Romney's Convention Speech

I didn't watch Mitt Romney's convention speech (nor will I watch President Obama's speech), but I did read the coverage of it and one line stuck out. He said:

You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.

That's not untrue. A lot of us are disappointed by President Obama. He hasn't lived up to our expectations, which he created during his campaign. His promise of bipartisanship turned into rolling over in the face of a radical Republican party. His moderation meant working on the budget deficit - not a real concern right now - instead of dealing with unemployment. I can go on, and have in previous posts.

But just like other Romney criticisms of Obama, Romney isn't the solution. If we were disappointed by the lack of "Hope and Change", Romeny won't deliver that instead. If we want someone young, energetic and forward-looking, that isn't Mitt Romney. If we want someone who can be bipartisan and move us away from the bitter partisan debates of the baby-boomers, that isn't Mitt Romney (at least not the current version of Mitt Romney)*. All the things we wanted in Obama are definitely nowhere in Mitt Romney.

This is similar to Mitt Romney's criticisms over Obama's handling of the economy. He is right that Obama hasn't done enough to fix the economy. Granted, Romney's party has stood in the way much of the time, but I agree that Obama could have done more or at least tried harder. But either way, Romney isn't the solution. What this economy needs (fiscal and monetary stimulus) Romney isn't promising.

The question is whether voters will understand this. Will they only realize their disappointment and punish Obama? Or will they realize that Romney cannot deliver what we want. Will they realize that our best bet for "Hope and Change" is to re-elect President Obama and see if he can deliver on his promise in the second term. We might be disappointed again, but at least there is a chance. And with Mitt Romney, there is no chance. 


*At this point, I doubt whether we want that. And I very much doubt that it is possible. It seems like the country is very divided along partisan lines.

Election Update: August

There was a time when I thought Obama wouldn't be re-elected. I assumed the economy was so bad that he could only win if he could explain that Republicans blocked his great plans. And he can't really say that.

But we are at the point now where polls are much better at telling us what might happen than suppositions based on generalities. I check Nate Silver's blog every day, and so I am now pretty confident that Obama can and will win (his model says Obama is a 68.7% favorite).

There are only two things that worry me. One is still the economy. If it goes south, I think Obama loses. Two, I am a little worried about the debates. There is a chance that Romney shines and Obama doesn't, and in a close race, that might matter. I think Obama is a better debater and when he makes gaffes, they are less bad than Romney's (ie $10,000), but the worrier in me thinks it could be a problem.

But putting those two things aside, I feel pretty good about the presidency. And the Senate (thanks to Akin).

Bush: More Rethinking

I wrote a post about how I was rethinking Bush in light of the major right turn of the GOP. With Bush not even part of the Republican convention, I have more thoughts / questions.

My question is why the GOP is distancing themselves from him? Yes, he was and remains unpopular. Yet the things he is unpopular for are things the GOP still stands for. Bush is unpopular because of the recession and the Iraq War. But Mitt Romney's economic policies are more of the same from Bush and show he hasn't learned anything from the Great Recessions. And his foreign policy - specifically its belligerence towards Iran - shows he didn't learn any lessons from the Iraq War.

My best guess is that the GOP is distancing themselves from Bush because people might see the connection between the GOP platform and Bush (and might even realize the GOP is even more extreme than Bush was). But this is a party that seems to laugh in the face of unpopularity. I would have expected them to highlight Bush and try to say he was right about all of those things. That would be the honest thing to do. And the decent thing to do as well.

Instead, they are humiliating someone for having the audacity to implement policies the party still supports. 

Romney: What Will He Do?

I am finding it difficult to predict what Mitt Romney will do in office if he becomes president. In the past, I have assumed that he is acting very conservative because he fears his base, so he will act that way in office. However, he has refused to take any position that might be at all unpopular. O anything that could be unpopular he is vague or silent. So this really makes me wonder what he will do in office.

It is clear that his policies, if looked at what is implied to meet his promises, are extremely conservative. It is also clear that doing what is implied would be deeply unpopular. The best example of this is his budget and the cuts that would be required to allow him to balance the budget, cut taxes, increase defense spending, and keep medicare and social security whole. To meet these goals he would have to gut all other government programs.

So will he go through with his unpopular policies or will be back down and be much more moderate? Jonathan Chait points to noise from the campaign suggesting Romney wants so bad to institute real change, even if it is deeply unpopular and causes him to have only a one-term presidency.

President Obama said the same thing and he was clearly being disingenuous. (The Romney campaign makes it sound more credible by referencing James Polk, though misrepresenting the history a bit.) And I don’t see Romney as being the one who is more willing than Obama to be unpopular.

It’s not like these are positions Romney has held dear. He has become a staunch conservative to win the nomination but as we all know he was a moderate as governor of Massachusetts.

So I am stuck. Will he actually take very unpopular steps to institute deeply conservative policies? I think Chait is right that Conservatives want to, seeing as that it is their last chance considering where the demographics are going.

It's possible that Mitt Romney doesn't even knows what he will do. Maybe he doesn't realize these policies will be deeply unpopular. Either way, I am not too worried. If the demographics are right, I don't see such far right policies saying for long. As Douthat points out in the Polk piece, the things Romney et al want to do are far in the future and easily overturned. Except for the budget cuts: though they can be reversed in short time there will be some short term damage.

2012 as 2004

This race reminds me more and more of 2004, with the party roles reversed. A rich, awkward, uninspiring candidate running as the opposite of the incumbent president (ie making the race a referendum - though it seems Romney is moving away from this).

A younger, relatively untested, more base-inspiring running-mate. The challenger is more about his biography and has only vague or unformed plans (Kerry was a real war veteran who could fix Iraq and Romney is the businessman who can save the economy).

The main difference is that Kerry wasn’t proposing to implement a far-far-left government, as Romney is.

Anyway, some splendid similarities.

Romney's New Direction

Ezra Klien has a piece on how the Romney campaign has jettisoned its three premises for the campaign:

The first was to make this a referendum, not a choice. The second was to keep it focused on the economy. The third was to bow to Obama’s essential likability by treating him as a decent guy who is simply in over his head.

He then says they have made it a choice by having Paul Ryan as the runningmate and have moved away from the economy, talking about Medicare and Welfare (with what seems to be some race whistles by the Romney campaign). And they have attacked Obama's character.

The last point I think is defensible, to be honest. I imagine the Romney campaign has seen how harsh the Obama campaign has been, and seen how voters are perceiving it - taking some of the shine off of President Obama. If Obama is less likable, the Romney campaign should be penalized less for going after him. 

What Matters to Romney?

I can’t figure out what matters to Mitt Romney - what is the thing he has been consistent on from day one - starting back in his campaign for Senate against Ted Kennedy. Something he won't move to the right on to please the base. But I can't find anything. Everything seems open to him to move far right. There is nothing moderate or even sensible - not even on business and the economy.

What finally made me realize this was his is arguing against active monetary policy and allowing gold standard talk in the GOP platform.This seems to be against the advice of his economic advisers. And as a businessman, it must be against his own good judgement. If it isn't, then his business acumen is far, far less impressive than we allow. Going back to the gold standard would be a disaster and wouldn't even lead to stable money. And a less active monetary policy would have made the recession worse and goes against Milton Friedman's teachings. 

I would understand if he was a strong business leader and was willing to cede to the right all social policies. But this isn’t the case. He is espousing far right policies in every arena. And the least sensible ideas are the in the area he knows the most about (or should) and therefore are the ones you would most expect him to understand and reject.

I just don't get it. The only explanation is that Romney just wants to be President for purely ambitious reasons and doesn't care about policy at all. 

Baseball and PEDs

The positive drug test by another MLB star has everyone talking about performance enhancing drugs (PED) again. MLB says it shows that they system is working. I don't believe that for a minute. My sense, and what I have seen in print, is that these systems are easy to get around. But I have never seen information on how, until now. This piece at Huffington Post has the following quote from Victor Conte:

"They only test the players when they’re at the ballpark," Conte explained. "Therefore, after a game, you can apply a testosterone cream or a gel or a patch, and this will peak at about four hours after you take it and be all the way back down to baseline about eight hours after. … This helps with tissue repair and healing and recovery, so they just wait until after the game and apply it … and they get the benefit of having that testosterone circulate and accelerate healing."

This is the first concrete thing I have seen about how to actually beat the system. Now, when someone says that to fail a PED drug test means you have really failed two tests, the drug test and an IQ test, I know why. Smithsonian Magazine had a decent piece before the Olympics (though they punted on the "Test Me, I'm Clean" bracelet), but it didn't give anything this specific. 

All of the performance enhancing drug incidents over the last 15-20 years have left me very cynical. I now believe that anyone who is a leader in their sport is taking performance enhancing drugs. Seriously. Close your eyes and picture someone who is the leader (or near leader), and I am assuming they are on drugs. This may not be fair, but that is just where I am at right now. 

Book Report: Grand Pursuit

I finally finished Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit. I won't do a full book review, but instead give some thoughts.

Basically, the idea of the book was a good one - mini biographies of all of the great economists / economic thinkers. Unfortunately, the execution was imperfect - the structure just didn't work. I think the author's goal was a flowing book, showing the arc of economic thinking. In this way, the book was mostly chronological, so you jump back and forth between individuals. But the chronology wasn't consistent and sometimes would move forward then go back in order to stay with one person before moving to another.

I think I would have preferred a more traditional approach of a full bio of each person in individual chapters.  Sure, this might have been more boring, but I think more useful. With individual chapters, it would have been easier to follow the arc of the person and retain more about them. 

Also, the book gave more biographical detail than was necessary. It is hard to pinpoint exactly, but there are descriptions that could have been done in a couple paragraphs that took many pages instead. And in doing this, I think she spent a little less time on their theories. 

The book covered Keynes and Freeman, Hayek and Schumpeter, Marx and Engels, Marshall, Fisher, and Samuelson, and my favorite, Amartya Sen. But it also included Beatrice and Sydney Webb and Joan Robinson, two that I didn't find necessary.

Though I found the book too long on biography and too short on theory, I will reference it in the future, if only to then do more research on the individuals.

On Paul Ryan

So Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate. I will discuss two aspects of this: what this means for the race, and what I think of the person of Paul Ryan.

First, I don't share the same glee that many Democrats do - though it doesn't make me nervous either. Instead, I feel this does nothing great and nothing bad for the election. Although I do think Ryan is extreme, I think that is hard to show to the average voter. Ryan seems reasonable enough, and the things he says, though disingenusous, also seem reasonable. He says he is for equality of opportunity. He wants to preserve Medicare while Obama will let it die. He wants to balance the budget.

Of course, any smart person can look at his actual plans and see something very different - that he is actually for large tax cuts for the rich, can't possibly balance the budget, and wants to save Medicare by making seniors pay more. But reaching and convincing large numbers of voters of this is difficult. It is much more difficult than showing them that Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, for some examples, are extreme and dangerous (which is why none of them were likely VP picks).

Having said all of that, I still think Democrats should try to convince voters that Ryan is extreme, because he is. But I don't think it will be easy and I don't think it will make the election. It might help turnout among informed liberals, but won't make much difference among independents.

On the flip side, I don't think it does a lot for Romney on the electoral college front. I generally trust / believe Nate Silver, who says that there were better picks from an electoral college perspective. But Ryan will help Romney with conservatives, help he needs, just like John McCain needed help. And like I said, I don't think it will hurt him much with independents.

Now, what do I think of Paul Ryan as a politician? I think he is more brave and more policy focused than many others, but less so than the press gives him credit for. And though he does propose policy, he is very often political and very often disingenuous.

Take his most recent budget for example. He says he can balance the budget and cut taxes (popular) without being specific at all about where the cuts (unpopular) will come from and he makes it sound like the cuts will be easy and painless instead of acknowledging honestly how large the cuts will have to be in order to meet his targets. 

Mitt Romney's plan, which Ryan has now signed onto, is even worse on this front and specifically so on tax breaks. It proposes cutting taxes while also cutting deductions, in theory leaving the overall share of taxes across incomes the same. However, it doesn't say which deductions will be cut. Nor does the math add up.

So overall, Ryan isn't adding much substance or honesty to Romney. They both are making budget claims that are extreme, vague, and hard to believe. 

On the political side, he is willing to give a speech accusing Obama of believing in equality of outcome, which is completely untrue. A man as smart and unpolitical as the press thinks he is would not say such a thing.

To conclude, Romney added someone to the ticket that will help him turnout conservatives and might also help turnout some liberals, but otherwise doesn't change much. And it is a person that I find far less wonkish and honest than many in the press - someone with an extreme and unpopular vision who is vague on all the unpopular parts of his plans.

Both Right and Both Wrong

Both candidates gave speeches on the economy a few weeks back, and I think they were both right, which is unfortunate for the country.

Romney is right that Obama’s policies haven’t improved the economy enough. Granted, Republicans have stood in the way of the few things Obama has proposed. But what he proposed was relatively modest and he has barely made the case that unemployment is our biggest problem and that his proposals are big enough to handle it. 

On the flip side, Obama is right that Romney’s policies won’t help the short term problem of high unemployment. More importantly, his policies are a return to those of George W. Bush. And remember, even without considering the crash (which was the result of ultra-free market policies of Clinton and Bush), Bush's economic record is one of very slow growth.

In other words, if Obama is elected and Republicans control at least one chamber, we are looking at the status quo - Obama paying limited attention to unemployment and having his small proposals blocked. But if Romney is elected, he'll let loose the free market, which won't improve short term growth or put us on a path to high medium term growth, but will lead to more risk and possibly more bail outs.

This is why we need Bernake and the Fed to act like the grownups and get us out of this. Unfortunately, they don't see an urgency or any serious problems.

Romney and Bain: More Thoughts

This is a post I drafted a month or so ago. Ezra Klein has written much better posts on this topic, but I still want to post my thoughts for posterity. 

The debate around Mitt Romney's time at Bain and how it qualifies him for president continues and I have some more thoughts.

First, his time at Bain is definitely fair game since that seems to be the only thing he talks about that qualifies him for president. Romney is saying that because of his time at Bain Capital, he knows how businesses work and he knows what it will take to get the economy going again.

To be clear, I don't actually think that is true. The economy is a huge complicated system and especially during a major recession the focus should be on macroeconomics instead of microeconomics. So if we wanted the best person for the economy, we would elect a macro-economist instead of a businessman.

I understand many people might not agree with that though. So let's think about what knowing about businesses would help Romney do? I agree with President Obama that by knowing only about businesses, Romney will miss all of the other important constituencies that a president needs to think about.

For example, Romney might have learned that regulations get in the way of business. In fact, that does seem to be something he believes strongly. But by only seeing things from the business's perspective means he wouldn't understand why the regulations are necessary. Lots of businesses would rather there weren't anti-pollution regulations or safe workplace regulations, but they protect lots of people and compensate for major and known negative externalities.

Also, Romney might have learned that taxes are bad for businesses. Again, this is something Romney has said. But only thinking about the business would mean he doesn't understand why taxes are necessary - he might be blind to all of the necessary services that tax revenues support from education and transportation to health and security.

My point is that Romney's experience at Bain isn't particularly helpful for a president because of how limiting it is. Better experience would be if Romney had been a state governor. If he had been, he might have seen how important things like healthcare are and might have proposed legislation that could extend coverage and might be a national model. And if he had done that, he could talk about it and show how he cares about helping everyone.

But based on the way Romney is campaigning, it seems like he hasn't done that and it seems that his only experience is at Bain Capital.

American Lion or Lamb?

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
by John Meacham

When I was on vacation in Charleston, South Carolina, I saw a pair of paintings of presidents playing cards. One is of Republican presidents and the other Democratic presidents, and both feature the ostensible founder of the party - back to the painting - playing with the modern presidents in that party. So the Republican painting has Abraham Lincoln playing with Teddy Roosevelt, Nixon, Eisenhower, Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes. The Democrat painting has Andrew Jackson playing with Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Carter, and Clinton.

On first look, it poses what might be an interesting question: what would it be like if the modern presidents were able to talk with the founder of their party? But on thinking a little more, the real question is whether the current presidents have anything in common with their founder?


Andrew Jackson, the founder of the Democratic party, initiated the Native American removal policy - forcibly sending Native Americans west of the Mississippi - ended the Second Bank of the United States, prevented state nullification of federal laws but supported slavery and states rights generally. And he was ostensibly a war hero, having fought the battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.

He was also a populist - the first frontiersman elected president - and very popular among the general population. He greatly expanded the presidency, exercising the veto much more often and setting an agenda independent of Congress.

John Meacham's book, American Lion, focuses on Jackson's White House years, and therefore only gives us the briefest overview of his early life and elections. We learn a little about his fights and duels, the battle of New Orleans, his wife and her passing, the failed election where John Quincy Adams won in the House of Representatives, and his election in 1828 and the creation of the Democratic Party.

Then we are taken through his presidency in some more detail. Meacham shows us the controversy over his Secretary of War John Eaton and his wife, which divides his supporters. And in fact, this one of the great weaknesses of this book (which inexplicably won the Pulitzer Prize). Meacham spends far more time on the gossip and familial / staff battles over Secretary Eaton than he does on other far more important topics. Having said that, he does seem to cover the issue fairly; neither side looks very good. Eaton's wife does come off as unpleasant but the others look uptight and elitist.

Meacham covers all of the major issues of the presidency: nullification and the tariff, Native American Removal, the ending of the Second Bank's charter, the dispute between America and France over war debt.  But in some cases he is too brief (Native American Removal and the tariff) but in all cases he spends less time on them than he does the Eaton affair.

But worse than that is the lack of objectivity in this book. Meacham spends countless paragraphs telling the reader that Jackson was a great leader and his men and the public generally loved him and trusted him to save them. The author would have benefited from more show and less tell.

And on the other side, he glosses over major areas of concern. He doesn't talk at all about the impact of the closing of the Second Bank of the United States. Once it is ended, it is of no importance to the author. There is only a quick sentence at the end of the book that some think its closing caused a major recession. The reader would have benefited from a discussion and analysis of the impact.

The same is true of Native American removal. He talks about why Jackson did it but is too fair. And then barely talks about the mass suffering and deaths from the actual implementation. He quickly blames it on Jackson's successor, Martin Van Buren who was president when it actually happened. Is it fair to blame it on Van Buren? Did Jackson have a safer plan that Van Buren didn't implement? Again, the reader would have benefited from more discussion of this.

The author might argue that the book is only about the White House years. But both of these things happened in the White House years and their longer-term impacts should be discussed.

Overall, the book is a pretty fast read. It might be fine for someone who just wants a quick overview of Jackson's presidency (which is what I was looking for). However, if you have a little more time, reading one of the other bios is probably worth it. I plan to read HW Brand's book sometime in the future to get a much better understanding of Andrew Jackson. 


So what would the 20th Century Democratic presidents think of their party's founder? Or what should liberals and progressives think of Andrew Jackson? Native American removal is a stain on our history. And Jackson was very wrong on the issue of slavery at a time when the abolition movement was growing. There isn't enough information to make any decision about the Second Bank of the US.

And yet he handled nullification in a way that avoided - or as we know only delayed - secession and civil war. And he expanded the president's powers in a way that makes perfect sense by making it co-equal with Congress. I think we can recognize the scale of his impact but say his policies were not progressive and therefore not positive. I think the modern Democratic presidents would agree. That doesn't mean it would be an unpleasant card game though.

Wisconsin Recall

I didn't like the California recall election in 2003, where Gray Davis was recalled and Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected. And I don't like the recall in Wisconsin. Short of illegal activity, elected officials should serve out their terms. If we had recall elections for every elected or executive official that is unpopular at some point in their term, officials would never be able to govern.

Fortunately, these things happen infrequently, and I hope it stays that way. And frankly, I am kind of glad Scott Walker won the recall because it will give other groups in other states pause before trying this. If Walker had lost, Republicans likely would have reacted by going after Democratic governors in every state they could.

While someone is governing, all energy should be going towards policy debates. We should save the politics for the elections. Recalls threaten to make everything about politics and elections never-ending.

The recall was also just bad strategy on the Democrat's part. They could have moderated Scott Walker with protests and other tactics to bring down his polling numbers. In fact, there was a time when Walker was at least talking about finding consensus and moderating a bit because of those tactics. He may not have been genuine, but he at least felt chastened and compelled to say those things.

But now that he won the recall decisively, he will feel no need to moderate and will only be more aggressive - more far-right. And worse, he is being discussed as a potential national candidate. Before the recall effort, he looked like a buffoon who went too far. Now the press is calling him a conservative hero. Granted, I think the press greatly exaggerates things, but the point is that wouldn't have been said 6 months ago.

There is also evidence that many people voted for Scott Walker simply because they didn't agree with the recall effort. This means that his overwhelming victory is partly based on moderates disagreeing with Democrats' tactics and therefore exaggerating Walker's overall support. This makes Scott Walker stronger than he should be. Overall, this was really bad strategy.

So Timid

I really don't understand why Democrats are so timid and why Republicans are so brave. I am especially confused because Republican positions are mostly unpopular generally. And in many cases, Democrats could make a really strong argument if they had some courage.

Take the recent testimony before Congress by Ben Bernake. The summary is that Republicans pressed him for less action - less monetary stimulus - while Democrats did not press him to do more.

This is crazy. Republicans are saying the economy is in bad shape because of Obama, while opposing both fiscal and monetary policy - opposing everything that could actually help. And Democrats are doing nothing.

In a previous post, I had argued against someone who thought that the problem is that Democrats want fiscal stimulus and Republicans want no stimulus. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it is only the liberal economists that want monetary stimulus, but liberal politicians want... nothing? fiscal stimulus? I don't know what they want because they are barely saying anything. 

I just continue to be amazed that Republicans are strongly arguing for far right policies. And all Democrats can muster are a few general populist messages but are too scared to articulate an approach from the left. Paul Ryan has a far right budget plan. Where is the plan from the left?

This is why Republicans can win in November: not because their ideas are more popular, but because Democrats lack the courage to have a real debate.

Great Minds

Great minds think alike, right? That saying is probably more often invoked by a lesser mind to associate with a great mind. That might be the case here.

A while ago, I wrote a post wondering if we would get out of the recession faster with a Republican as president because they would actually try stimulative policies so they could stay in power whereas Republicans oppose stimulus mostly to keep Obama from being successful.

Ezra Klein wonders the same thing, in a much more thorough and better written post.

Another Extreme Example

Ezra Klein linked to a post where Tyler Cowen posts the following comment from another site:

It’s incredibly frustrating. The political and policy world falls into two camps:

Those who believe no stimulus is necessary, everything is supply-side. Those who believe stimulus is necessary but only fiscal stimulus can or should supply it.

It’s like people completely forgot the existence of Milton Friedman, and decided to revert to the stupidest possible version of New Keynesianism, where interest rates are the only lever of monetary policy and the printing press is something that only functions when rates are above zero.

I feel like to both the centre left and the right, Milton Friedman is too heretical now — too right-wing for the left obviously and too left-wing for the right. Consequently, everything about monetarism has been stripped out of the public consciousness and we are left with vulgar Keynesianism and vulgar Austrianism.

We truly live in a Dark Age of economics.

This is silliness. Actually what is happening is that the Republican v. Democrat debate was over whether to use monetary or fiscal policy (respectively). Now the debate is whether to do anything. Milton Friedman is too liberal for the Republicans, which shows how far right they have gone. While Democrats are openly calling for more monetary policy.

Let that sink in. Republicans are opposing Milton Friedman policies. 

Too many people are trying to say the two sides are equally to blame. But this example makes it perfectly clear, contrary to the commenter, that the Republicans have gone off the reservation and won't even agree to Democrat suggestions that line up with old Republican positions - positions that used to be far to the right at the time.

Wishful Thinking as Usual

According to an article on Politico, President Obama thinks the Republican craziness will end after he wins reelection. He thinks that the craziness stems from trying to prevent him from being reelected. His wishful thinking and refusal to understand the current Republican thinking is distressing.

First, the Republicans want to prevent any accomplishments for him period. They don't want him to have a lasting record and don't want Democrats to have anything to campaign on.

But more importantly, the party itself has gone hard to the right. And there are only two things that will moderate the party.

One is big election losses that would make the party realize how unpopular their positions really are - from an insistence that all budget balancing come from program cuts to disbelieving global warming, and from immigration reform to opposing even civil unions.

The other thing that would moderate the party would be winning the upcoming elections and actually imposing their crazy agenda.

But a victory by Obama and a divided or Republican Congress will not moderate the party. Believing otherwise is naive. And I had hoped the president had learned his lesson after the debt ceiling debacle.

Bully Romney?

A story surfaced recently that Romney bullied someone in high school and possibly chose one person because he was gay. I don't think whether Romney bullied means anything about whether he would be a good president. But how he has responded does say something about how he will be as president.

The reason I don't think it matters whether he bullied is because lots of kids bully. I was pretty mean at times. Kids don't really get how much they hurt other people and so without proper supervision and instruction, kids will be mean and kids will bully. It doesn't necessarily mean that a kid that bullies will be a mean person as an adult. 

But it does matter how Romney handles it - and he didn't handle it well. He was a little bit contrite and apologetic, which is nice, but at the same time a bit dismissive. He says he was involved in "pranks and hijinks". That shows that Romney doesn't really take it seriously and hasn't learned anything.

What he should have learned is that kids bully but they shouldn't and we should try to prevent it. Good work is being done here in NYC (see Respect for All) thanks to leadership from the NY City Council. We do it by educating teachers and students about what is acceptable and how it affects people.

A Romney that takes it seriously and that learned from his youth would say that he is deeply sorry for any hurt he caused and he wishes he could go back in time and talk to that young Romney. And as importantly, he would say that he is committed to having or promoting programs that deal with this issue to prevent bullying in schools. He did apologize but he definitely didn't talk about this issue more broadly.

No one should be bullied and we should work and aspire to preventing it. Romney is not up to the challenge and I wonder if he even thinks it is a problem. 

On Consistency

A major theme for opponents of Mitt Romney has been his huge change on many issues - moving from being a very moderate Republican to a very conservative one. There has been some debate recently about whether consistency really matters to voters.

Before I get to whether I think it affects voters actual decisions, I will say that it certainly affects my thinking and I think it is worth the press covering the fact that positions have changed. It matters because it gives a sense of the candidate's character. For example, President Obama recently changed his position on same sex marriage. Many people though wondered how genuine his position has been on this.

There is some evidence he favored same sex marriage while a state senator, then changed his position when he had more national ambitions. And his comments that his position is "evolving" seemed just ridiculous. So many believe that he changed his mind to support same sex marriage only when it was right politically.

John Kerry faced bad press over his changed position on the Iraq War, and maybe rightly so. He supported it before he opposed it.

Mitt Romney is also facing questions about his changed positions on gun control, abortion, gay rights, health care, auto industry bailout and more that I am probably forgetting. All of this reinforces the image of someone who will change any position if it means becoming president. If he can go from becoming a moderate to a "severe" conservative, than what does he really stand for.

So I think all of these examples say something about the character of the candidate. But it also says something about being an elected leader in a representative democracy. Voters want to elect someone who agrees with them. But they also want to elect someone who has real convictions and strong character.

Ideally, they want both. In the GOP primary, Romney won because the only candidates that were more consistent had other much bigger flaws. I think if there had been someone more consistently conservative and with good credentials, they would have chosen that person.

The question is which do they prefer when those two cannot go together? I agree with the Monkey Cage that ultimately they want someone that agrees with them now. Democrats are happy that Obama finally supports same sex marriage and Democrats were happy when Kerry changed his mind on Iraq - as Democratic and independent voters had done. And Republicans would far prefer a Romney that changed all of his positions to follow a party that is turning hard right than if Romney had stood fast to most of his moderate beliefs. (Which is why Huntsman had little chance).

The problem is that candidates often have to follow the voters. When voters change their minds, we blame the politicians for being just as fickle as the voters are. Maybe that isn't fair. Or maybe it is. Maybe it makes sense to chose someone whose judgement is sound and doesn't have to change their minds and is right from the beginning. Probably a bit naive, but a good goal, I think.