The Debatable Land

Romney gets "down" with his peeps...

Just because I've not been posting much this month doesn't mean I've forgotten how ghastly Mitt Romney is. The gruesome Mitt was at it again recently as this report makes only too clear:

As he posed for a picture with a group of young people, the typically old-fashioned Romney was relaxed enough to quote from a popular hit single from a few years back.

“Who let the dogs out?” he called out, as he stood there beaming in his shirt and tie. “Who! Who!”

Be warned, the video is painful-yet-magnificent:

Merry Christmas Mitt...

Of course, one is supposed to despair at this sort of negative campaigning even when, as in this case, it is directed against a candidate one loathes. But, really, I take my hat off to whomever came up with the idea to send South Carolina Republicans fake Christmas cards purporting to be from Mitt Romney.

The text, taken from the first Book of Nephi (part of the Mormon bible) reads: "And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the great city of Jerusalem and also other cities. And I beheld the city of Nazareth, and in the city of Nazareth I beheld a virgin and she was exceedingly fair and white".

Best of all, however, is a line from the Mormon "apostle" Orson Pratt, printed on the back of the card that says:
"We have now clearly shown that God the father had a plurality of wives, one or more being eternity by whom he begat our spirits as well as the spirit of Jesus, his first born, and another being upon the earth by whom he begat the tabernacle of Jesus, as his only begotten in this world."

According to CNN a Romney spokesman said: "It is sad and unfortunate that this kind of deception and trickery has been employed. There is absolutely no place for it in American politics."

Of course not. There is nothing wrong with Mitt Romney's deception and fakery however. That's just standard campaign operating procedure.

For more on South Carolina shenanigans, see this entertaining Mike Crowley piece which begins:

Shortly before a Republican presidential primary debate in Columbia, South Carolina, this last May, several conservative activists in the state received mysterious envelopes in the mail. The letters arrived anonymously, each one containing an eight-page document, a typewritten manifesto with a pseudo-academic title: "Mormons in Contemporary American Society: A Politically Dangerous Religion?" The letters depicted Mormonism as based on "hoaxes" and ridiculed the church's founder, Joseph Smith, as a "gold digger turned prophet. " The mailing also provocatively dubbed Smith "the Mohammed of the West." "Like the prophet of Islam," it said, "Smith founded his religion upon prophecies and revelations which commanded him to become a polygamist and warlord. Many centuries apart, these two men became the focal point of large religions that blurred the lines between religion, war, domestic life and politics."

But - gasp! - this is bigotry isn't it? And anti-Mormon prejudice has to be as pernicious as ant-anything else bigotry? Well, yes of course it is. And yet not all religions are created equal. Or rather there's nothing that requires the outsider to treat them with equal seriousness, respect or reverence. Alas, like Scientology, Mormonism has not been around long enough to divest itself of the suspicion that it began life as an enormous confidence trick and, more importantly, it remains the case that Mitt Romney made his faith part of the campaign, not me or any of his other critics.

[Hat=tip: Eve Fairbanks]

But how can you be sure?

Mitt Romney, leader of men, sage of our time:

"I believe, of course, that there are thousands of people who are not of faith who are moral."

[Hat-tip: Mr Larison, who also points out that a) Roger Cohen has a confused view of history and b) sub-editors at the New York Times know no better.]

You mean Jesus lived here in America?

The nice folks at Comedy Central email to say they've put a whole bunch of South Park Does Mormonism cartoons online. Just the ticket to entertain you on a cold winter afternoon.

See the rest of them here

What an embarrassment!

Mitt's Mightiest Fan, K-Lo, on the speech:

I think a non-talking-head American watching the speech might be embarrassed at the thought that any American might be asked to prove he's qualified to be president despite his religion.

Really? What if the candidate were a Scientologist? Or a Jehovah's Witness? Or, shudder, a Muslim? I think most Americans would demand to know more about that candidate's religious views in those circumstances. I think Kathryn would too. Equally, it seems entirely proper that Huckabee's belief in Creationism be weighed when assessing his candidacy.

If you believe religious faith is a necessary condition for the Presidency - and clearly many people, including K-Lo and Romney, do - then that faith must be a matter for discussion. Otherwise it's rather like demanding that the GOP nominee be a conservative but then ruling off-limits any discussion of his type of conservatism.

Romney's Unsurprisingly Terrible Speech

Mitt Romney's "Mormon" speech must have been awful; Chris Matthews loved it. Clearly, I'm not the target audience for this sort of thing so it's perhaps unsurprising that I found it entirely unpersuasive and, in places, quite appalling. Some immediate thoughts...

It was nice of Governor Romney to concede that jihadist terrorists are "worse" than Europeans who don't share the American brand of religion, but really it's insulting for him to even make the comparison. I didn't know we were also the enemy. Even if the terrorists are "infinitely worse" it's significant that the two be bracketed together as examples of the twin perils facing America.

Others are better placed to comment upon the theological aspects of this speech, but Romney's apparent belief that all religions are just the same here does endorse an odd element of the modern day American religious experience: doctrine is immaterial, all that matters is that you believe in God.

"I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I am always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life's blessings.

But at some point this happy-clappy sentiment must curdle into nonsense: when did choosing a religion become no more significant than choosing a football team? At some level protestants have to believe that Roman Catholics are seriously misguided, otherwise there's precious little point in being, well, a protestant. Unless one is of the view that Mormonism involves the hoodwinking of 12 million people who've signed up to follow what was originally a lunatic personality cult, then the true Mormon must, at some level, believe that protestants and catholics are followers of an incomplete faith. If that's not the case, then whats the point of Mormonism?

As for a religious test? Well, please. Romney clearly believes there is one: you could not, reading this speech, be an unbeliever and run for President. Again, Romney's insistence that all faiths be admitted into what he grandiosely termed a "symphony of faith" leaves no room for the skeptic or the unbeliever.

Then there's this, taken from the excerpts released in advance of his speech:

“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”

This is nonsense on stilts, as even a cursory examination of Saudi Arabia or the Netherlands might reveal. But again, it's interesting to note that Romney must - if there's any logic or consistency to his views - believe that freedom is withering in Europe. Yet it's also the case that many, perhaps most, American conservatives believe that Europeans are far too tolerant of religion - at least when that religion is islam. So which is it?

Then there's this terribly confused passage:

“We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

Well, since polls show that an atheist has no chance of becoming President I think we may say that the threat posed by a militant secularism is over-played. But if religion has a place in public life - by which one may fairly mean the affairs of state - it is hard to see quite where Romney plans to divide church from state. Then again, he can't: after all this speech was supposed to convince skeptics that everything Romney does is motivated by his religious convictions (you just shouldn't ask him what those convictions are: that would be mean and unfair and un-American, you see. though if you think Romney would extend that courtesy to, say, a Muslim candidate then you're a generous person...)

Anyway, if secularism is a religion then apparently it's the only one that isn't welcome to play in the symphony of faith.

O tempora, o mores of course: not for the first time, one pines for Ronald Reagan's speeches. The Gipper of course wasn't much of a believer himself - though he said the right words - but he never thought he had to compensate for this by demanding a religious test for candidates for office the way Romney has done this morning.

I fear, mind you, that Romney may benefit from this speech even as I rather agree with those who said he should never have given it.

Romney's Faith-Based Problem

What should Mitt Romney say in his impossible-to-live-up-to-the-hype speech in Texas tomorrow? Noah Millman puts some fine words into the governor's mouth here:

“This is the place.”

That’s what Brigham Young said when he came to the valley of the Great Salt Lake for the first time. I don’t know if he heard him say it, but my grandfather’s grandfather was there, so he might have. The man who had led his people through the wilderness had come to the spot where he, and they, would build their permanent homes.

It’s a great American story. A group of hardy pioneers, setting off westward to find a place where they could live according to their consciences and reap the fruit of their own labor. But it’s a unique story, too, because my ancestors weren’t leaving Europe to make their new life. They were leaving America.

Forty nine years – seven weeks of years – after Brigham Young spoke those words, when the Utah territory became the state of Utah, my grandparents’ generation became fully party of the United States of America again. And that’s another great American story: how a group of people on the margins of society were welcomed back into the bosom of the land that gave them birth.

I have been asked, more times than I can count, by more people than I can remember, as I’ve crossed and re-crossed this great country on my campaign, what do I believe? Well, there are a lot of ways I could answer that. I could talk about the power of prayer, to heal broken bodies and broken marriages. I could talk about my wife of thirty-seven years, and the love and devotion we share. And those answers would be absolutely true, and would tell you a lot about me. But there’s a more important answer, just as true, that matters much more to this campaign.

I believe in America.

Count me among the people who need no anti-Mormon prejudice for their dislike of Romney. I mean, really, it's harsh to blame him for something he can't do very much about when there are so many other perfectly sound reasons for being creeped out by his robotic phoneyness.

It's Romney's misfortune that the personality cult to which he subscribes is only 170 years old, a sort of 19th century Scientology that, rather unfortunately, sometimes seems to be the sort of thing that could have been made up by Monty Python. What, you mean John Cleese didn't narrate the audiobook version of The Pearl of Great Price? And don't even get started on the underwear... 

Mitt's Mormon Moment

Daniel Larison explains why Mitt Romney's speech on "religious liberty" on Thursday is going to be a tricky balancing act:

His speech will have to go something like this: “My faith, which is very important to me and has made me who I am, should not be important to you, but it is important that we have a person of faith leading this country, and that person happens to be me.”

It is Romney's misfortune that many Americans wonder if he actually belongs to a cult. Doubtless he feels this is unfair, but he could comfort himself by reflecting that he could be labouring under a much more grievous burden: he could be an atheist*.

Besides, Romney has no-one to blame but himself. When a candidate declares that "We need a person of faith to run this country" it is entirely reasonable for the public to ask, "Well, mate, what do you believe in then? And why?"

*Or a smoker**

**I had a higher opinion of Obama before he decided to quit tobacco...

Romney's Plan for Washington

Andy Ferguson's article on the ghastliness of presidential campaign books isn't quite vintage Ferguson. for one thing he ignores the awkward fact that by all accounts Barack Obama did actually write his own book, something which is far from the worst reason for supporting him. Still, Ferguson's account of Mitt Romney's Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games is another welcome reminder of Mitt's Gruesomeness:

Turnaround looks like a business book, reads like a business book, and is as boring as a business book, stomped flat by excruciating accounts of sales pitches, budget meetings, brainstorming sessions, PowerPoint presentations, and marketing strategies. The dream that a businessman might someday seize the reins of American government and force it to work according to the most American of pursuits--making money--is apparently eternal. Over the last 20 years the public's bizarre flirtations with Lee Iacocca, Ross Perot, and Peter Ueberroth have attested to the dream's appeal. 

Turnaround is Romney's bid to exploit this frustrated and misguided constituency himself. Just as Huckabee would like to squeeze politics into the categories of pop therapy, Romney hopes to apply the principles of corporate management to politics: "At All Costs, Protect the Brand." "Never Underestimate the Value of Your Product." "Rivalry Breeds Interest." "Communicate the Vision." "Challenge the Team to Stretch." There are a dozen more. If they worked for Romney, they can work for you--and for America. It also helps if you look like Bob Barker.

Entertainingly Ferguson's piece appears in The Weekly Standard a week after Fred Barne' suggested in the same magazine that whatever the shortcomings of the most recent MBA President, Romney is the real deal who deserves to succeed his Harvard classmate and become America's first proper CEO President. According to Barnes:

Romney is not primarily a politician. He's a successful corporate executive with a second career in politics--a second career similar to Ronald Reagan's. He still slips into business consultant lingo, talking (at least to me) about "the breakthrough insight" and a person's "skill set" and "the selection, motivation, and guidance of people."

Barnes, it should be said, seems to view this as a good thing. Indeed, Barnes' entire piece explaining why Romney would be the Best President in the Whole World is based upon Romney's revolutionary idea that it can be a good idea to hear two sides of a discussion before making a decision. This is the sort of vision America - and the world - needs...

And yet the worst of it is that despite this impressive attempt to demonstrate his ghastliness it is possible that Romney is not in fact the worst of the leading Republican contenders...

Giuliani and Romney: Heroic Warriors and Leaders of Men

Mitt Romney was so desperate to serve his country in the late 1960s that rather than go to Vietnam (as he so  very much wanted to) he was compelled to spend years in France as a Mormon missionary. But what about Rudy Giuliani? Glenn Greenwald has a useful reminder:

Romney's draft-avoidance isn't quite as shameful as Super Tough Guy Rudy Giuliani's, whose deferment request was denied in 1969, thus placing him at imminent risk of being drafted, when he somehow convinced the federal judge for whom he was clerking "to write to the draft board, asking them to grant him a fresh deferment and reclassification as an 'essential' civilian employee." The very idea that a first-year judicial clerk, just out law school, is "essential" for anything is absurd on its face. Yet the swaggering tough guy Rudy Giuliani used that blatant lie to ensure that someone other than himself was sent to fight in Vietnam.

Now as it happens I don't think that what a young man did nearly 40 years ago should necessarily disqualify him from the Presidency (not when there are so many other, more recent, reasons!) but it is worth remembering that poor old Bill Clinton was hammered time and time again for his draft-dodging. That being the case Messrs Romney and Giuliani can hardly complain if they receive a measure of the same treatment.

Still, even talking about Vietnam reminds one that perhaps the most persuasive part of Andrew Sullivan's argument for Barack Obama is that an Obama Presidency would finally move us all on from the Vietnam and Baby Boomer era.

The unmitigated ghastliness of Mitt Romney

I highly recommend Ryan Lizza's dissection of Mitt Romney's campaign in the current issue of The New Yorker. If, after eight years of presidential overstretch, you're looking for a period of calm and a President who might adopt a more restrained view of what he might be able to achieve, might I suggest that a pandering, hyper-competitive management consultant is exactly the sort of obsessive tinkerer you would not want to elect?

Lizza sums up some of what makes Romney frightful in a single delicious paragraph that in a better world would torpedo and sink Romney on its own:

Politicians tend to pander, especially during the primary season. Romney’s chief opponent, Rudy Giuliani, also has a history as a pro-gun-control, pro-gay-rights Republican. But while Giuliani simply downplays his record on those issues, Romney sells himself as a true convert. He not only shifts positions; he often claims to be the most passionate advocate of his new stances. It’s one of the reasons that his metamorphosis from liberal Republican to committed right-winger seems so jarring. In 1994, in his race for the Senate, he didn’t simply argue that he was a defender of gay rights; he claimed to be a stronger advocate than his opponent, Edward Kennedy. Today, he’s not just a faithful conservative but the only Republican candidate who represents “the Republican wing of the Republican Party.” He brings a salesman’s bravado and certainty to issues. At a debate in May, when asked how he would respond to a hypothetical situation involving the interrogation of a terrorist at Guantánamo Bay, he said, “Some people have said we ought to close Guantánamo. My view is that we ought to double Guantánamo.” Elected as a pro-choice governor in 2002—YouTube is flooded with his passionate advocacy of abortion rights—he now presents himself as the most resolute anti-abortion candidate in the Republican field. A Mormon, he sometimes adopts the religious language of Evangelicals when he is addressing conservative Christian groups. To economic conservatives, he pitches himself as the candidate most strongly committed to slashing spending and taxes. (He’s the only major G.O.P. candidate to have signed a formal anti-tax pledge, the sort of move that his spokesman dismissed as “government by gimmickry” in Romney’s 2002 gubernatorial campaign.) To national-security conservatives, he is the most hawkish. (He says often that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, of Iran, should be indicted under the Genocide Convention, and his campaign has named the former C.I.A. counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black, the vice-chairman of Blackwater, as an adviser.) But, while giving customers exactly what they want may be normal in the corporate world, it can be costly in politics.

Romney's campaign against Giuliani then, seems to be based upon the slogan Vote for the phony not the loony.

Reasons to elect Mitt Romney, cont...

Nonetheless, have a gander and tell me if Mitt Romney looks presidential in this clip? It's not just the rather unfortunate - from Romney's point of view that is, since it makes him seem a heartless jackass - encounter with a medical marijuana activist (who is, it should be said, commendably restrained and temperate), it's the whole thing: the ghastly, aw-shucks-thanks-for-coming-out-on-the-weekend false modesty, the terrible, cliched waffling about how the kids are "the future" and eradication-of-freedom agenda everyone else in the world is hell-bent upon pursuing.

Now, of course it is ghastly to be subjected to the endless miseries and humiliations of the campaign trail. But since it requires such nonsense would it be too much to ask that candidates be accomplished fakers? notice in this clip how Romney cannot actually bear to speak to any voters and the appalled, panicked look upon his face when it seems as though he might have to continue anything that might charitably be labelled a conversation...

I don't really object to Romney faking it; I object to him being so bad at faking it. Better frauds please.

Band of Five Brothers

Tee hee. Slate skewers Mitt Romney. How can people vote for this phoney?

(Sorry about the irritating ad prefacing the spot.)

Fredless in New Hampshire

There was plenty to enjoy at last night's GOP debate in New Hampshire. From Rudy Giuliani's incessant and somewhat vulgar determination to relate any question on any subject to his time running New York City to John McCain's mild recovery (though he should be worried that other candidates were being nice to him; clearly they consider him irrelevant) and the excellent spat on Iraq between Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee which will, I suspect, benefit both candidates.

The second best moment of the debate, however, was when Fox's Chris Wallace accused Ron Paul of "taking marching orders from al-Qaeda" only for Paul to slap him down with a "NO! I'm suggesting we take our marching orders from our Constitution..." Whatever else one may think of Paul, this was terrific. Refreshing too. (Best bit comes at 2.00 minutes):

Good though that was, the best moment was the skewering of Mitt Romney when a New Hampshire voter, whose son is serving in the military, reminded Romney that he really had compared the service of troops in uniform to his own sons' work getting him elected and proselytising their church. Notice how even here Romney cannot help smirking. Moments such as these will, one hopes, sink Romney. And deservedly so.

Beware the jogger!

Another reason not to vote for Mitt Romney: he's a bloody jogger. No surprise there, I suppose. Anyway, despite that, this new Romney ad, is not without interest.

Jason Zengerle observes that Romney is playing up his "competency candidate" credentials, pivoting away from his previous pandering to social and evangelical conservatives. And so he is, but doesn't this also reveal that Romney probably agrees that the Bush presidency has been, well, a disaster. After all, this ad boasts about Romney's proven record of turning around failing companies (and "rescuing" both the Salt Lake City Olympics and the state of Massachusetts). Why would you mention this if you didn't think America needed saving? Yes, Romney says it's about changing "Washington" but that's a tough sell when your own party has held the White House for the past eight years and Congress for six of them. Sure, Nicolas Sarkozy managed the neat trick of being the "change" candidate in France even while being a member of th incumbent party but I don't see Romney emulating Sarko's success. Apart from anything else, what change - beyond managerial competence - is Romney actually promising?

Anyway, the jogging thing has K-Lo typically excited. She flutters:

I think I also hear some of the guys in the Team Romney headquarters in Boston saying, "I'd like to see, Fred, Rudy, or McCain try that."

Well, OK then... My thoughts, of course, were rather different. I advise checking the look on Romney's face at the end of this ad. He seems to be a cackling maniac.