The Willard Post

The Blog to Be Named Later returns with a discussion of the man with at least a 50/50 shot to be the next president of the United States, Willard Mitt Romney.
I used to write a lot of posts for this blog. In 2007 and 2008, I wrote frequently about the presidential race, and talked at least peripherally about Mitt Romney. I look back on that time and remember that most of the readers of my blog were co-workers in a company that raised money for political candidates and non-profit organizations. Because we worked in an industry that concerned itself with public affairs, we debated the issues in the workplace. In fact, more often than not, I wrote a blog post because someone asked me to, wondering what my thoughts were on this candidate or that idea.

Four years later, that company is out of business, dragged down in large part by an economy where people just don’t have money to donate to worthwhile causes. The people with whom I used to argue and debate, and the group of people at work who looked forward to reading my latest skewering of George W. Bush, have scattered across the country. Some still work in fundraising, some have disappeared, and most of the employees of that company took whatever job they could get.

All of this has happened during the administration of President Barack Obama, who took office with high expectations. Whether you support him or not, I think it is fair to say that for a variety of reasons, he has not met those expectations. As a result, he is in danger of losing his bid for re-election to Governor Romney, who I have not been kind to in previous posts on this blog.

In 2008, I chronicled in detail Romney’s history of flip-flopping, of saying whatever he thought you wanted to hear if it meant he could win your vote, of being so sleazy and transparently false that he was openly despised by the other Republican candidates for president. That’s who he was in 2008, and that’s who he is now. He explicitly denies doing or saying things that he has in fact done, things that are documented fact, things that there of video of him doing and saying.

But I did not write this post just to restate my previous complaints about Governor Romney. I wrote it because, at this moment, I feel as if he is going to win this election, and I am trying to contemplate what that would mean for this country. The president could certainly still win this race, and I have always cautioned people who ask me to predict election outcomes that a week is a lifetime in politics, and we have ten of them left until Election Day. But at the moment, regardless of the polls that narrowly favor Obama, I think Romney has the advantage, and here’s why:

Polling is an inexact science. There’s a margin of error built into every one of them. Still, the average of national polls and those in key battleground states has shown a narrow lead for the president. Unfortunately, there is very little correlation between a poll taken in August and an election in November, because you’re polling registered voters, not likely voters. You can’t accurately determine who is likely to vote in an election until much closer to that election, so you’re stuck with these polls of registered voters. And this is a problem because there are more registered Democrats than registered Republicans. In other words, the sample of the polls is skewed towards Obama. This means if he’s up by two in a poll of registered voters, he’s just as likely to be down by three or more when it gets close enough to the election to figure out who’s actually going to vote. The president is in this tenuous polling position after a summer of outspending Romney and hammering him through television advertising that sought to define Romney before he could define himself.

The Obama campaign tried to make Mitt unacceptable to the American people before the fall campaign even began, and they failed. Now, as people wind down the summer, settle into work and school, and pay closer attention to this election, Romney is going to have a decided financial advantage. Obama is the incumbent, he will have the debates as an opportunity to win votes, and Romney is a mistake prone candidate, so the president has a puncher’s chance. Looking at his numbers, he could scratch through to re-election, or he could lose fairly decisively. I think we’re going to see one of two prior elections unfold here: either Obama crawls to a narrow win like incumbent George W. Bush in 2004, or it will be like 1980, when a close race between President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan broke for Reagan late in a big way. Which one will happen? I don’t know. But let’s pretend for a moment that it’s like 1980 and in January of 2013, this nation prepares to see Mitt Romney take the oath of office as the 45th President of the United States.

People are already speculating how Romney would be as president, but that’s not my question. What I want to know is, who would Romney be as president? He’s already been a guy who claimed to be to the left of Ted Kennedy on some issues (when he was running against Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts). He’s already been a “severely conservative” politician (his words) who has made every effort in policy and demeanor to get the Tea Party to warm up to him. And he has been a commonsense, moderate Republican governor who reached across party lines to govern sensibly with Democrats.
Who will he be? I don’t know, and that’s what worries me.

In a way, Romney reminds me of Al Gore. A smart guy, a talented politician, but stiff and awkward and frequently inauthentic. They are both the sons of successful politicians. Both Albert Gore, Sr. and George Romney aspired to the presidency, and both men’s sons have wanted to fulfill the ambition of their late fathers. I always thought that if Al Gore had actually become president, he would have finally loosened up. Freed of the burden of his father’s ambitions and of the chase, he would settle into the office, do the job, and do it well. Maybe that’s what Romney would do. I hope so.

Unfortunately, this prospective president has shown himself to be so malleable, I think what we can expect from Mitt Romney depends on the political circumstances at the time. If he had a Democratic Congress like George H.W. Bush did, we could reasonably expect a solid middle of the road presidency based on a re-run of his time as Massachusetts governor. But he’s not going to have that. If he’s elected, he’ll have at least a Republican House of Representatives. A Democratic Senate would probably frustrate whatever legislative ambitions President Romney would have, and I find it amazing that I still have no idea what those ambitions would really be.

If we end up with President Romney and a Republican controlled House and Senate, we would arrive at a very dangerous point in American history. I’m not one to routinely demonize the other side. I poke, I prod, I belittle, but there’s nothing about being a Republican that I find sinister. But this isn’t the Republican Party of George Romney, or even Ronald Reagan. I can live with a genuine conservative. That’s fine. But we need a president who will guard us against the impulses and radical ideas of the wingnuts of the far right, and I don’t know if I can trust Mitt Romney to do that. I know Barack Obama will. In this political climate, in this economic reality, that is a depressing reason to choose one candidate over another, especially when one of them seemed so promising. But that’s why I can’t consider voting for Romney. Barack Obama disappointed me, but I still believe that he will be a responsible, principled president in his second term, whether he can get anything done or not. I think Romney might be the same way, but given the crowd of loonies behind him, and given his long history of changing his identity more often than a person in the witness protection program, I just can’t take that risk. And I hope that in the end, the American people see things the same way.

The Wisdom Post

The Blog to Be Named Later returns with a discussion of the wisdom of George Walker Bush. This is not so simply that I could write a sentence that has never been written before, but because a particular quote by W fits quite nicely into a discussion of the diminished expectations that people have for this year’s crop of presidential candidates.

Referring once to education policy, President Bush the Dumber once chastised Democrats for the “soft bigotry of soft expectations.” This phrase perfectly describes the apathy voters feel toward this year’s candidates, although I wouldn’t call it bigotry so much as well- deserved contempt.

Republicans currently have the dilemma of choosing a nominee who can defeat President Barack Obama. While former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has led the field and has won the first two contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, lingering suspicion about his conservative bona fides has left many Republicans longing for a realistic alternative. One by one, the other candidates in the race have gotten their moment in the spotlight, and ultimately been found wanting. Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and now Rick Santorum have been scrutinized and then rejected, to one degree or another. Congressman Ron Paul has chugged along, holding on to a base of rabid supporters but seemingly unable to build upon it. Former Utah governor and U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman lingers in the race, hoping to catch on or at least avoid joining Bachmann, Cain and Tim Pawlenty on the sidelines.
Recently, I encouraged several New Hampshire residents in my family to consider voting for Jon Huntsman. I did this not as an Obama supporter, but in spite of my desire to see the president re-elected. I continue to believe that Jon Huntsman, should he somehow secure the Republican nomination, would be the most formidable candidate against Obama.

I say this because history teaches us that re-election campaigns are referendums on the incumbent. In the event that an incumbent president is running for re-election but not generating enthusiasm, the task among his campaign team involves winning a war of attrition. Barack Obama and his prospective performance as president is known to the American people, and divided roughly equally between those who find it acceptable and favor a second term and those who do not and prefer a change. The challenge for Obama is to gain those few remaining undecided voters and shore up a lukewarm base. He cannot do this by generating enthusiasm. Many people have complained that Obama is another Bush. Well, to win re-election he needs to be. Like the son, or the father.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush ran for president as a pseudo incumbent president, the supposed heir to the legacy of Ronald Reagan. The problem is, most of the American public found Bush far less likable and inspiring than Reagan. Polling indicated that on the issues, voters sided with Democrats and in generic polls, indicated a preference to elect a Democratic president. So Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes and the rest of the Bush team proceeded to elect their candidate the only way they could: by making his opponent unacceptable to the voting public. The focus of the Bush campaign in 1988 was not to advertise the virtues of George Bush. It was to make Michael Dukakis look like an unpatriotic weirdo who was completely out of step with traditional American values. Never mind that the origin of the “unpatriotic” tag was Dukakis vetoing a bill requiring students to say the pledge of allegiance. Which is illegal, because you can’t require anyone to take an oath of allegiance. Dukakis vetoed the bill not only on constitutional grounds, but to save the public’s money from being wasted on a useless court defense of said bill. So of course we want to forget that part, since Dukakis was a liberal and liberals want to waste your money.
The point is that there were broad strokes to paint Dukakis with, and the substance found in the smaller details couldn’t save him. This is what Obama must do to the Republican nominee, because the substance of his own record can’t get him a second term, since those important details are lost in a larger, largely false narrative that the Democrats have lost control of.

Even if one does not accept the premise that there is a difference in quality between the perception and reality of Obama’s record, there is still a path to victory for him, and in this case, he would follow the pattern of the son, not the father. In 2004, very few Republicans seriously argued for the re-election of George W. Bush. Instead, they argued against the election of Senator John Kerry. The rationale was, “Okay, so Bush isn’t perfect. But he has kept us safe, has kept the terrorists on the run, and anyway, he’s not an effete wishy washy windsurfer.” I’m just kidding, most Republicans couldn’t come up with a turn of phrase like that. Most Republicans couldn’t read a turn of phrase like that. Anyway, they persuaded enough people to buy into that narrative, and forget about all of those other tiny, insignificant details, like starting an unnecessary war by attacking the wrong country, spending billions of dollars occupying Iraq while Afghanistan slipped out of control, shredding the Constitution for the sake of public safety and cutting taxes in wartime for the first time in American history, producing record deficits that burdened an economy already headed toward a historic collapse. You know, the small stuff.

Despite those issues, ultimately George W. owes his re-election to the supremely important and relevant fact that….black people in Ohio are homophobic. Yes, that’s correct. In a time of war, and great expense of treasure and blood, the Republican Party stirred up so much agita about the prospect of gay marriage that Bush’s vote in Ohio inched up enough to provide his margin of victory over Kerry in the state, and therefore the electoral college. Man, for a guy that could barely count, Georgie sure had a lot of success with electoral math. If you don’t believe me, look it up on the internet, brought to you by Al Gore.

If a candidate for the worst president in American history can crawl to re-election to a second term in that office, then apparently, another president who many think fits that description can do the same. This is why the Republican Party should choose as its nominee one Jon Meade Huntsman, Jr.

In the absolute circus that is the Republican primary, one question should be paramount in the minds of Republican voters. Which one of the guys tumbling out of the clown car is the most acceptable alternative to Barack Obama? Or rather, which of them is the least objectionable? Rick Santorum? Newt Gingrich? Rick Perry? Ron Paul? No, it’s Mitt Romney. Unless it’s Huntsman. Let’s pretend that these two are culinary dishes. The recipe for both includes: conservative but not an out and out right winger. Calm demeanor. Equitable balance between social liberalism and fiscal conservatism. Picture perfect family. Mormon. Former governor. The only difference between these two dishes is that when you want to make a Huntsman, you hold the bullshit.

Remember how much Republicans hated Bill Clinton? Then why did they help re-elect him by propping up old Bob Dole onto the ticket? Mitt is a younger Dole, minus the sense of humor. The other wing nuts running this year would have fit in quite well in that race. At the time, the Clinton White House prayed that one candidate wouldn’t catch on. Who? Boring, plaid shirt wearing, unobjectionable Lamar Alexander. Old Lamar didn’t excite anyone, but he would have been the most formidable candidate against the controversial Democratic president because he didn’t bother anyone either. Huntsman presents the same danger to Obama, but the Republican Party probably won’t recognize it. And Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.
Wait, why am I telling anyone this? Never mind! Go Romney!