Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Election 2008

The Romney Watch

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Mitt Romney’s money has so far kept him in the first tier of the Republicans running to be the next George W. Bush. But as the campaign goes on – and especially the general election campaign if he should win the nomination – Romney will be faced with serious questions about his religious beliefs and his history of driving companies into bankruptcy for his own benefit. Once he defeated a weak candidate for governor in Massachusetts it did not take long to recognize him as “All Suit, No Man” – a governor with shifting views on just about everything as long as it moved his career along the right path. I refer readers to the two pieces below which take him apart quite nicely. It has become common for the press to refuse to push any candidate on his or her religious beliefs in the mistaken view that such beliefs are too “personal” and irrelevant to an election. George W. Bush told us that God was his mentor and chief advisor. Seems to me to be relevant in making a judgment on his capacity to govern and lead in a complex world. The same should be true for Romney.

Mitt the Mormon: Why Romney Needs to Talk About His Faith
By Christopher Hitchens, Slate

And

Mitt Romney: Will Republicans Elect a Bloodsucking CEO?
By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com

Immigration and the U.S. Political Scene

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Bob and Doug MacKenzie have posted below on the recent anti-immigrant riots in Switzerland and while they cover Europe very well indeed, they do not address the situation in their Friendly Neighbor to the South.

The endless U.S. presidential campaign has been mostly charted as a horse race with the touts focusing largely on trivialities – Hillary’s cleavage, Hillary’s cackle, Edwards’ haircut, Romney’s ” my gosh and golly” vernacular, Hucklebee’s folk songs, Giuliani’s family problems, how much money each has raised, etc. But while the Democrats focus largely on Iraq and healthcare the Republican candidates are beginning to sound a bit like the American equivalent of the European far-right. There is something about scaring the bejesus out of everybody that appeals to them and with 9/11 apparently losing some of its scare appeal they have discovered the undocumented workers who pick grapes, mow lawns, wash dishes, drive taxis, etc. as this year’s group to fear.

The United States flirted with a solution when a bipartisan immigration bill, supported by President Bush, almost passed the Congress but the bill became a target for most of the Republican candidates and they continue to suck on that teat as they drum up not-so-new passions against their latest scapegoat – the illegal immigrant. But none of them seem to have a reasonable solution – although some are better than others. The basic message is that these people are breaking our laws and we need to throw all 11 million of them out of the country and never mind whatever contribution individuals might have made – in some cases for many years – paying taxes, doing hard work for low wages, etc.

As the campaign heats up there is considerable potential for campaigns to flirt with a subtle form of racism which may very well make the U.S. a soulmate of Switzerland and Austria. And as with almost every issue of any significance in the U.S. it is becoming increasingly difficult to have a serious discussion about the real problems and practicalities involved in immigration policy with discussion moving to mindless shouting matches with bogus statistics and rants of “no amnesty”, “ they are taking our jobs”, “they want their children to go to our schools”, ad nauseum.

Campaign Update II

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It is hard to imagine a two-year campaign for the presidency that could be more tedious and less substantive than the one we are being given.  It is hard to know whether this is mostly due to the dismal candidates or to the American press that manages to find almost nothing of substance to report. We have had reports on John Edwards’ $400 haircut, Hillary Clinton’s showing a shadow of cleavage on the Senate floor, Barack Obama’s basketball days in Hawaii, Mitt Romney’s “golly gee whiz” vernacular, Rudy Giuliani’s kids’ likely voting, Bill Richardson’s politically incorrect comment that people are gay because of “choice”, Clinton’s letters to an old college boyfriend, etc.

When Romney “won” the so-called Ames, Iowa straw ballot he was applauded for having organized a successful “walking around money” campaign in which he literally bought the election.  The second place finisher, Mike Huckabee, was elevated to a serious campaigner by virtue of his “folksy humor” – sort of a Latter Day Will Rogers to Romney’s Latter Day Saint. But the fundamental fact is that Romney won by giving people the money to go and vote and then feeding them and Huckabee came in second because he was basically the only other serious candidate to show up.

The big news yesterday and today is that a Republican Senator was arrested for doing something distasteful in an airport men’s room. This on the second anniversary of the Katrina recovery fiasco, and on the day that President Bush is seeking an additional $50M to drag out his Iraq fiasco with not a glimmer of a long-term strategy.  As for the candidates, presumably the Republicans will take aim at the sinful Senator while supporting the President’s request for good money after bad and ignoring the victims of Katrina. The Democrats will continue to split hairs of difference among themselves and to cater to a variety of narrow interest groups.  President Bush will continue to seek out meetings of veterans groups to drum up support for his war and the rest of us will simply wait for the serious campaign to start…assuming it will.

The Candidates and Iraq: Avoiding Reality

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A recent Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post recognizes what should by now be obvious to any serious candidate for the presidency: by any reasonable definition the Iraq War is lost. The decision to invade was based on a combination of ignorance, arrogance and deception; the waging of the war was naïve and simple-minded, and the management of the follow-up has been nothing short of a disaster. The surge is most recently defined by General Petraeus as a ten-year effort; that is a time line the American people will not accept. Nor will they accept the Bush/Cheney concept of a new “Korea-type” 50 year involvement. The American people have determined that it is not in the national interest and they are – finally – smarter than their leaders.

So, what is going on with the primary campaigns among both Republicans and Democrats? It seems obvious that the major foreign policy challenge facing America is first, how to extricate itself from Bush’s Iraq fiasco and second, and perhaps more important, to begin to define an appropriate role for the United States in the Middle East and Gulf region post-Iraq. But the campaign rhetoric is largely confined to how long to stay in Iraq, how many troops to leave behind, can Americans face the fact of defeat, and isn’t it about time the Iraqis cleaned up the mess we made.

No one can know what will happen when U.S. troops leave Iraq but we can certainly predict what will happen if we stay because it is happening already – more American deaths, more Iraqi deaths, throwing good American after bad, more Iraqis leaving their country, and a terrific training and recruiting ground for Al Queda.

But to read the press and listen to media news one would think that staying in Iraq was an actual option. It is not and the more time spent pretending otherwise is time lost to the serious effort needed to redefine America’s role in the world in a way that reflects both reality and America’s real national interest. This public discussion needs to begin now and needs to be led by those who would be our next president.

Mitt Romney: All Suit, No Man??

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His no-hair-out-of-place look has led some to refer to Mitt Romney as “Governor Perfect”. But former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney has not-so-subtly shifted positions from middle of the road to far right on abortion, stem cell research, gun control, civil unions for gay couples, homosexual adoption, and birth control privacy laws, among others. He has added support for the Iraq adventure to his current repertoire as he courts the right wing of the GOP for primary votes and it is apparent that he will do almost anything, take on any view and change any opinion, to reach the White House.

What would candidate Romney look like in a general election when the extreme right has less influence and any GOP candidate must gain support from independents? He has said that his positions have “evolved” since he left the governorship of Massachusetts and it is probable that they will evolve backwards as time and events demand. He is one more in a long (and growing) line of presidential candidates with no central core of beliefs and should have a large sign on the back of his suit: “Voter Beware”.

In 1968 George Romney, Mitt’s father, was a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination and discovered very late in the game that supporting the Vietnam War was a loser of an issue so he changed his mind, claiming that he had been “brainwashed” by the military (Gene McCarthy commented that a “light rinse would of sufficed”).

Seems like the Romney genes are intact, but going through life on a haircut and a smile do not make for a good president. Now it is up to the American press to put on their big-boy pants and start dealing with issues and the political history of all the candidates and forget about suits, haircuts, slick commercials, and canned responses aimed at narrow interest groups.