemistic concept of "creative destruction," and amounted to a total abdication of collective responsibility by America's rich, whose new thing was making assloads of money in ever-shorter campaigns of economic conquest, sending the proceeds offshore, and shrugging as the great towns and factories their parents and grandparents built were shuttered and boarded up, crushed by a true prairie fire of debt. 

Cut out some of the invective (which Taibbi is fond of), such as referring (albeit accurately) to Romney and Ryan as "pompous and self-righteous," Wall Street executives as "shifty-eyed huckster" or "jerkwad," and billions of dollars as "assloads of money," and you have two-thirds of Americans jumping off their sofa and cheering.    As a bonus, Mitt Romney would have gone ballistic and self-destructed.  (True, Jim Lehrer might have had a heart attack and Bill Clinton, Cory Booker, and Ed Rendell would have put out a contract on Obama, but the President does have Secret Service protection.)

Of course, this didn't happen, and won't happen, for Obama is loathe to incur any more enmity from the finance, insurance, or real estate sector.  He was anxious to avoid the issue of Bain Capital, as Mitt Romney generally does, probably because it enhances his image as rapacious and greedy.

The President was presented a golden opportunity to sharpen his differences with Romney when Lehrer opened a new topic by stating "All right? All right, this is this is segment three, the economy, entitlements.  First answer goes to you. It's two minutes. Mr. President, do you see a major difference between the two of you on Social Security?"

A few moments into a boring response, Obama half-heartedly remarked " that's the perspective I bring when I think about what's called entitlements. You know, the name itself implies some sense of dependency on the part of these folks."    His response should have been more direct and decisive by correcting the host on the term "entitlements," noting they instead are "earned benefits," and lashing out at Mitt Romney for targeting the elderly surviving on Social Security benefits.

But Barack Obama did not seize the opportunity, which was, hopefully, merely bad strategy rather than an indication that a re-elected President will go all in for a grand bargain.



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Misstep In Colorado


At Fox News, Charles Krauthammer said that polls should tighten a bit with Mitt Romney's solid debate (transcript, here) performance in Denver.  The Republican demonstrated to voters bombarded by ads attacking him that he "does not have horns"  while, Krauthammer observed, Barack Obama unwisely sat on a lead.

Sat on a lead, indeed.   There were at least ten instances in which President Obama stated or strongly implied agreement with his opponent, including

When it comes to our tax code, Governor Romney and I both agree that our corporate tax rate is too high.

On energy, Governor Romney and I, we both agree that we've got to boost American energy production.

Now, Governor Romney and I do share a deep interest in encouraging small-business growth.

When it comes to corporate taxes, Governor Romney has said he wants to, in a revenue-neutral way, close loopholes, deductions — he hasn't identified which ones they are — but thereby bring down the corporate rate. Well, I want to do the same thing, but I've actually identified how we can do that.

You know, I suspect that on Social Security, we've got a somewhat similar position. 

Now, in fairness, what Governor Romney has now said is he'll maintain traditional Medicare alongside it.

Now, Governor Romney has said he wants to repeal Dodd-Frank, and, you know, I appreciate, and it appears we've got some agreement that a marketplace to work has to have some regulation, but in the past...

And it happens we've got some agreement that a marketplace to work has to have some regulation.

...the irony is that we've seen this model work really well in Massachusetts, because Governor Romney did a good thing, working with Democrats in the state to set up what is essentially the identical model. And as a consequence, people are covered there. It hasn't destroyed jobs.

There's a reason why Governor Romney set up the plan that he did in Massachusetts. It wasn't a government takeover of health care. It was the largest expansion of private insurance. But what it does say is that insurers, you've got to take everybody. Now, that also means that you've got more customers.

At MSNBC, Ed Schultz noted that Obama said nothing about Bain Capital, the 47%, offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands or elsewhere.   Schultz noted that Romney was animated, yet not angry, and appeared to want the job, whereas the incumbent appeared almost indifferent to remaining president.   Mitt Romney, Chris Matthews recognized, "seemed to endure the evening while Romney seemed to relish it."    Chris Hayes, who also realized that Romney helped himself in the debate,  asserted that the President's people believe that Obama's biggest asset is his personality and feared that a more aggressive approach would have undercut that.     Left unsaid: Team Obama worries constantly about the President appearing to be an angry black man.

Reverend Al Sharpton argued that, despite initial impressions of the debate, Romney in the next couple of weeks will have to answer for "his lies."   At Salon, Joan Walsh notices a few of Romney's conflicts with objective reality: the candidate denied proposing a $5 trillion tax cut, contended he is "not going to cut education funding," claimed the Affordable Care Act had raised taxes by a trillion dollars, and, describing inaccurately the Independent Payment Advisory Board, maintained Obama has established "a board that will tell people what kind of treatment they're going to get,"   Whether fact checkers will have much of an impact on the public's perception of the veracity or integrity of the challenger remains to be seen.

Still, there is a major opening for the Obama campaign in Romney's declaration "But you make a very good point, which is that the — the place you put your money makes a pretty clear indication of where your heart is."  That would make for a delightful campaign ad given, as Walsh's Salon  colleague, Alex Seitz-Wald, notes, "The obvious rejoinder, ready-made for a DNC attack, is that Romney’s heart must be in the Cayman Island, Bermuda or Switzerland, where Romney has put his money.

It's on to the vice-presidential debate and the following two presidential debates.   Before this encounter, many pundits had argued that the first debate between Obama and Romney would be the most important of the three, and few if any maintained that either of the last two would be more important.   Fortunately for the incumbent, that will prove false.  Voters will tune in to Obama-Romney II and III to determine if their first impressions were correct.  If so, that bodes ill for the President; if not, his election will be almost assured.  In either case, the first debate, despite an almost unanimous decision for the challenger, thankfully will not prove pivotal.




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On Further Review, Pierce's Criticism Stands



The Washington Post uses the headline "Can Romney Turn This Thing Around?"Meanwhile, Investors Business Daily goes with the more accurate "Why Americans Might Tolerate This Failed President" to describe the misguided essay against Barack Obama by George Will.The columnist, long syndicated by The Washington Post's Writer's Group, contends

A significant date in the nation’s civil rights progress involved an African American baseball player named Robinson, but not Jackie. The date was Oct. 3, 1974, when Frank Robinson, one the greatest players in history, was hired by the Cleveland Indians as the major leagues’ first black manager. But an even more important milestone of progress occurred June 19, 1977, when the Indians fired him. That was colorblind equality.

Managers get fired all the time. The fact that the Indians felt free to fire Robinson — who went on to have a distinguished career managing four other teams — showed that another racial barrier had fallen: Henceforth, African Americans, too, could enjoy the God-given right to be scapegoats for impatient team owners or incompetent team executives.

Perhaps a pleasant paradox defines this political season: That Obama is African American may be important, but in a way quite unlike that darkly suggested by, for example, MSNBC’s excitable boys and girls who, with their (at most) one-track minds and exquisitely sensitive olfactory receptors, sniff racism in any criticism of their pin-up. Instead, the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure — thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him — seems especially reluctant to give up on the first African American president. If so, the 2012 election speaks well of the nation’s heart, if not its head.

In "George Will Is Not Making Any Human Sense, Continued" Charles Pierce writes

First, in my capacity as the Don King of Punditland, I will make the match right now: George Effing Will vs. the Kindly Doc Rachel Maddow. Fifteen rounds. The parking lot at Caesar's. Who ya got?

Second, if Will believes that the reason the president seems to be prospering right now is because the good heart of America is giving the black fella a break, he's climbed so far up his own ass that he could sneeze and break his collarbone.

Will, who  claims "Obama's administration is in shambles," is annoyingly prone to conflating baseball with life, or anything in it.   But I'll play that game, and you can play that at home.   When Jackie Robinson was signed as a player by Branch Rickey  

Fellow players were slow to accept Robinson as a member of their team. Some were openly hostile; others refused to speak to him or even sit near him. It didn't help that Robinson began his season in a slump, unable to make a hit in the first five games.

His teammates finally rallied to Robinson's defense after witnessing several incidents in which opponents verbally and physically assaulted Robinson. One player from the St. Louis Cardinals intentionally spiked Robinson's thigh so badly, he left a large gash, prompting outrage from Robinson's teammates. In another instance, players on the Philadelphia Phillies, knowing that Robinson had received death threats, held their bats up as if they were guns and pointed them at him.

Maybe- just maybe, of course- Obama as president has faced similar obstacles.   Apparently, Will did not notice a politically slick politician from Georgia recently say, however misleadingly

You have to wonder what he’s doing.  I’m assuming that there’s some rhythm to Barack Obama that the rest of us don’t understand. Whether he needs large amounts of rest, whether he needs to go play basketball for a while or watch ESPN, I mean, I don’t quite know what his rhythm is, but this is a guy that is a brilliant performer as an orator, who may very well get reelected at the present date, and who, frankly, he happens to be a partial, part-time president.

Yes, we (but not some columnists) get it, Newt.   The black fellow plays basketball (don't they all?) and has "some rhythm," though it is hard to determine "what his rhythm is."   Gingrich forgot to say he "dances around issues," though he remembered in January to call Obama "the most effective food stamp president in history."    He has labeled as "a partial, part-time president" (shiftless and lazy?) a chief executive who vacations far less than his immediate predecessor and whom The New York Times in May reported

insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.

“He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go,” said Thomas E. Donilon, his national security adviser. “His view is that he’s responsible for the position of the United States in the world.” He added, “He’s determined to keep the tether pretty short.”

George Will gets to have it both ways.    Without any evidence, he infers that Obama's hopes hinge on white guilt because voters are "especially reluctant to give up on the first African American president" and won't want to admit "it made a mistake in choosing him."   He calls on voters to reject his candidacy, like the Indians who "felt free to fire (Frank) Robinson," which "showed that another racial barrier had fallen."

Yet, October 3, 1974 also had been "a significant date in the nation's civil rights progress" because a black man was hired as a manager.   In the same manner, according to Will, America demonstrated it was not racist (though unwise, disregarding "its head") when it "hired" Barack Obama; it will prove "an even more important milestone of progress" when it fires him.   Convenient.

Will believes (or pretends to believe) that the U.S.A. struck a note for racial progress when a black was chosen as President.   Voters in Democratic caucuses and primaries arguably (full disclosure: I voted for Clinton) did so when it made a one-term Democratic Senator the nominee of the party over a heavily-favored spouse of an ex-President popular with the party's voters and establishment.  In the general election, however, the nominee faced a bad presidential, and even worse vice-presidential, candidate in an atmosphere in which Charles Manson, if released from prison, could have run a strong race against a Republican.   The GOP label was toxic at the time because any connection with the incumbent, George W. Bush, was deadly.  (Four years later, it took Mr. Bush's brother even to mention his name at the party's convention, and that was done somewhat defensively.)

Being a baseball aficionado, Will might do well to acknowledge while the opposing club is not strong and his own clean-up hitter is mediocre, his team is lousy, and most people realize it.



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