Rep. Randy Neugebauer - Fool or Fraud

Via TPM,

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) got into a heated exchange with a National Parks Service Ranger at the World War II Memorial over the closure of the park because of the government shutdown.

Neugebauer, one of a number of Republicans who have tried to use the closed memorial to bash the Obama administration and Democrats on the shutdown, confronted the ranger while surrounded by a crowd of onlookers.

Neugebauer asked the Ranger how she could turn World War II veterans away.

"How do you look at them and…deny them access?" the congressman asked.

"It's difficult," she responded.

"Well, it should be difficult," Neugebauer snapped.

"It is difficult," the Ranger said. "I'm sorry sir."

"The Park Service should be ashamed of themselves," Neugebauer said.

Yeah... the Park Service should be ashamed that Rep. Neugebauer and his Republican peers are throwing a childish tantrum instead of doing their job.

The Finely Tuned Messaging of the Political Right

A week or two ago I saw a Republican commentator complaining about how mean President Obama was to Mitt Romney during the election campaign. She accused the President of running an ad that said that Mitt Romney gave somebody cancer. My reaction to that statement was that she knew the actual facts - an independent entity, backing Obama, ran an ad about a man whose wife died of cancer, and suggested that she might have had a better outcome had Bain not taken over his company, laid him off, and cost them his health insurance.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody is claiming that the ad was fair, and the story it told was misleading. But the problem for Republicans is that if you respond to the ad, you will have great difficulty not responding to its story - and that story is of the problems families face when their health insurance is tied to their employment.

So what's the solution? That's easy: you lie. You pretend not to be familiar with the details of the ad, pretend to believe that it was an official Obama campaign ad, and pretend that it says something absurd. That way you get to advance a story line of how negative the Obama campaign was, how it was detached from facts, and get to avoid responding to the difficult issues the actual ad raised.

It is simply not credible that right-wing power players are unfamiliar with the ad. It went viral, it was discussed at length (often with breathless overstatement) in political blogs, on "fact checking" sites, in editorials, on television.... The distortion is deliberate.

The Republicans have become very good at shaping a message, pushing it out through multiple channels, and sticking to the script. So it was no surprise when I heard essentially the same story being pushed again, by none other than Grover Norquist:

Norquist: [Obama] has a very expansive vision and a very different sales pitch. Eighty-six percent of his ads this year were trashing Mitt Romney as a person. He'll give you cancer. He'll do all this other stuff. Eighty-six percent...

Rehm: I don't think he said that.

Norquist: Oh, one of the ads that was paid for on his behalf said that some guy who worked at one point for one of his firms got cancer and that was somehow Romney's fault. I don't know why they put it in the ad if it wasn't Romney's fault. That said, they went after him personally, 86 percent of the ads. He won a smashing mandate, overwhelming mandate not to be Mitt Romney. He did not run ads saying I want to spend $1.6 trillion and higher taxes.

Norquist not only repeats the same essential lie about the ad and its content, he mixes in his home-brewed statistics, as if he wants to personify the phrase, "lies, damn lies, and statistics".

When you see Norquist speak, he sometimes displays an odd affect that can distract you from what he's saying. But when you listen to him it's clear that he's focused like a laser on his agenda (nominally the prevention of tax increases, but more accurately the advancement of policies that shift the tax burden from the wealthy onto the rest of us).

When Norquist gets a fact wrong, rest assured, it's not an accident.

Romney Leads a Revival of Domestic Manufacturing.... Sort Of

For four years his party's factories have been sputtering, but Romney came along, tuned them up, and we're now the world's leading exporter of manufactured outrage! Sure, you can argue that he's making the same mistake as the "The Change Bank",¹ and perhaps confuses "volume" with "amplification", but he's hoping for a different type of profit.

John McCain, for example, is outraged that the President mocked Romney's talking point about Naval strength. And being a naval aviator himself, and thus presumably aware of the advent of aircraft carriers, and the son and grandson of admirals, who better than McCain knows how little has changed in the Navy over the past century.

"Frankly, I don't understand why the president wants to take these kind of cheap shots -- bayonets and horses, what's that all about?" he said. "You know, when I debated then-Senator Obama I didn't criticize or belittle his lack of experience on national security issues. And he seemed to take these kind of cheap shots. ... I kind of resent it."

He resents it? Because he never took any cheap shots and the prima donna celebrity lightweight during his own campaign? He and his campaign argued that Obama was weak, inexperienced, wrong and dangerous, and has been continuing to push the "Obama is weak" line through the present, but no cheap shots... on that subject during the actual debates? [Added: "I didn't criticize or belittle his lack of experience on national security issues"... not so true.]

Unlike Senator Obama, my admiration, respect and deep gratitude for America's veterans is something more than a convenient campaign pledge.

I take a backseat to no one in my affection, respect and devotion to veterans. And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did.

Hm. Those sounds like a cheap shots to me. Maybe McCain means "I made no cheap shots on that subject during the debate, just before, after and by proxy."

McCain would have been better served by pointing out to Romney that his talking point was really, really weak, even if it got laughs or applause when tossed out like red meat to low-information Republican voters, and that when you carry a weak talking point into a debate you should expect your opponent to be ready for you. Or, if McCain suddenly prefers rational, reasoned debate, being in a position to defend Romney's claim on its substance. Would McCain dispute this: In a theoretical sea battle, if you put the U.S. Navy on one side and all of the other navies in the world on the other, the U.S. Navy would prevail?² Does McCain think it's good for the U.S. and its projection of power to pretend that the Navy is weak?

If something truly is a "cheap shot", it should be easy to refute on the facts. The "weak navy" cheap shot is easily refuted on the facts - Obama's response was shorthand for what, to somebody like McCain, should have been obvious from the day Romney started reciting that line. John McCain should be in an excellent position to explain why Romney's point holds.

The fact that McCain, like so many Republican partisans after the past three debates, is resentfully pounding the table about "cheap shots" and the like rather than explaining how Romney's claims make sense comes pretty close to an a collective admission of Romney's substantive weakness. Romney and Ryan do best when they are reciting poll-tested claims that they believe will sound good to his intended audience, despite having little to no relation to fact, calculated to make the President look weak or ineffectual. I'm surprised that McCain still needs this explained, but sometimes your opponent fights back - and when you telegraph your punches, sometimes you make that easy.

In fairness, if you are of the school that the best defense is a strong offense, sputtering rage about how unfair things were to your candidate may seem like a reasonable response to his having lost two consecutive debates.
---------------
1. The gist of the skit:

Change Bank: "We make change for you. You got a $1, we can give you 20 nickels. Or we can give you 5 dimes, a quarter, and 25 pennies - its all up to you."

Customer/Narrator: "How do you make money?"

Change Bank: [deadpan] "Volume".

2. That's not what the modern Navy is designed to do, so I'm not putting that forth as a definitive test of naval strength, but if you want to compare "then and now", it seems like a fair measure of relative strength.

Truth is, Romney Could Have Done Worse

I recently elicited a comment on my description of Paul Ryan as an example of how"the media and party can sometimes elevate mediocre people to undeserved heights".

Just curious what you think....calling Paul Ryan mediocre and seeing him become the VP nominee.

Never mind that Ryan's continued rise exemplifies my point.

However, recent events suggest that Ryan could offer something important to the ticket, assuming Romney is willing to listen: an ear for politics. Ryan has, at this point, build himself a national reputation as an idea man and budget whiz based upon little more than spin. You can't do that unless you pay careful attention to the direction of the political winds. Romney seems perfectly willing to blow whichever way the polls tell him to go, but he appears to lack any instinct of when to stand against the wind, or when he's going too far. That is to say, he seems to have a proverbial tin ear for politics.

Right now, it's Romney who is pulling the Sarah Palin act (while she literally cheers him on from the sidelines), pushing the latest iteration of her "Obama pals around with terrorists" calumny, while Paul Ryan - the guy who gave up a good chunk of his reputation by "taking one for the team" with his ridiculous, mendacious convention speech - is playing the part of McCain. Sure, he's being politically opportunistic, and after a reasonable initial statement has reverted to platitudes, but he has chosen to leave it to clowns and hacks like Sarah Palin and Reince Priebus to look ridiculous.

Romney, alas, was one of the first out of the clown car.

How the Republican Party Can Appeal to Minority Voters

In her "What if Barack Obama had been a Republican" column, Kathleen Parker, well, doesn't quite get it. She claims,

Obama was elected not only because of his attractive eloquence but because we are fundamentally a good people who value fairness and equality. Electing Obama was part of our reward to ourselves. It allowed us to feel that we were this good and this big.

She credits the President with devising a campaign "message of hope that felt like honey after eight bitter years of terrorism and war" and of appealing to "our best instincts" and desire to "become a purple, post-racial nation, never again to be divided", concluding with the rhetorical question,

Who wouldn’t fall in love with that?

Perhaps she's speaking for herself, but I'm recalling a bitter, partisan election fight in which Obama was attacked and ridiculed, called a lightweight, a celebrity, and in which (shocker) his supporters were accused of only voting for him because they got some sort of thrill out of voting for an African American President (and you know those African Americans - they always vote on race, right?) The notions that Republicans pushed during the campaign - that Obama wasn't a "whole-blooded" American, that he didn't get our values, that he didn't understand business, that he was a socialist, possibly a Muslim, if not a terrorist himself certainly a guy who "pals around" with them, coalesced into the nastiness that is encapsulated by birtherism - with our reaching the point where one Republican candidate for the presidency was a birther, and the guy who came out on top attempted to rally his supporters with a birther joke (his after-the-fact attempt to explain it away being wholly unconvincing). Some people, Dinesh D'Souza comes to mind, are continuing to rake in millions by launching scurrilous, fabricated race- and ethnicity-based attacks on the President, who cares about the facts. A Member of Congress felt at liberty to break more than two centuries of comity and screech, "You lie" during a State of the Union Address - and became a Republican Party hero.

For that matter, has there ever been an incident analogous to Jan Brewer's disgraceful finger-jabbing at the President of the United States? For Justice Scalia's embarrassing rant from the bench, not over the case he was deciding but over the President's role in current events in the political world? What of all of the yammering about teleprompters, flag pins, not knowing how to behave in the Oval Office, bowing, fabricated stories about "apologizing for America"?

How does Parker summarize that history?

Republicans were certain that Obama was all style over substance, but their criticisms quickly were interpreted in some quarters as racial animus.

Calling the attacks on Obama an accusation that he puts style ahead of substance is... a rather disingenuous summary of what actually occurred. And while Parker's acknowledgment that "some who call themselves Republicans also can be called racist" is true, that would be an example of what is called "soft-pedaling". This goes way beyond the parameters of "racist content of some political dialogue" that is "out there" "on the Internet".

Parker attempts an artful dance around race issues, but her column is consistent with the right-wing trope that President Obama managed to be elected not based upon his skill as a politician but because white people felt guilty, and ignores the fact that, whether you like or hate those accomplishments, his first term accomplishments stack up impressively against pretty much any modern President. And that, despite inheriting a disastrous recession and a Republican Party that perceived great reward in trying to damage the President and obstruct his agenda - and reaped that reward in the midterm election. It's also more or less what Karl Rove is presently arguing, not a racist argument as such, but,

[S]peaking about racial politics clinically, astringently, the way political professionals do -- it is a shorthand that, as his audience's knowing laughter suggests, all these politicos comprehend. The same sort of analysis leads operatives of all stripes to make recommendations about how to energize target groups by exploiting race and class divides. That's the campaign we're all experiencing.

More directly, compare Parker's argument to Rove's description of North Carolina:

There, he said, in 2008 "New South independents" (meaning, I think, white independents) who were "racial moderates, economic conservatives" had supported Obama in the belief that "this will be really good for the country -- let's put the issue of race behind us." But now they are disappointed in Obama because he's "done a lousy job on the economy, and he's not a fiscal conservative." This analysis tells a story that Obama was elected, in the first place, because of his race, but that whites now think this was a failed experiment. The echo is pretty hard to miss: We gave a guy a boost he didn't entirely deserve in order to correct a historic wrong; too bad he wasn't up to it. Are white voters ready to conclude that Obama is an affirmative-action president

Although I think both of them know better, neither Parker nor Rove are willing to publicly articulate a theory under which the 2008 election was simply another election in which the better politician won. And no, I don't think it's a coincidence that Parker and Rove are simultaneously advancing the argument that "Obama's really an affirmative action President", an argument that has previously been raised less artfully by others, just as we enter the last few months of the 2012 election campaign.

Parker offers a, dare I say, whitewashed history of how the Republican Party found itself at a disadvantage with minority voters:

Republicans can honestly boast of having once been the party of firsts. The first Hispanic, African American, Asian American and Native American in the Senate were all Republicans. But that was before the GOP went south, banished its centrists and embraced social conservatives in a no-exit marriage.

Actually, through the Reagan Presidency, the Republican Party included a great many centrists. While Parker is correct that most of them would be purged from the modern party in the name of "social conservatism", the fact is that many (using Parker's phrase) "blacks and other minorities" are both socially conservative and deeply religious, so the realignment of the party in that direction would not of itself create a race issue. The unmentioned history? The Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights, and the Republican Party's conclusion that it could rise on the basis of its "Southern strategy". Parker knows this:

African Americans are not a monolithic group, obviously, and many likely would find comfort in the promises of smaller government, lower taxes, balanced budgets, school choice and so on that Mitt Romney put on the table Thursday night.

Parker notes that "appearances matter", but the problem is much less one of appearances and much more one of policy. The transformation of the Democratic Party to the adaptive, inclusive party that Parker describes was the product of a policy change. In terms of elections, it was a mixed bag - had the Republicans not pursued the Southern strategy and instead embraced the civil rights movement, Parker would not be writing this column and her fantasy of having an inclusive Republican Party might be our reality. She would not have to be brushing off dog whistles as "exaggerated sensitivity", for the same reason that Republican attacks on Joe Biden's "chains" comment failed - the Party of Lincoln needs to recall this political insight: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

The solution to the Republican Party's conundrum is not to invite people of color to its convention, then declare,

The impression that Republicans don’t welcome blacks and other minorities is, however, demonstrably false. Note the number of minority Republican governors recently elected: Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Susana Martinez of New Mexico.

The solution is to declare that the Southern strategy is an artifact of the past, that overt racist acts and statements are career-ending, that speaking in code on racial issues will not be tolerated, that there is to be no more assumption or argument that anybody of color on the other side's team succeeded only because of white guilt and affirmative action, and that the party's official platform will explicitly embrace civil rights and equality.

Are any of my suggestions difficult to implement? I don't think so. Costly? In dollar terms, they're cheap. Controversial? They certainly shouldn't be. So let's give 'em a try and see what happens. Deal?

Update: Via Atrios, a quote from Lindsey Graham that echoes Parker's sentiments:

“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.”

I'm surprised Graham was so candid, even more so that he was that candid on the record. The line about "generating enough angry white guys" sounds a bit tongue-in-cheek, but Graham might be well-served to reflect on how the GOP's efforts to manufacture outrage among white males play into their problems attracting minority votes.

What's Mitt Romney's Plan for When He Runs Out of Empty Chairs

All this talk of empty chairs has brought to mind a change in the law that took place in Michigan some years back. Prior to the change, in a case in which more than one person might be responsible for an injury, a plaintiff could sue the person he believed to be primarily or solely liable without suing everybody under the sun. After the change, the justifications for which are best reserved for another day, the defendant no longer had to bring in the additional defendant - he could instead use the "empty chair defense", arguing that the person the plaintiff did not sue was the person who caused the injury.

Clint Eastwood provided a pretty dramatic example of how the empty chair defense can work. When nobody is sitting in the chair, you can attribute actions to the absent person that weren't his, you can argue that he's responsible for things that were outside of his control, you can put words into his mouth.... In court, the person who put you on trial can object, or attempt to argue a different theory - although in most cases, upon receiving notice that the "empty chair" defense is coming into play, they'll add the third party to the lawsuit. At a political convention, there's nobody to object.

But what Mitt Romney's doing isn't much different from what Clint Eastwood did. Romney tried running a campaign against the actual person named Barack Obama, the President, and he realized that he was losing. So he has changed his approach and is running against a fictional person, coincidentally named Barack Obama, who happens to have said and done a lot of questionable things, and may not even have been born in the United States (a joke...). As with the convention, though, Mitt Romney's attacks on his false Obama amounts to little more than hectoring an empty chair. The real Barack Obama is not invited to the party.

Romney appears to want to pull back a bit from his mendacity and race-baiting, and at the convention that job fell principally to others. But it would certainly be fair game to ask him about some of his allegations at a debate, when he's face-to-face with the actual President, and even if no direct question is asked we can expect the President to put Romney in the hot seat. And it's quite certain that if Romney huffs his usual falsehoods in the direction of the President, he's going to get a strong response. Romney seems intent on telegraphing every punch.

I think it was a big mistake for Romney's campaign to decide that he should get his hands dirty. Even if the thought was that Romney no longer had plausible deniability that his campaign was being intentionally dishonest - you can't, for example, premise your party convention on a lie without getting stuck with some responsibility - and even if Romney's advisers believed that certain portions of the base would be reassured, there is a difference between having the word's come out of the mouth of a proxy like John Sununu and speaking the words yourself. A proxy goes too far? They can apologize, have their role reduced, even be fired. You go to far? Those words are much more likely to come back at you.

Kathleen Parker Does a Little Dance

After asking a rhetorical question she answered four years ago,

Question: "How do you win an election when you are trying to distance yourself from... yourself?"

(Answer: Race baiting.)

Kathleen Parker does everything she can to avoid applying the dreaded "l" word to the false rhetoric of her party of choice:

Ryan has been called out on some of his statements that were not-quite-true, or at least not complete. These were simple, factual misrepresentations that could be easily checked — and were — or that were well known to those who know a little about recent history.

Okay, let's accept Parker's dance around the facts and shuffle around the vernacular and call them "statements that were not-quite-true" instead of "lies". If the "statements that were not-quite-true" were as transparent as Parker suggests, why did Ryan build his case against President Obama from a stack of them? Parker believes that even what she sees as Ryan's lesser "statements that were not-quite-true", his "statements that were not-quite-true" by omission about, for example, his vote against the Simpson-Bowles commission report or his own advocacy for cuts to Medicare, are harmful to the ticket.

Why not acknowledge this? Everyone knows it — unless Ryan believes that his audience isn’t really up to speed — so why not set the record straight?

It's fair to say that, according to the polls driving the Romney-Ryan rhetoric, many people do not know the facts and thus are persuaded by the falsehoods. Parker knows that - I suspect her actual concern is that the "statements that were not-quite-true" won't hold and thus make a very poor foundation for the last few months of the Romney-Ryan campaign.

Parker then channels David Brooks, lecturing us about Mitt Romney's immeasurable superiority to the rest of us:

He is a man of immaculate faith. He is a wildly successful businessman whose company outsourced jobs, as most did, not to rob Americans but to provide profits to investors and to keep prices down for U.S. consumers who, despite their moaning, still want the cheap jeans.

You see? If anybody lost a job due to Bain's actions it was your fault, because you like "the cheap jeans".

How many Americans know that Romney gave away his inheritance? Or that he has worked several jobs, including the governorship of Massachusetts, for no pay? Or that he has given to and made millions for charities? These are all on his personal résumé, but he doesn’t want you to know. Because?

It would be bragging, and men like Romney don’t brag.

I've previously addressed this, and Parker simply reinforces my point. Romney doesn't brag about his personal record because he would be called on his exaggeration. He brags by proxy about his personal life, and Kathleen Parker is his willing (if not eager) proxy. ("No pay"? Romney reportedly spent more than $50 million trying to defeat Ted Kennedy in his 1994 Senate race. Giving up a few hundred thousand in gubernatorial pay on his continuing quest for the White House is, comparatively speaking, pocket change.)

It's also fair to observe that Parker's thesis is false, at least in relation to Bain, the Olympics, his signature accomplishment as governor of Massachusetts (before RomneyCare became a liability).... Who hasn't heard of his brag that he created 100,000 jobs, mostly in his sleep following his retroactive retirement from Bain? And we're back to why Romney's better served when he brags by proxy - he can distance himself from the exaggeration and hyperbole, and doesn't have to risk being hit with follow-up questions.

If Romney wants to do something impressive, something that would give meaning to Parker's assertion that,

There’s no dishonor in giving or accepting credit (or blame) where due, but you can’t win voter confidence if you lack it in your own record.

He would stop lying. He would instruct Paul Ryan to stop lying. He would apologize for lying. And then he would run an honorable campaign. Pointing to his past charitable donations is not sufficient to overcome his present, deliberately dishonest campaign. If indeed Romney is the great person Parker would have us believe (not the more cynical liar in the name of self-advancement category into which Marc Thiessen seemingly places all politicians and which he seemingly believes excuses all "statements that are not-quite-true"), the best way to sell this notion of his greatness is not to tell us about past charitable contributions. It's to be something more than a man who will say absolutely anything to get elected - something more than the man we see before us.

Paying for Something You Don't Get Isn't a "Gain"

Via Daniel Larison, I see that the National Review's Christian Schneider doesn't understand what it means to gain from something.

Most important, it is younger voters who have the most to gain from Ryan’s plan to reform entitlements. With Medicare set to go bankrupt in a decade, Ryan can make a strong case to young voters that his plan is the only chance their generation has to benefit from the programs they currently fund.

Only if they're stupid enough not to see through that fraudulent argument.

Ryan, as you recall, is a typical "reformer" in that he lacks the courage to propose an immediate reform, so he's promising seniors that nobody above the age of 55 is going to be affected by his plan to transform Medicare into a voucher program. Let's imagine that Romney and Ryan win and make Medicare privatization the number one item on their agenda. The first set of vouchers won't be issued until 2023 or so, and it won't be for another fifteen or twenty years that enough seniors vested into the present Medicare system die off that the high cost of end-of-life care is no longer borne in large part by the present defined benefit Medicare program.

Then, with the caps on increases in the value of the "New Medicare" vouchers, unless healthcare inflation somehow fixes itself, you'll see the system deteriorate as seniors can afford less and less health insurance coverage for their vouchers. So if you're thirty today, you'll pay FICA taxes over the next twenty-five years to support defined benefit Medicare for most seniors, then you'll pay those same FICA taxes over the next ten or so years as the defined benefit recipients die off and the vouchers become less and less valuable, and your reward at the end of your lifetime of payment of the same FICA taxes that used to give seniors a robust, defined benefit plan? A voucher that is likely, at best, to allow you to pay for mediocre health insurance coverage. But you'll surely smile and thank Ryan and Romney for making you an "informed consumer" who has to sweat every healthcare dollar you spend because much of that money now comes out of your retirement savings.

Seriously, the Romney/Ryan plan is terrible for young people. It's an unconscionable ripoff. If Romney and Ryan believed the plan would sustain present levels of medical care they would not hesitate to implement it immediately. Instead they're not only taking the cowardly "put off the plan's implementation so far into the future that we're guaranteed to be out of office before anybody has to take responsibility" approach, they're employing a shockingly dishonest, race-baiting approach to sell it to seniors ("Obama wants to take away your Medicare, you sad, old white man, and give it to undeserving people who aren't like you"). When Romney tells seniors, "You paid" and that Obama is going to cut "guaranteed healthcare", it's a lie. But that's exactly what Romney and Ryan propose to do to young voters.

A Telling Choice of Words

In his latest screed, after endorsing the least flattering interpretation of every statement associated with the Obama campaign, Michael Gerson makes an interesting choice of words:

It is one thing to mischaracterize a federal waiver; another to accuse an opponent of being the Angel of Death.

Overlooking the absurd level of hyperbole, let's recall who Gerson is, the former leader of G.W. Bush's speech writing team, and his self-professed expertise in political rhetoric. As a partisan hack, he finds it easy to dismiss all of Romney's lies as fair game, distort the statements of anybody associated with Obama in the manner he sees as most beneficial to his own political party, and engage in the aforementioned hyperbole.

But "Angel of Death"? Not "an angel of death" or even "angel of death", but the "Angel of Death"? Really?

I'm sure Gerson would attempt to defend himself by arguing that the Obama campaign's suggestion that policies Romney endorsed as a business leader and presidential candidate actually can cause people to lose their insurance, and that losing your health insurance in this country carries potentially devastating medical consequences, was tantamount to comparing Romney to the mythic figure who taps you on the shoulder when it's time for you to die. Absurd? Absolutely. It doesn't work on a literal level, nor for that matter does it work on a metaphorical level.

But if Gerson were honest about it, I suspect he would admit that he intended something quite different with his deliberate and inflammatory choice of words. He's using rhetoric that invokes Nazism, specifically "Angel of Death" Dr. Mengele. It would be difficult to believe that Gerson's intended message is anything but, "Can you believe it? Obama's suggesting that Romney has the values of a Nazi."

Recall, right in that column, Gerson is whining about Biden's flubbed "chains" joke. Which case is stronger - Gerson's prattle that Biden engaged in "racially charged hyperbole" or my argument that Gerson, master of political rhetoric and nuance, would not have accidentally invoked Mengele.

Michael Gerson Couldn't be More of a Hack if He Tried

And yet he keeps trying.

For the Obama campaign, this is not an aberration; it is a culmination. The demonization of Romney is a main element of its strategy, pursued by Obama’s closest associates and former employees, not by loosely affiliated partisan groups. Deniability is not even remotely plausible, but it doesn’t remotely matter. Even when exposed, the Obama campaign never retracts, never apologizes — convinced that the news cycle will quickly erase inconvenient memories.

This from the guy who used to sit adoringly at Karl Rove's knee? The Obama team can take some comfort here - you don't elicit crocodile tears that large unless the hack criticizing your campaign knows his side is losing.

But the most vivid accusation (made by a closely associated PAC and embraced by the campaign itself) is that Romney’s ruthless business practices were responsible for the closing of a firm, the loss of a couple’s health insurance and thus the death of a woman from cancer. Except that Romney wasn’t connected to the closing of the firm, the woman continued to have health insurance from another source and her cancer was diagnosed five years after the plant shut down.

Which represents the crossing of an ethical line. If the conduct of the Obama campaign team were universalized, candidates would no longer require any evidence to accuse one another of complicity in a death. To accept this as a new political norm would be to define defamation down.

Because, you know, saying that your opponent favors policies and engaged in business practices that cost working Americans their health insurance is exactly the same as accusing somebody of murder. Suggesting that somebody committed murder, on the other hand, is fair game - as long as the nonsense is directed at a Democrat...

I am admittedly a sucker for rhetorical idealism. But it can’t be a small thing, a typical thing, a trivial thing, to ask for belief and then betray it.

Yeah... like Gerson's "compassionate conservatism". Flushed down the memory hole.

Mitt Romney's Job Plan - Leaked!

To be clear up front, I'm not stating that this document is real. It was or was not leaked to me by somebody who may or may not be an important member of Mitt Romney's campaign, who may or may not be a Bain investor, and who may nor may not actually exist. I may or may not have had it come to me as a relevation after I held what may or may not have been a seer stone to my forehead.

Now, do I know that it's true? As Harry Reid can attest, it's difficult to be certain. By which I actually mean that it is or is not difficult to be certain.

Top Secret
Internal Use Only

Job Strategy Memorandum

From:        Mitt Romney

To:             Campaign Staff

Subject:    Job Creation Strategy

As you know, ever since my retroactive retirement from Bain Capital I have been focused on unemployment. The present job situation is completely unacceptable. I have tried to be upbeat, and have even tried to joke about it, but the truth is painful. I am unemployed, and that’s simply not acceptable. It's not good for me, it's not good for you, and most importantly it's not good for America

I am therefore announcing the following strategy for job growth, a plan through which 12 million jobs will be created during my first term of office The numbers for this plan are solid. They come from a variety of independent, objective sources. To the extent that I depart from their numbers, as you can see, my logic is bulletproof. If their numbers are correct and my numbers are correct my plan will create 12 million jobs over four years.

The best part is, it’s really simple.

First, the data. In April, Macroeconomic Advisers projected growth of 11.8 million jobs over the years 2013-2016. Moody’s Analytics projects job growth of 11.84 million over the same period. We can reasonably call that 12 million jobs. If we get 11.8 million new jobs, nobody is going to complain about what amounts to a rounding error.

Here’s the plan:

Natural job growth:                                          11,800,000

Plus me!                                                                        1      

Subtotal                                                            11,800,001

Minus Obama:                                                                 (1)   

Total:                                                                11,800,000

Remember, this is not about me. It’s about America, and I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for the country that my jobs plan succeeds. This plan is too important to sit on my desk until after the election. I want everybody on my team to immediately devote their full attention to the rapid implementation of this plan. We have a serious unemployment problem here, and it’s your job to fix it.

Mitt              

In regard to the memo, some might say that it's untrue, dishonest, and inaccurate. That it's wrong. But why let trivialities like that get in the way of a good scoop? We have newspapers to sell here, folks. Ad impressions to generate.

If This Is Ross Douthat's Best... His Best Isn't Good Enough

At least when David Brooks serves the right-wing echo chamber, he attempts to put a creative spin on things - to translate the memo into his own words. If Ross Douthat's stenography is anything to go by, he's well on his way to being every bit as insightful and relevant as Richard Cohen. You have to wonder if he's even thinking about what he says.

Mitt Romney isn’t just wrong on specific policies or too right-wing in general. He’s part Scrooge, part Gordon Gekko; an un-American, Asia-loving outsourcer; a tax avoider and possibly a white-collar felon.

Douthat doesn't believe it's necessary to offer evidence for any of his claims, and it's obviously no coincidence that he's lapping up and repeating every anti-Obama line served up by his party, no matter how outlandish. The tactic of taking a statement by an irrelevant person peripherally associated with the campaign and pretending that the person's isolated statement is an official stance of the campaign? "It's in there." And seriously, Obama's the one claiming Romney is anti-American? Would Douthat have us believe that Romney's pushing back against his party's innuendo that Obama's a corrupt, terrorist-loving, anti-American socialist, who has never held a "real job" and whose only love of capitalism is for the crony variety? Does Douthat care that Romney pushes that dogma, and routlinely dispatches his lapdogs to advance those slanders?

Remember when Mitt Romney released his birth certificate to the media? Douthat doesn't recognize that as a nod to his party's "birthers"? Where can I find a clear and unambiguous statement by Mitt Romney that he disavows birtherism and believes that the President was born in the United States? Not a staffer telling us what Romney believes - Romney actually stating what he believes.

It's one thing to criticize politicians for dirty tactics. It's quite another to play the part of a dim-witted pot calling the kettle black. He pretends that Romney's complacent? Romney's been on board with the dirtiest attacks against Obama from day one. When your candidate sets the tone, sure, complain that the campaign has taken a nasty turn, but when the best campaign tactics your candidate can muster range from the distortion to the outright lie, and his minions routinely make absurd attacks on the President, one thing you cannot claim is that he's "complacent".

Douthat also regurgitates a string of Republican talking points about the President's policies.

Since the campaign kicked off, the president’s domestic policy rhetoric has become much more stridently left-wing than it was during the debt-ceiling debate. He’s dropped all but a pro forma acknowledgment of the tough choices looming in our future, and doubled down on the comforting progressive fantasy that we can close the deficit and keep the existing safety net by soaking America’s millionaires and billionaires.

Douthat knows that's a load of nonsense, which is why he doesn't substantiate his rhetoric with any actual quotes of Obama or positions the President has taken - not even a link. Worse, he knows that if he were to actually share the quotes, not only would people find his polemicism to be absurd, a lot of the people who reflexively nod along with that brand of right-wing prattle would find themselves agreeing with the President. Let's not forget, the Tea Party Movement emerged from an angry backlash against the Wall Street bailout. Let's also not forget that the tax increases Obama proposes are tiny and take us back not to an era of "soaking the rich", but to an era of rapid economic growth during which the rich (as usual) did better than every other economic class. The horror.

I know it's easier - and more profitable - for columnists like Douthat to echo the party line, ignore the facts, support their party's candidate. But when it's done that badly, it's just plain embarrassing.

Update: Predictable as ever, here's Richard Cohen. Douthat wants to be the other side of that coin?

Dirty Politics? Surprise! You're Soaking In It!

Frank Bruni has taken to his fainting couch over Harry Reid's brutal attack on Mitt Romney,

Spew first and sweat the details later, or never. Speak loosely and carry a stick-thin collection of backup materials, or none at all. That’s the M.O. of the moment, familiar from the past but in particularly galling and profuse flower of late.

It has spread beyond the practiced rabble-rousers of the far right, and Democrats are exuberantly getting in on this unbecoming, corrosive game. For many years they bemoaned an unfair fight: Republicans were by and large willing to play faster, looser and flat-out nastier than they were. Is there as much credibility to that lament today?

Well, yeah, it would be nice if everybody were above-the-board, if people didn't resort to anonymous sources to spread political dirt, if the shoving matches between political candidates were fairly mediated or assessed by the media, and the like. A bit more of that and you might see politicians run cleaner campaigns.

But here's the thing: If you write a column wringing your hands over how Harry Reid is a big meany-pants who won't leave poor Mitt Romney alone, you're not part of the solution. Harry Reid may as well be turning a giant key in you back and setting you off to do his bidding, like clockwork. Your indignation doesn't bother Reid - he's not the one running for office. He wants you to keep the story alive and guess what, the more indignant you are, the more fire you breathe about how unfair he's being, the more you contribute to the continuation and prominence of the story.

Bruni refers to the allegation that Romney may not have paid taxes for a significant number of years as a "casual slander of Romney". By definition, a slander is a false statement that is harmful to somebody's reputation. Unless Bruni knows for a fact that Reid's statement is false, he is engaging in the same form of over-the-top rhetoric he is criticizing. Bruni's exaggerated response reinforces Reid's point - that he's happy to be proved wrong, but that can only be done if Romney releases his tax returns. Bruni would be better off making his argument from neutral ground - Reid's tactics are wrong even if it turns out that the substance of his remarks are correct.

A fair question: Is Reid's statement, true or false, harmful to Romney's reputation? Would anybody be surprised if Romney found a way to pay zero taxes - or even if he found a way to get tax refunds while raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in deferred compensation? Would anybody think less of him? I suspect not. I suspect that the Republican leaders who presently defend tax avoidance as an act of patriotism would double down on that argument and that the polls would remain pretty much where they are. As many Republicans have pointed out, we appear to be at a point where any harm to Romney is self-inflicted.

I don't mind columnists lamenting the decline of civility in politics, the lockstep partisanship that prevents Republicans from working with Democrats to address issues of serious public concern, how issues such as Romney's taxes are a distraction from what's really important - and in fact allow Romney to blow smoke and pretend it's serious policy, because political commentators are so focused on the horse race and "low blows" that, for the most part, they don't reserve any column space for actual analysis. But if you're one of the people in a position to shape the public debate, and you choose the horse race and back-and-forth as the priority for your analysis, you're playing right into the hands of the people you criticize. In Internet parlance, you're feeding the trolls.

Why Won't Romney Defend Outsourcing?

Under the guise of balance, Fred Hiatt's editorial board has produced an unsigned editorial that basically accuses President Obama of being a meany-pants to Mitt Romney, right down to the cheap tactic I commented on the other day, taking the most extreme comment by a low-level campaign staffer, and pretending that it's representative. Not that we should be surprised, because that tactic was employed by one of Hiatt's own columnists. Hiatt and his board complain,

According to the Obama campaign, Mr. Romney’s claim of non-involvement in the fateful three years can’t be squared with some sworn documents he signed that describe him as Bain’s chief after 1999.

You might think that their next move would be to explain the consistency - to explain why Romney's claim that he departed Bain in 1999 can be squared with the SEC filings he signed stating that he continued to serve as CEO, President and sole shareholder. Alas, no, you instead get the predictable resort to the staffer - a resort to ridicule - followed by huffing that the issue is not "serious" because the matter has not been referred to the Justice Department. I guess that's consistent with Hiatt's apparent view on everything from how the nation ends up at war to torture and indefinite imprisonment to the financial industry debacle - unless somebody goes to jail, it can't possibly be serious.

Hiatt's crew uses the term "squabbling", which isn't at all accurate. A squabble is an argument. There's no argument here. What we are instead seeing is the Obama campaign goading Mitt Romney, and Romney reacting in a manner that serves primarily to draw attention to the fact that he's not being honest. No, I don't mean that Romney's refusal to speak candidly about his exact ties with Bain means that he was in fact actively managing his company, nor that his refusal to disclose his tax returns means that he has engaged in financial misconduct. But it's reasonable to infer that a person who says "I have nothing to hide", who then refuses to document his claims, is in fact hiding something. Hiatt's crew is simply giving him cover.

It is reasonable to note that many of the columnists who work for the Post are right-wing partisans, serving up one hackish attack after another on the President. The fact that Hiatt doesn't mind the fact that the editorial and op/ed pages of his paper, print and electronic, are consistently full of childish attacks on the President from the likes of Jennifer Rubin, William Kristol, David Gerson, Kathleen Parker, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Mark Thiessen, Ed Rogers... well, it's pretty clear that his paper isn't actually concerned about attacks that are hyperbolic, "derivative" or unfair. How many column inches of unsigned editorial space has the editorial board devoted to pushing back against right-wing depictions of the President as a socialist - an accusation presently being pushed by some of its aforementioned columnists? How many inches to pushing back against Romney's absurd accusation that Obama went on an "apology tour"? Would that be... none? How about individually? Any?

One response Hiatt might give is that not enough people buy into those arguments. That despite their being pervasively pushed by the right, notions of Obama as a socialist, Mitt Romney's fabricated "apology tour", birtherism, and the like don't matter because nobody who is informed or knowledgeable will fall for them. Never mind that if the proponents of those attacks agreed they would find some other nonsense to push. But that suggests an editorial board less concerned with truth than with rushing to the defense of a candidate who they see as flailing, and it would seem like a pretty thin rationalization for not taking similarly strong positions against the many false accusations raised against the President. Must a candidate be visibly drowning before he gets this type of lifeline?

The Board then attempts to do what Romney is unwilling to do: it attempts to make a case for the upside of outsourcing and offshoring. First they claim that international outsourcing (offshoring) creates as many jobs as it destroys, omitting the caveats that some of the people displaced by outsourcing will not find work in the same sector (i.e., will need to retrain and will likely never again achieve their former level of income) and that the study begins in 2000 ends in 2007 a very limited window that largely corresponds with the housing bubble and ends before the "great recession". They also argue that as corporations invest in foreign enterprises, they also invest in their domestic operations (albeit at a much lower level).

Are you seeing the problem here? The Post does, offering a small amount of sympathy followed by a large dose of condescension for displaced workers:

Of course, such studies are cold comfort to people who lose jobs, even temporarily. American workers’ anxiety is understandable, and an inclination to seek scapegoats in the executive suite, or overseas, is not surprising.

The condescension continues,

It is unsettling to realize that we are vulnerable to the same vicissitudes of international commerce with which other peoples have been coping for decades.

Is the editorial board seriously suggesting that Romney make that argument? It would be awkward enough for Romney to argue that outsourcing is a necessary evil in the global marketplace, helping to keep companies competitive both domestically and internationally, sometimes discretionary but in today's world often necessary, with the unfortunate effect that some workers will be displaced and blue collar wages will be significantly and permanently reduced. First, the populations of displaced workers who cannot find jobs or whose earning capacity has been permanently reduced are not going to buy into the conceit of "You win some, you lose some" or "It may be that the executives of your company got richer than ever while firing you and shipping your job to Asia, but don't go scapegoating them." Second, displaced workers are not going to respond well to the argument that "People in the developing world have suffered from low wages and job insecurity for many years, and they cope - why can't you?"

The editorial board lectures,

The president knows that the globalization of markets, including the market for labor, is irreversible, which is why he hasn’t proposed policies even remotely commensurate with his campaign’s alarmism. Rather, he’s for boosting education and infrastructure and tweaking the taxation of multinational firms’ foreign profits. If anyone has sounded protectionist, it’s Mr. Romney, who has promised to risk a trade conflict with China by labeling that country a currency manipulator.

What alarmism? His campaign has challenged Romney to explain how his record at Bain qualifies him to be President, and Romney has not been able to do so. His campaign challenged Romney to explain Bain's role in outsourcing jobs, and rather than explaining the economics of outsourcing or how it helped Bain's investments he's been whining, "That wasn't me, that was some other guy." That's pretty much it.

Meanwhile, no, Romney is not about to start a trade war with China. Even if they're unaware of the underlying facts, or don't care to point them out to Romney, I doubt that there's a person on the editorial board who doesn't recognize Romney's demagoguery for what it is.

You know what Romney could do? He could say, "You know what? The President and I are in agreement on outsourcing. We both know that it's a reality, there are sound economic reasons for outsourcing, and that it brings some genuine good to our society along with the bad. The President and I agree that we should help workers who are displaced by outsourcing and try to find ways to rebuild and maintain a strong middle class." But... he won't.

At the end, I'm reminded of my reaction to Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson - that the board is feigning disdain at a "squabble", oblivious to the fact that their part of the problem. But who knows - perhaps they're reveling in that fact. As their roster of right-wing columnists attests, they're not concerned with fairness and objectivity, and are happy to publish below-the-belt attacks. After all, if it sells papers, columns and page views, they make money.

In an ideal world, the president and his challenger would acknowledge that “creative destruction” is part of what helps an economy grow, while discussing the most cost-effective means of limiting and healing workers’ short-run pain. Alas, we don’t live in that world.

"Alas," says the paper that's part of the problem.

Dirty Politics and Partisanship

Uh oh, Michael Gerson has discovered that politicians are being mean to each other, and he's condemnatory. Why, look how offended he is by:

• The smear campaign, attributed to Karl Rove, that a politician with a long history of charitable work for abused children is a pedophile.

• The push poll, suggesting that John McCain had an African-American daughter, benefiting Gerson's ex-boss, George W. Bush.

• Whisper campaigns of the sort attributed to Karl Rove, that political opponents are gay.

• The false attacks on John Kerry by "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," which again benefited Gerson's boss while inspiring a new word for sleazy campaign tactics.

• Attacks on President Obama as a "socialist".

• Circulating flyers in churches, calling John McCain the "fag candidate", and suggesting that voters who didn't want homosexuals in the administration should vote for Bush.

• Attacks on President Obama's religious faith, suggesting that he's a secret adherent of "black liberation theology".¹

• Attacks on President Obama as "palling around with terrorists".

• False suggestions that the Obama Administration is anti-Catholic. (Oops.)

• False suggestions that the President was born in Kenya and isn't a legitimate President.

• President Obama's suggestion that Mitt Romney's record at Bain does not qualify him for the White House.

Note, I'm omitting the various wacko smears and conspiracy theories used to attack Clinton, as Gerson wasn't writing during that period and is a creature of the Bush/Rove machine. But I don't expect I would have much more luck finding Gerson expressing moral outrage that Clinton's political opponents were suggesting that he was guilty not only of financial impropriety, no matter what the facts turned out to be, but of murder.

Seriously, it's very difficult to find examples of Gerson actually arguing against dirty campaign tactics. Part of that could be self-interest, as it would not have done his career any good for Gerson to tell his boss, and his boss's "brain", that their campaign tactics were deplorable. Or it could be that he simply doesn't notice or care what's going on in the southbound lane.

It's fair to note that for a guy who supposedly wants a return to more mannered political campaigns, Gerson has been happy to ally himself with the worst of the attack gods, and for that matter at times to join their chorus. "Obama's not a bigot - but he surrounds himself with (anti-white) bigots". "He's arrogant and patronizing", an "elitist", an intellectual lightweight.² But when it comes to disavowing sleazy tactics directed against the President or other Democratic politicians, Gerson's silence is deafening. Look what happens when he's put on the spot, and unable to avoid addressing the false suggestion that Obama is "secretly a Muslim",

I think that this is a reflection of polarization. It is a reflection of a conspiratorial tendency on the Internet, which is true on left and right, by the way.

You see, just like whispers that a candidate is a pedophile or has an illegitimate African American child, there's no way such rumors could be planned, orchestrated and advanced by politicians, their supporters and campaign staff. The best explanation is that it's the Internet's fault. Yeah, that's it. And both sides do it.

And so I you know, I think and it's not but is not historically unprecedented. If you look back, people accused Know-Nothings accused Abraham Lincoln of being a secret Catholic, OK? People accused Franklin Roosevelt of being a Jew, OK, because with policies that he pursued.

There is a long history in America of people using these kind of attacks. But it was disturbing then and it's disturbing now.

And these attacks are disturbing, but they're really no different from the attacks that have occurred throughout American political history. It's disturbing but when you look at the big picture, no biggie, you know?

Well, it puts the president in a different position. You know, to object to this makes it sound like being, you know, of this faith is somehow objectionable, which it isn't. So, it's he shouldn't, I don't think, change, you know, carry a big Bible around. That would be deeply cynical, and he's not going to do that. The good book says, you should pray in a closet. That's, I think, pretty good political advice.

Tongue-tied and twisted. What else can I find? The "Obama's not a patriot because he doesn't wear a flag pin" argument? Gerson tells us it's not that Obama isn't a patriot - he doesn't wear a flag pin because he's a condescending snob.

It is now possible to imagine Obama at a cocktail party with Kerry, Al Gore and Michael Dukakis, sharing a laugh about gun-toting, Bible-thumping, flag-pin-wearing, small-town Americans.

In other words, Gerson is more than happy to be part of the smear machine when it's advancing his own political goals and agenda.

Gerson, predictably, feigns offense at the "polarization" created by President Obama's criticisms of Bain, and then it's all claws and venom:

Whatever his intentions or provocations, Obama is now engaged in partisan polarization on an industrial scale. His campaign’s latest round of Bain charges is not politics as usual. It is the accusation of criminal impropriety — the filing of false government documents — without real evidence, as various fact-checking outfits have attested. Obama’s recent attack ad, “Firms,” reflects the sensibilities of a particularly nasty 13-year-old. It is difficult to imagine most Americans saying: “That’s just what American politics most needs — more juvenile viciousness.”

Well, the evidence of the filing of false government documents would be that Romney is claiming to have "retired" from Bain several years before he stopped reporting himself to the SEC as President, CEO and sole owner. Gerson also deliberately overstates his case, pulling in the most outrageous statement made by anybody associated with the Obama campaign and pretending it's representative.

If I ignore Gerson's over-the-top rhetoric, he does make a valid point. Just as with the suggestion that Bill Clinton was guilty of fraud and murder, it's pretty extreme to accuse somebody of criminal activity when you don't believe that the charge will be substantiated, let alone that the person will be prosecuted. Unlike Gerson, I'm more concerned about conspiracy theories that don't die, or that are advanced for weeks, months or years by a political campaign that knows them to be false, than I am with an off-hand comment by a low-level campaign staffer. But I guess if you approach the argument with any amount of perspective it becomes harder to bash the President in the name of comity.

These are not excesses; they are the essence of Obama’s current political strategy. He is attempting to destroy Romney before Romney can define himself, while using a series of issues — the mini-DREAM Act, voting rights and contraceptive controversies — to excite his base. The approach is not politically irrational. But it is premised on the avoidance of issues such as unemployment and the deficit. And it leaves little room for complaints about the brokenness of Washington.

Why, it's almost as if they looked at the tactics of political operatives like Karl Rove, or politicians like George W. Bush, and said, "If we define our opponent, even if unfairly, we can win an election we might otherwise lose". Is Gerson's fit of pique, then, that the Democrats have studied at the feet of the masters, such as his former boss? That as dubious as the tactics are, they're actually pulling this off in a cleaner, more honest manner than one would have seen from a G.W. Bush or Karl Rove? Because it's really difficult to believe that Gerson was blithely writing speeches for G.W. without ever noticing his boss's tactics.

But these tactics do have an effect on politics. The most partisan Democrats are encouraged and empowered. The most partisan Republicans gain an excuse for the next escalation. This is the nature of polarization: Both sides feel victimized, which becomes a justification to cross past limits and boundaries. Neither side feels responsible for the problem, while both contribute to it.

It's difficult to argue with that. By dragging politics into the sewer, politicians like George W. Bush, operatives like Karl Rove and enablers like Michael Gerson set us up for a continuation and escalation of the problem. Except for some reason, in this context, Gerson isn't stammering that this is not really any different than what we've seen throughout the history of the nation's political campaigns, or that we should blame the Internet.

Funny, this,

Obama and his political team have a history of viewing themselves as superior to Washington and the “Beltway mentality.” The president combines a feeling of superiority to politics with a determination to beat his opponents at their own grubby game. It allows him to view himself as a pure, transformative figure while employing the tactics of a Chicago pol.

Gerson opens with the arrogance smear he's been pushing for years. He then states that the President is using the tactics of his opponents - that is, Gerson is stating that the "grubby" tactics he deplores when used by Obama are the intellectual property of the Republican Party. And that means that Obama is "employing the tactics of a Chicago pol", never mind that he just told us that Obama is using the tactics of the Republican Party.

And that "Chicago pol" thing? That's a smear that Republicans have been directing at Obama since he arrived on the political scene, a favorite of the worst of the hacks. Perhaps Michael Gerson can point me to a time when he has pushed back against the smear before giving it his full embrace? Or am I more likely to find the opposite?

Does Gerson actually deplore dirty politics? Truly, even if I were to ignore his role in the Bush Presidency, and say, "It was just a job - perhaps he held his nose a lot and hated what he and his colleagues were doing," I would have a difficult time believing that Gerson is sincere. Because no man who gushes about Karl Rove,

Rove's main influence on the Republican Party has not been a series of tactical innovations but a series of strategic arguments. In this way, Rove is the opposite of a cynical political operator.

can credibly claim that he dislikes sleazy, dirty political campaigns. It seems much more reasonable to infer that what people like Gerson hate is when the other side appears to be gaining the upper hand.

Update: I guess I should note that David Brooks apparently got the same party memo as Gerson and is in full blown hack mode. Brooks intentionally misrepresents the Obama campaign as attacking capitalism, when he knows full well that the actual attack is on Romney's claim that his experience leading Bain qualifies him to be President.

If Romney stumbled through the primary campaign and right wing attacks on his "vulture capitalism", it doesn't speak highly of him that he still has not formulated a response to the criticism of his background as a qualification for the White House.
---------------
1. Gerson did write a condescending column, asserting that Rev. Jeremiah Wright is an adherent of black liberation theology and suggest that if the President was not aware of that he must have been sleeping through the services he attended. He fastidiously avoided stating, "I don't think the President holds these beliefs."

2. Gerson writes,

But it is hard to avoid the feeling that Obama has gained the nomination without fully earning it. Unlike Clinton or Bush, his intellectual contributions have been slight. The wave he rides may take him far -- but he is not determining its direction.

Seriously?

Unfair Attacks in Political Campaigns

Do you know why politicians use unfair attacks in political campaigns? Why they avoid substantive issues while attempting to distort their opponent's record?

Because it works.

There's debate over whether the Swift Boat attack ads cost John Kerry the election, but there's little question but that those attacks, coupled with Kerry's delay in responding, seemingly arising from his misplaced trust that the media would dismiss the attacks as absurd, seriously harmed his public image.

The attacks on Kerry gave birth to the term, "swiftboating", the use of untrue allegations to attack your opponent's character and record. There was actually nothing new there, and if you look at some of the campaign treachery attributed to the kings of dirty politics such as Karl Rove, you will find lesser-known and less-remembered attacks that were as bad or worse.

But we're really talking about a matter of degree. It's a rare campaign where character is not an issue, with the individual candidates attempting to advance themselves as people of virtue, boasting of impeccable credentials, while suggesting at best that their opponent is less qualified.

Sometimes ignoring the attack works. Either the attack strikes the wrong note with the voters such that they don't care, or the accusation is "old news" by the time an election rolls around. G.W. Bush's history in the National Guard stands as an example. Do I know to what degree the allegations about string-pulling to get him in, his lackadaisical performance, or the circumstances of his discharge are true? No. I can suspect what happened based upon Bush's choice to remain silent and to prevent disclosure of his records, but I can't know. It didn't matter, because people weren't voting for Bush based upon his military record and largely accepted that pulling strings to get out of military service in Vietnam was not a big deal.

In the past, when discussing dirty politics, I've used the analogy of throwing spaghetti - you play around until you find something that sticks, something that resonates, and run with it. And yes, in today's politics that means identifying your opponent's strengths and poking and prodding them until you find a point of weakness, then pushing as hard as you can. The most fair, most honest attacks can fall flat. And unfair, dishonest attacks - swiftboating - can prove highly effective.

Right now we're seeing the Obama campaign push hard on Romney's record with Bain Capital, something Romney has made the cornerstone of his qualification to be President. A few years ago he had Romenycare and Bain, but Romney has been on a multi-year sprint away from his record as Governor of Massachusetts. Now it's just Bain. Romney is trying to push back, but so far his efforts have not been successful. The current attacks are resonating both with voters and with pundits who, even if they publicly deplore the attacks, can't seem to stop talking about them.

Are the attacks fair? I personally do think it's reasonable to argue that if you're characterizing yourself as President, CEO, and sole shareholder of a company, even if you're on a "leave of absence" you need to accept responsibility for what your company does. Romney is more than happy to claim credit for anything positive that is associated with Bain, not just for the period of his employment but through the present. But whenever you shine the light on the dark side of his company, he was "on a leave of absence" or "retired". Particularly given his past statements suggesting post-"retirement" involvement with Bain and its acquisitions, it appears that he can no longer have it both ways.

At the same time, I suspect that if Romney were to disclose his tax records, they would show that some of the criticisms are unfair or exaggerated. But I suspect that they would also paint a picture of Romney - of his wealth, of the trickery he uses to avoid taxes, of the various games ultra-rich people play - would do more harm to his image than attempting to weather the current round of attacks. I have heard it suggested that Romney's camp believes the cure would be worse than the disease - that to release his tax returns would paint a picture of a privileged elitist, documenting and potentiall taking massive tax deductions - well beyond what most families earn in a year - for just one of his many horses.

I prefer clean, above-board campaigns... I'm just not sure where to find one. So in this world I have to settle for being critical of dishonest campaigns and of the media's failure to try to ferret out the truth, while also accepting that being the focus of some dirty tricks is part of our process. I don't think it's every appropriate to exploit voter racism with false innuendo about a candidate or his family, or that a campaign can justify such tactics as falsely implying that a candidate who does charitable or humanitarian work with children is a pedophile. When something like that happens, I would like to see the media ferret out the truth and, should it be a political opponent, hold that person's feet to the fire. In the context of President Obama, it's an appalling failure of the mainstream media that somebody could be a "birther" and be taken seriously as a political candidate or commentator.

I would have been more sympathetic to John Kerry had he pushed back on the Swift Boat lies before they gained traction, but I do sympathize with the fact that once they gained traction the truth no longer mattered. Yes, the media does bear some responsibility, not only for failing to investigate or report known facts, but also for covering and perhaps giggling along with such "jokes" as the "purple heart" bandages. Of caring more about the horse race than the truth, of confusing "he said, she said" coverage with balance.

I admit that I'm uncomfortable with the tactic of implying something about your opponent that you suspect is not true "because it works", but I'm more sympathetic when it's the sort of innuendo I've already described than when it's something the candidate has the power to refute. I suspect that G.W.'s non-disclosure of his National Guard records was due to their revealing embarrassing details of privilege and string-pulling, with the gradual subsequent disclosures being "old news". Things did reach the point where a lot of records were released but, you know, aw, shucks.

And yes, I'll be a lot more sympathetic to your position if you're squeaky clean. If you're truly trying to rise above the fray, run a clean campaign, focus on the issues. If you're going to take potshots at your opponent, directly or through proxies, wink at claims and attacks you know are unfair or untrue, refuse to refute or stand against scurrilous attacks, don't cry to me when your opponent takes off the gloves. But guys, gloves or no, do try to keep it above the belt.

Update: I didn't have to wait very long for an illustration. If you want to complain, directly and through your proxies, that your opponent is being unfair to you, I will not weep for you if your very next move (consistent with any number of your prior moves) is to tell bald-faced lies about your opponent's on-the-record statements.

Protecting Romney from Criticism of Bain

Have you ever been in a car with somebody, waiting to pass an accident scene, while they observe that the traffic accident is not obstructing the road and that the only reason traffic is slow is because of the gawkers? And then, as they pass the accident, they themselves are distracted to the point that they don't notice that the car in front of them has driven on and they're now the gawker causing the slowdown?

The beltway pundits who call for more polite, mannered political campaigns remind me of that sort of driver. Actually, some of them seem a bit worse - some of them would stop their car in the roadway, get out, and share their opinions on the seriousness of the accident and whether it merited gawking, and offer running commentary about the other drivers passing the scene, oblivious to the fact that they've become part of the problem.

When the accident is cleared, they might recite that they're happy that it's over, but they'll keep bringing it up until the next accident comes along, and even then it may become a point of comparison. In many cases they'll talk incessantly about an accident in the northbound lane and, when you point out another accident, they'll express that accidents in the southbound lane are completely different.

Today, Robert Samuelson offers a lot of hand-wringing over problems in the northbound traffic lane, deploring what he calls "character assassination on the campaign trail". I don't follow Samuelson closely, so I am ready to stand corrected if he has in fact deplored past attacks on President Obama - Joe Wilson's outburst at the State of the Union Address, Justice Scalia's outburst from the bench, the entire "birther" phenomenon (Romney's contribution), absurd accusations that he's a socialist (in Romney's softened version, Obama "takes his political inspiration from Europe, from the socialist-democrats in Europe."), attacks on his religion, both his actual Christian faith and his imagined Muslim faith.... If Samuelson has ever demonstrated the slightest bit concerned about any of those acts of character assassination, I'm afraid I missed it.

But, oh, his heart melts for his friends in the financial industry.

Obama practices a cheap populism. He seems to presume that the complexities of the ACA and his repeated attacks on business (on oil companies, insurance companies, banks, hedge funds, private-equity funds and “the rich” in general) have no effect on the climate for investment or job creation. This is dubious.

It should be noted that Samuelson provides no context for any of this "repeated attacks", no quotes, no links. He also provides no evidence that any of President Obama's so-called attacks have resulted in any changes of policy, any economic impact, anything at all. "Dubious"? That's the best Samuelson can do? He thinks that substitutes for facts and evidence? I am aware that certain extremely wealthy people have complained that the President isn't sufficiently nice and deferential to them, and dares to suggest that they might bear some responsibility for the financial crisis and state of the economy. Samuelson apparently agrees with that. But when I look for what the President has actually said I find statements like this:

The tax cuts I’m proposing we get rid of are tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires; tax breaks for oil companies and hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners.

It would be nice if we could keep every tax break there is, but we’ve got to make some tough choices here if we want to reduce our deficit. And if we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we’ve got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship. That means we’ve got to stop funding certain grants for medical research. That means that food safety may be compromised. That means that Medicare has to bear a greater part of the burden. Those are the choices we have to make.

Or this:

While full recovery of the financial system will take a great deal more time and work, the growing stability resulting from these interventions means we're beginning to return to normalcy. But here's what I want to emphasize today: Normalcy cannot lead to complacency.

Unfortunately, there are some in the financial industry who are misreading this moment. Instead of learning the lessons of Lehman and the crisis from which we're still recovering, they're choosing to ignore those lessons. I'm convinced they do so not just at their own peril, but at our nation's. So I want everybody here to hear my words: We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess that was at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses. Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.

Does Samuelson have another, secret example of the President being mean? Because although I can characterize the elimination of tax breaks for corporate jets as symbolic, it's more than fair to suggest that calls for sacrifice should not stop with the middle class. Yet Samuelson sees that as an attack on "the rich"? Does Samuelson see a call for the end of subsidies as an attack on oil companies? An accurate assessment of the position taken by some within the financial industry, that the bailout signaled a right to return to business as usual, LIBOR fraud, reckless trading, manipulation of commodities prices, and the like, is an attack on "banks, hedge funds" and the like? Sadly, I expect so.

I'll present a counter-point from Paul Krugman:

In the wake of a devastating financial crisis, President Obama has enacted some modest and obviously needed regulation; he has proposed closing a few outrageous tax loopholes; and he has suggested that Mitt Romney’s history of buying and selling companies, often firing workers and gutting their pensions along the way, doesn’t make him the right man to run America’s economy.

Wall Street has responded — predictably, I suppose — by whining and throwing temper tantrums. And it has, in a way, been funny to see how childish and thin-skinned the Masters of the Universe turn out to be. Remember when Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group compared a proposal to limit his tax breaks to Hitler’s invasion of Poland? Remember when Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase characterized any discussion of income inequality as an attack on the very notion of success?

And I'll let you wager about which of the two gets invited to the billionaires' cocktail parties. As Krugman put it,

But here’s the thing: If Wall Streeters are spoiled brats, they are spoiled brats with immense power and wealth at their disposal. And what they’re trying to do with that power and wealth right now is buy themselves not just policies that serve their interests, but immunity from criticism.

Fear not, young bankers, Robert J. Samuelson has your back.

Why is Samuelson suddenly so concerned about "character assassination"? Why is he suddenly willing to advance the silly argument that the President's occasional, seemingly consistently accurate, statements about tax distribution and the financial industry, are somehow the cause of a slow recovery? It's pretty obvious: the President's reelection team is targeting Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital for criticism, and those attacks appear to be working.

Samuelson is on the record about "character assassination," true or untrue, fair or unfair, in elections:

We have entered an era of constitutional censorship. Hardly anyone wants to admit this -- the legalized demolition of the First Amendment would seem shocking -- and so hardly anyone does. The evidence, though, abounds. The latest is the controversy over the anti-Kerry ads by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and parallel anti-Bush ads by Democratic "527" groups such as MoveOn.org. Let's assume (for argument's sake) that everything in these ads is untrue. Still, the United States' political tradition is that voters judge the truthfulness and relevance of campaign arguments. We haven't wanted our political speech filtered.

That is, unless it's working for the other side better than it's working for our own, in which case it's, "Look at that horrible accident in the northbound lane!"

Update: The substance of Samuelson's attacks on Obama, which were peripheral to the discussion above, have been ably tackled by Dean Baker.

Update 2: If Samuelson is concerned that Obama's occasional, accurate rhetoric is going to devastate the economic recovery by hurting the feelings of bankers, oh, how he must hate the facts.