Tuesday, May 8, 2012
THE LOST ART OF MUD-SLINGING
H.N. Burdett When 19th century British statesman Benjamin Disraeli excoriated his chief rival, William Gladstone, as "inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity," he was referring to a real condition, journalist/author Gerald White Johnson once told me. Not only is it possible to become drunk on words, he explained, but anyone in that condition can become as plastered as having over-indulged "in the rawest busthead that ever dripped from a moonshine still." Nowhere is Johnson's supposition more evident than in the overheated realm of politics where rhetorical intoxication transpires well beyond candidates and their spokespersons, spilling over and into precincts far and wide from polite dinner party conversation to robust neighborhood gin mill give-and-take. The current quadrennial presidential race is widely touted as certain to erupt into the most vituperous ever waged. If an eyebrow or two is raised here among those who have delved into American history beyond the standard lifeless textbooks, that reflex emanates from recollections that the nation's most revered founding fathers were once targets of more than their share of verbal arrows. Alexander Hamilton was accused of embezzling public funds, George Washington of plotting the subversion of the republic. Nearly 60 years ago, the aforementioned Professor Johnson, writing in The New Republic, noted that the allegations against Hamilton and Washington were leveled not by politicians but rather by "merely newspaper editors, so it is questionable that their mouthings should be compared with public utterances." Johnson lamented the lost art of mud-slinging of which he deemed John Randolph of Roanoke and the virulent abolitionist Charles Sumner, both "learned and witty," as "the greatest master." As examples, Randolph's characterization of Stephen A. Douglas, who was both undersized in physical stature and possessed of ringing rhetoric, as "a noisome, squat and nameless animal" and of Senator A.P. Butler's defense of "the harlot slavery" as "though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his eyes." And there was Randolph's description of Edward Livingston, trusted adviser and Secretary of State to President Andrew Jackson: "He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. Like rotten mackerel by moonlight, he both shines and stinks." Johnson compared Randolph and Sumner with far clumsier purveyors of calumny, leading mid-20th century right wing Senators William Jenner of Indiana and Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin. Jenner lambasted General George C. Marshall,
THE LOST ART OF MUD-SLINGING
H.N. Burdett
When British statesman Benjamin Disraeli excoriated his chief rival, William Gladstone, as "inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity," he was referring to a real condition, journalist/author Gerald White Johnson once told me.
Not only is it possible to become drunk on words, he said, but someone in that state can get as plastered as anyone who has over-indulged in "the rawest busthead that ever dripped from a moonshine still."
Nowhere is Johnson's supposition more evident than in the overheated realm of politics where rhetorical intoxication transpires well beyond the candidates and their spokespersons, spills over and into precincts far and wide, from polite dinner party conversation to the robust corner neighborhood gin mill give-and-take.
The current United States presidential race is touted as certain to erupt into the most vituperous ever waged. If an eyebrow or two is raised here among those who have delved into American history somewhat deeper than the standard lifeless textbook versions, that reflex emanates from recollections that some of the nation's most revered founding fathers were once targets of more than their share of verbal arrows. Alexander Hamilton was accused of embezzling public funds, George Washington of plotting the subversion of the republic.
Nearly 60 years ago, Professor Johnson, writing in The New Republic, noted that the allegations against Hamilton and Washington came not from politicians but rather from "merely newspaper editors, so it is questionable that their mouthings should be compared with public utterances."
In that same article, he lamented the lost art of mud-slinging of which he deemed John Randolph of Roanoke and Charles Sumner, the virulent Massachusetts abolition leader, its "greatest masters."
Johnson cited Sumner's characterization of slavery advocates Senators Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina. He called Douglas, who was short, plump and possessed of a propensity for shrill rhetoric, "a noisome, squat and nameless animal" and compared Butler's defense of "the harlot slavery" with a mistress "although ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight. . ."
And Randolph described Edward Livingston, close adviser to President Andrew Jackson for whom he served as Secretary of State: "He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. Like mackerel by moonlight, he both shines and stinks."
Johnson contrasted Randolph and Sumner with clumsier purveyors of calumny, two mid-20th century conservative extremist U.S. Senators: Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin and William Jenner of Indiana. McCarthy charged five Democratic administrations with "twenty years of treason." Jenner lambasted General George C. Marshall, architect of the allied victory in World War II as well as the post-war European Recovery Program, as "an eager front man for traitors" and "a living lie."
Johnson wrote: "So while it is true that American political debate wallowed in the gutter (in the early days of the republic). . .it is also true that the worst of the guttersnipes were private individuals, not representatives of any constituency. And while it is true that debate was as fully venomous as it is today, it is also true that the most venomous of the debates sparkled, and sparkling slander is less offensive than stupid slander, even when it is uttered by a man in official position."
"It is regrettable, but true that this world will forgive a great deal to a man who amuses it," Johnson stressed.
As candidates gear up for the quadrennial national campaign, they might do well to heed the sage advice of Johnson, characterized by his friend and mutual admirer, Adlai Stevenson, thus: "When it comes to piercing stuffed shirts, when there are slobs to be speared and poisonous balloons to burst. . .without Gerald Johnson there are but pygmies to bend the bow of Ulysses. He is the critic and conscience of our time." ###
When British statesman Benjamin Disraeli excoriated his chief rival, William Gladstone, as "inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity," he was referring to a real condition, journalist/author Gerald White Johnson once told me.
Not only is it possible to become drunk on words, he said, but someone in that state can get as plastered as anyone who has over-indulged in "the rawest busthead that ever dripped from a moonshine still."
Nowhere is Johnson's supposition more evident than in the overheated realm of politics where rhetorical intoxication transpires well beyond the candidates and their spokespersons, spills over and into precincts far and wide, from polite dinner party conversation to the robust corner neighborhood gin mill give-and-take.
The current United States presidential race is touted as certain to erupt into the most vituperous ever waged. If an eyebrow or two is raised here among those who have delved into American history somewhat deeper than the standard lifeless textbook versions, that reflex emanates from recollections that some of the nation's most revered founding fathers were once targets of more than their share of verbal arrows. Alexander Hamilton was accused of embezzling public funds, George Washington of plotting the subversion of the republic.
Nearly 60 years ago, Professor Johnson, writing in The New Republic, noted that the allegations against Hamilton and Washington came not from politicians but rather from "merely newspaper editors, so it is questionable that their mouthings should be compared with public utterances."
In that same article, he lamented the lost art of mud-slinging of which he deemed John Randolph of Roanoke and Charles Sumner, the virulent Massachusetts abolition leader, its "greatest masters."
Johnson cited Sumner's characterization of slavery advocates Senators Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina. He called Douglas, who was short, plump and possessed of a propensity for shrill rhetoric, "a noisome, squat and nameless animal" and compared Butler's defense of "the harlot slavery" with a mistress "although ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight. . ."
And Randolph described Edward Livingston, close adviser to President Andrew Jackson for whom he served as Secretary of State: "He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. Like mackerel by moonlight, he both shines and stinks."
Johnson contrasted Randolph and Sumner with clumsier purveyors of calumny, two mid-20th century conservative extremist U.S. Senators: Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin and William Jenner of Indiana. McCarthy charged five Democratic administrations with "twenty years of treason." Jenner lambasted General George C. Marshall, architect of the allied victory in World War II as well as the post-war European Recovery Program, as "an eager front man for traitors" and "a living lie."
Johnson wrote: "So while it is true that American political debate wallowed in the gutter (in the early days of the republic). . .it is also true that the worst of the guttersnipes were private individuals, not representatives of any constituency. And while it is true that debate was as fully venomous as it is today, it is also true that the most venomous of the debates sparkled, and sparkling slander is less offensive than stupid slander, even when it is uttered by a man in official position."
"It is regrettable, but true that this world will forgive a great deal to a man who amuses it," Johnson stressed.
As candidates gear up for the quadrennial national campaign, they might do well to heed the sage advice of Johnson, characterized by his friend and mutual admirer, Adlai Stevenson, thus: "When it comes to piercing stuffed shirts, when there are slobs to be speared and poisonous balloons to burst. . .without Gerald Johnson there are but pygmies to bend the bow of Ulysses. He is the critic and conscience of our time." ###
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
THE PATH TO THE PRESIDENCY
H. N. Burdett
Issues and indicators in a presidential campaign seven months before election day can become blurred and even radically changed before ballots are finally cast. Unknown and unforeseeable events can and inevitably will erupt in the interim that could go a long way toward determining the outcome. Nonetheless, while perhaps not yet engraved in stone, battle lines have certainly been scratched in sand. Clearly, both President Obama and his presumptive Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, know all too well what they have to do.
In what a consensus of the punditocracy insists will be the most unsavory and most expensive election in modern national campaign annals, Romney's most demanding tasks are to: (1) Persuade voters that, despite his solid position on the pedestal of privilege, he understands their pain even if he does not actually share it; (2) Bend over backwards - and even stand on his head - to prove he is emphatically not declaring war on women.
Conversely, Obama must convince the electorate that his continuing stewardship is the best tonic for accelerating the pace of a gradually improving but far from acceptable economy - no cinch sell at a time of $4-a-gallon and rising gasoline that translates into just getting to and from work, as well as concomitant soaring costs of food, clothing and shelter.
During his first term, the president utilized his extraordinary oratorical skills to justifiably blame his predecessor for passing to him the worst mess since Hercules was challenged to sweep the Augean stables - two wars and a precariously collapsing economy. But this familiar litany is unlikely to resonate for entrusting him with four more years in the White House.
Obama had to be heartened by a recent Washington Post-ABC poll showing his double-digit advantages over Romney on matters ranging from handling of international affairs to addressing women's issues. The president was also somewhat comfortably, though less impressively, ahead of Romney on handling terrorism, social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, and a clearer vision for the future.
While the poll verified the perception that Romney has an uphill battle, it further reflected chinks in Obama's armor for the challenger and his super-PAC allies to exploit. The probable GOP nominee held slim but telling advantages over the incumbent in the areas of handling both the economy and energy policy. Romney's only double-digit lead over Obama was an eye-popping 51 to 38 percent in handling the federal budget deficit.
Conducted between April 5-8, the poll indicated that 15 percent more registered voters felt that "unfairness in the economic system that favors the wealthy" is a greater problem than "over-regulation of the free market that interferes with growth and prosperity." Though the poll revealed that voters prefer Romney over Obama on dealing with the economy, energy policy and the federal budget deficit, the president held a 10-point lead over his probable challenger in "protecting the middle class" and 12-point advantage in understanding people's economic problems.
Seven months may appear to be time enough for Romney to build on his advantages and re-boot where he has fallen short. But he must simultaneously coalesce his own divided party, particularly the alienated evangelical Christian and tea party factions. The distrust of these two principal segments of the GOP prevented Romney from nailing down the nomination much earlier on, despite his decided advantages in campaign funds, organization and key endorsements.
The hard-core conservative Republican base has been unwavering in its conviction that Romney is a Massachusetts moderate who will flip-flip on any issue - from abortion to gun control - to get elected, but that he shares neither its values nor its ideology.
Even should Romney successfully navigate the minefield of concerns of the disaffected elements within his own party, he must somehow evaporate Obama's robust 19-point lead among women voters so that it more closely aligns with his eight-point advantage over the president with male voters. If the election were held during the first week of this month, women voters would have fueled the Obama victory over Romney by 51 to 44 percent, the poll reveals. But it will be held in November. In the interim, hearts and minds have been known to change and, often enough, quite dramatically.
Should the election come right down to the wire, which most pundits predict it will, independent voters will be the key. And here, Romney holds a slim 48 to 46 percent edge over the president. While it is a statistical wash, these numbers will be well worth watching ever more closely in future polls as the months roll by.
###
Issues and indicators in a presidential campaign seven months before election day can become blurred and even radically changed before ballots are finally cast. Unknown and unforeseeable events can and inevitably will erupt in the interim that could go a long way toward determining the outcome. Nonetheless, while perhaps not yet engraved in stone, battle lines have certainly been scratched in sand. Clearly, both President Obama and his presumptive Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, know all too well what they have to do.
In what a consensus of the punditocracy insists will be the most unsavory and most expensive election in modern national campaign annals, Romney's most demanding tasks are to: (1) Persuade voters that, despite his solid position on the pedestal of privilege, he understands their pain even if he does not actually share it; (2) Bend over backwards - and even stand on his head - to prove he is emphatically not declaring war on women.
Conversely, Obama must convince the electorate that his continuing stewardship is the best tonic for accelerating the pace of a gradually improving but far from acceptable economy - no cinch sell at a time of $4-a-gallon and rising gasoline that translates into just getting to and from work, as well as concomitant soaring costs of food, clothing and shelter.
During his first term, the president utilized his extraordinary oratorical skills to justifiably blame his predecessor for passing to him the worst mess since Hercules was challenged to sweep the Augean stables - two wars and a precariously collapsing economy. But this familiar litany is unlikely to resonate for entrusting him with four more years in the White House.
Obama had to be heartened by a recent Washington Post-ABC poll showing his double-digit advantages over Romney on matters ranging from handling of international affairs to addressing women's issues. The president was also somewhat comfortably, though less impressively, ahead of Romney on handling terrorism, social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, and a clearer vision for the future.
While the poll verified the perception that Romney has an uphill battle, it further reflected chinks in Obama's armor for the challenger and his super-PAC allies to exploit. The probable GOP nominee held slim but telling advantages over the incumbent in the areas of handling both the economy and energy policy. Romney's only double-digit lead over Obama was an eye-popping 51 to 38 percent in handling the federal budget deficit.
Conducted between April 5-8, the poll indicated that 15 percent more registered voters felt that "unfairness in the economic system that favors the wealthy" is a greater problem than "over-regulation of the free market that interferes with growth and prosperity." Though the poll revealed that voters prefer Romney over Obama on dealing with the economy, energy policy and the federal budget deficit, the president held a 10-point lead over his probable challenger in "protecting the middle class" and 12-point advantage in understanding people's economic problems.
Seven months may appear to be time enough for Romney to build on his advantages and re-boot where he has fallen short. But he must simultaneously coalesce his own divided party, particularly the alienated evangelical Christian and tea party factions. The distrust of these two principal segments of the GOP prevented Romney from nailing down the nomination much earlier on, despite his decided advantages in campaign funds, organization and key endorsements.
The hard-core conservative Republican base has been unwavering in its conviction that Romney is a Massachusetts moderate who will flip-flip on any issue - from abortion to gun control - to get elected, but that he shares neither its values nor its ideology.
Even should Romney successfully navigate the minefield of concerns of the disaffected elements within his own party, he must somehow evaporate Obama's robust 19-point lead among women voters so that it more closely aligns with his eight-point advantage over the president with male voters. If the election were held during the first week of this month, women voters would have fueled the Obama victory over Romney by 51 to 44 percent, the poll reveals. But it will be held in November. In the interim, hearts and minds have been known to change and, often enough, quite dramatically.
Should the election come right down to the wire, which most pundits predict it will, independent voters will be the key. And here, Romney holds a slim 48 to 46 percent edge over the president. While it is a statistical wash, these numbers will be well worth watching ever more closely in future polls as the months roll by.
###
Friday, March 16, 2012
THE 'GAME CHANGE' BLAME GAME
H. N. Burdett
The HBO presentation of "Game Change" probably will not change the thinking of those who write and produce docu-dramas hereafter, but it should.
In preparation for watching it, I re-read the chapters of the book on which the movie focused. I was impressed by how faithful the film was to the 2008 presidential campaign page-turner by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, among the best of that genre.
The television version is necessarily limited in scope and the behind-the-scenes John McCain-Sarah Palin portion of the Heilemann-Halperin opus was dramatized to near perfection. One critic has correctly noted that the tranformative campaign of four years ago could have become an eminently watchable mini-series. The book covers the runs for the Democratic presidential nomination that year by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as the McCain-Palin saga.
Both Palin and McCain have dismissed the television production without actually viewing it, which can only mean that they were less than thrilled with the book on which it was based. That's too bad because Ed Harris's portrayal of McCain, if anything, enhances the senator's image as a politician who flatly refuses to play mudball politics. And Julianne Moore, in the role of Palin, at times poignantly reveals a side of Palin that would give pause to at least a few entrenched liberal Democrats who see the erstwhile Alaska governor as the personification of everything they detest.
Though no self-respecting progressive watching "Game Change" could be converted to Palin's politics, there might be at least a dollop of empathy for her as a human being going through emotions shared by all of those who have ever confronted a challenge that was simply over their heads.
Palin is revealed in both the book and the movie as a successful Alaska politician who was clearly out of her depth once she was elevated to the national stage. Stephen Schmidt, the senior McCain campaign strategist played by Woody Harrelson, freely admits that the Palin vetting process was shoddy at best. Nicolle Wallace, Palin's "handler" during the campaign, was understandably frustrated and ultimately distraught in feeling that Palin was a detached prima donna.
But both Schmidt and Wallace also seem to be shifting the entire blame, which in reality both shared, to those who checked out Palin and gave her their enthusiastic approval. Though not mentioned in either the book or the movie, the latter included neo-conservative intellectuals William Kristol and Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard, who went up to Juneau to meet Palin personally. My guess is that they came back believing they could easily mold and manipulate her into a spirited advocate for their fatally-flawed foreign policy views. That Kristol and Barnes later turned their spineless backs on the Alaska governor speaks volumes about their paltry principles, something McCain, a congenital hawk, would never have done and indeed did not.
In the end, McCain's feeling completely comfortable with Palin was what led to the decision that ultimately sank any hope at all he had of winning the presidency. Whatever else one might feel about the Arizona senator, there can be no disagreement regarding his unwavering loyalty, which is generally lauded as a commendably courageous trait but can also be a crippling weakness.
Reasonable questions arise as to why, when Palin's insurmountable shortcomings were recognized, she was not cut loose from the ticket. If this was ever suggested to McCain, he almost certainly would have rejected it - not necessarily because of his refusal to admit that he was wrong, but rather because, as a maverick politician as well as a onetime purposeless youth who had himself undergone an incredible transformation, he could identify with her plight in ways his campaign staff could not.
Furthermore, abandoning her might have been even a greater political risk than keeping her on the ticket. There was the case of George McGovern, who as the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, dropped his running mate, Tom Eagleton, in mid-campaign. Eagleton had not revealed to McGovern his long earlier nervous breakdown, and it was the very reason the vetting process became more exhaustive in subsequent national campaigns, at least until 2008. After Eagleton was dumped and replaced by Sargent Shriver, questions arose regarding McGovern's initial judgment in making his vice presidential choice and later about his loyalty when he declined to stand by his running mate. While this may not fully explain why the Democratic national ticket was crushed in that election year, it most certainly did not help.
One need not be a Palin die-hard to wonder why even a marginally competent staff could have been so clueless about the need to take special pains to prepare a state governor with absolutely no foreign policy experience, much less expertise, for a national campaign.
When Schmidt finally presented Palin with 25 talking points and four "attack lines," and reiterated the necessity to pivot away from certain questions, she did well enough. But this was a textbook case of too little, too late. More recently, Mitt Romney clumsily executed such a pivot in a television interview. When the reporter repeated the original query, Romney told the interviewer he was free to ask his questions and he, the candidate, was equally free to respond the way he chose. Rather than finding himself mired in yet another swamp of vilification for that graceless riposte, as Palin doubtless would have been, the incident was all but ignored by the media.
The larger and unresolved question is why Palin was not presented with the talking points to memorize well before her bungled interview with Katie Couric revealed that the Alaska governor was a foreign policy featherweight. Was there really no one in McCain's seasoned inner circle to suggest that she learn talking points and how to bob and weave around and away from an interviewer's grilling? Palin's ability to deliver rousing red-meat speeches, both at Wright State University in Ohio and at the GOP National Convention, had convinced McCain's campaign staff that all would come up roses if they just let Sarah be Sarah.
Next to an inexplicably incompetent job of vetting, McCain's people flubbed the preparation process that would be fundamental in running the campaign of the town dogcatcher. That savvy professionals like Schmidt, Wallace and Mark Salter allowed crucial slips through the cracks proliferate beyond damage control is, in a word, inexcusable.
No two campaigns are exactly alike. There are pitfalls around every corner. While it is not always apparent when or where they may occur, the one certainty is that they will. The job of the campaign strategist is to expect them to pop up, be able to respond quickly when they do happen, know the candidate's strengths and deficiencies, know how to emphasize the former and be as thoroughly prepared as possible for the latter. The best possible preparation cannot avoid or retaliate against every potential slip-up, but the bottom line was that the Palin debacle, which many blame for McCain's defeat, was as much the campaign team's fault as it was her own.
None of this, however, should be a distraction from the glaring fact that the process for selecting vice presidential candidates is long overdue for closer examination.
Running mates have been selected less on their ability to serve as president than on how they can help the ticket win. That assistance is generally sought to compensate for an obvious shortcoming at the top of the ticket, which can range from the perception that the vice presidential choice might bring a key state, or even entire regions of the country, into the fold, to filling an experience or ideological gap in the presidential nominee's makeup.
For example, John F. Kennedy, then a Massachusetts senator, selected Texan Lyndon Johnson as much for the probability that the latter could carry his electoral vote-rich home state as for his mastery of the United States Senate. At the other end of the spectrum, George H. W. Bush was perceived to have chosen Indiana Senator Dan Quayle, less for his legislative acumen than to ensure that Bush, a bland and colorless presidential nominee, would not be upstaged by someone more vibrant and colorful.
In McCain's case, there were three decisive factors for choosing Palin: (1) She could deliver hardball rhetoric likely to woo the GOP's conservative base that had not been enamored of McCain's ideological transgressions as a member of Congress;(2) She just might resonate with women who felt Hillary Clinton was the victim of a raw deal by Democratic primary voters who preferred a relatively inexperienced, freshman senator merely because Hillary happens to be a woman, and (3) McCain saw her in his own image as a maverick unafraid to buck the party line when the occasion called for it.
The apparent very last consideration in a national campaign is whether the vice presidential nominee will be able to immediately assume the role of leader of the nation and the free world. The most significant decision the top of the ticket must make is who will be next in line of succession should the unthinkable happen. If "Game Change" should somehow finally lead to a serious re-thinking of this vital question, it will have become a truly unique entity - something unlike anything the realm of art and entertainment has ever before achieved.
###
The HBO presentation of "Game Change" probably will not change the thinking of those who write and produce docu-dramas hereafter, but it should.
In preparation for watching it, I re-read the chapters of the book on which the movie focused. I was impressed by how faithful the film was to the 2008 presidential campaign page-turner by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, among the best of that genre.
The television version is necessarily limited in scope and the behind-the-scenes John McCain-Sarah Palin portion of the Heilemann-Halperin opus was dramatized to near perfection. One critic has correctly noted that the tranformative campaign of four years ago could have become an eminently watchable mini-series. The book covers the runs for the Democratic presidential nomination that year by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as the McCain-Palin saga.
Both Palin and McCain have dismissed the television production without actually viewing it, which can only mean that they were less than thrilled with the book on which it was based. That's too bad because Ed Harris's portrayal of McCain, if anything, enhances the senator's image as a politician who flatly refuses to play mudball politics. And Julianne Moore, in the role of Palin, at times poignantly reveals a side of Palin that would give pause to at least a few entrenched liberal Democrats who see the erstwhile Alaska governor as the personification of everything they detest.
Though no self-respecting progressive watching "Game Change" could be converted to Palin's politics, there might be at least a dollop of empathy for her as a human being going through emotions shared by all of those who have ever confronted a challenge that was simply over their heads.
Palin is revealed in both the book and the movie as a successful Alaska politician who was clearly out of her depth once she was elevated to the national stage. Stephen Schmidt, the senior McCain campaign strategist played by Woody Harrelson, freely admits that the Palin vetting process was shoddy at best. Nicolle Wallace, Palin's "handler" during the campaign, was understandably frustrated and ultimately distraught in feeling that Palin was a detached prima donna.
But both Schmidt and Wallace also seem to be shifting the entire blame, which in reality both shared, to those who checked out Palin and gave her their enthusiastic approval. Though not mentioned in either the book or the movie, the latter included neo-conservative intellectuals William Kristol and Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard, who went up to Juneau to meet Palin personally. My guess is that they came back believing they could easily mold and manipulate her into a spirited advocate for their fatally-flawed foreign policy views. That Kristol and Barnes later turned their spineless backs on the Alaska governor speaks volumes about their paltry principles, something McCain, a congenital hawk, would never have done and indeed did not.
In the end, McCain's feeling completely comfortable with Palin was what led to the decision that ultimately sank any hope at all he had of winning the presidency. Whatever else one might feel about the Arizona senator, there can be no disagreement regarding his unwavering loyalty, which is generally lauded as a commendably courageous trait but can also be a crippling weakness.
Reasonable questions arise as to why, when Palin's insurmountable shortcomings were recognized, she was not cut loose from the ticket. If this was ever suggested to McCain, he almost certainly would have rejected it - not necessarily because of his refusal to admit that he was wrong, but rather because, as a maverick politician as well as a onetime purposeless youth who had himself undergone an incredible transformation, he could identify with her plight in ways his campaign staff could not.
Furthermore, abandoning her might have been even a greater political risk than keeping her on the ticket. There was the case of George McGovern, who as the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, dropped his running mate, Tom Eagleton, in mid-campaign. Eagleton had not revealed to McGovern his long earlier nervous breakdown, and it was the very reason the vetting process became more exhaustive in subsequent national campaigns, at least until 2008. After Eagleton was dumped and replaced by Sargent Shriver, questions arose regarding McGovern's initial judgment in making his vice presidential choice and later about his loyalty when he declined to stand by his running mate. While this may not fully explain why the Democratic national ticket was crushed in that election year, it most certainly did not help.
One need not be a Palin die-hard to wonder why even a marginally competent staff could have been so clueless about the need to take special pains to prepare a state governor with absolutely no foreign policy experience, much less expertise, for a national campaign.
When Schmidt finally presented Palin with 25 talking points and four "attack lines," and reiterated the necessity to pivot away from certain questions, she did well enough. But this was a textbook case of too little, too late. More recently, Mitt Romney clumsily executed such a pivot in a television interview. When the reporter repeated the original query, Romney told the interviewer he was free to ask his questions and he, the candidate, was equally free to respond the way he chose. Rather than finding himself mired in yet another swamp of vilification for that graceless riposte, as Palin doubtless would have been, the incident was all but ignored by the media.
The larger and unresolved question is why Palin was not presented with the talking points to memorize well before her bungled interview with Katie Couric revealed that the Alaska governor was a foreign policy featherweight. Was there really no one in McCain's seasoned inner circle to suggest that she learn talking points and how to bob and weave around and away from an interviewer's grilling? Palin's ability to deliver rousing red-meat speeches, both at Wright State University in Ohio and at the GOP National Convention, had convinced McCain's campaign staff that all would come up roses if they just let Sarah be Sarah.
Next to an inexplicably incompetent job of vetting, McCain's people flubbed the preparation process that would be fundamental in running the campaign of the town dogcatcher. That savvy professionals like Schmidt, Wallace and Mark Salter allowed crucial slips through the cracks proliferate beyond damage control is, in a word, inexcusable.
No two campaigns are exactly alike. There are pitfalls around every corner. While it is not always apparent when or where they may occur, the one certainty is that they will. The job of the campaign strategist is to expect them to pop up, be able to respond quickly when they do happen, know the candidate's strengths and deficiencies, know how to emphasize the former and be as thoroughly prepared as possible for the latter. The best possible preparation cannot avoid or retaliate against every potential slip-up, but the bottom line was that the Palin debacle, which many blame for McCain's defeat, was as much the campaign team's fault as it was her own.
None of this, however, should be a distraction from the glaring fact that the process for selecting vice presidential candidates is long overdue for closer examination.
Running mates have been selected less on their ability to serve as president than on how they can help the ticket win. That assistance is generally sought to compensate for an obvious shortcoming at the top of the ticket, which can range from the perception that the vice presidential choice might bring a key state, or even entire regions of the country, into the fold, to filling an experience or ideological gap in the presidential nominee's makeup.
For example, John F. Kennedy, then a Massachusetts senator, selected Texan Lyndon Johnson as much for the probability that the latter could carry his electoral vote-rich home state as for his mastery of the United States Senate. At the other end of the spectrum, George H. W. Bush was perceived to have chosen Indiana Senator Dan Quayle, less for his legislative acumen than to ensure that Bush, a bland and colorless presidential nominee, would not be upstaged by someone more vibrant and colorful.
In McCain's case, there were three decisive factors for choosing Palin: (1) She could deliver hardball rhetoric likely to woo the GOP's conservative base that had not been enamored of McCain's ideological transgressions as a member of Congress;(2) She just might resonate with women who felt Hillary Clinton was the victim of a raw deal by Democratic primary voters who preferred a relatively inexperienced, freshman senator merely because Hillary happens to be a woman, and (3) McCain saw her in his own image as a maverick unafraid to buck the party line when the occasion called for it.
The apparent very last consideration in a national campaign is whether the vice presidential nominee will be able to immediately assume the role of leader of the nation and the free world. The most significant decision the top of the ticket must make is who will be next in line of succession should the unthinkable happen. If "Game Change" should somehow finally lead to a serious re-thinking of this vital question, it will have become a truly unique entity - something unlike anything the realm of art and entertainment has ever before achieved.
###
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
THE FAULT LINE IN COMMON GROUND
H. N. Burdett
While recent polls show that 82.5 percent of the American public disapprove of the job the United States Congress is doing, one would be hard pressed to find anyone professing to be among the 11.3 percent who approve. The polls do not reveal how the media stands on our representatives in Washington. But the legendary Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen pointed out some seven decades back that Congress-bashing has been a time-honored pastime of the media.
In July 1942, Dirksen read to his colleagues a litany of newspaper and magazine criticism of national lawmakers, including:
(1837) "A more weak, bigoted, persecuting and intolerant set of instruments of malice and every hateful passion, were never assembled in a legislative capacity in any age or any land."
(1873) "We are not certain that it is not possible to make the situation worse and Congress would probably speedily reach that result if that were possible."
(1908) "If God had made Congress, he would not boast of it."
(1942) "It is true that for collective brains, guts, vision and leadership, the Seventy-seventh would stand pretty close to the bottom in any ranking of the seventy-seven Congresses that have assembled...since 1789."
Polarization of the two major U.S. political parties has virtually stagnated the current Congress on virtually every major issue confronting it. National lawmakers' perpetual legislative treadmill has assigned to the realm of limbo priorities ranging from the budget to possible remedies for a swifter recovery from the worst economy since the 1929 stock market crash.
Neither of the two parties is blameless. President Obama turning his back on the report of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Simpson-Bowles), which he himself had appointed to draw up a blueprint for compromise, must be counted as a major disappointment of his presidency. The report placed on the table entitlements dear to Democrats, as well as taxes that are anathema to Republicans, draining any interest a significant segment of either party had in pursuing it.
Future historians would do well to examine closely the results of two ideology-fueled blunders of the present era: The congressional overturning of the Glass-Steagall Act and the Supreme Court's overruling of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act.
The calculated collapse of Glass-Steagall, which in 1932 legislated a firewall between commercial and investment banks, contributed substantially to the evidence that capitalism - a vital underpinning of American democracy - is unsustainable without reasonable regulations that are actually enforced.
Though Glass-Steagall did not assure foolproof protection against the chicanery of the least scrupulous of Wall Street operatives, for nearly 70 years it at least prevented wholesale conflicts of interest by prohibiting commercial banks from peddling securities - including those that were deceptively risky and others that were blatantly worthless.
Three Republican lawmakers - Senator Phil Gramm of Texas and Representatives Jim Leach of Iowa and Tom Blilely of Virginia - introduced legislation in the Senate and House of Representatives to end Glass-Steagall. This pried the lid from the Wall Street cookie jar and the crumbs could be followed down the path of economic disaster.
Polarization further led to the brazen distortion of the U.S. Constitution by those charged with dispensing justice from the nation's pinnacle of jurisprudence: the Supreme Court.
Conservative Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy voted to overturn McCain-Feingold in the Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case on grounds that the law violated corporations' right of freedom of speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution. Their 5-4 decision opened the door for unlimited sums from undisclosed sources to influence elections.
The cornerstone of Justice John Paul Stevens's 90-age dissent was that the Constitution protects individual rather than corporate rights. For conservatives who had railed long and loud against political activist jurists to deny that their ruling was anything but judicial activism is the very definition of intellectual dishonesty if not outright hypocrisy.
Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, among the few remaining GOP moderates in the U.S. Senate, not only voted for McCain-Feingold, she was also one of the fewer still members of her party to denounce the Court's Citizens United ruling. In her words, the decision was "a great disservice to American democracy."
Sen. Snowe recently announced that she will not seek a fourth term in the Senate. In a Washington Post op-ed explaining her decision, Senator Snowe wrote: "The great challenge is to create a system that gives our elected officials reason to look past their differences and find common ground if their initial party positions fail to garner sufficient support. In a politically diverse nation, only by finding that common ground can we achieve results for the common good. That is not happening today and, frankly, I do not see it happening in the near future."
The 1963 Civil Rights Act, which has been characterized as the completion of the "second American Revolution," was dependent upon the earlier mentioned Senator Dirksen rallying sufficient Republican votes to ensure its passage. Were that same decision left up to the present U.S. Congress, that landmark legislation would languish in the desert of irresponsible inaction. Inability by the major political parties to locate common ground is without doubt the greatest and continuing threat to American democracy.
###
C
o
While recent polls show that 82.5 percent of the American public disapprove of the job the United States Congress is doing, one would be hard pressed to find anyone professing to be among the 11.3 percent who approve. The polls do not reveal how the media stands on our representatives in Washington. But the legendary Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen pointed out some seven decades back that Congress-bashing has been a time-honored pastime of the media.
In July 1942, Dirksen read to his colleagues a litany of newspaper and magazine criticism of national lawmakers, including:
(1837) "A more weak, bigoted, persecuting and intolerant set of instruments of malice and every hateful passion, were never assembled in a legislative capacity in any age or any land."
(1873) "We are not certain that it is not possible to make the situation worse and Congress would probably speedily reach that result if that were possible."
(1908) "If God had made Congress, he would not boast of it."
(1942) "It is true that for collective brains, guts, vision and leadership, the Seventy-seventh would stand pretty close to the bottom in any ranking of the seventy-seven Congresses that have assembled...since 1789."
Polarization of the two major U.S. political parties has virtually stagnated the current Congress on virtually every major issue confronting it. National lawmakers' perpetual legislative treadmill has assigned to the realm of limbo priorities ranging from the budget to possible remedies for a swifter recovery from the worst economy since the 1929 stock market crash.
Neither of the two parties is blameless. President Obama turning his back on the report of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Simpson-Bowles), which he himself had appointed to draw up a blueprint for compromise, must be counted as a major disappointment of his presidency. The report placed on the table entitlements dear to Democrats, as well as taxes that are anathema to Republicans, draining any interest a significant segment of either party had in pursuing it.
Future historians would do well to examine closely the results of two ideology-fueled blunders of the present era: The congressional overturning of the Glass-Steagall Act and the Supreme Court's overruling of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act.
The calculated collapse of Glass-Steagall, which in 1932 legislated a firewall between commercial and investment banks, contributed substantially to the evidence that capitalism - a vital underpinning of American democracy - is unsustainable without reasonable regulations that are actually enforced.
Though Glass-Steagall did not assure foolproof protection against the chicanery of the least scrupulous of Wall Street operatives, for nearly 70 years it at least prevented wholesale conflicts of interest by prohibiting commercial banks from peddling securities - including those that were deceptively risky and others that were blatantly worthless.
Three Republican lawmakers - Senator Phil Gramm of Texas and Representatives Jim Leach of Iowa and Tom Blilely of Virginia - introduced legislation in the Senate and House of Representatives to end Glass-Steagall. This pried the lid from the Wall Street cookie jar and the crumbs could be followed down the path of economic disaster.
Polarization further led to the brazen distortion of the U.S. Constitution by those charged with dispensing justice from the nation's pinnacle of jurisprudence: the Supreme Court.
Conservative Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy voted to overturn McCain-Feingold in the Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case on grounds that the law violated corporations' right of freedom of speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution. Their 5-4 decision opened the door for unlimited sums from undisclosed sources to influence elections.
The cornerstone of Justice John Paul Stevens's 90-age dissent was that the Constitution protects individual rather than corporate rights. For conservatives who had railed long and loud against political activist jurists to deny that their ruling was anything but judicial activism is the very definition of intellectual dishonesty if not outright hypocrisy.
Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, among the few remaining GOP moderates in the U.S. Senate, not only voted for McCain-Feingold, she was also one of the fewer still members of her party to denounce the Court's Citizens United ruling. In her words, the decision was "a great disservice to American democracy."
Sen. Snowe recently announced that she will not seek a fourth term in the Senate. In a Washington Post op-ed explaining her decision, Senator Snowe wrote: "The great challenge is to create a system that gives our elected officials reason to look past their differences and find common ground if their initial party positions fail to garner sufficient support. In a politically diverse nation, only by finding that common ground can we achieve results for the common good. That is not happening today and, frankly, I do not see it happening in the near future."
The 1963 Civil Rights Act, which has been characterized as the completion of the "second American Revolution," was dependent upon the earlier mentioned Senator Dirksen rallying sufficient Republican votes to ensure its passage. Were that same decision left up to the present U.S. Congress, that landmark legislation would languish in the desert of irresponsible inaction. Inability by the major political parties to locate common ground is without doubt the greatest and continuing threat to American democracy.
###
C
o
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Corporate Political Access and Free Speech
H. N. Burdett
"A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold," wrote Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens in his 90-page dissent from the court's 5-4 decision in the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission case. That ruling swung open the door for super political action committees to pour unlimited funds from undisclosed sources into election campaigns.
Citing data to reveal that 80% of the American public feel unfair legislative access is what corporations receive in return for generously contributing to a candidate's campaign war chest, Justice Stevens predicted that corporate domination of elections would lead to disaffected voters ceasing to participate in elections.
Stevens challenged the contention of the court's conservative majority, which voted solidly in favor of Citizens United, that restricting corporate spending on political campaigns was a denial of free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution. He argued that the First Amendment protects individual self-expression, self-realization and the communication of ideas and that corporations are not entitled to the same constitutional protections as individuals.
Stevens concluded that the court's majority opinion was "a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government. . .and have fought the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. . .While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of the Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."
Along with a number of Democrats, Republican Senators John McCain and Olympia Snowe spoke out against the Citizens United ruling. McCain predicted "a backlash. . .when you see the amounts of union and corporate money that's going into political campaigns." Senator Snowe characterized the Court's decision as a "serious disservice to our country."
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who placed third in the last three presidential elections, said, "With this decision, corporations can now directly pour vast amounts of cororate money, through independent expenditures, into the electoral swamp already flooded with corporate campaign PAC contribution dollars."
Republican lawmakers and conservative pundits, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and columnist George Will, staunchly defend Citizens United, arguably the worst Supreme Court decision since the 1857 Dred Scott ruling which upheld the abominable argument equating human beings with property. Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, has introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.
Two years ago, the DISCLOSE act was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, and in the Senate by Charles Schumer, D-New York. The legislation would not have overturned Citizens United. But it would have required transparency, including timely disclosure of funds corporations donate to super PACS that spend money on campaign advertisements. It further required lobbyists to disclose campaign expenditures to contributing corporations' shareholders. The measure would have forced super PACS to reveal their five largest donors in each political ad and further compel heads of these groups to approve an ad's message at the end of each ad. This would have at least identified corporations and organizations with at least 500,000 members that were exercising their dubious freedom of speech right by seeking to buy elections.
The initial DISCLOSE act of 2010 was approved in the House of Representatives by a 219-206 vote. Only two Republicans - Mike Castle of Delaware and Joseph Cao of Louisiana - voted for it. Neither is still in Congress. The bill failed in the Senate by a single vote. All 59 Democratic senators voted in favor of the measure, but no Republicans offered support.
Rep. Van Hollen re-introduced the bill earlier this year, stating: "We need to restore accountability in our elections. The American people have a right to know the source of the money that is being spent to influence the outcome of our elections. They should be told who is behind the millions of dollars in campaign ads and they should receive this information in a timely fashion."
Citizens United gives labor unions, which traditionally support Democratic candidates, the same First Amendment right as corporations, which historically back Republican candidates. Why then is the Republican National Committee pursuing its current state-by-state union-busting campaigns? Which, of course, has nothing to do with the unions' empowerment under Citizens United, right?
That odor one detects emanating from the conservative establishment's rabid support of the Supreme Court's cynical Citizens United decision is the stench of the defense of political corruption once an opening to advantageously tilt the playing field is recognized.
###
"A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold," wrote Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens in his 90-page dissent from the court's 5-4 decision in the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission case. That ruling swung open the door for super political action committees to pour unlimited funds from undisclosed sources into election campaigns.
Citing data to reveal that 80% of the American public feel unfair legislative access is what corporations receive in return for generously contributing to a candidate's campaign war chest, Justice Stevens predicted that corporate domination of elections would lead to disaffected voters ceasing to participate in elections.
Stevens challenged the contention of the court's conservative majority, which voted solidly in favor of Citizens United, that restricting corporate spending on political campaigns was a denial of free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution. He argued that the First Amendment protects individual self-expression, self-realization and the communication of ideas and that corporations are not entitled to the same constitutional protections as individuals.
Stevens concluded that the court's majority opinion was "a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government. . .and have fought the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. . .While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of the Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."
Along with a number of Democrats, Republican Senators John McCain and Olympia Snowe spoke out against the Citizens United ruling. McCain predicted "a backlash. . .when you see the amounts of union and corporate money that's going into political campaigns." Senator Snowe characterized the Court's decision as a "serious disservice to our country."
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who placed third in the last three presidential elections, said, "With this decision, corporations can now directly pour vast amounts of cororate money, through independent expenditures, into the electoral swamp already flooded with corporate campaign PAC contribution dollars."
Republican lawmakers and conservative pundits, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and columnist George Will, staunchly defend Citizens United, arguably the worst Supreme Court decision since the 1857 Dred Scott ruling which upheld the abominable argument equating human beings with property. Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, has introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.
Two years ago, the DISCLOSE act was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, and in the Senate by Charles Schumer, D-New York. The legislation would not have overturned Citizens United. But it would have required transparency, including timely disclosure of funds corporations donate to super PACS that spend money on campaign advertisements. It further required lobbyists to disclose campaign expenditures to contributing corporations' shareholders. The measure would have forced super PACS to reveal their five largest donors in each political ad and further compel heads of these groups to approve an ad's message at the end of each ad. This would have at least identified corporations and organizations with at least 500,000 members that were exercising their dubious freedom of speech right by seeking to buy elections.
The initial DISCLOSE act of 2010 was approved in the House of Representatives by a 219-206 vote. Only two Republicans - Mike Castle of Delaware and Joseph Cao of Louisiana - voted for it. Neither is still in Congress. The bill failed in the Senate by a single vote. All 59 Democratic senators voted in favor of the measure, but no Republicans offered support.
Rep. Van Hollen re-introduced the bill earlier this year, stating: "We need to restore accountability in our elections. The American people have a right to know the source of the money that is being spent to influence the outcome of our elections. They should be told who is behind the millions of dollars in campaign ads and they should receive this information in a timely fashion."
Citizens United gives labor unions, which traditionally support Democratic candidates, the same First Amendment right as corporations, which historically back Republican candidates. Why then is the Republican National Committee pursuing its current state-by-state union-busting campaigns? Which, of course, has nothing to do with the unions' empowerment under Citizens United, right?
That odor one detects emanating from the conservative establishment's rabid support of the Supreme Court's cynical Citizens United decision is the stench of the defense of political corruption once an opening to advantageously tilt the playing field is recognized.
###
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Crunching the GOP's Nomination Numbers
H. N. BURDETT
Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. Albert Einstein's maxim certainly applies to the Byzantine thicket of primaries and caucuses that comprise the current Republican presidential nominating process.
At the end of the day, the actual number of states won by a candidate is inconsequential compared with the total of delegates within the state a candidate can manage to scoop up. In some states, the prize for winning the most votes is all of its delegates. In other states, delegates are divided in proportion to the votes garnered by the individual contenders. Some caucuses and primaries are closed to only Republicans; others are open, allowing for malicious mischief by Democrats and independents with absolutely no intention of voting for the GOP candidate in the November presidential election.
Four years ago in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, freshman Illinois Senator Barack Obama upset the far better known and financed Hillary Clinton. Ballistic over the fact that his wife's campaign had poured $29 million into Iowa for a mere 70,000 votes, Bill Clinton was convinced that the Obama campaign had rigged the outcome by importing supporters from Illinois. The Clinton strategy had depended on a low turnout. But 239,000 caucus voters participated, almost twice as many as four years earlier.
With 1,144 delegates required to secure the nomination and after 20 debates, Mitt Romney now leads the remaining field of four with a scant 105 delegates, followed by Rick Santorum (71), Newt Gingrich (29), and Ron Paul (18). Even should Romney sweep the table, winning all the delegates in both Michigan and Arizona on Tuesday, he would have a cumulative total of only 164. There is some conjecture that Romney could win the popular vote in Michigan and still be left with fewer delegates there than Santorum.
If front-runner Romney were able to win every single delegate up for grabs through March 6 Super Tuesday when 10 states hold primaries or caucuses - mathematically possible but astronomically improbable - he would still fall 502 delegates short of clinching the nomination.
Thus Super Tuesday is less likely to be the defining moment for the eventual GOP presidential candidate than two perhaps critical Tuesdays in April. Among the four states voting on April 3 is Texas, which alone has 155 delegates. On April 24, New York's 95 delegates and Pennsylvania's 72 will be determined along with those of three other states with a total of 64 delegates. And the labyrinthian minefield to the nomination could continue even through June 5, when California, with 172 delegates, and New Jersey, with 50, are among the five states voting.
Still, when asked about chances that the GOP nominee will be ultimately decided by powerbrokers at the party's August 27-30 national convention in Tampa, no less an authority than Karl Rove, the contemporary incarnation of Machiavelli, opined that this was as about as likely as discovering life on Pluto, the outermost planet of the solar system.
Meanwhile, Barack (No Drama) Obama's campaign builds its war chest, speculating on whom it will be used in November. The curtain remains tightly drawn on the GOP's final act in this theater of the absurd season. If money and organization retain their traditional significance, when it is lifted Romney will be standing atop the scrap heap into which the Republican party, with its irreparably collapsed center, has fallen.
Whenever the footlights illuminate the GOP nominee, today's odds remain where they were at the beginning: On former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to be the party's standard-bearer. As the farce has unfolded, each of the hopefuls - remember Cain, Bachmann, Huntsman and Perry? - have been tested and found to be untrustworthy or merely unworthy.
Should the script play out, the Republican party will strive to coalesce around Romney, a candidate more comfortable in corporate boardrooms than on campaign rostrums where he tends to spout nonsense about the height of trees and his preference for bankruptcy over bailouts, then in a less than grand finale croaks a few bars of "America The Beautiful." All crudely crafted smoke and mirrors to distract the party faithful from the former one-term Bay State governor's flipflops on virtually every Republican core issue. It is as though Romney has taken his cue from Groucho's memorable quip: "Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."
More than a few Republicans will be reduced to daydreaming that the underdog they are stuck with will be strapped to the top of one of his wife's two Cadillacs and sped into the sunset. Only then would Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels or some other reluctant savior emerge from the GOP ashes, quixotically clutch the party's shredded banner, and march valiantly into the autumn of his discontent.
###
Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. Albert Einstein's maxim certainly applies to the Byzantine thicket of primaries and caucuses that comprise the current Republican presidential nominating process.
At the end of the day, the actual number of states won by a candidate is inconsequential compared with the total of delegates within the state a candidate can manage to scoop up. In some states, the prize for winning the most votes is all of its delegates. In other states, delegates are divided in proportion to the votes garnered by the individual contenders. Some caucuses and primaries are closed to only Republicans; others are open, allowing for malicious mischief by Democrats and independents with absolutely no intention of voting for the GOP candidate in the November presidential election.
Four years ago in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, freshman Illinois Senator Barack Obama upset the far better known and financed Hillary Clinton. Ballistic over the fact that his wife's campaign had poured $29 million into Iowa for a mere 70,000 votes, Bill Clinton was convinced that the Obama campaign had rigged the outcome by importing supporters from Illinois. The Clinton strategy had depended on a low turnout. But 239,000 caucus voters participated, almost twice as many as four years earlier.
With 1,144 delegates required to secure the nomination and after 20 debates, Mitt Romney now leads the remaining field of four with a scant 105 delegates, followed by Rick Santorum (71), Newt Gingrich (29), and Ron Paul (18). Even should Romney sweep the table, winning all the delegates in both Michigan and Arizona on Tuesday, he would have a cumulative total of only 164. There is some conjecture that Romney could win the popular vote in Michigan and still be left with fewer delegates there than Santorum.
If front-runner Romney were able to win every single delegate up for grabs through March 6 Super Tuesday when 10 states hold primaries or caucuses - mathematically possible but astronomically improbable - he would still fall 502 delegates short of clinching the nomination.
Thus Super Tuesday is less likely to be the defining moment for the eventual GOP presidential candidate than two perhaps critical Tuesdays in April. Among the four states voting on April 3 is Texas, which alone has 155 delegates. On April 24, New York's 95 delegates and Pennsylvania's 72 will be determined along with those of three other states with a total of 64 delegates. And the labyrinthian minefield to the nomination could continue even through June 5, when California, with 172 delegates, and New Jersey, with 50, are among the five states voting.
Still, when asked about chances that the GOP nominee will be ultimately decided by powerbrokers at the party's August 27-30 national convention in Tampa, no less an authority than Karl Rove, the contemporary incarnation of Machiavelli, opined that this was as about as likely as discovering life on Pluto, the outermost planet of the solar system.
Meanwhile, Barack (No Drama) Obama's campaign builds its war chest, speculating on whom it will be used in November. The curtain remains tightly drawn on the GOP's final act in this theater of the absurd season. If money and organization retain their traditional significance, when it is lifted Romney will be standing atop the scrap heap into which the Republican party, with its irreparably collapsed center, has fallen.
Whenever the footlights illuminate the GOP nominee, today's odds remain where they were at the beginning: On former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to be the party's standard-bearer. As the farce has unfolded, each of the hopefuls - remember Cain, Bachmann, Huntsman and Perry? - have been tested and found to be untrustworthy or merely unworthy.
Should the script play out, the Republican party will strive to coalesce around Romney, a candidate more comfortable in corporate boardrooms than on campaign rostrums where he tends to spout nonsense about the height of trees and his preference for bankruptcy over bailouts, then in a less than grand finale croaks a few bars of "America The Beautiful." All crudely crafted smoke and mirrors to distract the party faithful from the former one-term Bay State governor's flipflops on virtually every Republican core issue. It is as though Romney has taken his cue from Groucho's memorable quip: "Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."
More than a few Republicans will be reduced to daydreaming that the underdog they are stuck with will be strapped to the top of one of his wife's two Cadillacs and sped into the sunset. Only then would Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels or some other reluctant savior emerge from the GOP ashes, quixotically clutch the party's shredded banner, and march valiantly into the autumn of his discontent.
###
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
