What Now? Can We Find Peace Amid Rising Waters, Rising Gorge?

God willing and the creek don’t rise…  I wrote earlier this week about the likely election of Hillary Clinton.

The creek rose. And now so will the seas. And now what do those of us, more than half the country, who think Trump is horrendous do to find some equilibrium? Anger shock and griping isn’t a healthy plan for living.

Donald Trump’s first act as president elect will ensure that his son Baron and Baron’s children will live in a world of horror. You think there are refugee problems now, Mr. Trump? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Wait until your know-nothing policy on global warming has its effects and tens of millions of poor people who don’t look like your voters flee the rising seas. Trump named Myron Ebel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute to head his transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency. The fox has entered the henhouse. “Mr. Ebel has asserted that whatever warming caused by greenhouse gas pollution is modest and could be beneficial,” The New York Times writes today. Bye Bye Paris climate accord. Bye Bye livable earth.

Every day there will be another outrage like this. But these won’t be like Trump’s campaign outrages. Those could have still been addressed by the voters. Too late now. Too many of these new daily outrages will become policy.

Can I stand to be outraged every day? Angry? Depressed? Clinton in her concession speech said we owe the president elect an open mind. I’ll try. I’ll have to or I’ll go crazy. Or I’ll have to go up in the hills and live alone and become a helmet, as Maynard G. Krebs said.

Perhaps this man will grow in the office. He seems not to have fixed convictions, and he’s certainly not an orthodox Republican. So I suspect he’ll sometimes pleasantly surprise us. He may push for government-supported work repairing infrastructure that was the first thing the Republicans blocked President Obama from doing eight years ago. Clips and pictures of him meeting with Obama yesterday showed Trump looking as if he’s realized what deep water he’s in. That, or he was already bored.

I can’t live in anger for four years. People who thought Obama was an abomination and that his policies were ruining the country felt every day for eight years what I’ll feel now for four. Their representatives in Congress did little but bitch and say no. That wasn’t very satisfying or useful. I don’t want to do that.

So I’ll watch and read less news. Try not to wallow in the daily transgressions. Read more books. Write more books. Watch more movies. Talk with Lisa more instead of sitting next to each other watching MSNBC. Bowl. Do something. Actively try to stop some of the worst things Trump and his backers will do. Are already doing. But I can’t be sad or angry every day or the cats will hide under the bed and Lisa will make me live on the screen porch where my black cloud won’t foul the air.

Half the country is crawling out of their cellars these last three days and looking around at what the tornado rearranged. It’s an apt cliche to say we’re in shock. Moving slow. Staring off in the distance. Wishing it weren’t so.

The dark parts of me want to say to Trump voters, “You picked him, you got him, don’t come to us when you realize he’s screwing you.” And the nasty parts of me want to say to Democratic primary voters, “You picked her, a terrible candidate, and look where that got us.” The late great Molly Ivins wrote a book about George W. Bush’s years as governor of Texas to show voters what Bush would be like as president. And he was (sort of) elected anyway and he acted just like Ivins warned he would. She wrote a second book before Bush’s reelection and said in the introduction “If y’all hadda read my first book I wouldn’t have had to write the second one.” If we’d paid attention to Carl Bernstein’s study of Hillary Clinton’s actions and character “A Woman in Charge” we would have put up someone this year who wasn’t so reviled and could have won.

But that didn’t happen. And I have to stop moaning about it all. For my own peace, and so people and small animals don’t flee from me on sight. Pick a few important causes to back and then back away from the daily deluge. Find quiet corners.

We survived eight years of Reagan (the poor didn’t survive very well as income disparity started to skyrocket under this earlier actor who played a president). We survived eight years under Bush (the soldiers and civilians killed and maimed in Bush’s endless wars didn’t survive very well under this earlier front man who didn’t know much). We can probably survive four years of Trump. But the planet and our progeny?

Get thee to a hammock, Bruce. Squeeze a cat pet a dog love the kids. Turn down the temp inside yourself. And send Elizabeth Warren flowers.

— Bruce Benidt

 

“I Voted.” Small sticker, precious step

Today I’m as powerful as Sheldon Adelson, Sean Hannity, Paul Ryan, John Roberts, David Axelrod or Elizabeth Warren.

My vote counts as much as each of theirs. And as I cast my vote today my heart lifted. I could feel it. For too many months I’ve been worrying and griping and moaning and arguing and living in fear of the unthinkable. An hour ago I took action. I feel empowered.

Our country has flaws. Disparity of rich and poor. Gross overconsumption of the planet’s resources. Poor education and a paucity of hope for too many. A system designed by those who already have the most to assure they get more. And our election system is far from perfect. Voter suppression. Hanging chads. Too much influence by the wealthiest. Gerrymandered districts that permit little challenge to incumbents.

But I just cast a vote that counts the same as Barack Obama’s. And it will be counted. The regular citizens who handed me the ballot and watched me slide it in the machine are the volunteer custodians of the dream the founders dreamed. My Uncle Bob died in World War II to protect the vote I cast today. John Lewis had his skull cracked to preserve the right of all of us to not just speak up about where we’re going as a country but to put our hands on the wheel.

There was a man standing at the corner of the street that leads to our local government center where Lisa and I voted. He was showing the world a life-size picture of Hillary Clinton behind bars. I firmly believe he’ll be disappointed a week from today. And as we drove past him I felt less of the despair I’ve been feeling for months, despair that the candidate he supports might actually, how could this possibly be true, win the election. I felt less depressed because I had just taken action. I had voted. To turn away that man’s vision and to bring my own closer to the light.

In a world full of despots I stood up and said to the preposterous, self-absorbed, ignorant, immature poseur who would be president: “I banish thee. Slink back under the foul rock you crawled out from. Begone.” Little old me, a guy of scant power, wealth or influence. But a guy with a vote.

In the car, Lisa and I did a Barack-Michelle fist bump. Is this a great country or what?

— Bruce Benidt

I Need A Mystic Chord of Spirit Touched, Please, Madame Secretary

In 2001 my therapist in Minneapolis said he had many clients who, like me, were suffering a kind of political depression. George Bush was president and things that mattered deeply to me were being ignored.

I feel that same depression now. How is it possible that … oh you know, Donald Trump.

And Hillary Clinton doesn’t lift me out of my slough of despond. Are my reactions to her unfair? Am I guilty of a double standard?

My biggest disappointments about Clinton are that she’s so calculating, and that she lets her ambition and fear overwhelm her decency. I agree with almost every position she takes on the issues, and I admire the lifetime of work for others her husband told us about at the DNC.

But she has consistently lied about the whole email mess, which she created in the first place by being too secretive and protective of her too-managed image.

So. Double standard? I just read JFK’s Last Hundred Days, by Thurston Clarke. It tells about what JFK was growing into, building up to. Opening to Cuba. Getting us out of Vietnam. Pushing for Civil Rights. Oh. And there was that sexual addiction thing. He shared a mistress with a Mafia goon. He slept with a woman who had ties to East Germany. He slept with almost anyone who came near him. And of course he lied about it. Had the German woman deported so she couldn’t be called before Congress. This is a bit of a character flaw, right? Yet I admire JFK, felt deep sadness for what might have been as I stood in Dealey Plaza a few weeks ago.

Why can’t I give Hillary Clinton a break? Is it because she’s a woman? Am I not taking into account, as I react against how calculated and cautious she is, the decades of attacks she’s suffered at least partly because of her gender and her refusal to sit quietly in her place while the boys ran the show? I dislike her ambition and the lengths to which she’ll go to feed it, as shown in Carl Bernstein’s book A Woman in Charge and as exemplified by her saying, when asked in 2008 if Barack Obama was a Christian, “As far as I know he’s a Christian,” rather than challenging the whole notion of questioning his religion.

I know that I’m deeply distressed that she is so compromised by her flaws that an abomination like Donald Trump actually has a chance to be elected.

I’d like to be won over. I’ll vote for her, God knows, although I voted for Bernie Sanders in my Florida primary. But I’d like to see the part of Hillary that Bill talked about two nights ago. Tonight, as she accepts the nomination, I’d like to hear her talk. Not give a speech. Not holler how she’ll fight for me. I don’t want someone fighting for me. I want someone thinking and analyzing and inspiring and standing up for principle. I want to hear what’s in her soul. Including what she thinks of the darkness in there. Does she regret that some of her mistakes have made so many of us doubt her character? Show us. Let us feel that. Let us feel what drives her. David Axelrod said tonight she has to tell us not just what she’ll do as president but why.

I’ll try and relax my double standard, Secretary Clinton. You, please, send home the focus group and open up your heart. I need to feel touched. I know about your experience and competence, and god knows we need those. But I need to feel inspired. Spirit. Inside. Let it out. Draw mine out too. Touch what I felt the night Bill was elected. The night Obama was elected. Call out the better angels of all our natures. Let us see and feel what you’re made of. Please.

— Bruce Benidt

Oh Please…

Bob Woodward’s hissy fit over being “threatened” by the Obama administration makes me think it’s time for the septuagenarian journalist (he turns 70 in March) to hang up his quill and retire to Martha’s Vinyard or wherever he summers. If he’s serious, he’s lost his taste for blood.  If he’s not serious (and I’m pretty sure he’s not), he’s lost his moves and the game has passed him by.

You Pays Your Money and You Makes Your Bets…

So…here it is.  Some people must feel this way anticipating the Super Bowl or the World Cup.  For me, it’s election night.

I’ll fire up the televisions that haven’t been out of their boxes in four years.  Connect the projector to one of the computers.  Since 2008, iPads have been added to the mix and there will be plenty of those lying around as well.

The fun will start early:

We should start seeing things by 6:00 pm (7:00 pm EST).  I suspect we won’t KNOW who wins, however, until sometime on Wednesday if then.  There’s a fair number of chances for recounts, lawsuits, etc. In fact, the post-election period promises to be almost as contentious as the fall campaign season has been.

As to who will win, I’m going with Obama.  No surprise there, of course, but – if you believe the polls – the conclusion is inescapable.  I very much agree with Nate Silver’s fact-based, logical analysis of the race.  If he’s wrong, then what you’ll see tomorrow is a true 1-in-8 longshot coming in. Not to say it doesn’t happen, it simply seems very unlikely at this point.

Here’s my bets:

Obama/Romney:  290-248 electoral votes, 50.1-48.9 popular vote.

Bellwethers: if they call Virginia or Florida or New Hampshire early for anybody, those are important indications of direction.  If Pennsylvania is too close to call for a long while (or goes for Romney) it’s a bad night for Obama.  If North Carolina stays uncalled, it’s a bad sign for Romney.

In the Midwest, we’re watching who gets Iowa.  In the mountain states, it’s Colorado.

Senate: Democrats retain a majority.  Maybe one party or the other picks up a seat, but the overall majority remains Democratic.  Warren wins in Massachusetts, McCaskill wins in Missouri, Donnelly wins in Indiana.  Here’s a good blow-by-blow if you’re interested.

House:  The GOP keeps the House, probably at roughly the same numbers.  Again, a good overview is here.

In other words, if my predictions are right, on Wednesday morning – assuming we’re done counting – the balance of power at the federal level will look a lot like it does now.

Here in the Land O’ Lakes, Senator Klobuchar wins by 30 points, maybe more.  Rick Nolan will make Chip Cravaack a one-term Congressman and we’ll still have Michelle Bachmann to embarrass us on the national stage as I expect Jim Graves’ challenge to fall short (but maybe not by much).  No changes in the rest of the Congressional delegation.  The marriage amendment fails and the voter ID amendment passes, but the latter will be much closer than polls have shown.

I don’t have a feel for the legislative races, but smarter people than me seem to think the Dems have a chance to reclaim the Senate majority.  I’ll go with that.

OK, that’s my predictions…what are yours?

– Austin

O-H-I-O. Not Just a Song By the Pretenders. Or CSNY.

Long-time readers of this blog – all two of you – might remember that in 2008 I was posting a lot in terms election prognosticating.  I haven’t done nearly so much this year.  Part of the difference is that I’ve been flat-out busy the last month or so with paying work and the other part is that I’ve concluded there’s almost zero value I can add to a discussion on this topic.  Everybody I know checks Nate Silver every morning (and afternoon and evening) along with Real Clear Politics, Votamatics and the other sites that aggregate, evaluate and weigh polling data.  What was once the purview of high-priced consultants and their client campaigns is now available to all of us for the price of a mouse click.

As of this morning, Silver is making the following predictions:

 

Pre-Gaming the First Debate

I’m not sure if it’s actually possible to 1) have the media invest tonight’s debate with any more importance for the Romney campaign than has been done over the last two weeks; 2) come up with another way to lower expectations for both candidates without reducing all of us to fits of giggles; 3) be any more primed for disappointment than all of us – left, right, center – are right now as we are almost certain to see a debate that is probably not going to deliver a knockout blow to Governor Romney, put President Obama on the defensive and the race back into a dead heat or – for the 11 remaining undecided voters in a swing state – illuminate much about what either client plans to do over the next four years.

It is, of course, possible that I’m wrong on any of these points, particularly #3, but statistics are on my side.  Why are nearly all of the most famous moments from Presidential debates from the 70s and 80s?  Because most of the time these events are not particularly memorable and don’t represent turning points in a campaign.

This reality is particularly true when the participants are Barack “No Drama” Obama and W. Mitt “the Robot” Romney.  While different in many ways, both men are generally very skilled at keeping their emotions in check and their talking points firmly in their forebrains.  Couple that with day…and days…and days…of debate camp and the throw down in Denver has all the suspense of two chessmasters replaying a game from the Fischer-Spassky era.  The image of an unscripted and freeflowing debate is just that; an image and not a reality.

None of this, of course, will prevent me from eagerly watching all 90 minutes and then listening to the post-debate analysis on as many channels as my wife will tolerate me surfing.  Here’s what I think we’ll be hearing after the debate:

1st and 20 – Romney Drops Back, Goes Deep…

The classic “Hail Mary” pass is a desperation play in the last seconds of the game when the only chance of victory is to wind up and heave the ball into the endzone with the hope that one of your receivers will miraculously come down with the ball and the win.

That said, there are lots of Hail Marys that are thrown much earlier in the game, usually when one team starts to feel the pressure of the clock, is down by a touchdown or so and concludes its game plan isn’t working.

Make no mistake, the Romney campaign has just thrown the first Hail Mary of the 2012 presidential election.  The ball is still in the air, but I’m not seeing a lot of receivers in the endzone.

I’m referring, of course, to Governor Romney’s doubling down on his now-infamous “fuggedaboutit” to the 47 percent of the country who apparently are only voting for Obama out of a lazy, selfish unwillingness to stop feeding off the work of the decent people.  Rather than try to deny the comments (which would have been well-nigh impossible IMHO) or try to mealy-mouth them away, the campaign and the candidate has embraced them and is trying to make them a fulcrum for a debate about a vision for America.  In the revised version of reality, Governor Romney would have us believe he wasn’t pandering to a crowd of rich folks that some people are worth keeping and some aren’t, but was instead “inelegantly” trying to frame a debate about the future of America.  As noted in the New York Times article on this long bomb, one that actually breaks with some very long-held conservative views:

Mr. Romney stood by his statement in an interview with Neil Cavuto of Fox News on Tuesday. “I think a society based upon a government-centered nation where government plays a larger and larger role, redistributes money, that’s the wrong course for America,” he said, adding that he hoped to improve the economy enough that people would be able to get well-paying jobs and rejoin the tax rolls.

So far, I’m not seeing much evidence that the play will work.  Despite a little razzle-dazzle in the form of the release of a 14-year old audio tape in which State Senator Obama goes on the record in support of – horrors! – “redistribution” in pursuit of the apparently un-American goal of “to make sure that everybody’s got a shot” (the comments were made in the context of how do we help the working poor) that has been slavishly flogged by the campaign’s principals and surrogates, the spin doesn’t seem to be working, even among the faithful (here and here and here and here and here just to name a few).

It’s be a few more seconds before the ball lands (uncaught I think).  That’ll make it 2nd and long with the clock at 48 days…and counting.  What’s the next play, Coach?

– Austin

And Now for Something Completely Different…

Well, that was different.

I’m not much of a Rachel Maddow sycophant, but I have to agree with her that Clint Eastwood’s 11-minute performance at last night’s RNC was the most bizarre thing I’ve seen in a major party convention.  Maddow was left speechless – for once – and so was I by the surreal sight of Mr. Eastwood rambling and ad-libbing to an empty chair.  Between the mumbling and the fly-away hairdo, Mr. Eastwood came off less like Dirty Harry and more like the old guy down the block who was pretty normal and neighborly in a curmudgeonly way until the day he started cutting the lawn in his underwear with a katana strapped to his back.

His performance makes two things abundantly clear:

1) Nobody – I mean NOBODY – vetted Eastwood’s remarks.  Not even so much as a “Mr. Eastwood, what do you need with the chair?”

2) Actors without good writers to give them good material are rarely worth listening to.

You are, of course, welcome to disagree with me on this point, but I am 100% sure that Team Romney counts this as a hot mess that is stepping all over the next-day coverage of what was supposed to be “All About Mitt.” Instead, The Big Speech (which in the words of Fox’s Chris Wallace was “workmanlike” at best) has to contend with headlines like:

• “After a Gunslinger Cuts Loose, Romney Aides Take Cover” – New York Times
• “Ann Romney: Eastwood Did “A Unique Thing” – CBS News
• “Clint Eastwood Riff Distracts From Successful Romney Convention” – Washington Post
• “Clint Eastwood Speech Backfires on Republicans” – Boston.com
• “Clint Eastwood at the GOP convention: effective, or strange?” – Christian Science Monitor
• “Clint Eastwood’s empty chair at RNC sparks Internet buzz” – NBC News
• “Clint Eastwood puts liberals in full panic mode” – New York Daily News
• “Eastwood mocked for kooky speech at GOP convention” – San Jose Mercury News
• “Clint Eastwood speech with empty chair upstages Mitt Romney at GOP convention” – Newsday
• “Eastwood, the empty chair and the speech everyone is talking about” – CNN

And on and on and on.  As of now, Google News is serving up more than 1,500 stories related to the Eastwood speech.  Every one of them distracts, detracts from or otherwise obscures the message Romney and company were hoping we’d be talking about today but aren’t.

Check out the New York Times‘ story this morning on who was responsible for this clusterfuck:

Clint Eastwood’s rambling and off-color endorsement of Mitt Romney on Thursday seemed to startle and unsettle even the candidate’s own top aides, several of whom made a point of distancing themselves from the decision to put him onstage without a polished script.

“Not me,” said an exasperated-looking senior adviser, when asked who was responsible for Mr. Eastwood’s speech. In late-night interviews, aides variously called the speech “strange” and “weird.” One described it as “theater of the absurd.”

Finger-pointing quickly ensued, suggesting real displeasure and even confusion over the handling of Mr. Eastwood’s performance, which was kept secret until the last minute.

A senior Republican involved in convention planning said that Mr. Eastwood’s appearance was cleared by at least two of Mr. Romney’s top advisers, Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens. This person said that there had been no rehearsal, to the surprise of the rest of the campaign team.

But another adviser said that several top aides had reviewed talking points given to Mr. Eastwood, which the campaign had discussed with the actor as recently as a few hours before his appearance. Mr. Eastwood, however, delivered those points in a theatrical, and at times crass, way that caught Romney aides off guard, this person said.

Mr. Stevens, in an interview, said he would not discuss internal decision making but described Mr. Eastwood’s remarks as improvised.

There’s some profiles in courage there. I can hardly wait for a Romney presidency in which the aides race one another to their iPhones to rat out their colleagues – anonymously of course – when real decisions go wrong.

Couple last  night’s mess with everything else that went wrong or off-message in Tampa (cancellation of Day 1, the Christie keynote (aka “It’s All About Me”), the cult of Paul Ryan, the peanut tossers, being upstaged by his wife and Condeleeza Rice, the untruths of the Ryan speech, the Ron Paul distractions) and this was NOT a good convention for Romney. Anne Romney, maybe, but not Mitt.

Yes, the GOP talking points would have us believe otherwise, but the reality is that Mitt Romney got less out of this convention than almost anyone. Instead of a bounce, I’m expecting more of a post-convention “thud” in the next set of polls.

Oh well, there’s still the debates.  Governor Romney was pretty good in the Republican debates where he could play Snow White to the Seven Dwarfs but I’m not entirely sure he’ll come across so well in a one-on-one comparison with Obama.

– Austin

 

“Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice”

Come January 20, 2013 I expect Barack Obama to be sworn in for his second term. After Chief Justice Roberts administers the oath of office, it’s likely he and the President will shake hands. At that moment, I expect the President to pull the Chief Justice close so that he can speak directly and privately to him:

“Thank you.”

Chief Justice Robert’s vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) all but ensures that President Obama will be re-elected come November. For many undecideds, the Supremes’ stamp of approval legitimizes the law and – with it – Obama’s administration. That approval, coupled with the lingering lack of enthusiasm for Willard Mitt Romney, will be enough to ovecome even the millions and millions of dollars that the conservative super PACs are raising and threatening to spend. It won’t be a walk, but it won’t be a nailbiter either.

Expect to see the following: 1) widening gaps in swing state polls of likely voters and 2) super PACs withholding expenditures (even while they continue to raise money by promising to beat Obama).

Yes, I know it’s a long way to November and anything can happen. That said, barring an unexpected event, the general landscape of this election is set. And, I think, it’s over.

What do you think?

– Austin

With Immigration, Mittens Actually Has to Do Something.

The fascination of the day is what the Republicans and Mitt Romney are going to do — actually DO, not just bloviate over and obfuscate — about immigration. The laissez-faire, Libertarian,what’s good for Bain Capital is good for America crowd are on the horns of a dilemma with this one.

Since President Obama went unilateral (at long last) with his decision to stop prosecuting children of “illegal” immigrants, Romney and his advisors have been flapping around like an invasive carp tossed up on the banks of the Rio Grande. To agree with Obama is … well, that’s not even conceivable. The GOP position since November ’08 is to never agree with Obama on anything and blame him for everything, including, as is always worth reminding, the multi-trillion debt run-up of the George W./Dick Cheney administration. Not to mention their inability to push sensible immigration reform past their troglodyte partisans, many of whom are eager to believe that wave after wave of brown-skinned types are pouring across our borders beheading patriotic ranchers and god knows, fornicating with livestock, instead of, you know, picking strawberries in the Central Valley.

The problem is exacerbated because immigration is an issue that actually requires discernible action. You really do have to do something. Immigration is an issue that delivers a lot of immediate, empirical feedback to the effected. This is in contrast to the central — and easily/constantly obfuscatable — tenet of modern conservatism which is that packing on more (and more) tax relief for “job creators” is the only way to restart the economy. With that one conservative partisans can argue ad nauseam that the current level of tax relief is never enough, that liberals are continuing to practice “class warfare” against the only productive members of society, that Barney Frank and Fannie Mae caused the Wall St. meltdown and that “out of control” government spending, requiring laying off thousands of middle class government workers is the only possible way to achieve fiscal balance and employment growth.

They can say all that because the average low information voter finds finance bewildering and is generally inclined to believe that all government — on every level — is inhabited by a bunch of hopeless screw ups.

But … immigration … either the government does something to rectify the problem, or it doesn’t. By stopping the prosecution of young people here because of their parents and opening a path toward citizenship, Obama is doing … something. Still not a lot, but something to alleviate a long, long-festering problem that wouldn’t have festered nearly so long if the modern GOP had any serious intention of, you know, running the government like business. In business you identify problems and solve them. In politics, which is, let’s be honest, is all the Republicans are ever doing these days, you play inane rhetorical games and create as much chaos as possible in hopes of gaining back full power … at which point you can double down your tax cut dreams for the “job creators”.

Another irony with the immigration issue is that the presence of so many “illegals”, (and I use quote marks to suggest that there is a qualitative difference between illegal immigration to do work no American wants to do, and homicidal rampaging), has been shown to be a modest net gain for the economy. This is due to significant gains for the “illegal” fruit pickers and leaf blowers AND the corporate farmers, ranchers, slaughterhouse operations that employ them. (Not so much for school districts and hospitals.)

Presumably a good chunk of those large-scale farm and livestock interests are sympathetic to other Republican policies — like more tax cuts. But as it is, even they aren’t getting relief from the GOP. Large scale employers remain as vulnerable to INS raids as ever, although they are hardly the key villain in the minds of Tea Party conservatives as the Guatemalan who shows up in Pueblo, Colorado with a pair of sandals and a sleeping bag.

In general, Mitt Romney has nothing constructive to offer on any issue you can mention. (The thought of someone as gelatinous as Romney making foreign policy decisions is truly frightening.) But where he can fake it by bewildering the cynical public about finance, job creation with economic double-speak, when it comes to immigration he has to come up with something that actually … does something.

Unless its tax relief for private equity wealth creators, “doing something” ain’t Mitt’s game.

The (Propaganda) Road We’ve Traveled

Unlike a lot of liberals, I don’t just tolerate President Obama. I don’t just like him better than the dismal alternatives. I admire him more than any other President in my lifetime. Not because he is black, a Democrat and articulate, as I my conservative friends charge. I admire him because he had a breathtakingly difficult economic, political and foreign policy assignment that he has done better than I imagined anyone could. Not perfectly by any stretch, but, given the difficulty of the tasks, very well.

So because of my man crush, I recognize I’m not an objective observer. But trying my best to judge it as a communications professional rather than an Obama admirer, I have to say the video the Obama campaign released yesterday tells the story of the Obama first term better than any communications tactic I’ve seen from Team Obama.

Love Obama or hate him, this is extremely good story telling, or propagandizing, depending on your point-of-view. It sets a context that makes an objective swing voter feel better about only having 8.5% unemployment and one sunsetting war.

Seeing this took me down another road I’ve traveled. I vividly remember despising every second of President Reagan’s masterful Morning in America ad, because it was so effective. Twenty-eight years later, I still hate watching the propaganda film that cemented President Reagan’s reelection, and his version of history.

President Obama’s film isn’t nearly as good as Reagan’s, mostly because it is 16-minutes longer, which severely limits the audience that will see it. But if I were a conservative, I would hate watching this film as much I hated watching “Morning in America” back in the day.

Maybe this isn’t saying much, but Obama’s film is the best political storytelling I’ve seen a Democrat do in a very long time. Base, if this won’t rally you, I don’t know what will.

– Loveland

Dear Addy

Yesterday, one of our faithful Rowdies emailed me to ask this:

Dear Addy:

How would you respond to this Rick Perry ad?

Signed,

Ad Mirer

So, here goes..

Recapping the Summer Campaign Season

Oh, what a difference a few months make.

At the end of May, loyal readers may recall that I gave you my sense of how the Republican field for president was shaping up.  At the time, I put four white guys – Romney, Huntsman, Pawlenty and Santorum – in the small category of candidates who could win their party’s nomination and could win in the general.

Turns out I was too generous by half.  Former Governor Pawlenty packed it in a day after a disappointing performance in the Ames straw poll and former Senator Santorum’s performance over the last couple of months suggests to me that he’s in it for the ideology not the office.  That leaves only former Governor Romney and former Governor Huntsman still in the sweet spot (with Huntsman there only out of courtesy as he hasn’t done much of anything since declaring in June).  Jeez, there’s a lot of former officeholders looking for work, isn’t there?

Overall, however, the dynamics of the Republican race haven’t changed much.  Romney is still considered to be the frontrunner by most pundits and many Republicans are still looking for someone else.  In just this year alone, we’ve seen flirtations with Donald Trump, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniel, Michelle Bachmann and – most recently – Rick Perry.  Even with the actual candidacies of the latter two, we’re still hearing wistful longing for more choices such as Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio and others.

As a result of all of this churn, my graphic representations of who’s best positioned to win the nomination and who’s best positioned to win the general have changed a little bit:

Among the most noteworthy changes:

• The rise and fall of Michele Bachmann.  I hope Ms. Bachmann has enjoyed her star turn because her best days on the campaign trail are behind her.  The entry of Rick Perry sucks away too much of her oxygen and her regularly scheduled lunatic ravings (“”I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’) are not playing well on the larger stage.  While she’s still in the consideration set, my perception is that she’s rapidly falling out of it.  If Michele Bachmann’s candidacy were something actually important – like, say, a nation’s AAA credit rating – we’d have it “under review with negative implications.”
• The entry of Rick Perry.  Governor Perry is an actual current governor so he’s got that going for him, but it’s interesting to note that after about a week’s worth of infatuation, the GOP intelligentsia started showing signs yet again of restlessness.  It will be interesting to see how the Aggie from west Texas holds up.
• The fall, fall, fall…fall of Newt Gingrich. Not since 1980 have I seen a major candidate as unprepared for a presidential run as Newt.  You have to go back to Ted Kennedy’s famous Roger Mudd interview in which he blew the softest softball question in presidential political history – “Why do you want to be president?” – to find a candidate screwing up so badly out of the gate.  Kennedy never recovered and Newt won’t either.
• The thud of Jon Huntsman.  Is he actually running for president?  Damned if I can tell.  Most days he’s invisible and when he does appear most of what he says is unmemorable.  Between his – relative – moderateness and his hesitancy to attack Obama as aggressively as others are doing, he’s often drowned out.
• The splitting of the field.  Discerning readers will note that the GOP field is bifurcating into a big mass of names around the pole marked “No Way” in terms of winning the GOP nomination.  This is a reflection less of ideology than of logistics.  If you ain’t in it now, the odds that you can get in it to win it are shrinking every day.  Running for president requires money, organization and strategy; if you don’t have a least 2 out of 3 by Labor Day you’re hosed.  Even Sara Palin though she may be crazy enough to think otherwise (that said, I’m about 90 percent sure she’s smart enough to stay out of this melee.

The weakness of the Republican field and the continued inability of its candidates to demonstrate how they can walk the whipsaw of the nomination and the general election continue to be the best thing President Obama has going for him as a re-election strategy. Usually, a sitting president with 9+ percent unemployment, sub-three percent economic growth, high gas prices and an unpopular war would be a one-term shoo-in.  The inability of the Republicans to come together around a viable candidate is the strongest reason he’s still in the game. Well, there’s the billion or so dollars he’s likely to raise, too.

Labor Day marks the unofficial start of the election season and the Iowa caucuses are just about five months away.  As Hank Williams Jr. might say, “Are you ready for some football?”

– Austin

A Star That Shines Half as Bright…Jon Huntsman Enters Stage Center

I was driving around yesterday listening to POTUS (the single best thing on radio for the political junkie) during Jon Huntsman’s declaration announcement.  I had several thoughts:

• This guy needs a new speechwriter
• This guy needs speaker training
• The crowd sounded like it was 20 people who wandered by
• What a rational guy
• The Obama team is right to worry about him in the general election
• He’ll never make it out of the primaries

While the speech seemed awkwardly worded throughout and Governor Huntsman’s delivery verged on monotonic, I loved some of the sentiment and sensibility I heard. In particular:

Now let me say something about civility. For the sake of the younger generation, it concerns me that civility, humanity and respect are sometimes lost in our interactions as Americans.

Our political debates today are corrosive and not reflective of the belief that Abe Lincoln espoused back in his day, that we are a great country because we are a good country.

You know what I mean when I say that.

We will conduct this campaign on the high road. I don’t think you need to run down someone’s reputation in order to run for the Office of President.

Of course we’ll have our disagreements. That’s what campaigns are all about.

But I want you to know that I respect my fellow Republican candidates.

And I respect the President of the United States.

He and I have a difference of opinion on how to help a country we both love.

But the question each of us wants the voters to answer is who will be the better President; not who’s the better American.

When I got home I watched the video and thought it was beautifully staged (something that is apparently a strength of Team Huntsman) but that the flaws I heard were not diminished with the addition of visuals. The crowd was small, the phrasing was goofy and the delivery was about as inspiring as a midlevel manager (I think I heard the words “manage”, “manager” and “management” about 10 times and all in a positive context) talking about the companywide cost-cutting program he was directing.  The weird “motorcycle in the desert” video was beautifully produced and way better than the usual campaign fare (not a waving flag anywhere that I remember), but didn’t add much.

There’s a backlash meme currently making the rounds that Huntsman’s candidacy is a creation of the media that wants Huntsman to be a viable candidate and of the GOP “elite” (that presumably means the “bidness” wing of the party) who does want a reprise of the Goldwater debacle. Maybe that’s right, but unless he steps up his game pretty quickly in terms of the nuts-and-bolts of delivering his message, he’ll quickly lose the attention of both.

About that message…

As I noted, Huntsman could be a viable candidate but I really, really can’t see it selling with the conservative wing of the party.  His record is impure (Cap and trade!  Climate change! Civil unions! Obama!) and his rhetoric of moderation and civility does not resonate with anyone who’s angry about the current administration and its “gangster” ways.  In relatively short order, I think the governor will have to make the hard choice of walking back his commitment to civility or accepting permanent status as a “margin of error” candidate.

I hope he picks the latter, but won’t be shocked if he picks Door #1.

– Austin

How Shall We Go to War Today?

The news that 10 members of Congress have filed suit against President Obama claiming he has violated the War Powers Resolution should come as no surprise.  President Obama is simply the latest in a long line of presidents – all of them – to claim for himself the unilateral right to determine when, where, how and how long are armed forces can be deployed in the field.

This is not a  right/left, liberal/conservative thing.  Dennis Kucinich and John Boehner man one side of the debate and Barack Obama and George W. Bush man the other. Hell, Senator Barack Obama the senator doesn’t agree with President Barack Obama on this topic.

Instead, the debate is an institutional one.  Congress takes seriously the Constitutional words in Article I, Section 8 that it alone has the power to declare war.  Each president takes just as seriously his duties as commander-in-chief and the oath of office to protect and defend the country as enumerated in Article II.

An that’s all it takes to start a Constitutional tug-of-war that has lasted until today.

Everybody pretty much agrees that the President doesn’t need Congressional authorization to deploy troops in response to an attack or to stop an attack that is imminent.  Over the years, however, succeeding presidents have used those exceptions to stretch their usage at least into controversial if not outright distorted grounds.

Even more effectively, though, presidents have gotten around the Constitutional requirements by simply defining a deployment as something other than “war.”  Hence the long line of “police actions,” “peacekeeping missions.” and “limited kinetic engagements” that populate our history of going to other countries and tearing up big chunks of it.

The 1973 War Powers Resolution came about when frustration about our involvement in Vietnam – which to many was an unauthorized war – reached a peak in Congress.  The joint resolution passed both house overwhelmingly and then was passed again over President Nixon’s veto.

The resolution actually represents a major concession by the Congress in that it allowed the president to deploy troops pretty much as he sees fit for up to 60 days with only an after-the-fact notice to Congress.  While a retreat in the eyes of some Constitutional scholars, it also was a recognition that the framers’ worldview – in which the development of threats and responses took months or years and that most armed conflict was nation versus nation in nature – no longer applied.

Good intentions, perhaps, but in practice  the War Powers Resolution has simply given executives another way to deploy troops as they wish.  When it suits their purpose, presidents cite their compliance with the resolution as a post-hoc justification for their actions.  When it doesn’t, as Mr. Obama did today, they assert that the Resolution doesn’t apply and is un-Constitutional to boot.

In case you’re wondering why the Constitutionality of these actions and resolutions are still in question, the answer is that no branch of government – not the executive, not the legislative and certainly not the judiciary – wants this question cleared up.  The legislative and executive branches both worry that the courts will weaken their current powers and the judicial branch does not want the job of parsing the Constitutionality of such a touchy subject.  A ruling one way or the other could put one of the branches of government into direct conflict with the finding and bring to the fore a Constitutional crisis that we’ve all managed to mostly ignore for nearly 225 years.

Accordingly, expect this lawsuit to go pretty much nowhere because – after the press conferences are over – the last thing anybody really wants is a speedy trial.

– Austin

 

Screw the Weiner. Give Me a Real Scandal!

I believe I’ve mentioned that going into the last presidential election cycle I was a big fan of John Edwards. As campaign messages go I thought that his “Two Americas” bit was dead on and very saleable. (And it still is, maybe more than ever.) Plus,I assumed that after his ’04 run with John Kerry he was fully geared for the absurdities of the campaign trail … and, frankly, I thought what the Democrats needed was a slick, smart trial lawyer to counter-attack the usual Karl Rove-style selective outrage crap. Also, I figured he might do okay with the female vote.

Lately I’ve also admired the work of Anthony Weiner. In a world of sawdust dull Harry Reids, Henry Waxmans and, well, John Kerrys, I saw some value in a guy who was both on target legislatively and politically and could deliver a steady stream smart bombs on GOP hypocrisies with a satirist’s wit. (Hence the voracity with which he’s being gutted.)

So, in the realm of understatement, last week was a tough one, what with Edwards indicted for kiting campaign money into the care and keeping of his astral-crystal lover mama and Weiner exposed as — what else do you call it? an utter, compulsive idiot — for cyber sexting female fans. Right now I can’t remember where I read or heard someone who knew Edwards pre-’04 talking about the “astonishing transformation” that came over the guy after he got a killer dose of the idolatry that comes from intense public exposure .,.. in a fevered partisan environment. . The phrase “down to earth” was even used. If Anthony Weiner has undergone something of the same, I don’t know, except of course that Jon Stewart considers him a friend and Stewart doesn’t strike me as a guy who readily embraces wanton douche bags.

But this latest … epic scandal, a mostly obscure congressman from Queens/Brooklyn flirting with women to whom he is not married, but as far as we know not breaking any laws … got me thinking again on the Republicans’ singular failure over the past three years. Namely, the inability to hang anything … anything … on Barack Obama. And by “anything” I mean some kind of sexual scandalpalooza. Something titanic. Like, you know,  Paula Jones via the earth-shaking Whitewater real estate deal. What could possibly give? Even if Obama has managed to keep his pants zipped and his fingers off his Blackberry camera all of his career, the likes of Andrew Breitbart should have made something up by now. The Presidential equivalent of a Shirley Sherrod moment. Get video of Obama with Mrs. Sarkozy, Carla Bruni, feed it back and forth through an Avid editing deck and voila! insinuation of scandal and a news cycle dominating story that knocks the Paul Ryan budget debacle, and the looming establishment GOP v. Tea Party crusaders brawl deep into the background.

The book “Game Change” by Mark Halperin and John Heileman, (soon to be a major movie), was a great read for all the head-slapping bungling, back-stabbing, second-guessing, desperation and craven-ness of everyone on the ’08 campaign trail … except Obama. Point being again, we elected the right guy in terms of someone fully committed to doing the job he was elected to do, and considering the quality of the candidates the Republicans have been swooning over, Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain and our own “courageous”, budget-balancing choirboy, Tim Pawlenty, he should get elected again.

But now I am wondering, what with the string of all the anti-gay Republicans caught flagrante delicta with male hookers (and worse), Nev. Sen. John Ensign’s “C” Street Bible Study Group/hot chick clearing house, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Edwards and Weiner how much the public really cares anymore about the sexual compulsions of influential men swamped with constant, easy access to “somethin’ somethin'” on the side? How soon does this kind of … historically routine … behavior hit the tipping point equivalent  of having smoked a few joints in college? The point where you just can’t care that much … about something that matters so little to you?

If I were to advise Weiner on a career path, I’d suggest he follow Eliot Spitzer’s lead and move to better paying job with a bigger megaphone for attacking the real scandals of our age … the stuff that actually does matter, a hell of a lot, to everyone whether they’re being reminded of it hourly by the mainstream press or not.

Do I have to remind you that as of this date not one key person involved Wall Street’s world economic collapse home mortgage derivatives scandal, (a real scandal, albeit one lacking any naked pictures), has yet gone to jail, and the government is being successfully stymied in pressing indictments against Goldman Sachs for what appear to be beyond flagrant acts of fraud? Weiner on cable news could for example get New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin (author of “Too Big to Fail”) on with Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi to discuss their competing views of the veracity/duplicity of Goldman, Sachs’ management team. (Sorkin’s Tuesday column is essentially a public response to Taibbi’s piece of May 10, and here Taibbi responds to Sorkin.)

It ain’t exactly beefcake on Twitter, but I for one am a lot more taken with the gravity of that scandal than this latest Tale of the Weiner.

Barack Obama’s Crucible

THIS POST HACKED.

– The Mgmt.

The Impossible Dream: Marketing A Bent Curve

THIS POST HACKED.

What Barack Obama Can Learn from Glenn Beck

THIS POST HACKED.

– The Mgmt.

 

It’s not McChrystal’s Criticism, it’s His Bait & Switch

THIS POST HACKED.

Obama the (Late) Great Communicator

THIS POST HACKED.

– The Mgmt.

 

Are Reid and Lott Statements Morally Equivalent?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is being challenged to step down from his leadership post because he said something racial. After all, says Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele, Republican Senate Majority Trent Lott was forced to step down when he said something racial.

But are the two remarks really morally equivalent?

Reid privately observed that Obama may be more acceptable to some white voters than past unsuccessful African American candidates because he was lighter skinned and didn’t have a traditional African American dialect. The observation about Obama’s pigment and parlance are factual. The observation about those things making him more politically viable than past African American presidential candidates may or may not be correct. But it was electoral analysis about intolerance, not endorsement of intolerance.

On the other hand, Lott told a crowd:

“When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.”

Now remember, Strom Thurmond was the segregationist candidate in 1948. So that statement was clearly an endorsement of a set of grossly unjust segregationist policies that banned millions of Americans from achieving the American dream available to white Americans.

Reid was making an observation about public bigotry, while Lott was cheerleading for it. The two statements are hardly moral equivalent.

– Loveland
small business association nice

Can Obama Make the Case for More Costly War in Afghanistan?

President Obama has a hard job ahead of him — convincing Americans we should keep fighting in Afghanistan, convincing us that the soldiers who are being killed and maimed there are serving our national interest and the interests of global security, freedom and democracy.

I’m tired of useless, ill-conceived and poorly executed war. Obama was handed a mess by BushCheney, and I find the easy way out very alluring — get out now. I think Obama is about to make a mistake, and I’m a huge supporter.

What he says Tuesday, what he lays out, will be a test of his ability to convey his vision, his leadership, and his skill in clarifying a horribly murky situation.

The New York Times Sunday Magazine had an excellent story on General Stanley McChrystal in October. It’s McChrystal whom Obama charged with figuring out what we should do militarily in Afghanistan, and McChrystal who’s asking for more troops. Is McChrystal the latest in a long line of military leaders who seem to be forward thinking for these new times but still seem to have one basic message — more troops, use force? The commanders in JFK’s administration

called for invading Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and during the Cuban Missile Crisis and called for a pre- emptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union early in JFK’s term. The brass in Vietnam said with more troops and new strategy we could win. More troops and a new strategy is holding Iraq together for the moment, with baling wire and duct tape. And now more troops to help patch together a country that has wrecked modern armies, that we left high and dry twice in recent history, that isn’t really a country. More troops. More debt. More death.

As Dexter Filkins writes in the Times cover story on McChrystal and Afghanistan:

McChrystal’s plan is a blueprint for an extensive American commitment to build a modern state in Afghanistan, where one has never existed, and to bring order to a place famous for the empires it has exhausted. Even under the best of circumstances, this effort would most likely last many more years, cost hundreds of billions of dollars and entail the deaths of many more American women and men.
And that’s if it succeeds.

McChrystal has some new ideas and some new strategies, but he also has some of the same old military instincts — he was a passive part of covering up the death in Afghanistan by friendly fire of Pat Tillman under the secretive and misleading Bush administration. The military viewpoint is so often “just leave us alone to do what we see is right and we’ll take care of everything.”

Obama and America and the world have steep mountains to climb in Afghanistan. The wrong choice — and are there any other kinds there? — could leave terrorists a home base or could leave America bankrupt and bleeding. Or both.

I trust Obama’s judgment, but I hope the ghost of John Kennedy is whispering in Obama’s ear the lessons JFK learned dealing with our military during the Cuban crises — the military is subservient to civilian authority in the United States for a damn good reason. When you’re a commander of a huge military force, you see it as a solution to many problems and you want to use it. When you’re the commander in chief, sometimes you have to just say no.

— Bruce Benidt
(Photo from NYTimes.com)payroll calculator free nice

Premature Adulation

I’m a big Obama fan.  In fact, I admire President Obama more after 10 months in office than I did when he was candidate Obama.  He has been the kind of president I think we need in this very, very difficult time and I am glad that he’s the one wrestling with how many troops to send to Afghanistan.  When he makes the decision, I’m confident it will be a well-reasoned, thoughtful judgment of which course of action best serves America’s interests.

But, a Nobel Peace Prize?  What are they putting in the Norwegian water these days?

I can’t help but think that this high honor has been prematurely given and is more of a curse than a blessing (kind of like being the football player on the cover of the new Madden NFL videogame).  For all the good things he has done to date, the body of work is not quite up to Nobel standards.  Maybe someday, but not yet.

But, just to prove that every cloud has a silver lining, I’m sure this will drive Mr. Obama’s conservative critics’ blood pressure to new heights.  The image of so many vein-throbbing, red-faced bloviators makes me smile and that’s never a bad thing on a Friday afternoon.

– Austin

The Bully Pulpit…

It’s good to be king.

One of the great advantages of being president is the ability to nudge the national discussion in whatever direction you choose.  As President Obama spoke to Wall Street today, that ability was on full display on every cable news feed except the Weather Channel.

John Boehner is probably speaking somewhere right now.  So is Mitch McConnell.  And so too are Rush and Sarah and Sean and Michael and Ann and all the other members of the pontificates in exile.  They ain’t got 7 channels, though.

– Austin

Dr. Spin

Just because you have the opportunity to get lots of media attention doesn’t always mean it’s a good idea to get lots of media attention.

Case in point: With the President coming to Minnesota tomorrow, Governor Pawlenty could lay low for one day, but that would leave him out of the limelight. Or he could promote his health record, which will get him loads of press attention, maybe even national attention.

Governor Pawlenty has chosen the path of least diffidence. Upon hearing that the President was coming to his state to promote health care reform, he issued a cutesy Top 10 list designed to bring attention to his own health achievements.

It worked, in the sense of getting him media attention. But does Pawlenty really want to the national media to look into the brutal cost shifting effects of his cuts in health care for the state’s most vulnerable citizens?

“We try to pass those costs on to our commercial payers,” says Lawrence Massa, president of the Minnesota Hospitals Association.

“We eat as much of it as we can, but we have our own bills to pay. The commercial market”–meaning non-government health insurers–“generally is where the costs are absorbed, which results in higher premiums for everybody.”

In addition, some “safety net” hospitals, such as Hennepin County Medical Center, have already had to be bailed out by county taxpayers, which represents another cost shift.

Does he really want to tell a nation worried sick about their future access to health care that cutting access is preferable to expanding access?

– Loveland

Obama Not A Mama Last Night

In the past we’ve discussed linguist George Lakoff’s writings about Republicans being very disciplined about framing themselves as strict fathers of the national family and Democrats as overly permissive mommies. That daddy framing, the theory goes, is appealing to many voters who are looking for a leader to keep them secure and safe, like stereotypical 1950s TV dads did.

Well, mommy wasn’t home in the U.S. Senate chambers last night. Let’s just say Obama wasn’t stressing the “care” part of the health care debate as much as Democrats typically do. He had a little stern daddy in his repertoire:

…(T)he time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action…

But we cannot have large businesses and individuals who can afford coverage game the system by avoiding responsibility…

It is a lie, plain and simple…

I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it.

If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.

We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it. I still believe we can act even when it’s hard.

Because that is who we are. That is our calling. That is our character.

“We will call you out???” Pretty tough stuff for a caring, sharing, man-purse-wearing Democrat.

Last night Obama was reminiscent of stern daddy figures from the right. Reagan: “Go ahead, make my day.” Bush I: “Read my lips, no new taxes.” Bush II: “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”

And that wasn’t the only thing that was different about Obama last night. When Democratic Presidents aren’t playing the nurturing Mommy-in-Chief, they are usually playing the Wonk-in-Chief. And despite an incredibly complex topic, Obama mostly avoided that messaging trap as well.

This approach appears to have worked for the time being. Before the speech, CNN had support for Obama’s health plan at 53%. After the speech? 67%.

Honey, I’m home!

– Loveland

The Revised DIO Index

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.“

G.K. Chesterton

Count me among the Progressives, I guess.

A couple of weeks ago I unveiled the “Days In Office” or DIO Index as a way to remind friend and foe alike that it might be a little premature to judge the Obama administration a failure – or a success.  A couple of readers took the time to let me know that while they appreciated the thought, the logic of a ratio that shrank with the passage of time, particularly one meant to illustrate how much time the current administration has held office versus its predecessor, was lacking in…logic.

Fortunately, the fix for this problem is one that even I can handle; you simply flip the dividend and the divisor.  Instead of a number that starts out really big (meaninglesly so) and shrinks, the new quotient starts out very small and increases over time. And, since it is analogous to the percent of time Obama has been in office versus Bush (multiple the DIO Index by 100 to get the percentage), it is intuitively more understandable.

So, without further ado:

And, yes, I really do believe it is too early to judge the Obama administration up or down.  That said, the man has been busy.  As Dan Balz wrote in yesterday’s Washington Post:

In his first 60 days in office, Obama has nearly overwhelmed Washington with his proposals to stimulate the economy, fix the credit crisis, help struggling homeowners, regulate the financial industry, reform the health care system, initiate a potentially costly program for alternative energy and push to revitalize the nation’s education system.

And that’s just on the domestic front.  Never mind Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, China and Mexico.

He probably would have done the DIO Index right the first time.

– Austin

The DIO Index

Before the right gets a little too excited about declaring the Obama administration a failure, I’d like to introduce the “DIO Index” to remind all of us – left, right and center – that it might be just a little premature to call the game yet.

The DIO – Days in Office – is a simple ratio of President Bush’s days in office compared to President Obama’s.  The index current is over 63, meaning that as of today, President Bush held office 63 times longer than President Obama.  At the end of the over-hyped first 100 days, it will be about 29-1.

The Bush administration was remarkably efficient in screwing things up so the Obama administraiton is going to have to work hard to match their pace.  Accordingly, I would suggest our brethren on the right – as represented by Glenn “Bunker Boy” Beck and “Rush-to-Judgement” Limbaugh -that they would have a stronger case to make when the DIO gets down to around 8 or so.

We’ll update the DIO as events warrant.

– Austin