It's time to Break It Down!
In 97 days Americans will go
to the polls to elect the 45th
President of the United
States.
Between now and then, far and away, one of the most lucratively
rewarding professions in this country will be advertising. No subset of marketeers will see more business
activity than the breed committed to churning out a bevy of creative, but
negative ads. Sadly, for all the so-called
Exceptionalism, of which so many of
our politicians boast, we as a culture have retrogressed
into a people not only capable and willing to be swayed by such lunacy, but into a nation which appears
to crave it. End of rant!
Mitt Romney
returned home yesterday after a weeklong trip to Europe (Great Britain & Poland)
and the Middle East (Israel). On paper, the trip was a political/marketing dream.
It contained four, ostensibly,
wonderful components:
- It gave Mr.
Romney an opportunity to make his first visit overseas as an official
candidate for President of the United
States.
- It provided a framework with which to authenticate his bona fides as the titular leader and chief purveyor of conservative American policy abroad.
- It allowed him time and space to attend the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, while accentuating
his role as the man who, a decade earlier, rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City; at the same time, demonstrating his devotion as the husband
of a woman who owned a horse (Rafalca)
competing in the Dressage event.
- It created multiple foreign country fundraising opportunities to buttress his campaign’s July
cash haul.
So far, so good! But then an interesting thing happened. Mr.
Romney and his aides appeared to begin channeling Clark Griswold and his family, from Warner Brothers’ European Vacation, and National Lampoon’s “Vacation” film series (starring Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold).
In the last several weeks, Team Romney has systematically upped the ante
in terms of increasingly stiffening their resolve and attacking President Obama. During the course of his trip, however, Mr. Romney had to invoke a weeklong hiatus on his attacks because there is
an unwritten rule for candidates not to attack the President while on foreign soil.
As a result, the Romney camp was
forced to devise a temporary strategy and talking points to carry them through
the week.
Viewed through the lens of mainstream (often called lame stream by social conservatives) media,
the Campaign had some difficulty
changing horses in midstream, no offense to Rafalca. The gaffes
started early, and were repeated often.
By some accounts, the gaffes,
misstatements, and miscalculations
started while the traveling party was still stateside.
While hobnobbing at a San Francisco fundraiser the Sunday night before the trip, Mr.
Romney is said to have repeated a conversation from earlier in the day with
Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr,
in which he claimed Mr. Carr told him
America was “in decline,” but the situation could be reversed if a budget deal
were made.
It turns out the problem is,
the story appears to have been a fabrication. Minister
Carr says he did not say what Romney
attributed to him. In fact he indicated
he was praising America’s economic strengths. But hey, it gets better…or worse, if you are
viewing matters from a Team Romney
perspective.
The litany of gaffes, untimely assertions, and otherwise questionable statements attributed to
team Romney is substantial. A list of 10
such statements not purported to be all inclusive, follows:
- The United Kingdom’s Telegraph reported that a Romney
aide said of Mitt Romney’s plan to improve U.S.-British relations, Mr. Romney was better placed to
understand the depth of ties between the two countries than Mr. Obama, whose father was from Africa. (What?)
- He further added, “We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels
that the special relationship is
special," the adviser said of Mr.
Romney, adding: "The White
House didn't fully appreciate the shared history we have".
- Asked about his impression of London’s readiness for the Olympics, Romney contrasted the confusion he saw in London with
the orderly Salt Lake City Winter Games he helmed in 2002 and sniffed,
"It's hard to know just how
well it will turn out."
- The Prime Minister, David Cameron, replied, "Of course it's easier if you hold an
Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere," an off-hand reference to Salt Lake City
where Mr. Romney oversaw the 2002 Winter Games.
- He received a confidential briefing on Syria
from MI6, Britain's spy service. We know he received
this top-secret briefing because he
told the reporters while standing outside the prime minister's house. I
repeat, he told reporters.
- Mr. Romney’s top foreign policy aide, Dan Senor, indicated to reporters
that the candidate was prepared to support a unilateral Israeli military strike on Iran. The Campaign
then spent the next several hours “clarifying”
those comments, without rejecting the original point.
- Romney spent a considerable amount of time before
his arrival in London,
boasting about his close personal friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a Vanity Fair article over the weekend, the Prime
Minister is quoted as saying, "I remember him for sure, but
I don't think we had any particular connections. I knew him and he knew me, I
suppose."
- Romney scheduled a meeting with the leaders of Israel's
Labor Party, only to make a "last-minute
cancellation."
- At his Jerusalem fundraiser, Romney spent quite a bit of time praising
the Israeli health care system, which covers more of the nation's
population than America’s, while spending less as a
percentage of GDP. Mr. Romney may not have given full
and thoughtful consideration to this, since – Israel
– has a
socialized system and a national mandate.
The kind of health care policy
he was praising in Israel
is the same kind of policy he
routinely condemns here in America.
- “Culture makes all the difference!” Mr. Romney said to an Israeli audience, "And as I
come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments
of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture
and a few other things. As you come
here and you see the G.D.P. per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000, and compare that with the G.D.P. per capita just across the
areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000
per capita, you notice such a
dramatically stark difference in economic
vitality," he said.
There's much with which to quibble in these assertions. First, Mr.
Romney's figures are inaccurate.
Also, it is curious for him to praise Israel's GDP, given that Israel has a top marginal income
tax rate of 48% on income over
$125,000. This is the very sort
of economic policy that offends Romney
to the core…here at home.
Moreover, the argument that
the fact that Israel
has the superior "culture"
is the reason Palestinians have less
money is simply offensive on its face.
It conveys a degree of ignorance about "the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority," where
economic activities are restricted and opportunities to create a robust GDP are limited. This argument also conveys
an underlying elitism; inferior cultures, Romney
seemed to argue, are the ones with lower per
capita GDP.
One Israeli professor even noted that Romney's remark could be seen as playing into anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews
and money. It's true that Israel
has logged tremendous achievements, said Abraham Diskin, a political science professor at the Inter-Disciplinary Center
outside of Tel Aviv. But "you can understand this remark in
several ways," he added. "You can say it's anti-Semitic (a
stereotype about Jews and money).'"
When pressed for an explanation, the Romney Campaign said
the former governor had been taken out of context (there's a lot of that going
around). As campaign aides
explained it, after mentioning the per
capita GDP of Israel and Palestine, Romney added,
"And that is also true between other countries that are near or next to
each other; Chile
and Ecuador,
Mexico
and the United States."
To put that in perspective, to downplay the ugliness of the underlying argument,
the Romney camp wants reporters to know he also believes Chile has a superior culture to Ecuador, and Mexicans are inferior, too, by virtue of the size
of their economy.
Finally, as the 8-day, 3-country trek wound
down, and Team Romney was about to leave Poland, the party offered up one
for the road. As would-be President
Romney headed to his car, ignoring a chorus of media questions about his
gaffes, aide Rick Gorka could hold it no longer, and told some members of the
press corps, “Kiss my ass, this is a holy site for the Polish people. Show some respect.” Certainly, that made for an interesting juxtaposition
of ideas. It should be noted; Mr. Gorka
subsequently called members of the press and apologized.
Rush Limbaugh, reacting to Gorka’s comments
accused the media of driving the story, according to a transcript of the show.
He said, “Now the reporters areharassing Romney. They are trying tocreate gaffes. They’re working on behalfof Barack Obama. They are attempting tocarry forth the meme that Romney’s foreign trip is a disaster, that it’s onegaffe after another. They’re trying todo this in the mainstream. And the factof the matter is Romney is having a home run of a trip.”
One other theory being posed is that the
traveling media corps, which had followed Romney for 8 days, was frustrated by
the lack of access. The Campaign had
provided only one opportunity to question the candidate, and he took only three
questions. You must admit, as logical as
that may sound, it’s not nearly as interesting as a left wing media conspiracy.
Jamelle Bouie noted,
"If Mitt Romney were a Democrat,
his behavior on this foreign trip would all but disqualify him from the Presidency."
In his book, No Apology, Romney wrote of President
Obama, "Never before in American
history has its president gone before so many foreign audiences to apologize
for so many American misdeeds, both
real and imagined." In a primary debate he claimed that President Obama "went around the
world and apologized for America"
and has repeated the falsehood in his stump speech hundreds of time since. Politifact
has consistently given Romney "Pants on Fire" ratings for inordinately repeating this egregious falsehood.
I’m done; holla back!
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