David Matthews

Archive for the 'House Red: Politics & Current Affairs' Category

the somewhat unsettling case of Barack Obama…and me…

Barack Obama remains a sympathetic figure despite a program of assassination by drone that is indefensible from any and every angle; despite half-hearted, misguided, inept efforts to rein in corporate oligarchs, investment buccaneers, and the general run of greedheads, swindlers, and scoundrels who do fabulously well for themselves at the expense of the commonweal; despite the degradation of national infrastructure and the environment; despite the dismal state of American education. The list could go on.

For all this Barack Obama strikes me as a decent, intelligent person, a man of good will who in other circumstances, faced with a more or less conventional loyal opposition, would likely have found common ground with them on any number of issues, no doubt at times infuriating your oft humbled scribe in the process, while remaining true to his conviction that government has a positive role that goes beyond building a fence on our southern border and throwing money at the military-industrial complex. From the get-go Obama faced a howling mob bent on delegitimizing a presidency it refused to accept, ever at the ready to hurl epithets—socialist, Muslim, Nixonian—and bandy about the prospect of impeachment with furious glee. We can speculate as to the source of these caricatures of a man who is pretty mainstream in his thinking, devoted husband and father, basketball guy, someone with whom I might well enjoy drinking some beer and shooting the shit, as an old college buddy puts it. To be sure, this is scant recommendation for high office, or any office for that matter. There are any number of people with whom I have enjoyed a beer and conversation through the years whose occupation of any position of authority, much less the highest office in the land, is a prospect not exactly conducive to peace of mind.

With the possible exception of the drone program, the whole load of the country’s mess can hardly be dumped on Obama alone. The makeup of the Congress and the Republican Party put effective control of the government, veto power at the least, in the hands of people who do not believe in government. We are fortunate that their numbers are not sufficient for them to realize their program for freewheeling laissez-faire in every phase of life, a grotesque parody of Darwinian survival of the fittest, war of all against all, nature red in tooth and claw, an armed camp, each individual dependent on her or his own devices and fortune, the devil take the hindmost. Yes, I exaggerate somewhat. Nonetheless, this is the direction the Ayn Randists, tea partiers, libertarians, and their comrades would take us.

It is fashionable in certain circles to blame Obama for Republican muleheadedness.

“[I]t is his [Obama's] job to get them [members of Congress] to behave. The job of the former community organizer and self-styled uniter is to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do. It’s called leadership.” (Maureen Dowd, Bottoms Up, Lame Duck, The New York Times, 30 April 2013 )

“It’s the president’s job to lead, and to bang heads if necessary…” (Dana Milbank, Obama’s second-term blues set in, Washington Post, 13 May 2013)

One need not be possessed of Solomonic wisdom to observe that the House leadership cannot get its own members to toe the party line, not even when it would redound to their political advantage, as happened last month when Republicans pulled a bill designed to undermine a progressive piece of the Affordable Care Act under the guise of concern for the protection of individuals with preexisting conditions. The legislation, sponsored by Eric Cantor, was shot down by fire-breathing purists who objected that it merely tinkered with the dread ACA instead of going for outright repeal. We should expect Obama to lead or somehow compel this bunch to act responsibly? Leadership is not the issue.

The duty to safeguard minority and individual rights is a fundamental and near sacred principle of the American experiment in government.

It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority—that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable…. The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. (James Madison, The Federalist, No. 51: The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments)

The tension between commitment to minority and individual rights and the fundamental maxim of republican government that the sense of the majority should prevail has thus been with the country from the beginning. At some point the minority must accede to the will of the majority if the system is to function. By way of example, as a citizen I pay taxes due federal, state, and local governments even though they are not allocated as I might wish and in some cases fund programs and policies to which I stand in firm opposition. I might, and as a citizen I am obligated, to petition my elected representatives, engage in public debate and demonstration, generally work through the electoral process, and in extreme cases engage in civil disobedience to rectify unjust, bad, or outright immoral practice.

What we witness today, what confronts Obama, is a wild pack of libertarians, tea partiers, gun fetishists, and sophomoric nihilists dedicated to overthrow, overturn, subvert, and thwart the sense of the majority. When the attempt to impose their will is frustrated, too many appeal not to principles of civil disobedience and nonviolence preached and practiced by the likes of Gandhi and Martin Luther King but rather stand in the camp of Mao, holding to the maxim that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Government is in principle that “we the people” thing, all of us working together, more like muddling through most of the time, to promote the general welfare and common good. This is not some Marxist, socialist, leftist principle; rather, it is embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. It all but goes without saying that what constitutes the general welfare and common good is never beyond dispute. The fierce debate to define these things makes up a considerable part of what we call politics, and people of good will may disagree even on matters of fundamental principle. What becomes of the possibility of politics when a conglomeration of parties allies around rejection of the idea that promotion of the general welfare and common good is feasible or even desirable? Is there any hope of fashioning a functioning society under principles of justice and rule of law?

I set out to examine the sources of my sympathy for Barack Obama, and perhaps justify it for myself, despite profound misgivings about certain policies and aspects of his presidency. This sympathy is not altogether rational, as nothing human is altogether rational. To a considerable degree it derives from a sense that I could sit down with this man, maybe over a beer, or elitists that we are, a glass of red wine, and talk seriously about policies and principle, each acknowledging the uncertainties, complexities, and doubts at the heart of our positions, able to attain a kind of harmony even in disagreement, in a way that I cannot conceive with, say, Paul Ryan or Rand Paul or from the far other end of the spectrum Noam Chomsky. I take the liberty of including Chomsky with others of diametrically opposed viewpoint and indisputably lesser intellect because all are strident foes of Obama and I think that Chomsky, like Ryan and Paul, has not a doubt in his military mind that he is right and anyone who sees things differently is wrong, and in this respect they all differ in disposition from Obama, who has capacity to accept the legitimacy of other viewpoints and willingness to accommodate them to a degree, some would argue far too great a degree. For this he is routinely battered from all directions. For in the 21st century humility is not a virtue but a sign of weakness. It has been banished from the American landscape together with the qualities of Keats’ negative capability, uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, which are today certifiable mental disorders, susceptible to treatment by therapy and drugs.

Maybe I do Chomsky an injustice. Maybe, too, I am wrong about Barack Obama. Maybe I give him too much credit. Perhaps I judge him too much by the caliber of those who stand against him, a comparison altogether to his favor.

Summing up the Benghazi thing

Richard Cohen offers a nice summation of the Benghazi contretemps in his Washington Post column Symptoms of Benghazi Syndrome:

Watergate, though, was a crime. Iran-contra was a crime. Government officials were convicted and some of them went to jail. Fudging a press release is not a crime. Compromising on wording is not a crime. Making a decision — even if wrong — that there was no time to call in the cavalry is not a crime. And having inadequate security is not only not a crime but partly a consequence of congressional budget cuts.

David :: May.13.2013 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: No Comments »

Benghazi: Tragedy, blunder, scandal…political opportunity…

With the Benghazi hearings the curtain is raised for the opening act of the 2016 presidential campaign as Republicans use the attack and the death of an American ambassador to fling mud at Hillary Clinton, presumptive Democratic Party nominee and a formidable candidate according to the prevailing wisdom. How much weight is due the prevailing wisdom three years before the campaign is fodder for another occasion. Rand Paul put it without nuance: “I think it precludes Hillary Clinton from ever holding office” (Alexander Burns, Rand Paul: Hillary Clinton ‘absolutely’ to blame for Benghazi, Politico, 10 May 2013). At any rate this is what is the libertarian firebrand and his comrades hope.

Meantime, the usual cadre of political operatives and propagandists posing as pundits are gleefully using the episode to bash the administration. Peggy Noonan goes so far as to suggest that the Obamites made a conscious decision not to take military action to protect Americans in Benghazi because military action would have been tantamount to acknowledging that this was “a planned and coordinated attack by armed combatants,” which the administration was at pains to avoid for tawdry political reasons (Peggy Noonan: The Inconvenient Truth About Benghazi, Wall Street Journal, 10 May 2013). The logic of Noonan’s line is difficult to follow. Indeed, what logic? Why would military action not be taken to protect an ambassador and other Americans from a mob as readily as from armed combatants if it were feasible to do so? Senator James Inhofe (R–Okla), a loose cannon even by Capitol Hill standards, raises the specter of impeachment with the dubious claim that “Of all the great cover-ups in history — the Pentagon papers, Iran-Contra, Watergate, all the rest of them — this … is going to go down as most egregious cover-up in American history” (Jeremy Herb, GOP Sen. Inhofe: Obama could be impeached over Benghazi ‘cover-up’, The Hill, 10 May 2013).

Attacks on US interests in trouble spots such as Benghazi are neither unprecedented nor particularly rare. During the Bush administration American embassies in Athens, Greece, Serbia, and Yemen were attacked, as were the consulate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, and the Green Zone in Baghdad, where the US embassy in Iraq is located, incidents that are conveniently forgotten or ignored (Juan Cole, Is Paul Ryan right that Obama’s Foreign Policy is Blowing up in Our Faces?, Informed Comment, 27 September 2012). Did the administration couch its account of the attack in language that aimed to minimize political fallout in the midst of a presidential campaign? Of course it did. Did Mitt Romney immediately try to gain political advantage from the death of an American ambassador? Of course he did. Should greater security have been provided? Could a rescue effort have been mounted? Is Congressional funding for embassy security adequate? Is a legitimate inquiry into these questions in order? Of course it is. Is a legitimate inquiry what is underway in the House of Representatives? Not by a long shot.

A Few Thoughts about Events of Last Week

My initial response on reading of the Boston bombing was to be happy that my brother was not there this year. He has run Boston three times, if my memory serves me well, most recently in 2011. I suspect this is how we generally look at such things, first through the lens of personal relationships, later in broader perspective and context.

No remarkable power of perception or insight is required to note that media and news organizations did not exactly distinguish themselves with their coverage of the bombing and its afermath. Reporting was generally a shoddy wash of unsubstantiated rumor that turned out to be wrong, wild speculation passed off as analysis, and overblown, contradictory, and often outright conflicting claims, more evidence, as if it were needed, that the wired world has reduced much journalism to the level of tabloid blather. I would not restrict this criticism to the mainstream media, and I do acknowledge exceptions, within the mainstream and outside it.

Sometime middle of the week a high school classmate passed along by way of Facebook the rumor that a “person of interest” in the bombing had ties to the Saudi royal family and the government was attempting to quietly deport him. The post inspired virtual cries of outrage about our “pethetic” [sic] government. No one suggested taking a deep breath until we find out if there is anything to this. That is how too much of the week went. Evidence of editorial judgment and critical acumen was in short supply as any half-baked gibberish that got posted, texted, or twitted was deemed newsworthy by someone, and not just by loose-cannon bloggers such as your oft humbled scribe.

It comes as no surprise that the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was accompanied by shrill cries of “enemy combatant,” “no Miranda rights,” etc., from the usual chorus led by Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Glenn Greenwald points out the irony in the “firestorm of outrage among various Democrats, progressives, liberals and the like” in reaction to Graham’s call for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to be treated as an enemy combatant and not read his Miranda rights “telling him to remain silent.” Greenwald documents that Graham advocates nothing more than established Obama administration policy dating back to March 2011 when the Department of Justice adopted rules giving themselves the power to allow investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their rights. (What rights should Dzhokhar Tsarnaev get and why does it matter?, The Guardian, 20 April 2013)

Graham’s formulation that the Miranda warning tells the suspect to remain silent is a misreading that we can only surmise is a deliberate provocation coming as it does from a Senator with a law degree and six-and-a-half years’ experience as an Air Force attorney. The Miranda warning does not “tell” anyone to remain silent. Rather, it instructs a suspect that she or he has the right to remain silent. Nothing in the reading of Miranda rights prohibits a suspect from cooperating with authorities, nor does its absence guarantee cooperation.

When I look at photographs of the Tsarnaev brothers, especially the younger, just a kid, a boy, I do not see a monster, however monstrous his acts. I wonder what in the world could have led to this. Sympathy is not a word I would use here. Sympathy is for the victims, their families, and their friends whose lives have been irrevocably altered in a horrible way. Juan Cole at Informed Comment and Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo offer some observations about the Tsarnaevs, speculation to be sure, but thoughtful and worth consideration.

thinking about guns and things

Last week I emailed President Obama to voice my support for his proposals to reduce gun violence. Then I emailed my representatives in Congress to urge them to stand with the president. Will these modest efforts make any difference in the world? Maybe not. Even so, it is something one can do.

Guns and gun ownership are deeply ingrained in American culture. I may not understand or relate to this, but it is with us nonetheless and not apt to change anytime soon, however much I might wish otherwise. There are honorable and decent people who feel other than I do, and as passionately, about guns and the Second Amendment. I know some of them. Some are friends. I try to respect their views.

Do we have any idea how representative of gun owners generally are the Second Amendment dead-enders the likes of Wayne LaPierre and David Keene of the NRA, who brook no regulation or restriction on sale and ownership of guns and ammunition? Do they represent the mainstream of what I will call for want of a better term the gun culture? Or as might be hoped are they more a vocal, rowdy, and unfortunately well-funded fringe?

In the aftermath of Newtown the gun lobby adopted two talking points, the first articulated by LaPierre in his first press conference after the shooting, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” a simplistic formulation that smacks of PR flack. This is presented as a given, a brute fact. To any suggestion that regulation might staunch some of the blood flow, stone-faced they intone the mantra, “It won’t work.” Better, they would have it, that the country should become an armed camp. There is ample reason to take a dim and pessimistic view of humankind, but good grief this is a bleak, dark vision of us.

The second talking point is to claim that gun violence is not a gun issue but a mental health issue, a proposal that can only be viewed as cynical when advanced by people who oppose government social programs in principle and routinely dig in their heels to resist taxation in any way, shape, or form. The attempt to delineate the plague of gun violence as exclusively a mental health issue is a ploy to divert the conversation from the role that guns play in violence and the possibility that steps might be taken to at least try to mitigate that it.

Nothing we can do, not the regulation and restriction of guns and ammunition, not provision of mental health services far beyond our capacity to provide at present, not turning the country into an armed camp of gun fetishists, each of us packing heat and ready to blast away at the slightest suspicion that someone means to do us harm, will guarantee that something like the spate of school shootings seen in recent years will never happen again. People have done awful things to one another as long as there have been people and in all likelihood will continue to do so. This does not mean we are helpless and can do nothing. It certainly does not mean we should not try.

There are a host of factors that account for crime and violence, and more things beyond those that are beyond account. Some human actions are inexplicable. Why would we not make it as difficult as possible for the unhinged, the nutty, the just plain mean among us to obtain weapons of mind-bending destruction? As for the NRA approach, I think of the people I encounter on bus and train during my daily commute to and from the office, many of them without question fine people. Would I really be more safe if every one of them was armed?

Richard Cohen notes in a recent column in the Washington Post, (The Debacle of Gun Control) that within certain segments of the population are held the twin misguided notions that ownership of guns by individual citizens is the only thing that stands between us and tyranny and that the government is unwilling or unable to protect us from crime. ” Taken together,” Cohen writes, “what we have is the cratering of liberalism, which is deeply associated with government—its growth, its utility.”

There really is an immense divide in this country between those who believe there is in human affairs a role and a need for government, even as we curse its flaws and failings, and those who seem sincerely to believe that taxation and any kind of restriction undertaken to provide for the general welfare and common good are grievous wrongs, with discords rooted in race and class, wealth and poverty, education and its lack, self-righteous liberal elites and self-styled patriots who wrap themselves in the flag while decrying all government.

Is it possible, even conceivable, to find common cause with my gun-bearing friends and those like them who stand across a great divide from me? Surely it is or ought to be. Surely we should try. Surely we should speak to one another and remember that with speaking comes listening. Surely we should do what is in our power, small as it sometimes seems, and take our stands even when those stands are only symbolic gestures. It occurs to me to wonder if LaPierre and his flag-waving frères are convinced they have already won this fight by virtue of the fact that they are armed and we are not, oblivious to the irony that they pretty much embrace the Maoist principle that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Mao was wrong. Our freedom and our rights are rooted in the principle of rule of law, ideals of justice, and imperfect notions of human dignity, autonomy, and community. When these are gone, all the firepower in the world will not deliver us.

Social Media…and Listening Well…

Most of the news I get via radio and television comes by way of public broadcasting, primarily National Public Radio and the PBS NewsHour. Throughout the election season, and particularly following the presidential debates, these folks have exhibited a peculiar fixation on the role and impact of social media. The subject is newsworthy, but the emphasis may be a tad excessive and perhaps in part a ploy to attract a younger audience by showing that public broadcasting is relevant, hip, and way out there on the cutting edge.

Now I am not a total dinosaur. At the moment I put these thoughts down on paper, figuratively speaking, as I type them into Word, with the intent to post on my website, where I hope some few readers will chance upon them. I am well aware that social media plays a huge role in contemporary life. While I do not twit and hardly ever text from my phone, I do have a Facebook account that I use somewhat to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances and to publicize poetry readings in which I participate. From this I have firsthand experience that about 99 percent of what is posted on Facebook, including my contributions, is trivial and ephemeral at best, shallow and vapid at worst, and generally of no great consequence.

Okay. That sentence indulges in a bit of hyperbole. Even so I stick by it in principle as a response to inflated claims routinely made for social media that take for granted something substantive is at work here when for the most part what is not cant, rant, and raving amounts to little more than idle chatter. Unfortunately, the sophomoric enthusiasm typically exhibited by journalists reporting on this subject lends itself more to cheerleading for the new technology and its users than to critical analysis.

The NewsHour reports regularly on how the presidential campaign is playing out in social media and on the Web. In a recent segment the NewsHour‘s Ray Suarez spoke with regular guests Laura Ashburn, editor in chief of Daily Download, and Daily Download contributor Howard Kurtz, Newsweek‘s Washington bureau chief and host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” Early on Suarez seemed to try to move the discussion in a fruitful direction:

The world is shifting under our feet here, so I’m wondering if we know whether any of this works. Yes, now that we know that we can do this, someone can pay because of what I’m interested in to have something move to the top of my queue, so it’s more likely to catch my eye.

Do we know whether these things, people starting their own Web pages, circulating these fun photos and collages that people put together, whether it changes anybody’s mind, whether it gets them thinking about the issues in a different way, whether it gets them to engage in a different way.

Ashburn jumped on this to assert the obvious that people are engaging in a different way. The subsequent discussion, however, neglected to consider whether this different way of engaging actually contributes to a better informed and educated citizenry. None of them seems to wonder if the kind of engagement produced by social media is apt to contribute to good government, the general welfare, and the common good. No one asks how reduction of complex issues to slogans, sound bites, and 140-character disquisitions promotes genuine examination and understanding.

The conversation soon made a striking segue with observations by Ashburn and Kurtz that many people, particularly younger members of the audience, followed the debate online and on another device at the same time or by being on Facebook and Twitter while watching on television. Kurtz fairly gushes:

…the reason that’s an earthquake in my view, Ray—and in fact the number is only going to grow—is that people who are on Facebook and Twitter the same time that they are watching something on — this is still a big television event, let’s face it—they’re engaged, they’re talking to their friends, they’re commenting, they’re reading about Big Bird or binders full of women or whatever is the catchphrase, or Medicare or actual serious issues.

And so it’s a different way of consuming political information than just passively sitting on your couch with the clicker in your hand.

Added Ashburn:

And that’s very much this younger generation.

When you’re designing a website, as we did, Daily-Download, it has to be interactive. It can’t just be static information anymore that is given to you. People want the ability to click here and click there and feel like they’re a part of it. And the same thing now is true in politics.

And so it’s a different way of consuming political information than just passively sitting on your couch with the clicker in your hand. Whoa, Nelly, as venerable sportscaster Keith Jackson used to say. Is watching the debate on television ipso facto a passive act? To listen well, to be engaged in following the line of argument, to discern what is substance and what is fluff, is anything but a passive act. Listening well, like reading well, is an activity of intellect and mind requiring discipline and focus. Does the kind of multitasking where attention flits from the television to Facebook and Twitter contribute to the good listening that is a prerequisite to genuine reflection and knowledgeable judgment? I do not see that it does.

This line of thought seemingly did not occur to Suarez, Ashburn, and Kurtz. In their defense one might note that these comments came at the end of the segment. Maybe they just ran out of time. Or maybe their giddiness over social media got in the way of critical assessment.

memo from the editorial desk

A minor edit added the second sentence of the second paragraph, beginning “At the moment I put these thoughts down,” after this essay was posted. This sentence was included in early drafts but dropped out during the revision process. Its reinsertion does not affect the tenor or substance of the argument.

David :: Oct.28.2012 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: 1 Comment »

Mitt Romney’s genuine moment

I caught only the first twenty minutes or so of the first presidential debate. The other two and the vice presidential debate I watched in their entirety. There was one moment when Mitt Romney may have genuinely spoken from the heart with passion and conviction. It came when he said he would eliminate tax on interest, dividends, and capital gains for middle-income taxpayers.

Middle-income people are going to get a tax break.

. . .

But your rate comes down and the burden also comes down on you for one more reason, and that is every middle-income taxpayer no longer will pay any tax on interest, dividends or capital gains. No tax on your savings. That makes life a lot easier.

If you’re getting interest from a bank, if you’re getting a statement from a mutual fund or any other kind of investment you have, you don’t have to worry about filing taxes on that, because there’ll be no taxes for anybody making $200,000.00 per year and less, on your interest, dividends and capital gains. [italics mine]. Why am I lowering taxes on the middle-class? Because under the last four years, they’ve been buried. And I want to help people in the middle-class.

And I will not — I will not under any circumstances, reduce the share that’s being paid by the highest income taxpayers. And I will not, under any circumstances increase taxes on the middle-class.—Mitt Romney, presidential debate 16 October 2012

What world does this man live in that he thinks tax on interest, dividends, and capital gains makes an appreciable difference in middle-class life? Perhaps—and only perhaps—these taxes are more than negligible for some near the $200,000 cutoff. But for individuals and especially for families earning under $100,000 a year, and that is a lot of us, the proposal goes beyond irrelevance. It is silly and insulting.

I was also struck by Romney’s emphasis that he will not reduce the share that is being paid by the highest income taxpayers. He is at pains to refer always to the share, the percentage of the total tax collected by the federal government, paid by the highest income taxpayers, not the actual amount they pay.

It takes no great mathematical or logical wizardry to see that if the share paid by these taxpayers is not reduced, then either it must be raised, they pay more, or it remains the same. The first option, that Romney might consider raising taxes on those at top in any fashion, whether share of the whole or the actual amount, buggers the imagination. I believe we can dismiss it out of hand. That leaves the share of the total tax paid by this group to remain the same. Now if the amount paid by middle-income taxpayers is to be cut and the share paid by the highest income group stays the same, it follows as night the day that total tax collected and the amount paid by those at the top will be reduced, unless the difference is to be made up by sticking it to the 47 percent who presently, for many good reasons, pay no federal income tax, an absurd proposition, however appealing it may be in certain quarters. It certainly appears that Romney intends to reduce the amount of federal taxes paid by those at his income level, however careful he has been to avoid stating this explicitly since making it out of the Republican primaries.

Those on the right tend to employ the term “revenue neutral” when on the subject of reforming the tax code. If taxes on some, generally the middle class to whom politicians of all stripes wish to promise much and ask little, are to be reduced, while the outcome is revenue neutral, then someone somewhere must pay more, but nobody wants to get into specifying exactly who will take the hit for the greater good−a formulation that smacks of socialism, quelle horreur. Where this leaves Romney’s commitment to reduce the dread federal deficit, much less wild promises to balance the budget, is anyone’s guess. The closest Romney comes to substance is supply-side mumbo-jumbo, whereby tax cuts stimulate miraculous economic growth with a concomitant increase in tax revenues, coupled with a righteous vendetta against the least fortunate among us, which Paul Ryan assures us is necessary for the sake of their character.

Commission on Presidential Debates: Debate Transcripts

memo from the editorial desk

This piece underwent minor, nonsubstantive revision after its initial posting.

David :: Oct.27.2012 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: 2 Comments »

the debates, the vote, character…

I failed to check the schedule for presidential debates before making arrangements for dinner with a friend on Wednesday the third. Upon learning that the first debate is slated for that evening, my first thought was to ask if we could reschedule dinner. After further consideration, fairly minimal consideration at that, I thought better of it. I would kind of like to catch the debate, but it is not as if my vote hinges on the outcome…unless Mitt Romney were to come out for single-payer, universal health care, an end to the Bush tax cuts for individuals in upper-income brackets, investment in infrastructure and renewable energy, serious financial regulation and enforcement of it, serious environmental regulation and enforcement of it, and so on. We know this will not happen. We know where the candidates and the parties stand. The choice could hardly be more clear-cut. It is difficult to comprehend how anyone could remain undecided, yet some do. This can only stem from muddled or wishful thinking. There is nothing admirable about it.

People used to assert their high-mindedness by claiming to vote for the man, not the party, a fine-sounding enough proposition that does not hold up under any but the most cursory examination. The presumption is that, say, a Republican fellow who is a good citizen would vote for a Democrat of character rather than for a rapscallion of his party, and vice versa. I wonder. Of course a candidate’s ability and character matter. So too do positions on the issues, which are reflected to a greater or lesser degree in party affiliation. Could I in good conscience vote for Romney when I am convinced that if elected he would pursue policies that will harm many people and the country as a whole, even if I thought him a man of character and Obama a rascal? If I thought the choice lay between a scoundrel and an honorable person with a misguided program that would do great harm, I might be obliged not to vote at all. That is not the choice in this election. As those who find their way regularly to this site, both of you, are likely aware, I believe that it is Romney who is of dubious character and wrongheaded policy, while Obama is a man of of decency and intelligence with whom I can respectfully disagree on particular issues. The choice could hardly be more clear-cut.

David :: Sep.29.2012 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: No Comments »

Romney’s bizarre response to embassy attacks

Once more Mitt Romney shows that he has no shame and at best a passing acquaintance with truth. His charge that a statement issued by the U.S. embassy in Cairo six hours before it was attacked expressed sympathy with the attackers goes beyond straining credulity in its willful disregard of the facts. Romney factotum Rob Portman’s characterization of the statement as an apology is silly and borderline weird.

Here is the embassy statement:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others. (quoted in Glenn Kessler, The Romney campaign’s repeated errors on the Cairo embassy statement, Washington Post, 9/13/2012)

There is no sympathy, much less apology here. Would Romney suggest that the film Innocence of Muslims should be defended? That it perhaps should represent the view of the American government and people?

The embassy statement was a reasonable attempt to defuse a volatile situation. Glenn Kessler in his Washington Post column previously cited criticizes the statement on several points, notably that the language on freedom of speech is weak and reference to 9/11 misplaced, while acknowledging that “there is a big difference between an embassy news release and a fully-vetted statement of policy issued by the U.S. government.” It might be added that the embassy statement was likely drafted in some haste in circumstances where extensive review and revision before its release was not a feasible option.

The charges made by Romney et al. go beyond reach and misrepresentation. They are untrue, and we can only surmise deliberately so.

Now we have the bizarre spectacle of Romney advisers asserting that the embassy attacks would not have occurred if Romney were president.

“There’s a pretty compelling story that if you had a President Romney, you’d be in a different situation,” Richard Williamson, a top Romney foreign policy adviser, said in an interview. “For the first time since Jimmy Carter, we’ve had an American ambassador assassinated.” (Philip Rucker, Romney team sharpens attack on Obama’s foreign policy, Washington Post, 9/13/2012)

If this kind of thinking represents the caliber of the foreign policy team Romney would put together as president, and I see no reason to doubt that it does, it is further evidence, if any is needed, that Romney foreign policy figures to be every bit as bungled as his domestic policy.

memo from the editorial desk

Minor, nonsubstantive edits were made to this piece after it was posted earlier today.

David :: Sep.14.2012 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: No Comments »

Observations on the R convention

[Mel Martinez, former US Senator from Florida and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under George W. Bush] said that the personal anecdotes [Ann] Romney told also reach out to Hispanics looking to claim their piece of the American Dream. “That story that Ann Romney told last night about tuna and pasta and the basement apartment,” he said. “The aspirational hopes of every Latino in this country is that someday they can be the millionaire.” (Talking Points Memo, Now on Ann Romney’s Shoulders: The Hispanic Vote)

The aspirational hopes of every Latino in this country is that someday they can be the millionaire? Now I imagine that most, perhaps all, Latinos, and pretty much the rest of us, would take being a millionaire. We would willingly bear the burdens that millionaires bear. But is this really our aspiration? We aspire to live a good life, to take care of our families and loved ones, to live in accord with moral principles, treating others as we ought. To do these things, to live a good life, thinking in Aristotelian terms, requires a certain level of material well-being, income, wealth, but that is a means to an end to which we aspire, not an end in itself.

That accumulation of worldly riches is a laudable aspiration is an accepted principle in certain circles and nowhere more so than among a political party whose members make great public show of their faith, thumping their Bibles, pawing at crosses, loudly professing what one would think would be the most personal of all relationships. Faith is not certainty. In faith there is doubt that is overcome only through the grace of God. Faith is shown in the life that is lived. Not that a person of faith hides that faith. Faith is revealed by way of something deeper and more substantial than outward trappings, calling attention to good works, and amassing worldly possessions.

Perhaps my thoughts here only reveal how out of step I am with the twenty-first century as I speak of Christian principles I was taught as a child, principles that have little to do with the Christianity of many of my contemporaries.

quote of the day

“The demographics race we’re losing badly,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.). “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” (Rosalind S. Helderman and Jon Cohen, As Republican convention emphasizes diversity, racial incidents intrude, August 29, 2012)

David :: Aug.30.2012 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: No Comments »

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Observations on the R convention

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