Election Day 2012

So today is election day. I had planned to write a post about how to watch the coverage and which states to pay attention to. But really, it is all about Ohio. Granted, if Obama loses Pennsylvania, that is a really bad sign. Same goes for if Romney loses Florida. But absent those scenarios, just pay attention to Ohio. And right now, Nate Silver's blog says Ohio and therefore the election are likely to go to Obama with 90.0% probability.

Instead though, I am going to reflect on this year versus four years ago. Four years ago, I was a relatively early Obama supporter. I started off favoring Bill Richardson but went to Obama once I realized he wasn't viable. And I became a really strong Obama supporter - so much so that I donated and volunteered for Obama.

Mitt Romney was right though, the best feeling I had about Obama was the day after the election. This post is kind of embarassing in retrospect (and I guess it is no surprise that I am now reading a lot of history again). When I am trying to be fair, I think that Obama has done a good enough job. He passed major health care reform, a big stimulus, prevented the recession from continuing, took major stands in favor of same sex couples, and passed a banking reform bill.

But he has also been disappointing on foreign policy, specifically on drone strikes (more in a future post), and he was weak on the economy and caved on budget issues. He has let Republicans set the agenda by focusing on a medium term issue - the budget - instead of the immediate issue of job. And then let them attack him for not doing enough on jobs.

In light of all of this, I did not donate nor did I volunteer this time. Maybe part of my lack of volunteering is due to my young son. But much more so, it is because I am not as inspired. Sure, we need to avoid a Romney presidency. But that isn't enough to get me out volunteering.

So here's hoping for an Obama win tonight. But I won't be filled with as much hope. Just much less dread.

Tuesday's Forecast: Phew - Obama a Favorite

All is right with the world of politics again. After the post-debate scare when Romney made up a lot of ground, Obama is back to being a solid favorite in Nate Silver's forecast. I admit, I was worried for a while there. (Not that I am overconfident now, it is still close enough for Romney to win, but much less likely.)

Having said that, I am really disappointed that one debate can move the polls so much, especially when relatively few people watched it, and even more so because the polls moved based on voters understanding of who won not what anyone said. That is depressing.

To be clear, that is the cynical interpretation of why Romney gained ground - that people changed their minds based not on what someone said, but how they said it - or actually how the press said they said it. But there are better and more plausible reasons why the polls shifted.

The polls movement many have been reversion to the mean - in other words the polls might have been moving back in line with the fundamentals. This makes sense if you think Romney was underperforming - maybe by scaring voters away with is 47 percent comments, and flawed convention including a crazy Clint Eastwood speech. So the debate might have shown some voters that would want to vote for Romney that he isn't that crazy or that incompetent.

Now that Obama is looking good again, I will say that there was a time when I was actually kind of curious about how Romney would be as a president. Mitt Romney is running a campaign that promises a lot with no specifics and avoids anything controversial: tax cuts, increased military spending, and general (but huge) cuts to discretionary spending.

But once he governs, he would have to figure out those details. For example, what discretionary spending would he gut to make his budget numbers add up? I think cuts of the magnitude he is proposing would be deeply unpopular. But if he doesn't do it, the GOP would be furious with him. It all just comes back to whether he would be extreme or moderate. Would he fight his party or be subservient to it? I think the later - and articles like this confirm my fear.

But the point is that someone who has so much avoided making any decisions and making anyone angry would have to finally do so. And I wonder how he wound handle that. Though I am not so curious that I want to see him win just to see what he would do.

The 47 Percent

We are all very familiar with Romney's taped comments about how 47 percent of the country didn't pay income taxes and are therefore dependent on the system and don't take responsibility for their lives and think they are entitled to benefits. There has been a lot of discussion about this, some of it very good and smart. I want to add my thoughts here.

The first thing I should mention is how dishonest this comment is. A lot of others have pointed this out, but it bears repeating. First of all, that number is abnormally high due to the recession. It is usually 40% that don't pay income taxes. But of that 47 percent, 60 percent are working and paying taxes for social security and Medicare. Another 22 percent are retirees. About 8 percent are not paying any federal taxes because they are unemployed, students, or on disability.

So the 47 percent are not all unemployed people on welfare. Most are working or retired. But let's pretend that Romney had the right number - let's say he made the same comments about that 8 percent that are not paying any taxes and are not working. Or even better, let's say he had a number that included only those unemployed and ignored the students and people on disability. Romney's claim was that this small number of people can never be convinced to take responsibility for their lives.

If there is one thing that seems to be consistent for Romney over the years, it is disdain for the welfare. He claims he ran against Kennedy because he wanted to tell the world that Kennedy's policies created a permanent underclass - that by helping people with food stamps and cash assistance, we were actually hurting them.

There are so many things wrong with the statement and that outlook. Ezra Klein has a great post on how the poor actually are taking responsibility but are in fact drowning in responsibility. I completely agree with that post and couldn't have written it better. But I don't expect someone with Romney's history to know what Klein points out. But I do expect him to know how he lived his life.

Mitt Romney did not live his life, nor treat his children, in a way that suggests responsibility and success only comes through hardship and self-reliance. We know that Mitt Romney used his inheritance from his Dad to support himself through school. And good for him. He used free money to better himself and become self sufficient - free money that was way more than what people on welfare get.

Also, Mitt Romney isn't forcing his kids to become poor to teach them how to make it on their own. Instead, he has set up a family trust that has $100 million in it, and he made sure to avoid taxes as best he could. As David Brooks says in his great take down, middle - and upper I would add - class parents don't deny their kids to teach responsibility, they shower them with everything they can. The best schools, the best programs. They give them a comfortable life so that they are most likely to achieve success.

The point here is that there is a huge disconnect between how Romney found success and then how he treats his children, and how he thinks poor people should be treated to find success. He believes his kids will find success if they are showered with supports and provided with lots of money, and his Dad felt the same way. But he believes that the poor will only find success if they are starved of supports and money.

I don't think this disconnect is racism. I think it is forced on him by his conservative worldview. In order to believe that you care about people's success but also to believe that government is too generous, you need to believe that people need less support in order to succeed. And you believe this despite your own experience and behavior. In fact, this is the greatest trick conservatives play on the world: that the best way to help someone is to not help them at all. Then you can perceive yourself as generous and kind, but also feel like you should keep more of your money.

Unfortunately, it is wrong. The best way to help someone is to help them. Just like the best way to help your family is to help them. And you do that by providing them with lots of money.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

Jobs Numbers: Ouch

I am so depressed about the really bad jobs numbers released yesterday. I know that one data point doesn't tell a full picture. But this is one bad data point - or set of data points. The number of jobs added were half what was predicted and previous months numbers were reported down.

If things don’t really speed up in the coming months, there is a good chance Romney will be our next president. And what really depresses me is that Romney has worse, not better plans, to help the economy.

I understand that the economy hasn't gotten better under President Obama, and he deserves his fair share of the blame. He has been silent on monetary policy and extremely meek on fiscal policy. He must know that more fiscal stimulus will help, but he assumes it is unpopular and unlikely to pass and so he won't call for it. So the voters don't know why the economy isn't getting better. 

So the voters will punish the current president - somewhat fairly - but in return get a president who's ideas to help the economy are much worse. Our only hope is that Romney - and other Republicans are more Keynesian than they let on.

There is some evidence of this. Romney said he doesn't want to cut the budget too much too soon and put us back into a recession. And it seems like other Republicans want to prevent stimulus to prevent Obama's re-election. Disgusting as this all is, there is hope that when in power, Republicans might actually do the right thing (as they have in the past). So that is our best case scenario right now. Pretty unfortunate, no?

Romney's Qualifications

I was planning to write a post about Romney's claim that he is more qualified to be president because of his business experience. The point was going to be that Romney's time as governor was better experience than his time at Bain Capital, especially because the government does not engage in private equity. Of course Romney doesn't want to talk about his time as governor because it would remind his base of a time when he was far less conservative.

But I never got around to writing that post, and good thing. Ezra Klein wrote a much better post on what Romney should have learned at Bain Capital to make him a better presidential candidate.

“I know how business works,” Romney likes to say. “I know why jobs come and why they go.” That’s overstating the case. But while Romney’s perspective at Bain was biased toward creating short-term profits rather than creating value or employment, it was a look at the ferocity of modern, global, financialized capitalism, and Romney surely recognizes its realities in a way many of us don’t.

[edit]

What he could have learned from that experience is that, just as creative destruction is important for moving an economy forward, a safety net is important for catching those who are left behind. As head of Bain, Romney fired a lot of workers who were perfectly good at their jobs, who were committed to their companies, who had families they needed to support. That was his job as head of a private-equity giant. But his job as president of the United States would also be to look out for those workers.

Klein goes on to say that Romney's plans do not help people caught up in creative destruction and therefore he didn't learn the right lessons from Bain Capital.

Klein's post is great - and you should read the whole thing because it really gets at the Bain Capital issue well. And yet it doesn't actually tell us anything new about Romney or the Republican Party.

Romney and the Republicans have shown, through the issues they focus on and the positions they choose, that they are exclusively concerned about the rich. They talk all about tax cuts - for everyone, but they won't agree unless the wealthy are included - and removing regulatory burdens.

But they have not demonstrated any support for the unemployed. They complain that benefits are too generous, including unemployment insurance. They have no plan to provide universal health care. And they have no urgency in bringing unemployment down, especially if it means the possibility of higher inflation.

So yes, Romney should have learned from Bain Capital about the things that face middle income and lower income households. But he had many opportunities to do that. He could have learned how hard getting through college can be by realizing how comparatively easy it was using his trust fund. But he didn't. And this says something about him and who he sympathizes with.

The Economy: Who is to Blame?

When talking about the economy, some people like to say that a president deserves far less blame and far less credit than they actually get. This statement seems so reasonable and nonpartisan when you first hear it. Granted, Republicans often say this, and this allows them to avoid giving Clinton credit for the boom of the 1990s and avoid blaming George W. Bush for this recession. So it isn't so non-partisan.

But it is also wrong. There is a lot presidents can do about the economy. They can create conditions that lead to speedy recoveries from recessions - with the help of good policy from the federal reserve. And they can create conditions that lead to bubbles and an overleveraged a financial system.

The president has helped the economy recover but I think the president could be making it recover faster. There is no question that the stimulus helped. It just wasn't large enough (and maybe poorly targeted). But recent budget cuts at the federal, state, and local level have not helped the recovery. Federal reserve policy has been helpful, but again, they could be doing more. And President Obama could encourage them to do more. 

Also, I blame presidents for aspects of the Great Recession. President Clinton and President George W. Bush supported decontrol of the banking system, allowing banks to overleverage, putting the whole system at work. It also allowed a lot of risky borrowing by homeowners and investors alike. 

But there were other aspects that were outside the control of Presidents Clinton and Bush. Excessive savings by Asian countries had a role in our recent housing bubble.  

Also, I don't give Clinton too much credit for the 1990s dot-com boom. Sure, his decision to balance the budget and create surpluses helped create market confidence. But really, that boom was driven by technology and efficiency improvements (and a bit of a bubble). 

Mitt Romney's economic adviser, Greg Mankiw, had a good thought on evaluating presidents and their economic policy :

What you would not do is judge him by the outcome. Even the best physicians have patients die. And even witchdoctors can have patients recover. Randomness is a fact of life (and death). In the case of a medical doctor, the answer seems clear: Instead of looking at the outcome, you would judge him by the decisions he makes and treatments he prescribes. That is, you would examine whether he followed best practices for the circumstances he faced.

I think this makes a lot of sense. Following this method, we might blame Obama if we enter a double-dip recession caused by further government austerity. But we would not blame Obama if Europe's austerity causes them to have a double-dip recession and then bring us along for the ride or if the Federal Reserve decides to implement monetary tightening. 

Mitt Romney himself takes a different approach. When there is good news about the economy, he gives Bush credit. When the recovery is faltering, he blames Obama.

I think it is clear though that a president can have a very big impact on the economy. We just need to be nuanced (Romney has inexplicably attacked Obama for nuance) and thoughtful about what a president is and is not responsible for.

What is Work?

A couple weeks ago there was a big to-do about women and what constitutes work. Mitt Romney's  team got all riled up when someone associated with Obama suggested that staying at home and taking care of children is not work, in reference to Ann Romney. I think the outrage was mostly fake and ginned-up, but that's how campaigns work. But fine, we all agree that women (and men) staying home to take care of children is work.

Except Mitt Romney doesn't actually agree with that himself if you look at past statements. When talking about low income women, Mitt Romney actually thinks staying at home is not work, and that these same women should be forced to "work" in order to get welfare and to teach good "work" habits to their children.

Mitt Romney is a bad candidate. His positions are not at all consistent, even when not considering all the positions he has changed. But this actually points out a Republican inconsistency. Republicans want the woman's role in the home recognized and appreciated. Just not when it comes to low income women.

It is a shame that the press is more interested in fake controversies than in actually getting at fundamental issues like whether being at home is work and how that affects major policies like welfare reform. If pressed, Republicans cannot maintain this position and be consistent. If taking care of kids is work, than single low income mothers should be paid to stay home if they want to (welfare). If not, Republicans have to say that staying home is not work.

But our press corps won't push this. Instead, they'll cover every silly fake controversy and miss all the important issues. And Republicans (and sometimes Democrats) will continue to be allowed to be inconsistent. And policy and our debate will suffer.

They Have Chosen

Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee. I think we all assumed this would be the case, but there were moment when it was unclear and it was possible that someone as crazy as Santorum, Perry, or Gingirch might have won (Bachmann and Cain even had their moments).

So what does this mean? I like this quote from Peggy Nonnan, a moderate conservative columnist for the Wall Street Journal, describing Romney:

We learned Mitt Romney is not a greatly improved candidate from four years ago. He has endurance and discipline: He wants this thing. The reason why is still not fully clear. His political instincts and sense of subject matter are not much better than they were in 2008. The awkwardness continues.

I think this is all true. More than other politicians, his views seem to move to whatever will get him elected. The question is if he wins, will we get the current far-right Romney, or the Massachusetts moderate Romney. My guess is that we'll get the far-right version; the base will always be watching him and so he will always have to show if loyalty.

As for the campaign though, I have to say I am not worried about him as a candidate. That he couldn't dispose of such a weak field is meaningful, despite his huge advantages in money, endorsements, and staff support. This doesn't mean he cannot win, it just means that it would take very favorable circumstances to do so (like a stalled or double-dip recession).

I will say though he has a very interesting strategy as a candidate to deal with one of his weaknesses - low favorability ratings.  He has a kind of jiu-jitsu strategy where he accuses his opponents of the things they are accusing him of. And it does seem to throw them off-stride.

He managed in a debate to accuse Santorum of not being sufficiently conservative - attacking him for his vote on No Child Left Behind. That Santorum fell for it and made some lame excuse showed that it worked. He is doing the same thing to Obama - accusing him of being a Harvard elite, despite that Romney has two degrees from the university. And in light of anti-woman legislation like the transvaginal ultrasound, Romney is trotting out disingenuous numbers about job losses for women in the Obama presidency to accuse him of being anti-woman.

The fact is that this probably works. It brings the candidates down to his level. He is basically saying, "if you think I am ________, my opponent is just as bad." It worked well enough in the primary. We'll see if the voters get tired or if Obama is a better candidate and able to avoid it.

The final thing I will say, is that I just really don't like Romney. I can't find a moment when he is being genuine, in his attacks or in talking about his vision. His attacks on Obama are false - especially on foreign policy (where Obama is pretty conservative) and the economy. And when he talks about his vision, it is vague or noncommittal.

I know that most politicians are like this to some extent. Obama has said and will say some ridiculous things - and his surrogates will be even worse. And maybe I am not objective, though I do try to be. I just can't help but feel though that Romney is worse in this respect than anyone else.

Romney is not principled, like McCain tried to be. And he will try to bring everyone down with him.  After all, if people don't like him, the only thing to do is make the people not like his opponent as well. 

I have a feeling that I am going to find this campaign to be painful to watch. Maybe Obama can take more of the high ground, but I doubt it. I will probably long for the days of the somewhat reasonable McCain v. Obama. I can handle painful though, so long as Obama still wins.

Update on 2012 Election

I just want to give my latest thoughts on the upcoming presidential elections. First, I want to say that I actually think President Obama will get a second term. There are two reasons I have changed my mind.

First, the economy seems to be on the mend. And if you'll remember, one of the main reasons I thought he would lose was because the economy wasn't doing well and there was nothing he could say he wanted to do but was prevented. With the economy improving, that goes away and he can instead take credit for it.

But second, the potential GOP challengers are a mess. It looks like Romney will probably get the nomination, though this is no sure thing. Santorum is doing surprisingly well and Gingrich is holding on. If Romney wins, he will do so not by articulating a better vision, but by making his opponents look even worse.

It is clear that Romney is using quite a bit of negative advertising when his opponents start to do well. I'm not saying I oppose this - I don't love it - but my point is more that it shows the weakness of a candidate that has to rely on negative advertising so much.

Romney is also spending quite a bit of money and not raising quite so much. At this time during the elections in 2008, Obama and Hillary were beating each other up, but they were also raising a ton of money and building strong ground operations for the general. None of the GOP candidates are doing this. All, including Romney, are spending on advertising and not on organization.

But I also want to note the possibility that Romney does not win the nomination. If it is Santorum or Gingrich, the party will be sending far right candidates to the general election (though you can call the current version of Romney far right as well). Santorum holds some really crazy positions, not the least of which that a man and a woman should not have sex unless married and trying to conceive. And therefore contraception is wrong. Gingrich is now far right, but also just a lose cannon.

I don't think either of them could win a general election - though it is scary to consider it and to know that it is possible if unlikely.

There is the potential, though also unlikely, for a new GOP candidate to come in through the convention. Whoever that would be would start with a huge disadvantage in money and organizing. Although I will say, I might prefer someone like Jeb Bush if it would lead to a good debate about issues.

Lastly, I just want to express real frustration over GOP attempts, including by Romney (who never ceases to amaze me in his ability to say things that are not true and that I don't think he believes), to paint Obama as a far left liberal. But I am even more frustrated over Obama letting them do that.

The GOP has been attacking Obama's foreign policy, though it is not markedly different from Bush and Cheney (I wish it was). Romney said Obama wants to talk about the poor instead of the middle class even though he doesn't seem to (I wish he did). His attempts to balance the budget are center-right. And his State of the Union seemed to talk only about tax cuts.

I wish we had a president that was liberal and defended liberal values. But at the least, he should really defend his moderation and attack Republicans for lying.

Gingrich v. Romney

Dear Conservative, 

I see that in the latest, and probably last, iteration of the your anyone-but-Romney fickleness, Newt Gingrich has surged in the polls. In the past, I have avoided writing on the newest surge because I assumed the person would crash. There are a lot of reasons why Gingrich might (money, staff, erratic behavior, skeletons), but the right is desperate, and he might actually stick around.

Since I think I am pretty good at thinking like a conservative, I am going to talk through with you the decision you might face: Romney versus Gingrich.

First, I want to acknowledge that you face a difficult task. Between the two, there is only one similarity I can think of: Both candidates have a history of supporting positions that are now unsupportable - namely carbon cap and trade and health care individual mandate.

Other than that, the candidates are pretty different. Romney is perceived as a moderate that has flipped to win the primary - which makes him untrustworthy. However, he is also seen as competent and probably a good manager; his business successes and time as governor support that perception. And though he seems slippery, maybe robotic, he doesn't have any baggage around family issues that Gingrich has.

Gingrich has conservative credentials. So his flipping is perceived as erratic - or better, excused because others in the party have flipped (ie Heritage Foundation). He is seen as an ideas man, though maybe too wildly seeking new ideas and not grounded enough to manage an administration well. And though he is smart, some of his ideas and theories are not well thought-out. Also, his history with his wives shows a major lack of compassion, loyalty and moral decency - and his timing with the impeachment reeks of hypocrisy (though you probably don't care about that - better to go after a liberal like Clinton hypocritically than to be consistent and therefore not impeach a Democratic president). 

Finally, and perhaps the worst unless he can continue to disingenuously sweet talk his way out of it, is his lobbying. I don't think people will continue to buy that Gingrich was only providing history lessons for millions of dollars. And, if you are getting paid to support an idea, even if you would like the idea anyway, it is still lobbying.

In looking at the two options, I think you, dear conservative, have a difficult choice. A robotic but competent former governor whose core positions and values seem open for change with the winds or an erratic but full of ideas former legislator and lobbyist who lacks compassion and loyalty. I would probably go with the one more likely to be a good manager. But then again, maybe having loyalty to conservative principles is more important. And despite his erraticness sometimes, Gingrich is better on that front.