December
13, 2012
The New York Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN
We are not
having a debt crisis.
It’s important to make this point, because I keep seeing articles about the
“fiscal cliff” that do, in fact, describe it — often in the headline — as a debt
crisis. But it isn’t. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to
cover its deficit. In fact, its borrowing costs are near historic lows. And even
the confrontation over the debt ceiling that looms a few months from now if we
do somehow manage to avoid going over the fiscal cliff isn’t really about debt.
No, what we’re having is a political crisis, born of the fact that one of our
two great political parties has reached the end of a 30-year road. The modern
Republican Party’s grand, radical agenda lies in ruins — but the party doesn’t
know how to deal with that failure, and it retains enough power to do immense
damage as it strikes out in frustration.
Before I talk about that reality, a word about the current state of budget
“negotiations.”
Why the scare quotes? Because these aren’t normal negotiations in which each
side presents specific proposals, and horse-trading proceeds until the two sides
converge. By all accounts, Republicans have, so far, offered almost no
specifics. They claim that they’re willing to raise $800 billion in revenue by
closing loopholes, but they refuse to specify which loopholes they would close;
they are demanding large cuts in spending, but the specific cuts they have been
willing to lay out wouldn’t come close to delivering the savings they demand.
It’s a very peculiar situation. In effect, Republicans are saying to President
Obama, “Come up with something that will make us happy.” He is, understandably,
not willing to play that game. And so the talks are stuck.
Why won’t the Republicans get specific? Because they don’t know how. The truth
is that, when it comes to spending, they’ve been faking it all along — not just
in this election, but for decades. Which brings me to the nature of the current
G.O.P. crisis.
Since the 1970s, the Republican Party has fallen increasingly under the
influence of radical ideologues, whose goal is nothing less than the elimination
of the welfare state — that is, the whole legacy of the New Deal and the Great
Society. From the beginning, however, these ideologues have had a big problem:
The programs they want to kill are very popular. Americans may nod their heads
when you attack big government in the abstract, but they strongly support Social
Security, Medicare, and even Medicaid. So what’s a radical to do?
The answer, for a long time, has involved two strategies. One is “starve the
beast,” the idea of using tax cuts to reduce government revenue, then using the
resulting lack of funds to force cuts in popular social programs. Whenever you
see some Republican politician piously denouncing federal red ink, always
remember that, for decades, the G.O.P. has seen budget deficits as a feature,
not a bug.
Arguably more important in conservative thinking, however, was the notion that
the G.O.P. could exploit other sources of strength — white resentment,
working-class dislike of social change, tough talk on national security — to
build overwhelming political dominance, at which point the dismantling of the
welfare state could proceed freely. Just eight years ago, Grover Norquist, the
antitax activist, looked forward cheerfully to the days when Democrats would be
politically neutered: “Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around
and are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and
sedate.”
O.K., you see the problem: Democrats didn’t go along with the program, and
refused to give up. Worse, from the Republican point of view, all of their
party’s sources of strength have turned into weaknesses. Democratic dominance
among Hispanics has overshadowed Republican dominance among southern whites;
women’s rights have trumped the politics of abortion and antigay sentiment; and
guess who finally did get Osama bin Laden.
And look at where we are now in terms of the welfare state: far from killing it,
Republicans now have to watch as Mr. Obama implements the biggest expansion of
social insurance since the creation of Medicare.
So Republicans have suffered more than an election defeat, they’ve seen the
collapse of a decades-long project. And with their grandiose goals now out of
reach, they literally have no idea what they want — hence their inability to
make specific demands.
It’s a dangerous situation. The G.O.P. is lost and rudderless, bitter and angry,
but it still controls the House and, therefore, retains the ability to do a lot
of harm, as it lashes out in the death throes of the conservative dream.
Our best hope is that business interests will use their influence to limit the
damage. But the odds are that the next few years will be very, very ugly.
November 3,
2012
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
IN this
year’s campaign furor over a supposed “war on women,” involving birth control
and abortion, the assumption is that the audience worrying about these issues is
just women.
Give us a little credit. We men aren’t mercenaries caring only for Y
chromosomes. We have wives and daughters, mothers and sisters, and we have a
pretty intimate stake in contraception as well.
This isn’t like a tampon commercial on television, leaving men awkwardly
examining their fingernails. When it comes to women’s health, men as well as
women need to pay attention. Just as civil rights wasn’t just a “black issue,”
women’s rights and reproductive health shouldn’t be reduced to a “women’s
issue.”
To me, actually, talk about a “war on women” in the United States seems a bit
hyperbolic: in Congo or Darfur or Afghanistan, I’ve seen brutal wars on women,
involving policies of rape or denial of girls’ education. But whatever we call
it, something real is going on here at home that would mark a major setback for
American women — and the men who love them.
On these issues, Mitt Romney is no moderate. On the contrary, he is considerably
more extreme than President George W. Bush was. He insists, for example, on
cutting off money for cancer screenings conducted by Planned Parenthood.
The most toxic issue is abortion, and what matters most for that is Supreme
Court appointments. The oldest justice is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a 79-year-old
liberal, and if she were replaced by a younger Antonin Scalia, the balance might
shift on many issues, including abortion.
One result might be the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which for nearly four
decades has guaranteed abortion rights. If it is overturned, abortion will be
left to the states — and in Mississippi or Kansas, women might end up being
arrested for obtaining abortions.
Frankly, I respect politicians like Paul Ryan who are consistently
anti-abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. I disagree with them, but their
position is unpopular and will cost them votes, so it’s probably heartfelt as
well as courageous. I have less respect for Romney, whose positions seem based
only on political calculations.
Romney’s campaign Web site takes a hard line. It says that life begins at
conception, and it gives no hint of exceptions in which he would permit
abortion. The Republican Party platform likewise offers no exceptions. Romney
says now that his policy is to oppose abortion with three exceptions: rape,
incest and when the life of the mother is at stake.
If you can figure out Romney’s position on abortion with confidence, tell him:
at times it seems he can’t remember it. In August, he abruptly added an
exception for the health of the mother as well as her life, and then he backed
away again.
Romney has also endorsed a “personhood” initiative treating a fertilized egg as
a legal person. That could lead to murder charges for an abortion, even to save
the life of a mother.
In effect, Romney seems to have jumped on board a Republican bandwagon to
tighten access to abortion across the board. States passed a record number of
restrictions on abortion in the last two years. In four states, even a woman who
is seeking an abortion after a rape may be legally required to undergo a
transvaginal ultrasound.
If politicians want to reduce the number of abortions, they should promote
family planning and comprehensive sex education. After all, about half of all
pregnancies in the United States are unintended, according to the Guttmacher
Institute, which conducts research on reproductive health.
Yet Romney seems determined to curb access to contraceptives. His campaign Web
site says he would “eliminate Title X family planning funding,” a program
created in large part by two Republicans, George H. W. Bush and Richard Nixon.
Romney has boasted that he would cut off all money for Planned Parenthood — even
though federal assistance for the organization has nothing to do with abortions.
It pays for such things as screenings to reduce breast cancer and cervical
cancer.
Romney’s suspicion of contraception goes way back. As governor of Massachusetts,
he vetoed a bill that would have given women who were raped access to emergency
contraception.
Romney also wants to reinstate the “global gag rule,” which barred family
planning money from going to aid organizations that even provided information
about abortion. He would cut off money for the United Nations Population Fund,
whose work I’ve seen in many countries — supporting contraception, repairing
obstetric fistulas, and fighting to save the lives of women dying in childbirth.
So when you hear people scoff that there’s no real difference between Obama and
Romney, don’t believe them.
And it’s not just women who should be offended at the prospect of a major step
backward. It’s all of us.
When
General Motors tells a presidential campaign that it is engaging in “cynical
campaign politics at its worst,” that’s a pretty good signal that the campaign
has crossed a red line and ought to pull back. Not Mitt Romney’s campaign.
Having broadcast an outrageously deceitful ad attacking the auto bailout, the
campaign ignored the howls from carmakers and came back with more.
Mr. Romney apparently plans to end his race as he began it: playing
lowest-common-denominator politics, saying anything necessary to achieve power
and blithely deceiving voters desperate for clarity and truth.
This started months ago when he realized that his very public 2008 stance
against the successful and wildly popular government bailout of G.M. and
Chrysler was hurting him in the valuable states of Ohio and Michigan. In
February, he wrote an essay for The Detroit News calling the bailout “crony
capitalism on a grand scale” because unions benefited and insisting that Detroit
would have been better off to refuse federal money. (This ignores the
well-documented reality that there was no other cash available to the
carmakers.)
When that tactic didn’t work, he began insisting at the debates that his plan
for Detroit wasn’t really that different from President Obama’s. (Except for the
niggling detail of the $80 billion federal investment.)
That was quickly discredited, so Mr. Romney began telling rallies last week that
Chrysler was considering moving its production to China. Chrysler loudly
denounced it as “fantasies,” saying it was only considering increasing
production in China for sale in China, without moving a single American job.
“I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not
be moved from the United States to China,” Chrysler’s chief executive, Sergio
Marchionne, said in a statement. “Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation
in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand. It is
inaccurate to suggest anything different.” In fact, 1,100 new jobs will be added
in Toledo to produce a new generation of Jeep.
The Romney campaign ignored the company, following up with an instantly
notorious ad saying President Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to
build Jeeps in China.” If the false implication wasn’t clear enough, the
campaign put out a radio ad on Tuesday saying “Barack Obama says he saved the
auto industry. But for who? Ohio or China?” What happened, the ad asks, “to the
promises made to autoworkers in Toledo and throughout Ohio?”
What happened was that those promises were kept. Nearly 1.5 million people are
working as a direct result of the bailout. Ohio’s unemployment rate is well
below the national average. G.M.’s American sales continue to increase, and
Chrysler said this week that its third-quarter net income rose 80 percent. These
companies haven’t just bounced back from the bottom; they are accelerating.
What Mr. Romney cannot admit is that all this is a direct result of the
government investment he would have rejected. It’s bad enough to be wrong on the
policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume
on a lie and keep repeating it.
By doing that in a flailing, last-minute grab for Ohio, Mr. Romney is providing
a grim preview of what kind of president he would be.
G.O.P. Turns Fire on Obama Pillar, the Auto Bailout
October 29,
2012
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and JEREMY W. PETERS
TOLEDO,
Ohio — The ad from Mitt Romney showed up on televisions here early Saturday
morning without the usual public announcement that both campaigns typically use
to herald their latest commercials: Chrysler, a bailout recipient, is going to
begin producing Jeeps in China, an announcer says, leaving the misleading
impression that the move would come at the expense of jobs here.
And so began the latest, and perhaps most important, attempt by Mitt Romney to
wrest Ohio into his column. His effort to do so is now intently focused, at
times including statements that stretch or ignore the facts, on knocking down
what is perhaps the most important component of President Obama’s appeal to
blue-collar voters in Ohio and across the industrial Midwest: the success of the
president’s 2009 auto bailout.
Mr. Obama’s relatively strong standing in most polls in Ohio so far has been
attributed by members of both parties to the recovery of the auto industry,
which has helped the economy here outperform the national economy. At the same
time, the industry’s performance and the president’s claim to credit for it
appear to have helped Mr. Obama among the white working-class voters Mr. Romney
needs.
With the race under most expected circumstances coming down to Ohio, and Ohio
potentially coming down to perceptions of how the candidates view the auto
industry, Mr. Romney has spent the last few days aggressively trying to undercut
Mr. Obama’s auto bailout narrative.
In the past few days his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, has accused
Mr. Obama of allowing the bailout to bypass nonunion workers at Delphi, a big
auto parts maker with operations in Ohio; Mr. Romney has characterized Mr.
Obama’s bailout plan as based on his approach; and Mr. Romney incorrectly told a
rally in Defiance, Ohio, late last week outright that Jeep was considering
moving its production to China. (Jeep is discussing increasing production in
China for sales within China; it is not moving jobs out of Ohio or the United
States, or building cars in China for export to the United States.)
It is a high-risk strategy: Jeep’s corporate parent, Chrysler, had already
released a scathing statement calling suggestions that Jeep was moving American
jobs to China “fantasies” and “extravagant”; news media outlets here and
nationally have called the Romney campaign’s statements — initially based on a
poorly worded quotation from Chrysler in a news article that was misinterpreted
by blogs — misleading.
Mr. Obama’s campaign, seeking to maintain what it sees as its advantage in Ohio,
responded on Monday by releasing a commercial calling Mr. Romney’s ad false and
reiterating that Mr. Romney had opposed the bailout on the terms supported by
Mr. Obama. And on Sunday it dispatched the investment banker who helped develop
the bailout, Steven Rattner, here to discuss Jeep’s plans and the auto rescue
with local news organizations.
Democrats are hoping that Mr. Romney’s latest move will draw a backlash in a
city so dependent on Jeep, which has announced plans to add 1,100 jobs to an
assembly plant here that is currently being refitted for the next iteration of
what is now called the Jeep Liberty.
Bruce Baumhower, the president of the United Auto Workers local that oversees
the major Jeep plant here, said Mr. Romney’s initial comments on moving
production to China drew a rash of calls from members concerned about their
jobs. When he informed them Chrysler was, in fact, is expanding its Jeep
operation here, he said in an interview, “The response has been, ‘That’s pretty
pitiful.’ ”
The fight over the auto bailout shows the enduring power of the issue but also
its complexities in a campaign that is about both the strength of the economy
and the size and role of government.
The auto bailout was one of the first major moves of Mr. Obama’s presidency, and
gave Mr. Romney an early chance in opposing it to prove his conservative
credentials.
Mr. Romney has portrayed himself as an automobile maven. As he frequently says
in his stump speeches, his father was credited with keeping American Motors in
business during the 1950s and early 1960s. (The company, it happens, owned Jeep
from 1970 to 1987.)
Just as the incoming Obama administration was beginning to contemplate a
bailout, Mr. Romney wrote an Op-Ed article in the The New York Times — given the
title by the newspaper “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.’’ In the piece Mr. Romney wrote
that in the event of a bailout, “You can kiss the American automotive industry
goodbye.”
The plan the administration settled on first helped Fiat buy Chrysler and then
put both Chrysler and General Motors into managed bankruptcies as part of a
program that brought total government assistance for Detroit to almost $80
billion between the Obama and Bush administrations. Coming as the Tea Party was
beginning to form, it seemed like risky politics for Democrats being accused of
taking big government to an extreme.
At the third and last debate last week in Boca Raton, Fla., Mr. Romney
emphasized his position that “these companies need to go through a managed
bankruptcy, and in that process they can get government help and government
guarantees.”
Mr. Romney has stepped up his offense on the issue since.
So it was that he told those at the exuberant rally on Thursday in Defiance, “I
saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now
owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China.”
Mr. Romney was apparently referring to a Bloomberg News article that said Jeep
would return to manufacturing in China that had been misinterpreted by several
conservative blogs to mean Jeep was shifting its production to China; the
company made clear in a statement that Chrysler was only resuming production in
China for Chinese consumers, which it had done for years before halting in 2009
before its sale to Fiat.
Mr. Romney’s ad treads carefully, with an announcer saying Mr. Obama “sold Jeep
to the Italians, who are going to build Jeeps in China” and the screen flashing,
“Plans to return Jeep output to China.”
Calling it “blatant attempt to create a false impression,” former Gov. Ted
Strickland of Ohio, a Democrat, demanded Mr. Romney take it down on Monday.
Stuart Stevens, a senior Romney adviser, disputed that the ad is misleading.
“Right now every Jeep built is built in America by an American and sold to the
world,” he said. “Now instead of adding jobs in Toledo, they will be making
Jeeps in China by the Chinese and selling them in China.”
Jeep began a joint manufacturing venture in China in 1984 and today makes some
vehicles in Egypt and Venezuela. While it does produce cars for Chinese export
here now, it has discussed returning some production to China since last year.
Jim Rutenberg
reported from Toledo, and Jeremy W. Peters from New York.
Richard A.
Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Sabina, Ohio.
October 30, 2012
The New York Times
By MICHAEL BARBARO and MICHAEL D. SHEAR
DAYTON, Ohio — The presidential campaign entered a delicate
and disrupted phase on Tuesday morning, suddenly becoming a sideshow to a
devastating storm that posed an improvised leadership test to both sides as they
sought to navigate the politics of a natural disaster.
Mitt Romney, a challenger without the trappings and authority of office to
respond to the crisis, has scheduled what his campaign called a “storm-relief
event” here in the same location where he was previously set to hold a
traditional campaign rally. The celebrity guests scheduled to appear will also
be at the storm-relief event. As the crowd gathered, a long campaign video for
Mr. Romney played on a giant screen, describing the candidate as a “charismatic”
and “authentic.” A woman in the audience held up a T-shirt that said “Obama,
you’re fired.”
His aides, sensitive to the image of the Republican nominee engaged in
electioneering when cities across the East Coast are flooded, said Mr. Romney
would make no political remarks. Attendees are being asked to bring canned food,
which will be shipped off to areas damaged by the torrential storm.
Yet the event means that Mr. Romney would still appear on television, as a
candidate, after his aides said they would cancel “all events currently
scheduled” for Mr. Romney and his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, on
Tuesday out of sensitivity to the storm’s victims. On local television here
Tuesday morning, an Ohio Republican official said the event was “not a campaign
event per se.”
President Obama has withdrawn from the campaign trail and will spend his day at
the White House where he will conduct briefings and survey the impact of the
severe weather, aides said. But, he too, may speak to the country as both a
president and a candidate, two roles that are inextricably linked at this late
stage in the campaign. The White House said the president spent much of the
night Monday monitoring the storm’s impact and talking with elected leaders
throughout the affected region.
Mr. Obama earned repeated praise on Tuesday from an unlikely source: Chris
Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey and one of Mr. Romney’s top
surrogates. In several appearances on morning news programs, he called Mr.
Obama’s efforts for his state “wonderful,” “excellent” and “outstanding.”
“It’s been very good working with the president,” Mr. Christie said on MSNBC’s
“Morning Joe” program. “He and his administration have been coordinating with
us. It’s been wonderful.”
Speaking about the damage to his state on NBC’s “Today” show, Mr. Christie
called the president “outstanding” and said the response from the Federal
Emergency Management Agency. had been “excellent.”
In a Twitter message from his official account, Mr. Christie said he wanted to
“thank the president personally for all his assistance” as New Jersey recovers
from the storm.”
The effusive comments about the president from Mr. Christie come after Mr.
Christie has spent weeks criticizing the president and his leadership on behalf
of Mr. Romney’s campaign. Some Republicans on Tuesday privately expressed
frustration that Mr. Christie went as far as he did in thanking Mr. Obama a week
before the election.
The effects of the storm are being felt in Ohio, where wind gusts of 60 miles
per hour were reported Tuesday morning in the central part of the state, along
with scattered power outages and school closings. The banner headline of the
Columbus Dispatch said, “A Storm For The Ages.”
But even as the candidates altered their campaigning, their dueling television
commercials were roaring along on Tuesday. The campaigns and their third-party
allies are making a final push on already saturated airwaves with millions of
dollars worth of new commercials. A “super PAC” backing Mr. Romney’s campaign
began broadcasting a new ad in eight states that features a woman expressing
disappointment about Mr. Obama’s first term in office. Another released two ads
across the battleground states criticizing Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy.
Mr. Obama’s campaign continued to broadcast ads criticizing Mr. Romney’s
economic proposals and promoting the president’s plans for a second term. Ads by
Mr. Obama’s campaign also urged people to vote early.
Representatives for the candidates are still planning to hold campaign rallies
on Tuesday. Former President Bill Clinton stood in for Mr. Obama in Florida on
Monday and planned to press ahead with three stops in Iowa on Tuesday. Mr.
Romney’s wife, Ann, will attend a “victory rally” in Iowa after making a stop at
a storm-related event in Wisconsin.
With a razor-close election just seven days away, each camp confronted the same
quandary: whether pressing ahead in campaigning would earn them the votes they
needed to win or whether it would be seen as crass, unpresidential behavior at a
time of power failures, flooding and mass evacuations.
Both sides reached a similar conclusion after holding urgent discussions among
their top advisers — talks that included up-to-the-minute weather updates and
airings of logistical concerns about the dangers of air travel. Within hours of
each other, the campaigns suspended appearances by their candidates at least
through Tuesday.
Mr. Obama, shouldering the responsibilities of a sitting president, acted first,
abandoning a planned Florida rally to fly back to the White House on Monday
morning. In a statement after a Situation Room briefing with emergency response
officials, Mr. Obama said that the election “will take care of itself next week.
Right now our No. 1 priority is that we’re saving lives.”
Just before noon, Mr. Romney’s campaign announced that it, too, had decided to
cancel the candidate’s scheduled events, including one in Wisconsin on Monday
night and his entire schedule on Tuesday, “out of sensitivity for the millions
of Americans in the path of Hurricane Sandy.”
On Monday night, it announced the new storm-relief event in Dayton. Richard
Petty, the racecar driver, and Randy Owen, the singer, will appear with Mr.
Romney.
Top aides to Mr. Romney said they feared the possibility of a split-screen
moment that showed Mr. Romney attacking the president next to images of flooded
homes. They said canceling traditional campaign events allowed Mr. Romney to be
part of the storm story, not apart from it. Both campaigns also halted
fund-raising across the East Coast in favor of an appeal to donors for Red Cross
contributions.
For the campaigns, the storm forced critical judgment calls as they addressed
the need to campaign while being sensitive to the effects of the storm that
swirled around them. Among the questions: How long will the huge storm continue
to paralyze a campaign that is racing toward its conclusion?
The answer inside both campaigns appeared to be: at least through Tuesday.
Still, neither side would rule out the possibility of further cancellations
Wednesday or beyond. David Axelrod, the president’s top strategist, said the
campaign had already begun thinking about how to start rescheduling the stops
that have been canceled.
“We’re obviously going to lose a bunch of campaign time, but that’s as it has to
be, and we’ll try to make it up on the back end,” he told reporters on Monday.
Also on the table for both campaigns was how to deal with the grim aftermath of
the storm. A visit to a ravaged area by the president would be traditional and
expected, but could further interrupt Mr. Obama’s campaigning. Mr. Romney’s
advisers said that they were discussing the possibility of Mr. Romney visiting a
site damaged by the storm well after it has dissipated, but that they had not
yet completed plans.
Polls released over the weekend continued to show a tight race between the two
men, nationally and in some of the battleground states that will decide which
one reaches 270 electoral votes. A Gallup poll of likely voters on Sunday gave
Mr. Romney an edge of 51 percent to Mr. Obama’s 46 percent.
Inside his headquarters in Boston, advisers to Mr. Romney were engaged
throughout the weekend in marathon conference calls about how and where to
schedule his time in the midst of the storm.
Mr. Romney’s aides were holding out hope throughout most of Monday morning that
he could continue his full campaign schedule on Tuesday. But that changed after
a 10:45 a.m. conference call among his advisers in Boston, officials at the
Republican National Committee and Mr. Romney’s top aides on the campaign bus in
Ohio.
“There are families in harm’s way that will be hurt either in their possessions
or perhaps in something more severe,” Mr. Romney said in brief remarks after a
rally in Avon Lake, Ohio. “This looks like another time when we need to come
together all across the country, even here in Ohio, and make sure that we give
of our support to the people who need it.”
Mr. Obama’s initial decision to go to Florida on Sunday night in the face of
dire weather attests to the political pressures he is facing. The president’s
advisers calculated that he could squeeze in one more rally in a closely fought
electoral battleground by moving up the event’s start time by two hours and
still return to Washington in time to take charge of storm preparations. But
they changed course after determining Air Force One might not be able to make
the trip any later.
After returning to Washington, Mr. Obama led a meeting in the Situation Room
with top emergency response officials. In his statement to reporters afterward,
Mr. Obama warned Americans that “this is going to be a big storm; it’s going to
be a difficult storm.” He added: “The great thing about America is when we go
through tough times like this, we all pull together. We set aside whatever
issues we may have otherwise to make sure we respond appropriately.”
Storms can have a treacherous effect on the fortunes of a president, most
notably in the case of Hurricane Katrina and George W. Bush in 2005. But they
can also help rally support, as in final four months of the 2004 campaign, when
Florida was pounded by three successive hurricanes, Charley, Frances and Ivan.
Mr. Bush was well aware of how, in 1992, the chaotic response of the government
to Hurricane Andrew in Florida had hurt his father, then seeking re-election.
Twelve years later, the younger Mr. Bush marshaled a more effective federal
response, which some analysts said helped him secure a clearer victory in the
state against Senator John Kerry than he had against Al Gore in 2000.
Michael Barbaro reported from Dayton, Ohio, and Michael D. Shear
from Washington.
Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington, and Ashley
Parker from Boston.
October 29, 2012
The New York Times
By ROGER COHEN
CLEVELAND, OHIO — Things are getting ugly among the Jews of
Cuyahoga County, with family splits and dinner invitations declined. “I have
never seen the divisions this acute,” said James Ratner, an executive of the
Forest City real estate group.
The pressure of a very tight presidential race whose outcome Ohio could well
decide has been compounded by the Senate candidacy of a conservative Jewish
Republican, Josh Mandel, who has divided loyalties among the 80,000 Jews of
Greater Cleveland.
An advertisement in the Cleveland Jewish News this week, paid for by a group
called Jews for Israel 2012, asked this question: “Are you willing to bet the
life of the Jewish people on this president?” It questioned Barack Obama’s
willingness to defend an Israel “threatened by nuclear annihilation.”
Automated calls pour into Jewish households from John Bolton, the hawkish former
U.N. ambassador, in which he warns that a vote for Romney is needed to save
Israel from an Iranian bomb and Islamist extremists.
Mandel, a 35-year-old ex-Marine who has raised more than $20 million through
conservative backers, has appalled Ohio’s socially progressive Jews — who are
still the clear majority — with an anti-abortion stance that has included
calling the Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock a “class act” after Mourdock
said pregnancy resulting from rape was “something that God intended to happen”
and life was always “a gift from God.”
Oy vey. Does all this matter? Yes it does. It is that close in the Buckeye
State. Ohio, with its 18 electoral votes, is about tied, according to most
polls. No Republican has won the White House without carrying Ohio. This is the
swing state most likely to swing things. Conservative-backed billboards
screaming “Voter fraud is a felony” have prompted the countermessage that,
“Voting is a right, not a crime.” Republican intimidation meets Democratic
determination.
Obama needs to win big in Cuyahoga County, which includes the strongly
Democratic inner city of Cleveland, to carry the state. That is what he did in
2008, gaining 68.5 percent of the vote and winning by a margin of nearly 250,000
votes — enough to secure victory by just over 200,000 votes in Ohio. The Romney
campaign reckons that if it can cut Obama’s margin in Cuyahoga to about 175,000
it will take the state.
About 80 percent of Cleveland’s Jews are believed to have voted for Obama last
time. Robert Goldberg, former chairman of the United Jewish Communities (now The
Jewish Federations of North America) and a Romney supporter, said he believed
that number would drop to 60 percent this time. “Jews just don’t trust Obama on
Israel,” he told me. “The president has no sympathy for Israel. His sympathy is
for the Muslim world he knew as a child.”
If Goldberg is right about a shift, that would be significant. He argues that
Obama is anti-business and anti-Israel and believes a faltering economy above
all is pushing Jewish voters to change position. (Polls in Israel show Israelis
strongly favoring a Romney victory.)
The case I heard in Ohio against Obama on Israel was the usual Republican
hodgepodge of insinuations: The president went to Cairo but not Jerusalem, he
snubbed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he reached out to Muslims but showed
no love for Jews. They ignore all the defense and intelligence cooperation that
led the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, to say Obama had done “more than
anything that I can remember in the past” for Israeli security.
Mandel has also been playing the Israel card in pursuit of the Jewish vote,
despite the fact his opponent, the Democrat incumbent Sherrod Brown,
co-sponsored the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012,
legislation that deepens defense cooperation.
Among those troubled by Mandel’s campaign is Austin Ratner, a novelist and the
son of James Ratner. Mandel is related by marriage to the Ratner family. Austin
Ratner wrote a piece this month in the Jewish Daily Forward arguing that family
and tribal Jewish loyalty were misplaced in the political sphere, where reason
must prevail.
He quoted his aunt, Deborah Ratner, a major Democratic fund-raiser, telling
Mandel at a family gathering: “I don’t want this to be awkward, but you
represent everything I’ve spent my life working against.” He also said some
Democrat relatives “have supported Mandel’s campaign out of family loyalty” — a
form of loyalty, he suggested, that “leads deeper into the darkness.”
The Jews of Cleveland are arguing at high volume. They are good at disputation.
In this case the argument could change the course of things far beyond
Cleveland.
James Ratner sent me an e-mail saying, “This may well be a case where the noise
is obscuring the music.” Beneath all the shouting, he suggested, Jewish
sentiment remains solidly Democratic. “In a meeting this week of 60 members of a
woman’s group at Park Synagogue there was absolute unanimity behind Obama. No
one was voting for Romney.”
Those Jewish women know exactly what Romney and Mandel represent: an
obscurantist and invasive threat to their rights in the name of a God whose
wishes these men presume to know.
You can follow Roger Cohen on Twitter or join him on Facebook.
Tracking Voters’ Clicks Online to Try to Sway Them
October 27,
2012
The New York Times
By NATASHA SINGER and CHARLES DUHIGG
A few weeks
ago, Thomas Goddard, a community college student in Santa Clara, Calif., and a
devoted supporter of President Obama, clicked on mittromney.com to check out the
candidate’s position on abortion.
Then, as he visited other Web sites, he started seeing advertisements asking him
to donate to Mitt Romney’s campaign. One mentioned family values, he said, and
seemed aimed at someone with more conservative leanings.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Mr. Goddard said. “I’m the opposite of a Romney
supporter. But ever since I went to the Romney site, they’ve been following me.”
One of the hallmarks of this campaign is the use of increasingly sophisticated —
but not always accurate — data-mining techniques to customize ads for voters
based on the digital trails they leave as they visit Internet sites.
It is a practice pioneered by online retailers who work with third-party
information resellers to create detailed portraits of consumers, all the better
to show them relevant marketing pitches. Mr. Goddard, for example, may have
received those Romney ads because of “retargeting” software designed to show
people ads for certain sites or products they have previously viewed.
Now, in the election’s final weeks, both presidential campaigns have drastically
increased their use of such third-party surveillance engines, according to
Evidon, a company that helps businesses and consumers monitor and control
third-party tracking software.
Over the month of September, Evidon identified 76 different tracking programs on
barackobama.com — two more trackers than it found on Best Buy’s Web site —
compared with 53 in May. It found 40 different trackers on mittromney.com last
month, compared with 25 in May.
The report provides a rare glimpse into the number of third-party tracking
programs that are operating on the campaign Web sites — as many as or more than
on some of the most popular retailers’ sites.
The campaigns directly hire some companies, like ad agencies or data management
firms, that marry information collected about voters on a campaign site with
data about them from other sources. But these entities, in turn, may bring their
own software partners to the sites to perform data-mining activities like
retargeting voters or tracking the political links they share with their social
networks.
Now some consumer advocates say the proliferation of these trackers raises the
risk that information about millions of people’s political beliefs could spread
to dozens of business-to-business companies whose names many voters have never
even heard. There is growing concern that the campaigns or third-party trackers
may later use that voter data for purposes the public never imagined, like
excluding someone from a job offer based on his or her past political
affiliations.
“Is the data going to be sold to marketers or shared with other campaigns?” said
Christopher Calabrese, the legislative counsel for privacy-related issues at the
American Civil Liberties Union. “We simply don’t know how this information is
going to be used in the future and where it is going to end up.”
Evidon offers a free software program called Ghostery that people can use to
identify third-party trackers on the sites they visit. On Oct. 18 the program
identified 19 different trackers on the Obama Web site and 12 on the Romney
site. A reporter contacted 10 for comment.
Among those who responded, Cassie Piercey, a spokeswoman for ValueClick, whose
MediaPlex marketing analytics division was identified as operating on the Obama
site by Ghostery, said she could not comment on specific clients and referred a
reporter to the company’s privacy policy. The policy says that ValueClick may
collect information about users — like their Internet Protocol addresses, Web
browsing histories, online purchases and searches — that does not involve
identifiable information like their names, and that the company may share that
data with its clients and marketing partners.
Adam Berke, the president of AdRoll, an advertising and retargeting company
identified by Evidon on the Obama site, said the company did not aggregate user
data or share it with other clients.
Meanwhile, Nanda Kishore, the chief technology officer of ShareThis, a service
found on the Romney site by Ghostery that collects information about the links
visitors share with their social networks, said the company collects only
“anonymous” information about users and does not share or sell it.
The privacy policies on the campaigns’ Web sites acknowledge that they work with
third parties that may collect user data.
Evidon executives said the tracking companies on the campaign sites included
services that collect details about people’s online behavior in order to help
mold ads to their political concerns; advertising networks that track people’s
browsing history to measure the effectiveness of ads; and companies that record
user behavior so they can analyze the effectiveness of sites to attract and hold
on to Web traffic.
Officials with both campaigns emphasize that such data collection is “anonymous”
because third-party companies use code numbers, not real names, to track site
visitors.
Adam Fetcher, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the Web site does not
allow its partners to share data collected from visitors with other clients or
use it for other purposes like marketing consumer goods.
“We are committed to protecting individual privacy and employ strong safeguards
to protect personal information,” Mr. Fetcher wrote in an e-mail. “We do not
provide any personal information to outside entities, and we stipulate that
third-party partners not use data collected on the site for other purposes.”
In response to a reporter’s query about whether the Romney site placed
limitations on the collection or use of voter data by its partners, Ryan
Williams, a campaign spokesman, wrote in an e-mail: “The Romney campaign
respects the privacy rights of all Americans. We are committed to ensuring that
all of our voter outreach is governed by the highest ethical standards.”
Evidon compiled the statistics on campaign tracking by aggregating data from a
panel of about seven million volunteers who use its Ghostery program.
From May to September, Evidon identified 97 tracking programs — “far more than
the average site employs,” a company report said — on the Obama and Romney sites
combined. (Some trackers appeared on both sites.)
The campaigns’ increased use of tracking technology represents “a significant
windfall for online data collectors and ad targeting companies,” Andy Kahl, the
director of consumer products at Evidon, wrote in the report. But, he added,
“the campaigns need to realize that being on top of which technology partners
are appearing on their site, and ensuring clarity into what these partners can
and can’t do with the data, is essential.”
Industry executives say the campaigns simply use data-mining to show the most
relevant message to each voter.
“Political campaigns now for the first time can actually reach out to
prospective voters with messaging that addresses each person’s specific
interests and causes,” according to a recent report from the Interactive
Advertising Bureau, a trade group.
But privacy advocates say such personalization raises questions about
transparency.
“Individual voters may not be aware that the message they are getting is based
on information that has been gleaned about their activities around the Web and
is precisely targeted to them,” said Mr. Calabrese of the A.C.L.U. “It may be a
private message just for me that is not the type of statement the campaign makes
publicly.”
While some voters may be turned off by the customized campaign appeals, for
others, they are expected.
“Companies are doing it, why shouldn’t campaigns?” said Michael James, a New
Jersey high school teacher who visited both campaign sites this year to
determine whom he would support. “The Internet has changed privacy. We can’t
expect either campaign to pretend we’re living in the past.”
The economy is slowly recovering from the 2008 meltdown, and the country could
suffer another recession if the wrong policies take hold. The United States is
embroiled in unstable regions that could easily explode into full-blown
disaster. An ideological assault from the right has started to undermine the
vital health reform law passed in 2010. Those forces are eroding women’s access
to health care, and their right to control their lives. Nearly 50 years after
passage of the Civil Rights Act, all Americans’ rights are cheapened by the
right wing’s determination to deny marriage benefits to a selected group of us.
Astonishingly, even the very right to vote is being challenged.
That is the context for the Nov. 6 election, and as stark as it is, the choice
is just as clear.
President Obama has shown a firm commitment to using government to help foster
growth. He has formed sensible budget policies that are not dedicated to
protecting the powerful, and has worked to save the social safety net to protect
the powerless. Mr. Obama has impressive achievements despite the implacable wall
of refusal erected by Congressional Republicans so intent on stopping him that
they risked pushing the nation into depression, held its credit rating hostage,
and hobbled economic recovery.
Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has gotten this far with a
guile that allows him to say whatever he thinks an audience wants to hear. But
he has tied himself to the ultraconservative forces that control the Republican
Party and embraced their policies, including reckless budget cuts and
30-year-old, discredited trickle-down ideas. Voters may still be confused about
Mr. Romney’s true identity, but they know the Republican Party, and a Romney
administration would reflect its agenda. Mr. Romney’s choice of Representative
Paul Ryan as his running mate says volumes about that.
We have criticized individual policy choices that Mr. Obama has made over the
last four years, and have been impatient with his unwillingness to throw himself
into the political fight. But he has shaken off the hesitancy that cost him the
first debate, and he approaches the election clearly ready for the partisan
battles that would follow his victory.
We are confident he would challenge the Republicans in the “fiscal cliff” battle
even if it meant calling their bluff, letting the Bush tax cuts expire and
forcing them to confront the budget sequester they created. Electing Mr. Romney
would eliminate any hope of deficit reduction that included increased revenues.
In the poisonous atmosphere of this campaign, it may be easy to overlook Mr.
Obama’s many important achievements, including carrying out the economic
stimulus, saving the auto industry, improving fuel efficiency standards, and
making two very fine Supreme Court appointments.
Health Care
Mr. Obama has achieved the most sweeping health care reforms since the passage
of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The reform law takes a big step toward
universal health coverage, a final piece in the social contract.
It was astonishing that Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress were able to get
a bill past the Republican opposition. But the Republicans’ propagandistic
distortions of the new law helped them wrest back control of the House, and they
are determined now to repeal the law.
That would eliminate the many benefits the reform has already brought: allowing
children under 26 to stay on their parents’ policies; lower drug costs for
people on Medicare who are heavy users of prescription drugs; free
immunizations, mammograms and contraceptives; a ban on lifetime limits on
insurance payments. Insurance companies cannot deny coverage to children with
pre-existing conditions. Starting in 2014, insurers must accept all applicants.
Once fully in effect, the new law would start to control health care costs.
Mr. Romney has no plan for covering the uninsured beyond his callous assumption
that they will use emergency rooms. He wants to use voucher programs to shift
more Medicare costs to beneficiaries and block grants to shift more Medicaid
costs to the states.
The Economy
Mr. Obama prevented another Great Depression. The economy was cratering when he
took office in January 2009. By that June it was growing, and it has been ever
since (although at a rate that disappoints everyone), thanks in large part to
interventions Mr. Obama championed, like the $840 billion stimulus bill.
Republicans say it failed, but it created and preserved 2.5 million jobs and
prevented unemployment from reaching 12 percent. Poverty would have been much
worse without the billions spent on Medicaid, food stamps and jobless benefits.
Last year, Mr. Obama introduced a jobs plan that included spending on school
renovations, repair projects for roads and bridges, aid to states, and more. It
was stymied by Republicans. Contrary to Mr. Romney’s claims, Mr. Obama has done
good things for small businesses — like pushing through more tax write-offs for
new equipment and temporary tax cuts for hiring the unemployed.
The Dodd-Frank financial regulation was an important milestone. It is still a
work in progress, but it established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,
initiated reform of the derivatives market, and imposed higher capital
requirements for banks. Mr. Romney wants to repeal it.
If re-elected, Mr. Obama would be in position to shape the “grand bargain” that
could finally combine stimulus like the jobs bill with long-term deficit
reduction that includes letting the high-end Bush-era tax cuts expire. Stimulus
should come first, and deficit reduction as the economy strengthens. Mr. Obama
has not been as aggressive as we would have liked in addressing the housing
crisis, but he has increased efforts in refinancing and loan modifications.
Mr. Romney’s economic plan, as much as we know about it, is regressive, relying
on big tax cuts and deregulation. That kind of plan was not the answer after the
financial crisis, and it will not create broad prosperity.
Foreign Affairs
Mr. Obama and his administration have been resolute in attacking Al Qaeda’s
leadership, including the killing of Osama bin Laden. He has ended the war in
Iraq. Mr. Romney, however, has said he would have insisted on leaving thousands
of American soldiers there. He has surrounded himself with Bush administration
neocons who helped to engineer the Iraq war, and adopted their militaristic talk
in a way that makes a Romney administration’s foreign policies a frightening
prospect.
Mr. Obama negotiated a much tougher regime of multilateral economic sanctions on
Iran. Mr. Romney likes to say the president was ineffective on Iran, but at the
final debate he agreed with Mr. Obama’s policies. Mr. Obama deserves credit for
his handling of the Arab Spring. The killing goes on in Syria, but the
administration is working to identify and support moderate insurgent forces
there. At the last debate, Mr. Romney talked about funneling arms through Saudi
Arabia and Qatar, which are funneling arms to jihadist groups.
Mr. Obama gathered international backing for airstrikes during the Libyan
uprising, and kept American military forces in a background role. It was smart
policy.
In the broadest terms, he introduced a measure of military restraint after the
Bush years and helped repair America’s badly damaged reputation in many
countries from the low levels to which it had sunk by 2008.
The Supreme Court
The future of the nation’s highest court hangs in the balance in this election —
and along with it, reproductive freedom for American women and voting rights for
all, to name just two issues. Whoever is president after the election will make
at least one appointment to the court, and many more to federal appeals courts
and district courts.
Mr. Obama, who appointed the impressive Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia
Sotomayor, understands how severely damaging conservative activism has been in
areas like campaign spending. He would appoint justices and judges who
understand that landmarks of equality like the Voting Rights Act must be
defended against the steady attack from the right.
Mr. Romney’s campaign Web site says he will “nominate judges in the mold of
Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito,” among the most
conservative justices in the past 75 years. There is no doubt that he would
appoint justices who would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Civil Rights
The extraordinary fact of Mr. Obama’s 2008 election did not usher in a new
post-racial era. In fact, the steady undercurrent of racism in national politics
is truly disturbing. Mr. Obama, however, has reversed Bush administration
policies that chipped away at minorities’ voting rights and has fought laws,
like the ones in Arizona, that seek to turn undocumented immigrants into a class
of criminals.
The military’s odious “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule was finally legislated out of
existence, under the Obama administration’s leadership. There are still big
hurdles to equality to be brought down, including the Defense of Marriage Act,
the outrageous federal law that undermines the rights of gay men and lesbians,
even in states that recognize those rights.
Though it took Mr. Obama some time to do it, he overcame his hesitation about
same-sex marriage and declared his support. That support has helped spur
marriage-equality movements around the country. His Justice Department has also
stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act against constitutional challenges.
Mr. Romney opposes same-sex marriage and supports the federal act, which not
only denies federal benefits and recognition to same-sex couples but allows
states to ignore marriages made in other states. His campaign declared that Mr.
Romney would not object if states also banned adoption by same-sex couples and
restricted their rights to hospital visitation and other privileges.
Mr. Romney has been careful to avoid the efforts of some Republicans to
criminalize abortion even in the case of women who had been raped, including by
family members. He says he is not opposed to contraception, but he has promised
to deny federal money to Planned Parenthood, on which millions of women depend
for family planning.
For these and many other reasons, we enthusiastically endorse President Barack
Obama for a second term, and express the hope that his victory will be
accompanied by a new Congress willing to work for policies that Americans need.
In Final
Days of the Race, Fighting County by County
October 27,
2012
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERG
WESTERVILLE, Ohio — President Obama and Mitt Romney are plunging into the final
nine days of a multibillion-dollar presidential race focused not only on the
seven most competitive states, but also on battleground counties within them
that could tip the balance of an exceedingly close contest.
They include the suburbs here in Franklin County, Ohio, where many young married
women turned to Mr. Obama in 2008 out of frustration with the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan but could turn against him now for perceived failures on his
campaign promises and a slow-to-recover economy.
In Colorado, the contested territory is Arapahoe County, where Mr. Romney’s
campaign is courting Hispanic business owners who are frustrated with the
national health care law. It is Hillsborough County in Florida, where both sides
agree that whoever wins the independent voters is likely to be president.
At this late stage of the race, the fight for the White House is being waged on
intensely local terrain, in places whose voting histories and demographics have
been studied in minute detail by both sides. Mr. Obama is intent on replicating
an electorate that swept him into office four years ago and is heavily dependent
on younger, female and minority voters. Mr. Romney is relying on an older,
whiter and more conservative voting group, along the lines of the ones that
turned out in 2004 and 2010.
The Romney campaign, worried about its options in the seven top battleground
states, opened a fund-raising drive on Saturday to try to expand the playing
field into Pennsylvania and Minnesota, two states that Mr. Obama has considered
safe. Mr. Romney is also making a deeper push this week into Wisconsin, which he
will visit for the first time in two months.
“The switch that went on after that first debate is still on,” said Gov. Scott
Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican. “I still think people are undecided, they are
still listening.”
Obama loyalists are wondering whether the campaign organization, with its focus
on the mechanics of getting its voters to the polls, was built to withstand late
decisions by voters to give Mr. Romney another look. The president flew to New
Hampshire on Saturday — the last day to register to vote by mail — to protect
the state’s four electoral votes in hopes of avoiding a narrow loss or an
Electoral College tie.
The biggest fear for Mr. Obama’s team is that a large number of voters suddenly
will get so fed up with the back-and-forth of the campaign, the economic outlook
and the partisan rancor that they break for Mr. Romney, if only to try something
new in Washington.
The biggest fear for Mr. Romney’s campaign is that he is coasting on a wave of
enthusiasm rather than building upon it. Or in the words of one top campaign
adviser: “Did we peak too soon?”
Mr. Obama now has a solid lead in states that account for 185 electoral votes,
and he is well positioned in states representing 58 more, for a total of 243,
according to a ranking of states by The New York Times, based on polls and
interviews with strategists in both campaigns.
Mr. Romney has solid leads in states with 180 electoral votes and is well
positioned in states with 26 more, according to the Times rating, for a total of
206. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
In the closing days of the race, seven states representing 89 electoral votes —
Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin — are now
considered tossups. Here is a look at their dynamics and the potential path for
each candidate.
Florida
Mr. Romney’s swing through Florida on Saturday — the first day of in-person
early voting there — included a visit to a Republican county in the Panhandle
where he wants to pump up his vote count (Escambia) and where a huge crowd met
him with chants of “10 more days,” a Democratic county where he wants to cut
into Mr. Obama’s expected lead (Osceola), and a swing county (Pasco).
For good reason.
Mr. Romney cannot afford to leave any base untouched. If he loses Florida, his
chances of winning the presidency depend on sweeping nine other states,
including Ohio and Nevada.
Florida has been considered challenging territory for Mr. Obama all year. Even
when polls have shown him ahead, both campaigns have expressed skepticism that
the edge would hold.
But at Mr. Obama’s headquarters in Chicago, his aides said in interviews last
week that they believed they had at least a 50 percent shot in Florida, based on
mail-in ballots, voter registrations and polling. A new wave of Puerto Rican
voters in Central Florida is highly influential, Democrats say, along with
younger Cuban-Americans in South Florida.
Republicans, still bullish about victory, say Mr. Obama’s aides are
overestimating his support among Puerto Ricans. And, they said, Mr. Romney can
rely on a very strong showing in Polk County, a Republican stronghold, and push
for an edge in the swing county of Hillsborough as well as in Volusia County,
home to Daytona.
New Hampshire
On Mr. Obama’s trip on Saturday to Nashua, N.H., with the singer James Taylor in
tow, he wooed a state that revels in its reputation for unpredictability. In a
stop at a union hall, he said, “We don’t know how this thing is going to play
out.”
Mr. Obama won every county there in 2008, a feat that even Bill Clinton did not
pull off in 1992 and 1996. But Mr. Obama’s sometimes comfortable lead in polls
has dwindled.
Mr. Romney’s aides have been somewhat optimistic about his chances in the state.
He was the governor in Massachusetts next door, and he vacations there. His
lakeside home in Wolfeboro is in Carroll County, which he will need to win.
He and his campaign have plied the state’s two traditionally Republican-leaning
counties in southern New Hampshire — Rockingham and Hillsborough — with
attention since he announced his run for the presidency (in the Rockingham town
of Stratham). His assertions that Mr. Obama has allowed the budget deficit and
national debt to get out of control speaks to the state’s long tradition of
thrift.
New Hampshire has only four Electoral College votes. But they would make all the
difference if Mr. Romney also wins Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Ohio
and Mr. Obama takes Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and Wisconsin.
The state has extra resonance for Democrats: if Al Gore had won there, he would
have been president.
Colorado
There is a potential outcome that has tantalized political addicts everywhere:
that Colorado will become the new Florida, the state that decides it all.
For it to come to that, Mr. Romney must win four of the most competitive states
— New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida and Wisconsin — leaving Mr. Obama with Ohio
and Iowa. That would give Mr. Romney 262 Electoral College votes to Mr. Obama’s
267, leaving both in need of Colorado’s 9. In 2008, Mr. Obama became the first
Democrat to win the state in 16 years by stealing the counties north and south
of Boulder — Jefferson and Larimer — and Arapahoe County near Denver and by
shaving down the Republican margin in conservative areas like Colorado Springs.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist College poll released on Thursday showed
Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney to be tied among likely voters.
Democrats are counting on Hispanic and young voters and what they say is a
superior organization. “The closer and closer we get to the election, the more
the organizing matters,” said Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat.
Mr. Romney is trying to cut into Mr. Obama’s advantage with Hispanics and hoping
for support from military and evangelical voters. His political director, Rich
Beeson, has an added incentive to secure victory there: It is his home state.
Iowa
No state among the battlegrounds is more sentimental and symbolic to Mr. Obama.
Iowa christened his presidential candidacy in 2008; his victory in the caucuses
there helped pave the way to his winning the Democratic nomination.
Iowa’s unemployment rate is significantly lower than the national average, but
Mr. Obama has campaigned in the state as if his candidacy depended upon it. And
perhaps it does.
Mr. Romney is looking for backup options if the battleground map does not tilt
his way. And the six electoral votes in Iowa could be a critical piece to that
puzzle.
The suburban areas around Des Moines (Polk County) and Davenport (Scott County)
are crucial for both candidates. The Des Moines Register, whose editorial pages
supported Mr. Obama in 2008, announced its endorsement of Mr. Romney on Saturday
evening, saying he “offers a fresh economic vision.”
Social conservatives are working to deliver a record turnout in northwestern
Iowa. Democrats are taking steps to keep outpacing Republicans in early voting,
which means Mr. Romney will have to deliver a strong performance on Election Day
to win. Four years ago, Mr. Obama received fewer votes on Election Day than
Senator John McCain, but still carried the state because of the ones he banked
early.
Ohio
Mr. Romney spent four of the last five days in the state trying to break through
with middle-class voters, making the case that the recovery under Mr. Obama has
been inadequate. With 18 electoral votes at stake, both candidates are treating
the state as if they were running for governor.
To win, Mr. Romney needs added strength in rural and suburban areas, where Mr.
Obama drew more support in 2008 than did previous Democratic candidates. On
Sunday night, Mr. Romney will hold a rally at the fairgrounds in Marion, Ohio, a
Republican-leaning county, where he needs the margin of victory to return to the
levels seen in 2004.
The results in Cincinnati, in Hamilton County, will be among the closest watched
in the country. The county supported Mr. Obama in 2008 — the first time a
Democrat won in four decades — and is one of the most highly-competitive this
year.
“You want to peak at the right time, and we are peaking at the right time,” said
Scott Jennings, the Ohio campaign manager for Mr. Romney.
Before Election Day, officials estimate that at least one-third of registered
voters will have already cast their ballots.
Virginia
Virginia is vital to almost every one of Mr. Romney’s paths to the White House
if he does not win Ohio, which explains why he has spent so much time visiting
the state, including what were to be three rallies on Sunday before they were
canceled because of Hurricane Sandy.
Mr. Obama was the first Democrat to win the state since 1964. The tide he rode
among black voters in places like Hampton, on the coast, is likely to roll
again. And the northern part of the state, in the Washington area, is still
considered Obama country.
Mr. Romney has focused much of his effort in areas like those around Norfolk,
heavily populated with military personnel, where he asserts that Mr. Obama has
allowed the Navy to wither, and in coal-mining country in the south, where he
portrays Mr. Obama as hostile to the industry and quick to impose costly
regulations on business.
A run of polls in the late summer showed Mr. Obama to be on his way to
establishing a real advantage, but in recent weeks the race has fallen into an
effective tie. Mr. Romney’s improving standing among undecided women after the
debates — which he stoked with an advertisement that sought to soften his stance
against abortion — made Mr. Obama’s aides especially nervous.
The president’s campaign has been buoyed by recent indications that those
wavering women in the north seem to be returning to his column, especially as
Democrats remind them of the anti-abortion measures that state Republicans
pursued this year.
Wisconsin
The 2008 presidential election, when Mr. Obama carried the state by 14
percentage points, is a distant memory. The electorate is far more polarized
this year, particularly after the contentious recall attempt of Mr. Walker in
June, which failed.
The organization that Mr. Walker put together to fend off the recall effort by
labor unions is the muscle behind Mr. Romney’s on-the-ground operation. In an
interview last week, he said, “We set the stage for the Romney campaign before
the Romney campaign was fully engaged.”
Another factor is the pride that comes from a native son, Representative Paul D.
Ryan, on the ticket. His hometown, Janesville, is a strong Democratic-leaning
city, so any votes he wins from there could help the Republican margins in a
race that both sides agree seems more like 2000 and 2004, when George W. Bush
lost by only a sliver.
Mr. Romney is set to campaign in the state on Monday, focusing on Milwaukee and
the suburbs of Waukesha County that offer the biggest Republican margins in the
state.
A day later, Mr. Obama is scheduled to visit Green Bay. In 2008, he turned many
counties in the Fox River Valley from red to blue. Consider the results of Brown
County: Mr. Bush defeated Senator John Kerry by 10 percentage points, while four
years later Mr. Obama defeated Mr. McCain by nearly the same margin.
The Romney campaign does not consider Wisconsin one of its best prospects, but a
victory would break the Midwestern firewall that Mr. Obama is trying to build.
And if Mr. Romney could win the state’s 10 electoral votes — coupled with
Colorado’s 9 — it would counterbalance a potential loss in Ohio.
Jeff Zeleny
reported from Westerville, Ohio, and Jim Rutenberg from Chicago.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 27, 2012
A caption that accompanied an earlier version of this article misstated the
location where President Obama was seen in a photograph on Saturday. He was in
Nashua, N.H., not Manchester, N.H.
October 26,
2012
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
When Jay
Swiney emerges from the night shift in the coal mines to assume his duties as
mayor of Appalachia, Va., it is hard for him to miss the partisan forces rocking
the heavily unionized Democratic hamlets in the mountains along the Tennessee
border.
Billboards proclaim “America or Obama — You Can’t Have Them Both!” and “Yes,
Coal; No-bama.” Out-of-work miners are sporting baseball caps that say
“Coal=Jobs” and T-shirts with the sarcastic message: “Make Coal Legal.” Yard
signs and TV ads for Mitt Romney are everywhere.
Mr. Romney’s campaign is aggressively tapping into anger at President Obama’s
environmental policies throughout the Appalachian counties where the state’s
coal miners live, hoping that huge margins there will offset Mr. Obama’s equally
aggressive campaign to woo female voters in the suburbs of Northern Virginia,
just outside Washington.
The battle playing out in Virginia has echoes across the battleground states,
where the final days of the presidential campaign have become a test of
geographical strategies and an all-important focus on motivation, intensity and
turnout. Republicans are pushing hard in suburban Denver and central Florida to
appeal to Hispanic small business owners. Mr. Obama’s campaign is probing for
white male voters around Toledo, where there are major auto plants that
benefited from the auto bailout.
In Virginia, Republicans hope to keep the race razor-close in other parts of the
state. If they do, aides believe Mr. Romney’s appeal in the sparsely populated
coal country could tip Virginia’s 13 electoral votes into his column, a victory
vital to his White House bid. With just 10 days left, few self-described
hillbillies in southwest Virginia are undecided.
“I definitely will vote for Romney this time,” Mr. Swiney, 43, who considered
backing Mr. Obama four years ago before deciding on Senator John McCain, said in
a telephone interview this week. “Not just because of the devastation that’s
going on with coal now. I’m a firm believer in giving somebody a chance. We’ve
given Obama a chance for the last four years.”
The mayor, whose post is nonpartisan, points to the men in the coal camps on the
outskirts of the 2,800-person town, some of whom are losing their jobs as
tougher environmental regulations make coal more expensive to mine. Plummeting
natural gas prices are discouraging the use of coal to generate electricity. The
region feels under siege and at war, he says, a sentiment that is also common in
coal-mining regions of Ohio, another battleground.
“I personally blame him for it,” Mr. Swiney said of the president.
Mr. Obama argues that he has been supportive of coal by pumping government money
into clean-coal technologies. He regularly mocks Mr. Romney for presenting
himself as a champion of the coal industry while conveniently forgetting his
criticism of coal mines when he was governor of Massachusetts.
“If you say that you’re a champion of the coal industry when, while you were
governor, you stood in front of a coal plant and said, this plant will kill you,
that’s some Romnesia,” Mr. Obama said at a rally in Fairfax, Va.
But the president, who lost much of that part of the state in 2008, seems at
risk this time of losing by even larger margins. State Senator Phillip Puckett,
the longtime Democrat from the region, says he will not support Mr. Obama’s
re-election because, telling a local television station last year, “It’s very
clear to me that the administration does not support the coal industry.”
Strategists for Mr. Obama say coal miners and their families — many of whom are
elderly — should be attracted to the president’s position on Social Security and
Medicare. The president’s campaign is running ads in the region accusing Mr.
Romney of wanting to turn Medicare into a voucher system. And surrogates are
pressing the case.
“Romney is a political chameleon,” says Richard L. Trumka, the president of the
A.F.L.-C.I.O., and a former head of the United Mine Workers. “He will say
anything that he thinks people want to hear. For him to say he’s a friend of
coal is absolutely ridiculous.”
But even longtime Democrats in the state concede that Mr. Romney is making a
forceful push for votes in the Ninth Congressional District, which encompasses
the state’s half-dozen coal counties. One of Mr. Romney’s ads, appearing
frequently on television, begins with a coal miner saying, “Obama is ruining the
coal industry.” Mr. Romney held a rally in Abingdon, Va., this month. His son
Matt spoke to 7,500 people last week in Grundy, a town of just 996 people.
Dave Saunders, a veteran Democratic strategist who lives in the region, said:
“Three things are sacred in Southwest Virginia — the Holy Bible, moonshine and
coal. That’s all I got to say. They will get big numbers in the Ninth. No
question at all.”
The Republican effort to gather votes for Mr. Romney has been supplemented by an
aggressive and mostly negative campaign by third-party groups backed by
conservatives and energy interests. The American Coalition for Clean Coal
Electricity has a television ad blasting “heavy-handed E.P.A. regulations.” A
radio ad by the American Energy Alliance says the “president and his Washington
cronies have declared war on affordable energy.” A TV ad by the same group urges
miners to “Vote no on Obama’s failing energy policy.”
The president has cited reports that the coal miners in Mr. Romney’s ad were
coerced by their employers to be there, an accusation that some of the miners
have denied. But even if some of the outrage at Mr. Obama is being exaggerated
by outside groups, locals say that much of it is a genuine expression of the
frustration at seeing jobs die in the region.
In September, several hundred coal miners were furloughed for at least two
months because of rising costs and shrinking demand. The company, Consol,
announced on Wednesday that some workers will remain idled even after mining
resumes the first week of November.
Other plants have shut down for good, citing in part foreign competition. Larry
Lambert, 61, is one of the unlucky miners who spent a day this week at a
résumé-writing seminar, which was a requirement for picking up his unemployment
check.
“The E.P.A. has put so many strangleholds on the power companies they can’t burn
the coal we are mining,” Mr. Lambert said. He added that Mr. Obama seemed
appealing four years ago, but has betrayed coal miners.
And yet, it is not clear that there are enough voters like Mr. Lambert to offset
the president’s strength in Northern Virginia. About 750,000 people live in
southwest Virginia, less than a third of the number in the suburban counties
near Washington.
Democratic strategists working on Mr. Obama’s behalf said Mr. Romney would
probably win 60 percent of the vote in the region. But they say the shift in the
state’s population means that the huge margins will not be worth as much for Mr.
Romney’s campaign.
“In the 12 years I’ve been in elected office, we continue to see pretty dramatic
population shift,” said Mark Warner, one of the state’s two Democratic senators.
“The numbers just aren’t there.”
The final
weeks of a presidential race are supposed to give the candidates a chance to
choose their biggest ideas and strongest pitches to win wavering voters and
drive supporters to the polls. So how does Mitt Romney choose to address one of
the biggest challenges facing the nation — its faltering education system?
“We’re going to finally fix our schools,” he said on Wednesday in Reno. And
that’s all he said about his education policy. Not even a hint of how he
proposes to do that, especially given his hope to make the Department of
Education “a heck of a lot smaller.” (He did give the usual verbal shove to
teachers’ unions for resisting charter schools, which have hardly proved to be a
panacea.)
By contrast, President Obama talked about the subject in detail on his whirlwind
tour of swing states this week. In Tampa, Richmond and Cleveland on Thursday, he
said he wants to recruit 100,000 math and science teachers, train two million
workers at community colleges in the skills needed for employment, and pressure
colleges to restrain tuition growth. He made it clear that he will spend money
on a national priority that Mr. Romney apparently feels can be left to the whims
of individual states.
That’s only one example of how the campaigns are approaching the finish line,
but it illustrates the contrast in their conceptions of what voters want to
hear.
Mr. Romney is providing nostrums instead of policies. “I’ll balance the budget,”
he promised, though his plans to cut taxes and raise military spending would do
the opposite. By comparison, Mr. Obama, though he waited too long to begin
providing specifics on his second-term agenda, has decided to spend the last two
weeks describing them. In his speeches and in a new publication, he is talking
about using tax breaks to prod American manufacturing; spending money on repairs
of roads, bridges and schools; investing more in renewable energy; and raising
taxes on the rich to help pay for all of this. In an interview with The Des
Moines Register, he said (after agreeing to go on the record) that he intends to
renegotiate the sequester and focus on immigration reform if re-elected.
Mr. Romney, who has moved up in the national polls, has apparently decided to
play it safe in the final stretch, as wary of explaining how his tax or jobs
plans would actually work as he has been through the campaign. The latest
swing-state poll numbers suggest that he will have to do better. In the crucial
state of Ohio, Mr. Romney hasn’t been ahead in any poll for the last two weeks,
and on Wednesday, a Time magazine poll showed Mr. Obama ahead there by five
points.
For Mr. Romney, Mr. Obama’s decision to bail out the auto industry and his own
rejection of it is proving to be an Electoral College challenge. Several states
are also feeling the benefits of an improved economy. Obama campaign officials
say that to win, Mr. Romney would have to pick off voters already committed to
the president in states where Mr. Romney has never been ahead. “We think we
maintain a lot more plausible pathways to 270 than Governor Romney, who we think
has to essentially pull an inside straight,” said David Plouffe, the president’s
chief strategist.
Those pathways exist because millions of voters still harbor doubts about Mitt
Romney. He has apparently decided that in the final days of the campaign, he
will do little to dispel them.
October 25,
2012
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and JO CRAVEN McGINTY
President
Obama and Mitt Romney are both on pace to raise more than $1 billion with their
parties by Election Day, according to financial disclosures filed by the
campaigns on Thursday.
From the beginning of 2011 through Oct. 17, Mr. Obama and the Democrats raised
about $1.06 billion, and Mr. Romney and the Republicans collected $954 million,
including some money for the party’s Congressional efforts, setting up 2012 to
be the most expensive presidential campaign in history.
But the sources of that money, raised over the course of a deeply polarizing
campaign, echo the sharp divisions between the two men and their parties over
issues like abortion rights, the role of government in regulating industry and
the country’s economic future.
Wall Street has invested more heavily in Mr. Romney, a former financier who has
pledged to repeal Mr. Obama’s new financial regulations, than in any
presidential candidate in memory. Employees of financial firms had given more
than $18 million dollars to Mr. Romney’s campaign through the end of September
and tens of millions more to the “super PACs” supporting him.
Insurance companies, doctors and law, accounting and real estate firms are
giving less to Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee than they did
four years ago, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
Yet donors in other industries have stepped in. With Mr. Obama making repeated
trips to Silicon Valley and holding round tables with executives there, the
technology industry has donated about $14 million to the president and the
Democrats, substantially more than in 2008.
Retirees, the biggest single source of money for both sides, have given the
Democrats much more than they did four years ago, as have employees of women’s
groups, retailers and hospitals and nursing homes.
To make up for the loss of business money that flowed to his campaign four years
ago, Mr. Obama has also turned to the very smallest donors, building an army of
millions of supporters who have given as little as a few dollars each. About 4.2
million people sent donations to Mr. Obama and the D.N.C., his campaign said on
Thursday, roughly one million more than in 2008.
Over all, 55 percent of the Obama campaign’s money through the end of September
came in donations of less than $200, including from many people who have
repeatedly sent in small checks over the course of the campaign. Just 13 percent
of his checks were for $2,500, the maximum that donors are allowed to contribute
for either the primary or general election.
Mr. Romney, by contrast, has cultivated business leaders and benefited from a
Republican donor establishment that is eager to defeat Mr. Obama, raising an
unprecedented amount of money from wealthy donors who gave the maximum allowed.
Just 22 percent of his cash has come from donations of less than $200. Through
the end of September, 45 percent of checks to Mr. Romney’s campaign were for the
maximum $2,500 contribution.
Neither candidate is likely to raise as much money directly for his own
presidential committee as Mr. Obama did in 2008. A flood of online donations
that year, and support from many traditionally Republican donors, helped Mr.
Obama raise $748 million for his presidential committee. The D.N.C. raised
another $244 million, bringing the combined total to a little under $1 billion.
This time around, Mr. Obama, as an incumbent, has raised more of his total
through the D.N.C., which can accept five-figure checks from each of Mr. Obama’s
wealthiest supporters. By raising more money from his very biggest and very
smallest donors, Mr. Obama has been able to offset his losses from the business
world and from previous contributors who gave less or not at all this time,
whether because of the recession or fading enthusiasm.
Mr. Romney, after becoming the presumptive Republican nominee in the spring,
almost immediately began a fund-raising effort with the Republican National
Committee, several state parties and the two Congressional campaign committees.
Mr. Romney’s total through September included about $13.6 million that was
raised for and transferred to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and
the National Republican Congressional Committee.
The overall totals do not include hundreds of millions of dollars being raised
and spent by “super PACs” and other outside groups, mostly to benefit Mr. Romney
and other Republicans. Groups aligned with Mr. Romney have spent $302 million on
campaign advertising that they are required to disclose to the F.E.C., compared
with about $120 million for groups aligned with Mr. Obama. Tens of millions of
dollars more has been spent on issue advertisements whose precise costs are
difficult to measure.
“As the Romney campaign and their ‘super PAC’ allies continue to outspend us on
the air, we’re making every effort to expand our donor base heading into the
final stretch,” said Adam Fetcher, an Obama spokesman.
Mr. Romney and the Republicans raised about $21.3 million more than Mr. Obama
and the Democrats during the first 17 days of October, according to the
disclosures filed on Thursday, as Mr. Romney rose in the polls and performed
well in debates, emboldening his supporters.
Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee took in $92.4 million during
that period, after surpassing Mr. Romney in August and September.
Mr. Romney and the R.N.C. raised $113.7 million over the same period, the final
days for which the campaigns are required to report their fund-raising before
the election on Nov. 6. Mr. Romney and his party also spent about $146.2 million
during the first 17 days in October, slightly less than the $149.7 million spent
by Mr. Obama and the Democrats.
While Mr. Obama’s team invested tens of millions of dollars early in the
campaign to identify, contact and raise money from grass-roots voters, those
expenditures have left the Republicans with more cash in the final weeks of the
election that could finance a late surge of advertising. Mr. Romney and the
G.O.P. ended the final filing period with $169 million in cash on hand,
significantly more than the $123.8 million held by Mr. Obama and the Democrats.
Michael Luo
and Derek Willis contributed reporting.
October 25,
2012
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG
CHICAGO —
This is what “grinding it out” looks like at President Obama’s election
headquarters: scores of young staff members intently clicking away at computer
keyboards as they crunch gigabytes of data about which way undecided voters are
leaning, where they can be reached, and when; strategists standing at
whiteboards busily writing and erasing early voting numbers and turnout
possibilities; a lonely Ping-Pong table.
The wave of passion and excitement that coursed through Mr. Obama’s headquarters
here in 2008 has been replaced with a methodical and workmanlike approach to
manufacturing the winning coalition that came together more organically and
enthusiastically for him the last time, a more arduous task with no guarantee of
success.
As Washington and the cable news commentariat breathlessly discuss whether Mitt
Romney’s post-debate movement in the polls has peaked, Mr. Obama’s campaign
technicians — and that’s what many of them are — are putting as much faith in
the multimillion-dollar machine they built for just such a close race as in the
president himself.
“We are exactly where I thought we would be, in a very close election with 12
days left with two things to do and two things only: persuade the undecided and
turn our voters out,” said Jim Messina, 43, the president’s technocratic
campaign manager, slightly paler and more hunched than he was when the campaign
began. Pointing to the rows of personnel outside his office on Thursday, he
added, “Everything in that room has been focused on that.”
Four years ago, Mr. Obama’s political team here was preparing one of its
trademark showstoppers: a half-hour prime-time program extolling Mr. Obama’s
character and plans across four networks, culminating in a live feed from a
boisterous rally in Florida.
There will be no such razzmatazz this time around. Any extra money in this tight
final phase of the election is being wired to Nevada and Florida for more
Spanish-language ads, to Iowa and Ohio for more on-the-ground staff members, and
to Google and Facebook for more microtargeted messaging to complacent, maybe
even demoralized, young supporters.
Mr. Obama emphasized the importance of their task during a stop at a phone bank
here in Chicago on Thursday, telling volunteers, “If we let up and our voters
don’t turn out, we could lose this election.” He added quickly, “The good news
is, if our voters do turn out, we will definitely win the election.”
At the White House, it is clear that the action has moved to Chicago, with some
staff members, who are legally prohibited from even wearing campaign buttons to
work, pining to be on the trail and others whiling away the time preparing for
the lame-duck Congressional wrangling on the budget impasse.
For Mr. Obama’s campaign staff in a nondescript office tower here, the task now
comes down to creating an electorate more favorable to Democrats than most major
pollsters have assumed, with percentages of Obama-friendly black, Latino and
young voters that rival those of 2008, at least enough to offset the large drop
in support among other segments of the population, like independent men.
An ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll on Thursday had Mr. Romney with a
50-to-47-percent edge among likely voters nationwide, the first time the
challenger had reached 50 percent in the poll. But Mr. Obama’s aides here are at
least projecting an air of confidence. They say their system, which they began
building long before the Republican primaries, is exceeding expectations. Eleven
days will tell whether they are bluffing.
After using their huge database to increase registration among favorable voting
groups in crucial states, they are now pinpointing people who ordered absentee
ballots and need a nudge to send them, or sporadic voters who indicated they
would vote for the president but may need to be pushed to show up at their
polling place.
“We made a strategic choice very early on that getting our supporters — and the
right types of supporters — to the polls before Election Day was a big priority
for us,” said Mitch Stewart, the Obama campaign’s battleground state director,
who has been helping organize Mr. Obama’s supporters since the 2008 election and
started at the campaign some 19 months and, in his words, “20 pounds ago.”
With a box of Tastykakes sitting on his desk in his spartan office, Mr. Stewart
added, “The electorate’s going to look much more like 2008 than 2010.”
Some polls in recent weeks have shown Mr. Obama with an advantage among all
registered voters, and Mr. Romney with an advantage or tied among likely voters.
Mr. Obama’s aides are contending that the pollsters are wrongly assuming that
Mr. Obama’s voters are less enthusiastic and that turnout among his key groups
will be down, that is, he has fewer likely voters than he had four years ago.
A new Time magazine poll this week showed Mr. Obama ahead by a two-to-one ratio
among those who voted early in Ohio.
His aides pointed to statistics showing that a slightly higher percentage of
African-Americans had voted early in North Carolina compared with the percentage
at this point four years ago, and that their percentages are up along with those
of Hispanics in the early mail-in vote in Florida, which they attributed to
their turnout operations.
Officials with Mr. Romney’s campaign disagree, and they said that whatever gains
Mr. Obama had would be unsustainable through Election Day, contending that he is
succeeding only in getting those most likely to support him to show up early, an
assessment that Mr. Obama’s aides dispute.
“Every cycle, when someone is losing, they claim they are altering the
electorate,” said Rich Beeson, Mr. Romney’s political director.
Of course, at this stage of the race, each campaign is engaged in a bit of
bravado, aimed at giving supporters and undecided voters alike a sense that it
is the winning team to be on.
There is little dispute that for Mr. Obama to at least come close enough to
matching his 2008 coalition to win he will need to induce people to vote in a
way he did not have to four years ago, before the full impact of the Great
Recession was followed by intensive partisan wrangling.
Mr. Obama’s aides here said they had prepared for the need to rebuild his
coalition all along, and that is why they have kept careful tabs on his former
supporters, and worked to identify potential new ones, since he took office, all
the while perfecting ways to keep track of them, keep in touch with them, and,
ultimately, persuade them to vote.
The campaign is refocusing its advertising to scare less motivated supporters to
vote. One new ad presents a reminder of Al Gore’s loss to George W. Bush in the
Florida recount of 2000, which, the ad says, made “the difference between what
was, and what could have been.”
But ultimately, if Mr. Obama does win, it could come down to the huge room of
technicians and data crunchers in a corporate office here, sitting on exercise
balls or squeezing stress toys as they dispatch information to volunteers
knocking on doors hundreds of miles away.
In interviews, Mr. Obama’s aides wistfully recalled when the office had just
opened, a vast, mostly empty space with a countdown of the days scrawled in
Magic Marker — then well into the hundreds. Now it is done with a digital clock,
ticking off the very last minutes and seconds.
Peter Baker
contributed reporting from Chicago,
and Mark
Landler and Jackie Calmes from Washington.
October 24, 2012
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Mitt Romney’s best argument on the campaign trail has been
simple: Under President Obama, the American economy has remained excruciatingly
weak, far underperforming the White House’s own projections.
That’s a fair criticism.
But Obama’s best response could be this: If you want to see how Romney’s
economic policies would work out, take a look at Europe. And weep.
In the last few years, Germany and Britain, in particular, have implemented
precisely the policies that Romney favors, and they have been richly praised by
Republicans here as a result. Yet these days those economies seem, to use a
German technical term, kaput.
Is Europe a fair comparison? Well, Republicans seem to think so, because they
came up with it. In the last few years, they’ve repeatedly cited
Republican-style austerity in places like Germany and Britain as a model for
America.
Let’s dial back the time machine and listen up:
“Europe is already setting an example for the U.S.,” Representative Kenny
Marchant, a Texas Republican, said in 2010. (You know things are bad when a
Texas Republican is calling for Americans to study at the feet of those
socialist Europeans.)
The same year, Karl Rove praised European austerity as a model for America and
approvingly quoted the leader of the European Central Bank as saying: “The idea
that austerity measures could trigger stagnation is incorrect.”
Representative Steve King of Iowa, another Republican, praised Chancellor Angela
Merkel of Germany for preaching austerity and said: “It ought to hit home to our
president of the United States. It ought to hit all of us here in this country.”
“The president should learn a lesson from the ‘German Miracle,’ ” Representative
Joe Wilson of South Carolina, a Republican, urged on the House floor in July
2011.
Also in 2011, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate
Budget Committee, denounced Obama’s economic management and said: “We need a
budget with a bold vision — like those unveiled in Britain and New Jersey.”
O.K. Let’s see how that’s working out.
New Jersey isn’t overseas, but since Sessions and many other Republicans have
hailed it as a shining model of austerity, let’s start there. New Jersey ranked
47th in economic growth last year. When Gov. Chris Christie took office in 2010
and began to impose austerity measures, New Jersey ranked 35th in its
unemployment rate; now it ranks 48th.
Senator Sessions, do we really aspire for the same in America as a whole?
Something similar has happened internationally. The International Monetary Fund
this month downgraded its estimates for global economic growth, with only one
major bright spot in the West. That would be the United States, expected to grow
a bit more than 2 percent this year and next.
In contrast, Europe’s economy is expected to shrink this year and have
negligible growth next year. The I.M.F. projects that Germany will grow less
than 1 percent this year and next, while Britain’s economy is contracting this
year.
Karl Rove, that sounds a lot like stagnation to me.
All this is exactly what economic textbooks predicted. Since Keynes, it’s been
understood that, in a downturn, governments should go into deficit to stimulate
demand; that’s how we got out of the Great Depression. And recent European data
and I.M.F. analyses underscore that austerity in the middle of a downturn not
only doesn’t help but leads to even higher ratios of debt to economic output.
So, yes, Republicans have a legitimate point about the long-term need to curb
deficits and entitlement growth. But, no, it isn’t reasonable for Republicans to
advocate austerity in the middle of a downturn. On that, they’re empirically
wrong.
If there were still doubt about this, we’ve had a lovely natural experiment in
the last few years, as the Republicans in previous years were happy to point
out. All industrialized countries experienced similar slowdowns, and the United
States under Obama chose a massive stimulus while Germany and Britain chose
Republican-endorsed austerity.
Neither approach worked brilliantly. Obama’s initial economic stimulus created
at least 1.4 million jobs, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget
Office. But that wasn’t enough, and it was partly negated by austerity in state
and local governments.
Still, America’s economy is now the fastest growing among major countries in the
West, and Britain’s is shrinking. Which would you prefer?
I’m not suggesting Obama distribute bumper stickers saying: “It Could Be Worse.”
He might want to stick with: “Osama’s Dead and G.M. Is Alive.”
Yes, there are differences between Europe and America. But Republicans were
right to call attention to this empirical experiment.
The results are in. And, as Representative King suggested, the lessons “ought to
hit all of us here in this country.”
Standard of Living Is in the Shadows as Election Issue
October 23,
2012
The New York Times
By DAVID LEONHARDT
WASHINGTON
— Taxes and government spending. Health care. Immigration. Financial regulation.
They are the issues that have dominated the political debate in recent years and
have played a prominent role in this presidential campaign. But in many ways
they have obscured what is arguably the nation’s biggest challenge: breaking out
of a decade of income stagnation that has afflicted the middle class and the
poor and exacerbated inequality.
Many of the bedrock assumptions of American culture — about work, progress,
fairness and optimism — are being shaken as successive generations worry about
the prospect of declining living standards. No question, perhaps, is more
central to the country’s global standing than whether the economy will perform
better on that score in the future than it has in the recent past.
The question has helped create a volatile period in American politics, with
Democrats gaining large victories in 2006 and 2008, only to have Republicans
return the favor in 2010. This year, economic anxiety, especially in industrial
battlegrounds like Ohio, is driving the campaign strategies of both President
Obama and Mitt Romney.
The causes of income stagnation are varied and lack the political simplicity of
calls to bring down the deficit or avert another Wall Street meltdown. They
cannot be quickly remedied through legislation from Washington. The biggest
causes, according to interviews with economists over the last several months,
are not the issues that dominate the political debate.
At the top of the list are the digital revolution, which has allowed machines to
replace many forms of human labor, and the modern wave of globalization, which
has allowed millions of low-wage workers around the world to begin competing
with Americans.
Not much further down the list is education, probably the country’s most
diffuse, localized area of government policy. As skill levels have become even
more important for prosperity, the United States has lost its once-large global
lead in educational attainment.
Some of the disconnect between the economy’s problems and the solutions offered
by Washington stem from the nature of the current political debate. The
presidential campaign has been more focused on Bain Capital and an “apology
tour” than on the challenges created by globalization and automation.
But economists and other analysts also point to the scale of the problem. No
other rich country — not Japan, not any nation in Europe — has figured out
exactly how to respond to the challenges. “The whole notion of the American
dream,” said Frank Levy, an M.I.T. economist, “described a mass upward mobility
that is just a lot harder to achieve right now.”
For the first time since the Great Depression, median family income has fallen
substantially over an entire decade. Income grew slowly through most of the last
decade, except at the top of the distribution, before falling sharply when the
financial crisis began.
By last year, family income was 8 percent lower than it had been 11 years
earlier, at its peak in 2000, according to inflation-adjusted numbers from the
Census Bureau. On average in 11-year periods in the decades just after World War
II, inflation-adjusted median income rose by almost 30 percent.
Matching the growth rates of the postwar period — when the country was poorer,
when harsh discrimination against women and minorities was receding and when the
rest of the world was weaker — is probably impossible. Yet there is still a vast
difference, both economically and politically, between incomes that are rising
modestly and not at all.
Historically, periods of economic stagnation have tended to bring pessimism,
political turmoil and a lack of social progress, said Benjamin Friedman, an
economic historian and the author of “The Moral Consequences of Economic
Growth.” The political volatility and partisan rancor of the last several years
seem to fit the pattern.
The recent stagnation has also led, economists say, to confusion and even
scapegoating about the real sources of the problem. The causes that can seem
obvious, and that often shape the political debate, are not necessarily the
correct ones.
Take immigration, especially illegal immigration. Whatever other problems it may
cause, evidence suggests that it has not played a significant role in the income
slump.
It may have caused a slight decline in the wages of native-born workers without
a high school diploma (and maybe not even that). But most illegal immigrants
lack the skills to compete with the bulk of native workers, according to
research by Giovanni Peri, Chad Sparber and others. Notably, incomes in some
states with large immigrant populations, like California, have risen faster than
in states with relatively few immigrants, like Ohio.
The minimum wage, similarly, appears to play only a minor role in the income
slump. It has risen faster than inflation since 2000, even as overall pay at the
bottom of the income distribution has not. And the size of the federal
government also looks like a dog that is not barking: Washington collected taxes
equal to 15.4 percent of gross domestic product last year, down from 20.6
percent in 2000.
A second group of much-cited forces have indeed played a role in middle-class
stagnation and inequality, many economists argue, just not as big a role as
automation, globalization or education.
Health care costs have grown sharply over the last decade, leaving employers
with less cash to use on salaries. Labor unions have shrunk; all else equal,
unionized workers earn more, often at the expense of corporate profits. Tax
rates have fallen more for the affluent than for anyone else, directly
increasing the take-home pay of top earners and indirectly giving them more
incentive to earn large amounts.
But many of these factors are particular to the United States, while
globalization and automation are obviously universal forces.
One of the more striking recent developments in economics has been economists’
growing acceptance of the idea that globalization has held down pay for a large
swath of workers. The public has long accepted the idea, but economists resisted
it, pointing to the long-term benefits of trade. “That is starting to change
only in the face of very strong evidence over the past decade,” said Edward
Alden of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In particular, job growth and wage growth have been weaker in sectors exposed to
global competition — especially from China — than in sectors that are more
insulated.
Automation creates similar patterns. Workers whose labor can be replaced by
computers, be they in factories or stores, have paid a particularly steep price.
The American manufacturing sector produces much more than it did in 1979,
despite employing almost 40 percent fewer workers.
Workers with less advanced skills have also suffered disproportionately. The pay
gap between college graduates and everyone else is near a record. Despite the
long economic slump — and the well-chronicled struggles of some college
graduates — their unemployment rate is just 4.1 percent.
What is the solution to this thicket of economic forces?
That question is the one that Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are trying to convince
voters that they can best answer. They both accept that the government and the
market have a role, but they put a different emphasis on those roles.
It is hard to see how either globalization or automation can be stopped. The
proposed solutions instead tend to involve managing them.
If the economy can be made to grow fast enough, incomes can still rise across
the board, as they did when the unemployment rate fell below 5 percent in the
1990s and briefly below 4 percent in 2000. If educational attainment rises, more
people will be able to get jobs that benefit from technology and global trade,
rather than suffer from it. And if inequality continues to soar, the government
could choose to use the tax code to ameliorate it — a solution that Democrats
favor and Republicans say will hurt economic growth.
Maybe the biggest reason for optimism is that there is still a strong argument
that both globalization and automation help the economy in the long run. This
argument remains popular with economists: Trade allows countries to specialize
in what they do best, while technology creates opportunities to extend and
improve life that never before existed.
Previous periods of rapid economic change also created problems that seemed to
be permanent but were not. Neither the cotton gin nor the steam engine nor the
automobile created mass unemployment.
“When technology reduces the need for certain kinds of labor, we know that some
inventive people will one day come along and find a way to use that freed-up
labor making things that other people want to buy,” said Mr. Friedman, the
economic historian. “That’s what in the long run made the Luddites wrong.”
He added, “How long does it take the Luddites to be wrong — a few years, a
decade, a couple of decades?”
Perhaps just as important, what happens to the workers who happen to be living
during a time when the Luddite argument has some truth to it?
October 23,
2012
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and HELENE COOPER
DAYTON,
Ohio — President Obama started making his closing argument for a second term on
Tuesday, beginning a furious two-week effort to beat back a late surge by Mitt
Romney and hang on to battleground states where voters are already casting
ballots in large numbers.
At the beginning of what the campaign described as a round-the-clock blitz, and
on the day after his final debate, Mr. Obama tried to address what polling has
shown is a consistent question among voters: What kind of agenda does he have
for a second term? He released a 20-page booklet encapsulating previously
announced policies and contrasting his positions to those of Mr. Romney.
The document contains no new proposals, and was derided by a spokesman for Mr.
Romney as a “glossy panic button.” But along with a new television advertisement
that began running in nine battleground states, the president’s aides predicted
it would help counter the Romney assault plan for the next two weeks that aims
to convince voters that Mr. Obama has no plans to fix the ailing economy.
Mr. Romney and his campaign spent Tuesday pounding away at points Mr. Romney
made during the debate on Monday night, including accusing the president of
apologizing for the United States and cutting military spending excessively. Mr.
Romney flew from Florida to Nevada, where he mocked Mr. Obama’s attacks on him
as desperate moves by a losing candidate.
“You know, the truth is that attacks on me are not an agenda,” Mr. Romney said
to a crowd of about 6,000 people in Henderson, Nev. “His is a status quo
candidacy. His is a message of going forward with the same policies of the last
four years, and that’s why his campaign is slipping, and that’s why ours is
gaining so much steam.”
In the president’s minute-long ad, and in appearances at the start of a frenetic
week, Mr. Obama stepped up his effort to convince the nation that he had brought
it back from the brink of economic collapse and that Mr. Romney would embrace
the policies that caused the problems. Looking directly into the camera, the
president asks voters to “read my plan, compare it to Governor Romney’s and
decide which is better for you.”
But even as he sought to strike a positive note at the start of a three-day
swing that is taking him through Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Florida and
Virginia, Mr. Obama also enthusiastically stepped up his attacks. The Republican
candidate, the president said at a rally in Florida, wants to “turn back the
clock 50 years for immigrants and gays and women” and is pursuing a foreign
policy that is “all over the map.”
Appearing later with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at a raucous rally
before 9,500 people in Dayton, the president went into a spirited assault, using
his new favorite attack word — “Romnesia” — to highlight his rival’s position on
the auto bailout, which the White House says was vital to saving jobs in Ohio
and throughout the Midwest.
“Last night, Governor Romney looked me right in the eye, tried to pretend he
never said, ‘Let Detroit go bankrupt,’ ” Mr. Obama said, one of many instances
all day when he suggested Mr. Romney was not being honest about his positions as
he seeks to appeal to a general-election audience after a Republican primary
campaign in which he emphasized conservative stances.
With some polls suggesting that Mr. Romney is closing the gap, Mr. Obama’s top
strategists described twin approaches: to make final appeals to independents,
moderates, women and minorities as they offer lacerating assessments of Mr.
Romney’s qualifications and credibility.
Still, Mr. Obama’s schedule and the tenor of his campaign appearances made clear
that his primary mission now was to energize his own supporters and get them to
vote, preferably right away. In Florida, where he appeared in the morning, and
later in Ohio,the constant refrain at his rallies was “Vote! Vote! Vote!” Early
voting begins in Florida on Saturday and is already under way in Ohio.The
terrain that Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are covering this week illustrates a
battleground within a battleground. The campaigns are advertising in nine states
— stretching from North Carolina to Nevada — but are spending most of their most
crucial resource — their time — in the Midwest.
Mr. Romney is scheduled to zip back and forth on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday
between Ohio and Iowa. Winning those states is the most efficient way for him to
block Mr. Obama from returning to the White House or for Mr. Obama to lock down
a path to 270 electoral votes.
In a sign of the closeness of the race, a “super PAC” supporting Mr. Romney,
Restore Our Future, reserved television time in Maine, traditionally a
Democratic state. Maine allocates its electoral votes by Congressional district,
and Mr. Romney’s supporters hope they may be able to pick off the single
electoral vote available from the state’s more conservative Second District.
In the final two weeks Mr. Romney has the challenge of maintaining a strategy of
presenting himself as more reasonable and pragmatic than the image the White
House built of him over the summer: that of an out-of-touch, job-killing
plutocrat. But to the degree that strategy involves emphasizing more moderate
positions than he stressed during the Republican primary campaign, it creates
the potential for him to face renewed questions among conservatives on his
ideological commitment.
Conversations with a half-dozen conservative activists on Tuesday suggested that
many were cutting Mr. Romney some slack. “There’s a caricature of Romney that
the Obama campaign has put out, and when he doesn’t fit the caricature he is
accused of changing his view,” said Gary L. Bauer, president of the Christian
advocacy group American Values.
In the final weeks, Mr. Romney’s campaign has been discussing ways to build on
gains that have shown him closing Mr. Obama’s lead in polls in states like Ohio.
Mr. Romney plans to deliver what the campaign describes as a major jobs and debt
speech on Thursday in Cincinnati, the third in a series of policy addresses
laying out how he would govern.
A new ad released Tuesday night shows Mr. Romney’s closing statement from the
last debate, arguing that voters have a choice between “two very different
paths” for the country. “The president’s path means 20 million people out of
work, struggling for a good job,” he says. “I’ll get people back to work with 12
million new jobs.”
The campaign is also mulling whether to expand distribution of the 10-minute
biographical video it first showed to rave reviews at the Republican National
Convention, or to buy time for a similar biographical commercial in swing
states, said two senior strategists, who had participated in those internal
deliberations.
Democrats monitoring Republican ad spending said the Romney campaign had begun
asking individual television stations about the possibility of buying time for a
long commercial.
Ashley Parker
contributed reporting from Henderson, Nev.,
Jeff Zeleny
from Columbus, Ohio, and Jim Rutenberg and Erik Eckholm from New York.
October 22,
2012
The New York Times
By DAVID BROOKS
Hello, my
name is David, and I’m a pollaholic. For the past several months I have spent
inordinate amounts of time poring over election polls. A couple of times a day,
I check the Web sites to see what the polling averages are. I check my Twitter
feed to see the latest Gallup numbers. I’ve read countless articles dissecting
the flawed methodologies of polls I don’t like.
And do you know what I’ve learned from these hours of attention? That if the
election were held today (which it won’t be), then President Obama would be a
bit more likely to win. At the same time, there seems to be a whiff of momentum
toward Mitt Romney. That’s it. Hundreds of hours. Two banal observations.
I have wasted a large chunk of my life I will never get back. Why? Because I’ve
got a problem.
Look, I know in the cool light of rationality how I should treat polling data.
First, I should treat polls as a fuzzy snapshot of a moment in time. I should
not read them, and think I understand the future.
If there’s one thing we know, it’s that even experts with fancy computer models
are terrible at predicting human behavior. Financial firms with zillions of
dollars have spent decades trying to create models that will help them pick
stocks, and they have gloriously failed.
Scholars at Duke University studied 11,600 forecasts by corporate chief
financial officers about how the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index would perform
over the next year. The correlation between their estimates and the actual index
was less than zero.
And, if it’s hard to predict stocks or the economy, politics is a field
perfectly designed to foil precise projections.
Politics isn’t a game, like poker, with an artificially limited number of
possible developments. National elections are rare, so we have ridiculously
small sample sizes. Political campaigns don’t give pollsters immediate feedback,
so they can gradually correct their errors. They have to wait for Election Day
for actual results, and only the final poll is verifiable.
Most important, stuff happens. Obama turns in a bad debate performance. Romney
makes offensive comments at a fund-raiser. These unquantifiable events change
the trajectories of tight campaigns. You can’t tell what’s about to happen. You
certainly can’t tell how 100 million people are going to process what’s about to
happen. You can’t calculate odds that capture unknown reactions to unknown
events.
The second thing I know is that if you do have to look at polls, you should do
it no more than once every few days, to get a general sense of the state of the
race. I’ve seen the studies that show that people who check their stocks once a
day get lower returns than people who check them once a quarter because they get
distracted by noise and make terrible decisions. I’ve seen the work on
information overload, which makes people depressed, stressed and freezes their
brains. I know that checking the polls constantly is a recipe for self-deception
and anxiety.
I know all this. But do I obey? Of course not. I check every few hours. I’m
motivated by the illusion of immanent knowledge. I imagine that somehow the next
batch of polling will contain some magic cross-tab about swing voters in Ohio
that will satisfy my voracious curiosity and allay this irritable uncertainty.
I’m also motivated by the thrill of premature celebration. Elections aren’t just
about policy choices. They’re status competitions. When the polls swing your
way, you feel a surge of righteous affirmation. Your views are obviously
correct! Your team’s virtues are widely recognized! You get to see the
humiliation and pain afflicting your foes.
When the polls swing the other way, well, who believes the polls anyway? Those
idiots are obviously skewing the results. This has been a golden age for
confirmation bias.
Finally, I’m motivated by the power of cognitive laziness. It’s hard to figure
out how each candidate will handle the so-called budgetary fiscal cliff or the
uncertainties involved with Iran. But the polling numbers are like candy. So
clear and digestible! Just as the teenage mind naturally migrates from homework
to Facebook, just as the normal reader’s mind naturally wanders from Toynbee to
Twitter, so the political junkie’s brain has a tendency to slide downhill from
policy to polling.
Look, I went into a profession — journalism — committed to the mission of
describing the present. Imagine how many corrections we’d have to publish if we
tried to predict the future. Yet, despite all that, every few hours, I’m on my
laptop, tablet or smartphone — sipping Gallup, chugging Rasmussen, gulping Pew,
trying to figure out how it will all go down.
Come on, David, think through the poll. This is the first day of the rest of
your life.
Wait a second! The 7-Eleven Coffee Cup Poll is out! Just one more look. Obama is
up big!
Judging by
the first two presidential debates — I’m writing this on the eve of the third —
there is one area where Mitt Romney and President Obama are in at least quasi
agreement: the need for serious tax reform.
“I want to bring the rates down; I want to simplify the tax code; and I want to
get middle-income taxpayers to have lower taxes,” said the Republican challenger
during the second debate. He added that he would limit “deductions and
exemptions and credits, particularly for people at the high end” — while getting
us “on track for a balanced budget.”
In response, President Obama said that he, too, wanted to bring rates down for
the middle class. But, he said, “in addition to some tough spending cuts, we’ve
also got to make sure that the wealthy do a little bit more.”
As my old friend Jeffrey Birnbaum pointed out recently, the two men really
aren’t all that far apart. Romney and the president both want to lower the
corporate tax rate and get rid of numerous loopholes. (Romney, of course, has
yet to say which loopholes he favors eliminating.) Romney would cap deductions
and credits — which would have the effect of raising taxes on the wealthy, which
the Democrats want. “The plans differ in detail,” Birnbaum wrote in a note to
his clients, “but they aren’t unbridgeable.”
Birnbaum, the president of BGR Public Relations, is a former Washington
journalist. As a young reporter for The Wall Street Journal, he co-wrote, with
The Journal’s Alan Murray, a minor classic about government: “Showdown at Gucci
Gulch,” which chronicled the arduous, multiyear effort that led to the Tax
Reform Act of 1986. Tax reform — real tax reform that rewrites the tax code top
to bottom — is so rare that it has happened only once in my lifetime. Birnbaum,
however, believes that it could happen again.
Then, as now, voters were upset about the state of the tax code. Stories about
millionaires paying lower rates than their assistants give people the gnawing
sense that the system is unfair. Corporations that pay little or no taxes
amplify that feeling.
What’s more, the need for tax reform is probably more urgent now than it was in
the 1980s. Then, the deficit wasn’t nearly the problem that it is today. Now,
tax reform is just about the only politically palatable way for Congress to
begin the process of lowering the deficit. Lowering tax rates will give Congress
and the president — whomever he turns out to be — cover for broadening the tax
base, reforming entitlement spending and raising additional revenue.
Yet what struck me as I reread “Showdown at Gucci Gulch” recently is not the
similarities between then and now, but the differences. For starters, we had, in
Ronald Reagan, a president deeply committed to lowering tax rates — because
during his days as an actor, the marginal tax rate was 90 percent. We had a
senator, in Bill Bradley, who was obsessed with creating a fairer tax system and
wouldn’t let go of the issue. Today, that role is played by Alan Simpson and
Erskine Bowles — neither of whom is an elected official.
We had plenty of money sloshing around politics in the 1980s — not to mention
powerful special interests — but it wasn’t close to the kind of money that is
routinely tossed around today, especially after the Citizens United decision.
Members of Congress and senators are more beholden to special interests than
they were a quarter-century ago.
Most of all, we had a Congress in which Democrats and Republicans, whatever
their differences, talked to each other and were willing to cut deals.
(Stunningly, one of those deals in 1986 led to the elimination of the capital
gains differential, which is almost unimaginable today.) Both Democrats and
Republicans got things they wanted — and lost things they wanted. “Compromise,”
said Bradley the other day, “is the essence of democracy.”
Today, of course, compromise has become a dirty word. That’s partly because
Republicans and Democrats have differing goals: one side wants to use tax reform
to shrink the government; the other wants to use it to raise revenue. But it is
also because Congress has simply become a nastier, more partisan place than it
was in the 1980s. Last year, the lack of trust and communication between the two
parties led to debt-ceiling crisis and the collapse of the so-called Grand
Bargain. Why should anybody think it will be any different next year?
Right around the corner lies the “fiscal cliff.” It offers Congress and the
president a golden opportunity to begin a process that will lead to tax reform
and, ultimately, deficit reduction. Birnbaum likes to point out that back in the
1980s, nobody really believed tax reform could ever happen. Miraculously, after
many fits and starts, it did. One can only hope that lightning can strike twice.
October 22,
2012
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and JEFF ZELENY
BOCA RATON,
Fla. — With a last aggressive debate performance behind him and 14 grueling days
ahead, President Obama is now facing what he worked so hard to avoid: a
neck-and-neck race with a challenger gaining ground when it matters most.
Over the last month, through the debates and a gradual moderation of the
conservative tone he struck during the Republican primaries, Mitt Romney
undermined the Democrats’ expensive summertime work of casting him as the
candidate of and for the rich, emerging as a far more formidable opponent than
Mr. Obama had ever expected.
He continued down the path of moderation here on Monday night, agreeing with Mr.
Obama almost as often as he disagreed.
“For the first time in this race, I’d rather be us than them,” said Senator
Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, crediting Mr. Romney’s strength in the first
debate as a critical shift in the campaign. “They spent months building him up
as one thing and one night he disproved it.”
The president, aware of deepening worry among Democrats about the prospect of
losing the White House, was aggressive at the debate, belittling his rival’s
foreign policy experience in a bid to keep voters from seeing him as a credible
commander in chief.
But Democrats could only hope the candidates’ final encounter here would level
out a steady rise for Mr. Romney that has brought him to even with or leading
the president in several national polls of likely voters. The race is suddenly
so tight in the nine battleground states that each side is looking at a single
Congressional district in Maine whose one electoral vote, in the event of an
exceedingly tight outcome, could decide whether Mr. Romney or Mr. Obama is in
the White House come Jan. 20.
The growing sense of optimism inside the Romney campaign about his place in the
race was visible in the newly relaxed faces of its senior advisers as they
lounged poolside at their hotel in nearby Delray Beach before Monday’s debate,
ticking through states where they see new opportunities and rising poll numbers.
Back in Boston, a senior aide marveled at how much the mood had changed from one
month ago, gallows humor giving way to a realization that “we’re in it.”
It remained a question whether Mr. Romney was gaining steam or riding a head of
it from the strongest month of his campaign. Obama officials argued that the
president’s showing at the debate on Monday would remind wavering voters of his
leadership in foreign affairs, a strong suit. They emphatically pointed to
advantages he still holds in enough important swing states as their life line.
“This race has automatically tightened as everybody in the Obama campaign
predicted that it would, but he’s ahead in the critical states,” said Senator
John Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Obama’s debate sparring partner.
But it is now unmistakable that Mr. Obama, who leaned forward in his chair at
several points during the debate and glared at his rival, is focused on
protecting some of his safest turf and Mr. Romney is seeing new opportunities to
take it.
Though polls have shown a mix of results, it is more often than not Mr. Romney
who is on the upward trajectory, if not always overtaking Mr. Obama, then, at
least, cutting into his leads among important constituencies. For instance a CBS
News poll released Monday showed his edge among women was down to 5 percentage
points from 12 a month ago. Another, from CBS News and Quinnipiac University,
showed Mr. Obama’s lead in Ohio among likely voters narrowing to 5 percentage
points from 10 points last month.
Mr. Obama will spend the next two weeks pitting the campaign machinery he built
to push his voters to the polls against Mr. Romney’s sense of momentum and new
signs of hope in states that were tilting away from him only a month ago.
Yet Mr. Romney still faces more of a challenge in the Electoral College and must
win more of the battleground states than does Mr. Obama, who won all of them
four years ago.
Though they had been basking in their new sense of momentum, Mr. Romney’s aides
acknowledged that their hardest work could still lie ahead. They were hoping to
break through Mr. Obama’s firewall of supportive states while seeking new
opportunities in places previously believed to be slipping out of reach, like
New Hampshire and Nevada.
Underlying it all will be a defining fight, as Mr. Obama and his allies seek to
recreate the image of Mr. Romney as a plutocrat whose policies will punish the
middle class. Television ads from Democratic groups began appearing on Monday,
reprising the accusations that Mr. Romney killed jobs to make a profit at Bain
Capital.
Mr. Romney’s aides say voters now know him well enough to reject that image.
They say they will continue to present Mr. Romney as a credible leader whose
plans have a specific appeal to women, who have provided Mr. Obama much of his
support in polls.
Heading into the final phase of their advertising war, Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama
have contrasting imperatives.
Mr. Romney is seeking to win over the last remaining undecided voters — many of
them 2008 Obama supporters — by presenting himself as a credible president ready
to work in the bipartisan manner swing voters crave. Mr. Obama has to keep that
from happening.
And that is making for a jarring contrast during the commercial breaks — giving
Mr. Romney the opening to show himself as the transcendent politician of a sort
Mr. Obama has sought to be as Mr. Obama pounds away at him in his commercials.
The question for Mr. Obama is whether attacks on Mr. Romney’s business record
can still work. Aides to Mr. Romney argue that Mr. Obama and his allies ran so
many ads painting Mr. Romney as plutocrat whose policies would harm the middle
class that they turned him into a caricature. It was shattered when he showed up
as someone else — himself, they say — on the debate stage.
“He wiped out millions of dollars in attack ads portraying Mitt Romney as a rich
guy from Bain Capital,” Senator John McCain said.
Democrats say they are confident about the continued power of their attacks
against Mr. Romney based on his business practices at Bain Capital, as well as
on his secretly taped remarks that 47 percent of Americans are so reliant on
government they will not take responsibility for themselves.
“It’s not that this line of questioning of his business record doesn’t have
salience,” said Bill Burton, a senior strategist with Priorities USA Action, a
“super PAC” supporting Mr. Obama. “It’s just that as we get to the end of the
campaign folks need a reminder.”
And Obama campaign officials argue that the line of attack is precisely what is
behind his continued edge in polls in the Midwest.
The best path to victory for Mr. Romney is to win Florida, North Carolina,
Virginia, Ohio — and one more state, with campaign advisers putting Colorado at
the top of the list.
The narrowest path to victory for Mr. Obama is by winning Ohio, Wisconsin and at
least one other state — the president’s personal top favorite, aides say, is
Iowa. Along with other safely Democratic states, that would be enough to block
Mr. Romney from winning.
As a sign of how tight the election could be, the president is heading to New
Hampshire on Saturday to avoid what one aide described as “the Al Gore problem.”
In 2000, Mr. Gore lost New Hampshire to George W. Bush, which made the entire
presidential race hinge on Florida.
October 23,
2012
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE
Who knew
that fact-checking the sole foreign policy debate of the presidential campaign
would include the ranking of Massachusetts schools and how best to administer
Medicaid? Repeatedly, the two candidates swerved to the economic issues that
have dominated the campaign.
Even the dispute over the attack on the American diplomatic compound in
Benghazi, Libya, which was expected to be a centerpiece, got less attention than
the now-familiar dispute over what kind of bankruptcy Mitt Romney had proposed
for the ailing auto industry.
But when Bob Schieffer, the moderator, wrestled them back onto foreign policy,
the two candidates offered starkly different views of the world. President Obama
described a tough, realistic America engaged with allies in “decimating” Al
Qaeda. Mr. Romney, even as he markedly moderated his tone and spoke repeatedly
of “peace” as his goal, described a far scarier world in which Iran is four
years closer to a nuclear weapon.
In many cases, the contrasting claims were a matter of perspective, and on
several occasions Mr. Romney said explicitly that he agreed with the president.
But both men also made statements that were misleading or exaggerated or that
contradicted previous statements.
Here are
some of the highlights:
Change in Tone on Iran
Mr. Romney’s remark that he wants to use “peaceful and diplomatic means” to
persuade Iran not to pursue its nuclear program was a striking departure from
the more hawkish tone he has used throughout the campaign.
He urged preparations for war against Iran last year in an opinion article in
The Wall Street Journal. “Si vis pacem, para bellum,” he wrote. “That is a Latin
phrase, but the ayatollahs will have no trouble understanding its meaning from a
Romney administration: If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Mr. Romney also called for more muscle-flexing aimed at Iran in a speech on Oct.
8 at the Virginia Military Institute.
“For the sake of peace, we must make clear to Iran through actions — not just
words — that their nuclear pursuit will not be tolerated,” he said.
Mr. Romney has long been dismissive of Mr. Obama’s attempts to use diplomacy to
persuade Iran to abandon its weapons programs. “In his first TV interview as
president, he said we should talk to Iran,” Mr. Romney said in his speech at the
Republican National Convention in late August. “We’re still talking, and Iran’s
centrifuges are still spinning.”
Last year, when asked in an interview what military action he would consider
against Iran, Mr. Romney said, “There’s a lot more information I need to have to
know what type of military strike would be appropriate and effective.”
“Would you be prepared to do it unilaterally if need be?” Bret Baier of Fox News
asked.
“Of course,” Mr. Romney said. MICHAEL COOPER
Troops in
Iraq
Mr. Obama suggested that Mr. Romney was mistaken in seeking to keep 10,000
American troops in Iraq. But the Obama administration initially sought to do
just that — but never managed to negotiate an agreement allowing them to remain.
Mr. Obama sought to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement that would have
allowed United States troops to stay in Iraq after 2011. Initially, the Obama
administration was prepared to keep up to 10,000 troops in Iraq. Later, the
Obama administration lowered the number to about 5,000.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki indicated that he might be willing. But the
Iraqis did not agree to an American demand that such an agreement be submitted
to their Parliament for approval, a step the Obama administration insisted on to
ensure that any American troops that stayed would be immune from prosecution
under Iraqi law.
Mr. Obama relied on Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as well as American
officials in Iraq to negotiate the agreement. The president spoke to Mr. Maliki
only twice during the negotiations. Also, the administration did not begin
formal talks with the Iraqis until June 2, 2011, leaving little time for
negotiation.
After the talks broke down, the Obama administration withdrew the remaining
American troops in December 2011, the deadline set for withdrawing all American
forces from Iraq under the Status of Forces Agreement.
Iran has taken advantage of the absence of American forces to fly hundreds of
tons of military equipment through Iraqi airspace to Syria. MICHAEL R. GORDON
The Arab
Spring
Mr. Obama spoke of the role the United States has played during the Arab Spring
uprisings, saying, “We have stood on the side of democracy.” But that is not
true across the board.
Consider Bahrain, where thousands of people rose up more than a year ago to
demand political liberties, social equality and an end to corruption. Its Sunni
monarchy, seen by the United States and Saudi Arabia as a strategic ally and a
bulwark against Iran, was never left to face the rage on its own.
More than a thousand Saudi troops helped put down the uprising, and the United
States called for political changes but strengthened its support for the
government. MICHAEL COOPER
Afghan
Withdrawal
Has Mr. Romney changed his view on an Afghan withdrawal and timeline? About an
hour into the debate, Mr. Romney seemed to adjust his long-held position.
In the past, he has said that while he wanted to follow the same 2014 withdrawal
timeline as the Obama administration and NATO allies, he would seek the advice
of military commanders on the ground before making a decision. This prompted
critics to suggest that Mr. Romney was giving himself wiggle room to keep
regular combat brigades in Afghanistan past 2014. (Both the Obama administration
and the Romney campaign have talked about keeping a small residual force,
presumably of Special Operations forces and military trainers, after 2014 — if
the government of Afghanistan allows it.)
But on Monday night, Mr. Romney seemed to draw a much clearer line that he would
take all regular combat troops out of Afghanistan by 2014, without the caveat of
first asking military commanders whether they believed that was a good idea.
In response to a question about whether he would withdraw troops even if it were
obvious that the Afghans were not able to handle their own security, Mr. Romney
said, “We’re going to be finished by 2014, and when I’m president, we’ll make
sure we bring our troops out by the end of 2014.”
He made no mention of first getting input from military commanders, as he has in
the past. “We’re going to be able to make that transition by the end of 2014, so
our troops will come home at that point,” Mr. Romney said. RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
‘Apology
Tour’
Mr. Obama responded to Mr. Romney’s claim that he had undertaken a foreign
“apology tour” as “probably the biggest whopper that’s been told during the
course of this campaign.”
Fact-checkers have repeatedly found the claim to be inaccurate. Mr. Obama has
admitted American failings at times — and like President George W. Bush has
apologized for specific acts of American wrongdoing abroad — but he has never
explicitly apologized for American values or principles.
Republicans often refer to Mr. Obama’s 2009 speech in France in which he said
that “there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been
dismissive, even derisive.”
But critics typically ignore what Mr. Obama said next: “But in Europe, there is
an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of
recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been
times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what’s bad.”
In other words, Mr. Obama was saying that the United States and Europe had at
times each dealt unfairly with each other; he never said he was sorry for
American values or diplomacy.
RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
China and
Cheap Tires
President Obama said that China was flooding the United States with cheap tires
and that he put a stop to it and saved jobs. In fact, many economists criticize
the administration’s action.
In 2009, the Obama administration unilaterally imposed a duty on imports of
Chinese tires, a move sought by the United Steelworkers union. It was one of
nine trade enforcement actions taken by the United States against China under
Mr. Obama and, some economists argue, the most questionable. The tariff
protected 1,200 American jobs at most, according to a study by the Peterson
Institute for International Economics.
But the same study found that the tariff cost American consumers $1.1 billion
last year alone in higher-priced tires, or about $900,000 per job. Moreover,
China responded by slapping tariffs on imports of chicken parts that cost
American poultry producers an estimated $1 billion in lost sales. Last month,
the Obama administration let the tire tariff quietly expire.
October 22,
2012
The New York Times
By ANNIE LOWREY
WASHINGTON
— At the presidential debate on Monday night, Mitt Romney, the Republicans’
nominee, repeated his promise to brand China a currency manipulator and to
rebalance the trade relationship between the two countries.
“I’ve watched year in and year out as companies have shut down and people have
lost their jobs because China has not played by the same rules, in part by
holding down artificially the value of their currency,” Mr. Romney said.
But formally citing Beijing as a currency manipulator may backfire, economic and
foreign-policy experts have said. In the worst case, it could set off a trade
war, leading to falling American exports to China and more expensive Chinese
imports.
“The economic credibility of that action would be pretty thin,” said Arvind
Subramanian of the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington.
“Moreover, it would be blatantly provocative at a time when the new leadership
was getting in place in China, and the new administration as well.”
Asked about the possibility of a trade war at his debate with President Obama,
Mr. Romney said one was already under way. “It’s a silent one, and they’re
winning,” he said. “We can’t just surrender and lose jobs.”
American officials largely, if tacitly, agree that China manipulates the value
of its currency to aid its economy.
In its most recent installment of a twice-yearly report to Congress on the
exchange and economic policies of the United States’ major trading partners, the
Treasury Department said that China has “resisted very strong market pressures”
for currency appreciation and that its “real effective exchange rate exhibited
persistent and substantial undervaluation.”
But since 1994, the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations have declined to
formally designate China as a currency manipulator for a number of economic and
strategic reasons.
For the Obama administration, one reason is that China has made significant
progress in allowing its currency to appreciate against the dollar of late —
making Chinese imports relatively more expensive and American exports relatively
more competitive. A dollar currently buys about 6.25 renminbi, down from about
6.8 when Mr. Obama took office.
Administration officials have urged China to do more in frequent
behind-the-scenes negotiations: to allow further currency appreciation, to
protect American companies’ intellectual property, to reform its financial
system, to even the playing field for companies that might want to invest in
China and many other issues.
The administration has also filed new trade cases against China at the World
Trade Organization, and set up a trade task force to ensure all countries are
playing by the rules.
They have also praised the country for the progress it has made. “I think the
cumulative effect of what China has done on the exchange rate side is, and the
external side, is very significant and very promising,” Timothy F. Geithner, the
Treasury secretary, said this year.
Congress has pushed a more aggressive approach, repeatedly putting forward
bipartisan bills to punish countries, like China, that manipulate their
currencies.
“The jig is up, it’s time to stop gaming the system or face severe
consequences,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a
statement last year, co-sponsoring a bill that focused on Beijing. “China’s
history of half-truths and broken promises on currency makes passing this
legislation an economic imperative.”
Second, economic and foreign-policy experts argue that taking more aggressive
actions against China might not result in a stronger American economy — instead
pitting the two countries against each other.
“In the worst case, a Romney decision to go to the brink with Beijing on the
value of its currency would result in a mutually damaging trade war that slowed
economic growth and increased unemployment in both countries and caused
inflation and higher interest rates in the United States,” Richard C. Bush III
of the Brookings Institution wrote in a recent analysis.
Labeling China a currency manipulator would not automatically put in place
tariffs, sanctions or other trade actions. But the measure would signal the
United States’ intention to take such measures — and China might take
countervailing ones in turn. Beijing might stop granting contracts to American
companies, like General Electric or Boeing, for instance. It might issue levies
or tariffs itself.
Antagonizing China would threaten the trade relationship with one of the United
States’ fastest-growing export markets, economists note. Chinese investment in
the United States has also been increasing.
“Today China is a minor U.S. employer compared to longtime foreign investors
such as Germany or Japan, but the potential for Chinese investment-led job
creation is tremendous,” concluded a report released last month by the Rhodium
Group, a research firm in New York. “If investment from China remains on track,
Chinese firms will employ 200,000 to 400,000 Americans by 2020,” up from about
27,000 today.
More broadly, if the United States leveled sanctions or tariffs against China,
other low-wage countries — in many cases, countries that also engage in currency
manipulation — might fill its void, economists said.
“Smaller U.S. trade deficits with China, offset by larger bilateral deficits
with other countries, cannot be expected to provide material job growth,”
concluded recent research by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
On top of any economic concerns come pressing foreign-policy concerns.
Designating China as a currency manipulator might cast a shadow on relations
with the Asian power.
For months, Chinese officials have quietly telegraphed their displeasure at the
idea that a new administration might brand them as a manipulator.
At the International Monetary Fund-World Bank meetings in Tokyo this month, Yi
Gang, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, made a point of noting the
country’s progress — the country’s current account surplus has fallen to 2.1
percent of economic output from 10.1 percent in 2007, he said, for instance.
“This has been primarily driven by structural factors, including the substantial
appreciation of the real exchange rate,” Mr. Yi said. “In the face of the
uncertain global environment, the Chinese government will continue to take
effective measures to maintain growth stability and accelerate the restructuring
of the economy.”
October 23,
2012
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
Mitt
Romney’s task in Monday night’s foreign policy debate was to demonstrate that he
could be a credible commander in chief, prepared to execute American power with
more muscle and less compromise than President Obama but without veering into
what Mr. Obama called the “wrong and reckless” policies of the last Republican
in the Oval Office, George W. Bush.
But in a combative 90-minute debate that veered from whether the United States
could control events in the fractious Middle East to which man has a better
chance of forcing Iran’s mullahs to surrender their nuclear program without
resorting to war, Mr. Romney avoided the more bellicose tone he often struck
during the Republican primaries.
While he pushed back at Mr. Obama at times, he explicitly said he would not
intervene militarily in Syria, remain beyond 2014 in Afghanistan or rush into a
confrontation with Iran. He ended up agreeing with the broad outlines of Mr.
Obama’s approach on the use of drones, and opposed a breach of relations with
Pakistan, arguably America’s most frustrating ally.
Mr. Romney had a narrower political task on Monday night: to show he was
conversant in the subject matter and to reassure a war-weary public that he
would not plunge the country into new conflicts.
As he did in his previous two debates with Mr. Obama, he shifted to the middle,
and at times he even sounded the nation-building themes the president talked
about as a candidate in 2008 and abandoned after he was elected. “We’re going to
have to do more than just going after leaders and killing bad guys,” Mr. Romney
argued several times, saying he would provide aid to build up democracies and
discourage terrorism — something he previously has rarely stressed. He
frequently talked of bringing about a “peaceful planet.”
Yet time and again, the president suggested that managing a world that at once
craves and resents American power requires a lot more than martial-sounding
declarations about calling in airstrikes or threatening to turn on and off
American foreign aid. And he relentlessly cast Mr. Romney as a man unwilling to
recognize how perceptions of American strength have changed: When Mr. Romney
complained that the Navy had fallen to its smallest size since World War I, Mr.
Obama dismissed the criticism. He noted that the capabilities of American ships
are far beyond what they once were and added, “Governor, we also have fewer
horses and bayonets.”
For Mr. Romney, this final debate before the election in two weeks was clearly
his weakest. While he seemed familiar with a range of topics, speaking about
rebellions in Mali and ticking off the insurgent groups in Pakistan, he also
took every opportunity he could to turn back to economic issues at home, his
campaign theme. Soon the two men were arguing about job creation at home and
support for education and teachers, until the moderator, Bob Schieffer of CBS
News, said with some exasperation, “We all love teachers.”
Even when the conversation turned to the intersection of international affairs
and economics, Mr. Obama attacked his challenger, contending not only that Mr.
Romney’s prescription for America’s automakers in 2009 would have put Americans
out work, but also that it would have strengthened the Chinese.
“We’d be buying cars from China instead of selling cars to China,” Mr. Obama
argued, before the two men engaged in a now-familiar argument over whether Mr.
Romney’s call for allowing General Motors to head into bankruptcy, without
government investment, would have weakened Detroit.
On most of the specifics they argued about, Mr. Romney had a hard time
explaining how he would act differently from Mr. Obama. He said he would not
send the American military into Syria, or even attempt a no-fly zone over the
county. Though he noted several times that 30,000 people had died in the Syrian
uprising, he said: “I don’t want to have our military involved in Syria. I don’t
think there’s a necessity to put our military in Syria at this stage.” It was
Mr. Obama, oddly enough, who made the case for the use of force, saying he had
made the call to hunt down Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, and noting that Mr.
Romney had called that “mission creep” and “mission muddle.”
Mr. Romney’s response was to argue that he was better suited to rein in the
chaos in the Arab world, mostly by projecting American strength. But he was less
than specific about how he would accomplish that task. For example, when Mr.
Schieffer asked him whether he would have “stuck with Mubarak,” referring to
Hosni Mubarak, the former president of Egypt and longtime American ally, Mr.
Romney said that “the idea of him crushing his people was not something that we
could possibly support.” What Mr. Obama lacked was “a better vision of the
future” for the Middle East, he said.
It was on the confrontation that could well erupt in 2013, the nuclear face-off
with Iran, that the friction between these two men, and their underlying
agreement on tactics, became most evident.
Asked whether there was a deal to be had with Iran, Mr. Obama argued that the
country was weaker than ever because he had invoked “crippling sanctions” as a
result of “painstaking” work that began “the day we got into office.” But Mr.
Obama was elusive about what exactly Iran would have to do to convince him that
it had given up any plan to build a nuclear weapons capability, simply vowing,
“We’re not going to let up the pressure until we have clear evidence” that the
Iranians are backing down.
Mr. Romney returned to a main themes of his campaign: that the mullahs had moved
ahead with their program because “they saw weakness where they had expected to
find American strength.” One result, he said, is that “now there are some 10,000
centrifuges spinning uranium.”
It was an accurate statement, but avoided any mention of the fact that the
construction program was initially begun just before the United States invaded
Iraq in 2003, in President Bush’s first term. And Mr. Obama, in his response,
was constrained by secrecy laws from talking about his most aggressive action
against Iran: his decision to expand a cyberwarfare campaign against the
country.
Inevitably, the two men descended into an argument over whether Mr. Obama had
conducted an international “apology tour,” leading Mr. Obama to declare that
“this has been probably the biggest whopper that’s been told during the course
of this campaign.” Mr. Romney shot back that the president had said in his
speeches in the Middle East that in the past “America had dictated to other
nations.”
“Mr. President, America has not dictated to other nations,” Mr. Romney said. “We
have freed other nations from dictators.”
In fact, America has done both, and the debate on Monday night that whether Mr.
Obama is re-elected or Mr. Romney moves into the Situation Room, the United
States will still find itself making compromises between America’s values and
its interests, because it usually has little other choice.
Role
Reversal Gives President Harder Line, and Punch Lines
October 23,
2012
The New York Times
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Mitt Romney
came in peace. He said he wanted better education, more financial aid, gender
equality and rule of law, and he was talking about the Middle East, not the
Midwest. He even said he was consulting a group of “Arab scholars” sponsored by,
of all things, the United Nations, to shape his plan for fixing the troubled
region. “We can’t kill our way out of this mess,” he said.
And all his expressions of internationalism and support for women’s liberation
overseas made President Obama, by contrast, almost sound like a Republican
hard-liner.
“Well, my first job as commander in chief, Bob, is to keep the American people
safe,” President Obama told the evening’s moderator, Bob Schieffer.
Monday night’s debate provided an odd role reversal that made Mr. Romney seem on
the defensive, particularly because he at times stuttered and sputtered in his
haste to make his points. He pronounced foreign names and countries correctly,
but also carefully, worried perhaps that a mispronunciation would sink his
credibility. Usually, it is Mr. Obama who seems professorial and long-winded.
There were long moments when Mr. Romney made the president sound succinct and
sharp-edged.
Perhaps trying to demonstrate the breadth of his knowledge, Mr. Romney careened
from Iran to Poland to China to Latin America to Greece to balanced budgets. He
delivered a long lecture on the strategic importance of Pakistan that was the
same as Mr. Obama’s position, then later complained, in detail, about spending
cuts to the Navy.
“Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets,” Mr. Obama said,
eliciting a laugh from the audience that echoed on Twitter, “because the nature
of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where
planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear
submarines.”
Mr. Romney tried a few jokes of his own, beginning the night with a crack that
sounded more like a confession of jitters than good humor. Citing their recent
exchange of jokes at the annual Al Smith dinner last week, Mr. Romney noted: “We
were together at a humorous event a little earlier, and it’s nice to maybe be
funny this time not on purpose. We’ll see what happens.”
What happened wasn’t particularly funny, but it was startling. Mr. Romney kept
talking about American “strength” and the need to be “tougher,” but he seemed at
times unnerved by the president, a man he accused of being too weak.
When Mr. Romney complained about what he described as Mr. Obama’s “apology tour”
on his first overseas trip, he accused the president of snubbing Jerusalem. “And
by the way, they noticed that you skipped Israel,” Mr. Romney said.
Mr. Obama, finally comfortable with the fact that debates require confrontation,
replied sharply: “When I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn’t take donors, I
didn’t attend fund-raisers, I went to Yad Vashem, the — the Holocaust museum
there, to remind myself the — the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel
will be unbreakable.”
Incumbency has its advantages in a foreign policy debate, but often inexperience
can also be its own asset. Domestic policy focuses on what a candidate wants to
do, be it raise taxes or cut them, reduce the deficit, invest in infrastructure,
increase military spending, cut Medicare or save it.
But foreign policy is often presented as what the candidate will not do: add
troops in Afghanistan, abandon Israel, start another war in the Middle East,
negotiate with terrorists, put nuclear missiles in Europe.
Mr. Romney didn’t really elaborate on Mr. Obama’s mistakes and say what he would
have done differently. Instead, he often highlighted where he agreed with the
president. When asked by Mr. Schieffer if he regretted, in retrospect, calling
for the fall of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Mr. Obama said no. So, too,
did his opponent.
“No, I believe, as the president indicated and said at the time, that I
supported his — his action there. I felt that — I wish we’d have had a better
vision of the future,” Mr. Romney said.
“But once it exploded, I felt the same as the president did.”
October 22,
2012
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER and HELENE COOPER
BOCA RATON,
Fla. — President Obama and Mitt Romney wrapped up a series of defining debates
on Monday night with a bristling exchange over America’s place in the world as
each sought to portray the other as an unreliable commander in chief in a
dangerous era.
Picking up where he left off in last week’s debate, Mr. Obama went on offense
from the start, lacerating his challenger for articulating a set of “wrong and
reckless” policies that he called incoherent. While less aggressive, Mr. Romney
pressed back, accusing the president of failing to assert American interests and
values in the world to deal with a “rising tide of chaos.”
“Governor, the problem is that on a whole range of issues, whether it’s the
Middle East, whether it’s Afghanistan, whether it’s Iraq, whether it’s now Iran,
you’ve been all over the map,” Mr. Obama charged.
“I don’t see our influence growing around the world,” Mr. Romney countered. “I
see our influence receding, in part because of the failure of the president to
deal with our economic challenges at home.”
The debate here at Lynn University, moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS News, was
dedicated to foreign policy even though it veered occasionally into domestic
issues, and presented the last opportunity for the candidates to face each other
before the Nov. 6 election. While international relations have often taken a
back seat to the economy during the marathon campaign, whoever wins in two weeks
will inherit a world with increasingly complicated challenges, from the turmoil
in the Middle East to a resurgent Russia to an emerging China, and Monday’s
debate highlighted the vexing issues ahead.
For all its fireworks, the debate broke little new ground and underscored that
the differences between the two men on foreign policy rest more on tone, style
and their sense of leadership than on particular policies. Mr. Obama and Mr.
Romney seemed to align on matters like withdrawing from Afghanistan, the perils
of intervening in Syria and the use of drones to battle terrorists.
While they varied in degree, the heart of their clash rested on who would pursue
the same national goals more effectively and ensure America’s enduring economic
and security role overseas.
Chopping the air with his hand, Mr. Obama came armed with a host of zingers, at
times lecturing and even mocking Mr. Romney on the details of certain policies,
hoping to expose his challenger as an uninformed pretender at the risk of coming
across himself as condescending. Mr. Romney sat stiffly, his hands before him,
back ramrod.
At one point, when Mr. Romney complained that the Navy “is smaller now than any
time since 1917,” Mr. Obama pounced and noted that the comparison works only if
aircraft carriers are equated with gunboats. “We also have fewer horses and
bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed,” the president said.
Slowing his words, he added sarcastically: “We have these things called aircraft
carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go under water,
nuclear submarines.” The issue, he said, “is not a game of Battleship, where we
are counting ships.”
The enmity between the men surfaced again and again, and the president seemed to
have studied each attack line that Mr. Romney had used in the past, in case he
used it again, like his oft-repeated criticism of Mr. Obama’s supposed “apology
tour” of the world. “You said that on occasion America had dictated to other
nations,” Mr. Romney said. “Mr. President, America has not dictated to other
nations. We have freed other nations from dictators.”
Mr. Obama hit back fast. “If we’re going to talk about trips we’ve taken,” he
said before pausing dramatically, in a reference to Mr. Romney’s foreign trip
this summer, when he was widely derided for insulting Britain’s ability to host
the Olympic Games and for holding fund-raisers in London and in Israel. “When I
was a candidate for office, the first trip I took was to visit our troops,” he
continued. “And when I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn’t take donors. I
didn’t attend fund-raisers.”
Mr. Romney pinned the cascading crises around the world on Mr. Obama’s
shoulders, saying the president had failed to live up to his promises from his
2008 campaign and left the country in a weaker position.
“Look at the record,” Mr. Romney said. “You look at the record of the last four
years and say: Is Iran closer to a bomb? Yes. Is the Middle East in tumult? Yes.
Is Al Qaeda on the run, on its heels? No. Are Israel and the Palestinians closer
to reaching a peace agreement? No.”
He sought to use the words of the Iranian leader, a hard-line Islamist who
considers the United States the “Great Satan,” to bolster his argument that the
United States has become weak. “When the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
says our debt makes us not a strong country, that’s a frightening thing,” Mr.
Romney said.
The subject of Iran’s nuclear program came up repeatedly during the debate, and
both men talked tough, at one point seeming to compete with each other to show
how much they are in the corner of Israel, which considers a nuclear Iran a
threat to its existence.
“As long as I’m president of the United States, Iran will not get a nuclear
weapon,” Mr. Obama said. He cited international sanctions as having brought the
Iranian economy to its knees. Mr. Romney said Mr. Obama had allowed “daylight”
to show between the United States and Israel and vowed to tighten sanctions and
seek a war crimes indictment against Mr. Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide
against Israel.
But at the end of the night, for all the sound and fury on Iran, there was
little substantive difference between the candidates. Both are in favor of
strong international sanctions, and both said they would use military power if
necessary to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Obama appeared to contradict himself at one point on Iran. He labeled “not
true” a report in The New York Times that the United States and Iran have agreed
in principle to direct talks on Iran’s nuclear program after the elections. But
he later welcomed Mr. Romney for supposedly agreeing: “I’m pleased that you now
are endorsing our policy of applying diplomatic pressure and potentially having
bilateral discussions with the Iranians to end their nuclear program. But just a
few years ago, you said that’s something you’d never do.”
.
The candidates arrived here as foreign policy, which had been a political asset
for Mr. Obama, has gained importance lately, particularly after the attack that
killed the American ambassador to Libya last month. Mr. Obama’s 10-point
advantage in July on who would be a better commander in chief has shrunk to a
three-point edge in the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll.
For all the attention to Libya at the second debate, the two men seemed to have
exhausted the topic this time. There was no chatter over whether Mr. Obama had
called it an act of terror, and Mr. Romney made only a couple of perfunctory
references.
Instead, he tried to broaden his critique, praising the president’s
counterterrorism efforts but quickly pivoting to call for a more comprehensive
strategy to diminish radicalism in the Middle East. “I congratulate him on
taking out Osama bin Laden and going after the leadership in Al Qaeda,” Mr.
Romney said, “but we can’t kill our way out of this mess.”
Mr. Obama countered sharply. Facing Mr. Romney directly, he said, “I have to
tell you that your strategy previously has been one which has been all over the
map,” a phrase he would use three times during the debate.
“My strategy is pretty straightforward, which is to go after the bad guys,” Mr.
Romney replied. “But my strategy is broader than that.” It is important to get
the Muslim world to reject extremism, he added. “We don’t want another Iraq. We
don’t want another Afghanistan.”
The two men also clashed over Syria, China and Russia. Mr. Obama ridiculed Mr.
Romney for saying Russia was America’s No. 1 one geopolitical foe. “The 1980s,
they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” the president said.
Mr. Romney distinguished a “geopolitical” rival from a more pressing national
security threat like Iran, but said he would not be naïve about Moscow. “I’m not
going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia or Mr. Putin,” he
said. Mr. Romney said Mr. Putin would not see more "flexibility" after the
election, as the president was overheard telling another Russian leader. “After
the election, he’ll get more backbone."
October 21,
2012
5:59 pm
The New York Times
By NATE SILVER
If only
women voted, President Obama would be on track for a landslide re-election,
equaling or exceeding his margin of victory over John McCain in 2008. Mr. Obama
would be an overwhelming favorite in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and most every
other place that is conventionally considered a swing state. The only question
would be whether he could forge ahead into traditionally red states, like
Georgia, Montana and Arizona.
If only men voted, Mr. Obama would be biding his time until a crushing defeat at
the hands of Mitt Romney, who might win by a similar margin to the one Ronald
Reagan realized over Jimmy Carter in 1980. Only California, Illinois, Hawaii and
a few states in the Northeast could be considered safely Democratic. Every other
state would lean red, or would at least be a toss-up.
Although polls disagree on the exact magnitude of the gender gap (and a couple
of recent ones seemed to show Mitt Romney eliminating the president's advantage
with women voters), the consensus of surveys points to a large one this year -
rivaling the biggest from past elections.
The gender gap is nothing new in American politics. Since 1972, when exit
polling became widespread, men and women split their votes in three elections:
1996, 2000, and 2004. They came close to doing so on several other occasions. In
2008, for example, Mr. Obama won resoundingly among women, beating Mr. McCain by
13 points, but only won by a single point among men.
The biggest gender gap to date in the exit polls came in 2000, when Al Gore won
by 11 points among women, but George W. Bush won by 9 points among men - a
20-point difference. The numbers this year look very close to that.
Since the first presidential debate in Denver, there have been 10 high-quality
national polls that reported a breakout of results between men and women. (I
define a "high-quality" poll as one that used live telephone interviews, and
which called both landlines and cellphones. These polls will collect the most
representative samples and should provide for the most reliable benchmarks of
demographic trends.)
The results in the polls were varied, with the gender gap ranging from 33 points
(in a Zogby telephone poll for the Washington Times) to just 8 (in polls by Pew
Research and by The Washington Post). On average, however, there was an 18-point
gender gap, with Mr. Obama leading by an average of 9 points among women but
trailing by 9 points among men.
If that difference carries forward to the exit polls, it would reflect among the
largest gender splits ever, rivaling the 20-point difference from 2000, and a
17-point difference in both 1980 and 1996.
The gender gap has been growing over time. It was nearly absent, for instance,
in 1972 and 1976, the first two years that the exit polls tested it.
But after the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, reproductive rights became a greater
focus in presidential elections -- particularly under Ronald Reagan in 1980, who
was more willing to campaign on the issue of abortion than most of his
predecessors. The gender gap jumped to 17 points that year, with men much more
likely to vote for Mr. Reagan.
The gender gap has sometimes been widest when there is a Democratic president
running for re-election, as in 1980 or 1996 (or a Democratic vice president
looking to ascend to the presidency, as in 2000). Women, apart from their
tendency to vote Democratic, also seem slightly more inclined than men to give
the incumbent party another chance. When the incumbent is a Republican, as in
1976 or 1992, this can mitigate the gender gap. When the incumbent is a Democrat
instead, as for Mr. Obama this year, both trends operate in the same direction,
making it wider.
One area where gender politics is less important is in planning Electoral
College strategy, since roughly equal numbers of men and women vote in each
state. Nevertheless, the Electoral College can serve as a way to demonstrate to
scope of the difference in how men and women vote.
If the current FiveThirtyEight forecast were re-calibrated to show an overall
10-point lead for Mr. Obama -- his lead among women in polls since the Denver
debate -- he would be a clear favorite in states totaling 347 electoral votes.
Mr. Romney would be favored in states containing just 140 electoral votes.
Another 51 electoral votes would be too close to call.
About the opposite would happen if Mr. Romney led nationally by 9 points -- his
current advantage among men. He would be all but certain to win states with a
total of 321 electoral votes, and would be highly competitive in traditionally
blue-leaning states like New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington.
The large gender gap comes despite the fact that men and women's economic roles
are becoming more equal -- according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women
represented 47 percent of the labor force as of September -- and that women
suffered at least as much as men in the recent economic downturn.
The unemployment rate among women was 7.5 percent as of September -- up from 7.0
percent when Mr. Obama took office in January 2009.
The unemployment rate among men is higher -- 8.0 percent as of September -- but
it has declined rather than increased since Mr. Obama took office. It had been
8.6 percent in January 2009, and peaked at as high as 11.2 percent later that
year.
This suggests the gender gap instead has more to do with partisan ideology than
with pocketbook voting; apart from their views on abortion, women also take more
liberal stances than men on social issues ranging from same-sex marriage to gun
control.
Presidential candidates have faced increasing pressure to align with the bases
of their parties on social issues. Mr. Obama reversed his previous position to
support same-sex marriage this year. Mr. Romney has long since abandoned a
number of moderate stances he took on social issues as governor of
Massachusetts, when he said he supported abortion rights. So long as the
ideological gap between the parties grows, the gender gap may grow as well.
The headlines from the last presidential debate focused on
President Obama challenging Mitt Romney on issue after issue. There was a less
noticed, but no less remarkable, moment when Mr. Obama agreed with Mr. Romney on
something — and both were entirely wrong.
The exchange began with a question about the offshoring of American jobs. Part
of Mr. Obama’s answer was that federal investments in education, science and
research would help to ensure that companies invest and hire in the United
States. Mr. Romney interrupted. “Government does not create jobs,” he said.
“Government does not create jobs.”
It was a decidedly crabbed response to a seemingly uncontroversial observation,
and yet Mr. Obama took the bait. He said his political opponents had long harped
on “this notion that I think government creates jobs, that that somehow is the
answer. That’s not what I believe.” He went on to praise free enterprise and to
say that government’s role is to create the conditions for everyone to have a
fair shot at success.
So, they agree. Government does not create jobs.
Except that it does, millions of them — including teachers, police officers,
firefighters, soldiers, sailors, astronauts, epidemiologists, antiterrorism
agents, park rangers, diplomats, governors (Mr. Romney’s old job) and
congressmen (like Paul Ryan).
First, the basics. At last count, government at all levels — federal, state and
local — employed 22 million Americans, with the largest segment working in
public education. Is that too many? No. Since the late 1980s, the number of
public-sector workers has averaged about 7.3 for every 100 people. With the loss
of 569,000 government jobs since June 2009, that ratio now stands at about 7 per
100.
Public-sector job loss means trouble for everyone. Government jobs are crucial
to education, public health and safety, environmental protection, defense,
homeland security and myriad other functions that the private sector cannot
fulfill. They are also critical for private-sector job growth in two fundamental
ways. First, the government gets its supplies from private-sector companies,
which is why Republican senators like John McCain have been frantically warning
about the dire effects on job creation if Congress moves ahead with planned
military spending cuts. (Republicans insisted upon the cuts as part of their
ill-advised showdown over the debt ceiling.) Second, government spending on
supplies and salaries reverberates strongly through the economy, increasing
demand and with it, employment.
That means the economy suffers when government cuts back. A report by the
Economic Policy Institute examined the effect of recent cutbacks at the state
and local level — including direct loss of government jobs and indirect loss of
suppliers’ jobs; the jobs that should have been added to keep up with population
growth; and the reduction in purchasing power from other cutbacks. If not for
state and local budget austerity, the report found, the economy would have 2.3
million more jobs today, half of which would be in the private sector.
The government does not create jobs? It most certainly does. And at this time of
state budgetary hardship, a dose of federal fiscal aid to states and localities
could create more jobs, in both the public and private sectors.
The outcome
of the presidential election will determine which of two opposing paths the
nation will follow on health care for all Americans. If voters re-elect
President Obama, he will protect the health care reforms that are his signature
domestic achievement. If they elect Mitt Romney, they will be choosing a man who
has pledged to repeal the reform law and replace it with — who knows what?
The competing visions are often difficult to evaluate because the Republican
candidates — Mr. Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan — have become so artful
about obfuscating their plans for Medicare, Medicaid and what they will do to
reform the whole system. Almost nothing the Republican candidates say on these
or other health care issues can be taken at face value.
Here are some of their bigger evasions:
REPLACING OBAMACARE Although Mr. Romney has said he wants to “repeal and
replace” the Affordable Care Act, he has provided few details on what he would
replace it with. When challenged to do so at the first presidential debate, Mr.
Romney never quite answered and made some egregious misstatements along the way,
some of which were repeated by Mr. Ryan in the vice-presidential debate.
Mr. Romney asserted that his plans had already been laid out in “a lengthy
description,” implying that anyone could read the whole story by turning to his
campaign Web site. As it turns out, the site has a page-and-a-half statement
that says he would rely on private markets and state leadership but gives no
hint of what it would cost or who would pay. A one-page list of frequently asked
questions about his Medicare plan assures us that “Mitt continues to work on
refining the details.”
He continues to assert that his plan would cover people with pre-existing
conditions when it clearly would not. People who have pre-existing conditions —
and are not already covered by insurance — are often refused coverage or charged
exorbitant rates by private insurers. Starting in 2014, the reform law will
require insurers to accept all applicants and charge them without regard to
health status. By contrast, Mr. Romney has simply pledged to protect people who
had insurance but then lost it, provided they take out a new policy within a
short time. But this protection is already required by law and offers absolutely
nothing for millions of people who can’t get or can’t afford private insurance.
He has also implied that the reform law created an unelected board that’s
“ultimately” going to tell people what treatments they can have. The advisory
board is specifically precluded by the law from recommending cuts in benefits or
eligibility; its job is to propose cuts in payments to providers and insurers if
necessary to meet budget targets.
A major goal of the law was to cover some 30 million more people by expanding
Medicaid and subsidizing coverage for middle-income people. That goal would be
lost if the law was repealed. The Republicans, of course, have no plans for
covering the uninsured beyond assuming they can use emergency rooms, leaving the
problem to the states.
MEDICARE Mr. Romney has misrepresented what would happen to both current
beneficiaries and future generations under his proposals. He says his plans
would have no effect on people now on Medicare or nearing eligibility. But if he
succeeded in repealing the reform law, which has many provisions that hold down
costs for Medicare enrollees, most beneficiaries would see their annual premiums
and cost-sharing go up. The average beneficiary in traditional Medicare would
pay about $5,000 more through 2022, and heavy users of prescription drugs about
$18,000 more over the same period, if the act is repealed, according to the
Department of Health and Human Services. Department of Health and Human
Services.
Mr. Romney also argues that the reform law will weaken Medicare because it cuts
some $716 billion from future Medicare spending by slowing the rate of increase
over the next decade. Of course, that is essentially the same amount of Medicare
cuts in Mr. Ryan’s budget resolutions, approved this year and last year by House
Republicans.
The reform law justifiably reduces the excessive subsidies to private plans
(known as Medicare Advantage) that enroll many beneficiaries. It also lowers the
annual rate of increase in payments to providers, like hospitals, nursing homes
and home care agencies, to force them to become more efficient. Mr. Romney wants
to keep overpaying the plans and providers simply to pander to elderly voters.
For future generations, the Romney-Ryan ticket would turn Medicare into a
premium-support — or voucher — program in which the federal government provides
a fixed amount of money to beneficiaries each year and allows it to grow by a
small amount annually, which may not keep pace with medical costs. The whole
point of turning to vouchers is to reduce federal spending on Medicare, so it
seems likely that many beneficiaries would end up worse off than now. (At the
vice-presidential debate, Mr. Ryan tried to pretend his premium-support proposal
was bipartisan, but the sole Democrat who backed an early version — Senator Ron
Wyden of Oregon — has disavowed his plan.)
Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan insist that the magic of competition among health
insurers — both private plans and a public option like Medicare — will bring
down premiums. But if competition fails to do that, beneficiaries would almost
certainly get socked with added payments or fewer benefits.
They say that lower-income beneficiaries would get more-generous premium support
and wealthier individuals would receive less support. But, of course, they
provide no numbers on what those support levels might be.
MEDICAID The Republicans want to repeal the reform law’s expansion of Medicaid
to cover millions of low- and middle-income people and instead shrink federal
funding by turning Medicaid into a block grant. States would be given a fixed
amount of money equal to what they had been getting in federal payments for
Medicaid, and that grant would then grow at a rate tied to inflation. If those
increases failed to keep up with medical costs, states — faced with the
necessity of balancing their budgets every year — would probably have to cut
enrollments or benefits or payments to providers. That could include cuts to
coverage for long-term and nursing home care that millions depend on.
The block grant proposal in Mr. Ryan’s budget resolution would reduce federal
Medicaid payments to the states by more than $800 billion over 10 years and
would cut federal funding by a third in 2022, according to the Center on Budget
and Policy Priorities. Mr. Romney blithely said that if a state got into trouble
“Why, we could step in and see if we could find a way to help them.” Or maybe
not. It’s another of those vague promises.
This article
has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 21, 2012
An earlier version of this editorial misstated the additional amounts Medicare
beneficiaries would pay if the health care reform act is repealed. The average
beneficiary would pay about $5,000 more through 2022, not $4,200 more over the
2011-2012 period. Heavy prescription drug users, on average,
would pay about $18,000 more through 2022, not $16,000 more over 2011-2012.
October 20, 2012
The New York Times
By ROSS DOUTHAT
IN public, the American political class makes idols of
undecided voters. We put them in focus groups, we let them pose questions during
debates, we interview them and pitch ads to them and fold them into elaborate
theories about “soccer moms” and “Reagan Democrats.” Officially, their existence
justifies everything that pundits and pollsters and consultants get paid to say
and do.
In private, though — and, O.K., sometimes publicly as well — political insiders
tend to discuss undecideds with a mix of exasperation, condescension and
contempt. Especially at this point in the presidential season, after months of
debates and ads and op-eds have made the case that “the choice is clear” in “the
most important election of our lifetimes,” it can be hard to imagine how anyone
with an ounce of savvy can still be on the fence.
Some of this frustration is justified. As anyone who’s watched a cable-news
focus group can attest, many undecided voters do tend to be ill-informed
bandwagon jumpers with little coherence or consistency to their worldview.
If you live and breathe politics, chances are that you care deeply about a
particular issue — abortion or the environment, foreign policy or health care.
But when the liberal writer Chris Hayes, now an MSNBC host, canvassed undecided
voters for John Kerry in 2004, he noticed that “more often than not, when I
asked ... what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds, I
was met with a blank stare, as if I’d just asked them to name their favorite
prime number.”
As we enter this campaign’s last two weeks, though, it’s worth putting in a
sympathetic word for a rarer species: the highly informed, highly engaged, yet
still conflicted voter.
Whatever partisans on both sides may insist, there are good reasons that a
high-information voter with views somewhere near the American median might still
regard this November’s decision as a harder-than-average call.
That’s because on one of the biggest issues the campaigns are arguing about —
the question of how to bring our spending in line with our revenues — the median
voter is probably pretty happy with the status quo. Conservatives think we tax
too much and liberals think we spend too little, but the present combination of
relatively low middle-class taxes and relatively generous entitlement spending
is one that most Americans would happily maintain in perpetuity.
Unfortunately, the status quo can’t actually continue: the combination of the
baby boomers’ retirement and rising health care costs means something has to
give. But to a voter who doesn’t bring strong ideological priors to the table,
neither party’s vision for how to manage this transition probably looks like a
sure bet.
The White House is arguing that we can limit health care spending largely by
bureaucratic fiat, by empowering experts to change the way doctors and hospitals
spend and treat and charge. But we’ve tried variations on centralized cost
control for years — “Medicare Whac-A-Mole,” Reason magazine’s Peter Suderman has
called it — without reaping anything like the promised benefits.
The Republicans are arguing for a more competition-driven approach, which would
allow private insurers to compete for Medicare dollars, and hopefully bid down
the cost of coverage. There are studies and pilot programs that suggest this
kind of structural change might lower costs. But there isn’t a large-scale
example that conservatives can point to as the template for the United States to
follow. For a voter with a skeptic’s eye rather than a believer’s faith, the
Romney-Ryan plan could easily seem like a leap in the dark.
That same skeptic’s eye would also tell our hypothetical undecided that neither
side is being entirely honest about the costs of its approach. The Democrats are
pretending that taxing the rich can pay for almost everything. The Republicans
are pretending that neither today’s taxpayers nor today’s seniors need bear any
of the burden. The high-information swing voters are basically left to decide
which dishonesty is worse, and which unacknowledged cuts or tax hikes they’d
rather risk having to bear.
Finally, the more our hypothetical voter knows about how Washington works, the
more obvious it becomes that all of this will be hashed out over years of
negotiated back-and-forth — because no legislation passed with a razor-thin
majority can endure unchanged for decades, and any enduring settlement will have
to leave both sides a little unsatisfied.
If you want to think well of swing voters, and imagine them as wise Athenians
rather than a Colosseum-going mob, you could see the improving odds for what
once seemed like an unlikely 2012 outcome — a Romney victory in which Democrats
hold the Senate — as a nod to the necessity for bipartisanship, and an attempt
to make a significant change in Washington while also forcing both parties back
to the negotiating table.
And if you want to go on thinking poorly of the undecideds — well, I’m sure that
some of the post-debate focus groups this week can help with that.
I invite you to follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/DouthatNYT.
A Romney Stance Causes Turmoil for Young Immigrants
October 20, 2012
The New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
An immigration stance that Mitt Romney took with little
fanfare this month has created turmoil for many young immigrants living in the
country illegally, lawyers and immigrant advocates say.
Mr. Romney said that if elected president, he would end the program that offers
hundreds of thousands of those immigrants two-year reprieves from deportation,
which the Obama administration began in August.
Mr. Romney’s statements have prompted many young people to hold back from
applying, worried that if he won the presidency, those who applied and were not
approved by the time he took office could be pursued by immigration authorities.
His position “has created a lot of confusion and a lot of anxiety,” said Cheryl
Little, the executive director of Americans for Immigrant Justice, a legal aid
group based in Miami that has assisted hundreds of young immigrants applying for
reprieves.
Mr. Romney has said that he would honor any reprieves already approved by the
government, and that he would not order the deportation of immigrants who did
not get deferrals.
Even so, his position on the reprieves has heightened already existing doubts
about how he would handle the program, said Gregory Chen, the director of
advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which has monitored
it closely. “For young people who have been living in the shadows for years,
coming forward now to the authorities is a big act of faith,” Mr. Chen said.
“They are concerned their information could be used at a later date against
them.”
Also, at least 800,000 young people, according to estimates by immigrant
organizations, will be unable to apply in time to be approved before the
inauguration in January because of document requirements and filing fees. They
are now facing the possibility that if Mr. Romney prevailed, they could miss out
on the deportation deferrals and the work permits that come with them.
By independent estimates, as many as 1.2 million illegal immigrants are
currently eligible for President Obama’s deportation reprieves. Since Aug. 15,
when the program began, 179,794 immigrants have applied, according to official
figures published on Oct. 12. But only 4,591 deferrals have been approved,
despite what lawyers praise as unusually fast work by the federal agency in
charge, Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Alberto Martinez, an adviser to Mr. Romney, said the candidate’s goal was to
eliminate “perpetual uncertainty” for young immigrants. Since the deferrals are
based only on a presidential action and do not provide any path to legal
immigration status, he said, “it is just another stage of limbo for these young
people.”
In the general campaign, Mr. Romney has moderated his immigration positions as
he tries to appeal to Latino voters, hoping to chip away at Mr. Obama’s big lead
among that group. In the presidential debate on Tuesday, Mr. Romney endorsed
proposals giving legal status to young immigrants who have been in the country
illegally since they were children.
“The kids of those that came here illegally, those kids I think should have a
pathway to become a permanent resident of the United States,” Mr. Romney said.
Without providing much detail, Mr. Romney said he would work with Congress on
“real, permanent immigration reform” to give legal status to young immigrants.
He has said that illegal immigrants who serve in the military should get
permanent residency.
But Mr. Romney has criticized the temporary reprieves, which Mr. Obama created
in June by executive action, as a political “stopgap measure.”
For young people who have grown up without documents, the deferrals and permits
allow them to work legally and, in some states, obtain driver’s licenses and
attend college at in-state tuition rates. In a recent poll by the Pew Hispanic
Center, 86 percent of registered Latino voters said they approved of the
program.
To qualify for the program, immigrants must be under 31, have come to America
before they were 16 and have lived here for at least five years. They must also
be current students or high school graduates. Since there is no filing deadline
and no appeal if an application is denied, administration officials have urged
young people to take their time to get it right. Many immigrants have also
struggled to gather the papers they need and to raise the $465 filing fee.
Leading Republicans who are concerned about the party’s standing with Latino
voters have differed on Mr. Romney’s position on the deferrals. In a recent
interview on Spanish-language radio, Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida,
lauded Mr. Romney’s plan for broader legislation. But he said, “I think it makes
all the sense in the world to maintain what exists right now.”
But Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said at an event on Tuesday that he agreed
with Mr. Romney. “We are not going to give out new permits because we are going
to replace the system with a new one,” Mr. Rubio said. “And I think that is very
promising.”
Mr. Romney’s statements have prompted some immigrants to rush to apply, hoping
they could still gain approval before January. Many more are hanging back,
lawyers said.
And then there is Claudia Trejo, 18, one of those who could miss the chance to
apply. Born in Mexico and raised in Denver, she said she had been living in this
country illegally since arriving with her parents when she was 10. Both she and
her 16-year-old sister qualify for deferrals. They want to apply together so
that neither would be left unprotected from deportation.
But their parents, also here illegally, do not have the money for two $465
filing fees. Ms. Trejo has been working odd jobs to raise the cash, hoping to
apply at the end of the year. “Honestly, the only thing I am waiting on is the
money to apply,” she said.
Ms. Trejo graduated from high school in May but cannot afford the out-of-state
tuition rates she must pay to go to college in Colorado. With a deferral, she
said, she could get a driver’s license and a regular job, and a chance to earn
her tuition.
“I just want to go to college as soon as possible,” Ms. Trejo said. “The things
Romney is saying are devastating.”
But groups opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants praised Mr. Romney’s stance
on the deferrals. “We have been hopeful he would immediately stop them,” said
Roy Beck, the president of NumbersUSA, which advocates reduced immigration. He
contends that Mr. Obama exceeded his authority with the mass deferrals, and his
organization has supported a federal lawsuit in Texas to try to stop the
program.
In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Mr. Romney wants to hold on to
Republicans who supported his early calls for tough immigration enforcement. He
also hopes to draw some Latinos, who are likely to cast crucial ballots in at
least three battleground states: Colorado, Florida and Nevada.
“We understand the power our communities have,” said Maria Fernanda Cabello, a
leader in Texas of the United We Dream Network, a national youth organization,
who said she received one of the earliest deferrals. Although she cannot vote,
Ms. Cabello, 21, said she had been busy organizing Latino citizens to do so. “We
urge both candidates to continue this program,” she said, “and we will be
mobilizing.”
October 20, 2012
The New York Times
By MICHAEL BARBARO and ASHLEY PARKER
GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — At a campaign stop in Rockford, Ill., not
long ago, Mitt Romney sought to convey his feelings for his wife, Ann.
“Smitten,” he said.
Not merely in love.
“Yeah, smitten,” he said. “Mitt was smitten.”
It was a classic Mittism, as friends and advisers call the verbal quirks of the
Republican presidential candidate. In Romneyspeak, passengers do not get off
airplanes, they “disembark.” People do not laugh, they “guffaw.” Criminals do
not go to jail, they land in the “big house.” Insults are not hurled,
“brickbats” are.
As he seeks the office of commander in chief, Mr. Romney can sometimes seem like
an editor in chief, employing a language all his own. It is polite, formal and
at times anachronistic, linguistically setting apart a man who frequently
struggles to sell himself to the American electorate.
It is most pronounced when he is on the stump and off the cuff, not on the
stuffy and rehearsed debate stage. But Mr. Romney offered voters a dose of it
during his face-off with President Obama last week, when he coined the
infelicitous phrase “binders full of women.”
Mr. Romney’s unique style of speaking has distinguished him throughout his
career, influencing the word choices of those who work with and especially for
him. Should he reach the White House, friends and advisers concede, the trait
could be a defining feature of his public image, as memorable as Lyndon B.
Johnson’s foul-mouthed utterances or the first President Bush’s tortured syntax.
Mr. Romney, 65, has spent four decades inside the corridors of high finance and
state politics, where indecorous diction and vulgarisms abound. But he has
emerged as if in a rhetorical time capsule from a well-mannered era of soda
fountains and AMC Ramblers, someone whose idea of swearing is to let loose with
the phrase “H-E-double hockey sticks.”
“He actually said that,” recalled Thomas Finneran, the speaker of the
Massachusetts House of Representatives when Mr. Romney was governor. “As in, go
to ‘H-E-double hockey sticks.’ I would think to myself, ‘Who talks like that?’ ”
Mr. Romney, quite proudly. In fact, he seems puzzled by the fascination with
something as instinctive (and immutable) as how he talks, as if somebody were
asking how he breathes. “It’s like someone who speaks with an accent,” he said
in an interview. “You don’t hear the accent.”
His Mormon faith frowns on salty language, and so does he. A man of relentless
self-discipline, he made clear to lawmakers in Boston and colleagues in business
that even in matters of vocabulary, he “held himself to a high standard of
behavior,” said Geoffrey Rehnert, a former executive at Bain Capital, the firm
Mr. Romney started in the 1980s. Mr. Romney’s father, George, whom he idolized,
shared the same style of refined and restrained speech.
Those around him are so accustomed to his verbal tics that they describe them in
shorthand. “Old-timey,” said one aide. “His 1950s language,” explained another.
“The Gomer Pyle routine,” said a third.
Asked about his boss’s word preferences, Eric Fehrnstrom, a veteran Romney
adviser, responded knowingly: “You mean like ‘gosh, golly, darn’?”
For Democratic strategists, Mr. Romney’s throwback vocabulary feeds into their
portrayal of a man ill-equipped for the mores and challenges of the modern age.
David Axelrod, a top adviser for an Obama campaign that has adopted “Forward” as
its slogan, once quipped that Mr. Romney “must watch ‘Mad Men,’ ” the hit
television show set in Manhattan in the 1960s, “and think it’s the evening
news.”
His exclamations can sound jarring to the contemporary ear — or charming,
depending on whom you ask. Midway into a critique of Mr. Obama’s economic
policies a few months ago, Mr. Romney declared: “They’ve scared the dickens out
of banks,” he said. “They’ve scared the dickens out of insurance companies.”
He declared, “To heck with it!” while urging reporters to use their fingers to
dig into a box of pastries he was passing around on a plane. “Darn good
question,” he replied to a voter in Kalamazoo, Mich., who asked how he would
work with Congress if elected. (His wife also got the “darn” treatment in
Michigan, when he enthused, “Gosh, darn, she is amazing!”) “Thank heavens” is
another favorite.
For people used to peppering their speech with four-letter words, time with Mr.
Romney can prove an exercise in self-control. A half-dozen people recalled the
precise moment when they swore — almost always accidentally — in his presence.
When Robert Travaglini, then the Democratic president of the Massachusetts State
Senate, would curse in front of Mr. Romney, the governor would frown and
interject, “Well, I wouldn’t choose that diction,” Mr. Travaglini recalled.
Mr. Rehnert, the former Bain executive, was mortified when a potential client he
took into Mr. Romney’s office promptly dropped a string of profanities. “Mitt
wanted to know what cats and dogs I was dragging in here,” Mr. Rehnert said.
His cussing colleagues said Mr. Romney took pains not to judge them publicly.
“He did not impose his language preferences on us,” Mr. Finneran said. “But I
wonder if we became a little bit more restrained because we knew this about
him.”
Mr. Travaglini recalled lawmakers’ discussing how Mr. Romney “should be more in
tune with the vernacular of the day and express himself more passionately.”
“But,” he added, “that’s not who he is.”
Mr. Romney does have his own distinctly G-rated arsenal of angry expressions —
“Good grief,” “flippin’,” “good heavens” and even the occasional “crap.”
Perhaps the most intriguing of these is “grunt.” Most people just grunt. Mr.
Romney, however, talks about grunting. “Grunt” he says, onomatopoetically, when
annoyed with a last-minute change in his campaign schedule.
Many of Mr. Romney’s verbal habits can sound like those of a hyper-literate
graduate student who never left school. (In college, he majored in English.) He
favors the gentlemanly qualifier “if you will,” which he invoked three times
during a recent speech.
On how to reduce the debt: “You have to start accumulating, if you will,
reserves.”
On speaking to a group of soldiers: “The cadets were all lined up and sitting at
attention, if you will.”
On his business background: “I’ve had the experience of working in the real
world, if you will.”
In interviews, voters expressed an equal measure of admiration for and curiosity
about his quaint dialect, which many described as a conspicuous break from the
normally harsh tone of politicians.
“It’s a wonderful change,” said Irene Sperling, a retiree from Allentown, Pa.
“He’s a gentleman.”
Wendy Tonn, 63, a Romney supporter who splits her time between Michigan and
Florida, said she found comfort in his vocabulary, comparing it to the simple
innocence of “Leave It to Beaver.” “We are of that era, and we’d like to be
returned to that kind of era,” she said.
Even Dennis Miller, the comedian, has weighed in, suggesting that after four
years of having a “hipster president” in the White House, Americans craved a
“gosh president.”
A few acquaintances have tried to drag him linguistically into the 21st century.
Mr. Finneran, an admitted serial curser, said that after years of working
closely with Mr. Romney, he began to fantasize about provoking him to utter a
particularly crude word.
“It got to the point where I started to think that my greatest achievement of
all time would be if I somehow or other got him to say the word,” he said.
Once, Mr. Romney seemed on the cusp of fulfilling that wish during a heated
discussion. But he caught himself. “And I thought, ‘Oh, God, my closest moment
ever,’ ” Mr. Finneran said. “But it’s not going to happen.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following
correction:
Correction: October 20, 2012
An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misstated
the location and date of a campaign stop by Mitt Romney.
He was in DeWitt, Mich., in June, not in Virginia this month.
There is a price to pay when a president appears disengaged,
and President Obama obviously learned how much his diffidence cost him in the
first debate this month. On Tuesday night, in the second debate, he regained
full command of his vision and his legacy, leaving Mitt Romney sputtering with
half-answers, deceptions and one memorable error.
Instead of windy and lethargic answers, the president was crisp in reciting his
accomplishments and persuasive in explaining how he has restarted economic
growth. Instead of letting Mr. Romney get away with a parade of falsehoods and
unworkable promises, he regularly and forcefully called his opponent wrong.
Having left many supporters wondering after the first debate whether he really
wanted another four years, he finally seemed like a man who was ready to fight
for another term.
What he did not do was describe how a second term would be more successful than
his first has been, and, in particular, show how he would cut through the
thicket of Republican opposition if re-elected. He missed opportunities to call
for a more forceful opposition to assault weapons in another term, and to put
forward a clear immigration policy.
But the contrast with the weak and failed ideas that Mr. Romney proposed could
not have been clearer. The president noted that he had signed legislation that
increased pay equity for women; Mr. Romney not only refused to say whether he
would have done so, but condescendingly said he had hired many women when he was
the governor of Massachusetts and had given them flexible schedules.
Mr. Obama pointed out that Mr. Romney’s tax numbers did not add up, and called
the plan a “sketchy deal”; Mr. Romney responded in a huff. “Of course they add
up,” he said. “I was someone who ran businesses for 25 years and balanced the
budget.” Apparently he thinks it should be self-evident that a private equity
mogul knows how to cut taxes drastically and still balance the budget, but it is
not evident to any of the independent experts who have looked at his plan, as
Mr. Obama icily pointed out.
The president reminded listeners that Mr. Romney’s immigration adviser was the
author of Arizona’s radical, unconstitutional immigration law. And Mr. Romney
himself repeated his cruel prescription to have undocumented immigrants
“self-deport” by making it impossible for them to find work and aggressively
demanding their identification papers. Mr. Obama offered the better, broader
view on fixing immigration, though his own administration has also deported tens
of thousands of noncriminals through a crackdown similar to Arizona’s law.
The president even got off a few good lines, pointing out that his pension was
considerably smaller than Mr. Romney’s, and that his opponent was far more
extreme than President George W. Bush in proposing to turn Medicare into a
voucher system and to eliminate financing for Planned Parenthood. He finally
took the opportunity to bring up Mr. Romney’s dismissal of 47 percent of the
country as people who consider themselves victims and do not take personal
responsibility for their lives.
But the most devastating moment for Mr. Romney was self-inflicted. Continuing
his irresponsible campaign to politicize the death of the American ambassador to
Libya, he said it took two weeks for the president to acknowledge that it was
the result of an act of terror. As the moderator, Candy Crowley of CNN, quickly
pointed out, the president referred to it as an act of terror the next day, in
the Rose Garden. “Can you say that a little louder, Candy?” asked Mr. Obama,
having fully regained his stride and confidence.
Voters who watched the first debate might have been left with an impression that
Mr. Romney was the candidate of ideas and that Mr. Obama’s reserves of energy
and seriousness had been tapped out. On Tuesday night, those roles were
reversed.
October 16, 2012
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and JEFF ZELENY
President Obama and Mitt Romney engaged Tuesday in one of the
most intensive clashes in a televised presidential debate, with tensions between
them spilling out in interruptions, personal rebukes and accusations of lying as
they parried over the last four years under Mr. Obama and what the next four
would look like under a President Romney.
Competing for a shrinking sliver of undecided voters, many of them women, their
engagements at times bordered on physical as they circled each other or bounded
out of their seats while the other was speaking, at times more intent to argue
than to address the questions over jobs, taxes, energy, immigration and a range
of other issues.
Mr. Obama, criticized by his own party for a lackluster debate performance two
weeks ago, this time pressed an attack that allowed him to often dictate the
terms of the debate. But an unbowed Mr. Romney was there to meet him every time,
and seemed to relish the opportunity to challenge a sitting president
Mr. Obama’s assertive posture may well have stopped the clamor of concern from
supporters that had been weighing on his campaign with three weeks and one more
debate to go before the election.
The president’s broadsides started with a critique of Mr. Romney for his
opposition to his administration’s automobile bailout in his first answer —
“Governor Romney said we should let Detroit go bankrupt” — and ended more than
90 minutes later with an attack on Mr. Romney’s secretly taped comments about
the “47 percent” of Americans who he said did not take responsibility for their
own lives.
“When he said behind closed doors that 47 percent of the country considers
themselves victims who refuse personal responsibility — think about who he was
talking about,” the president said toward the end of the debate at Hofstra
University in Hempstead, N.Y.
It was as if a different, highly charged president had taken the stage rather
than the reluctant, disengaged-seeming candidate who showed up to meet Mr.
Romney at their first debate two weeks ago.
Mr. Romney stayed acutely focused on Mr. Obama’s record in the face of it all,
saying that the president had failed to deliver what he promised in his 2008
campaign and arguing repeatedly and strenuously, “We just can’t afford four more
years like the last four years.”
He credited Mr. Obama for being “great as a speaker and describing his vision.”
But then he brought down the ultimate hammer in a challenge to an incumbent:
“That’s wonderful, except we have a record to look at. And that record shows he
just hasn’t been able to cut the deficit, to put in place reforms for Medicare
and Social Security to preserve them, to get us the rising incomes we need.”
The two took pains to fashion their arguments toward female voters, with the
debate seeming at times directed entirely at them. Mr. Obama mentioned Mr.
Romney’s vow to cut government funding for Planned Parenthood at least four
times; Mr. Romney repeatedly mentioned that under Mr. Obama: “There are three
and a half million more women living in poverty today than when the president
took office. We don’t have to live like this.”
And Mr. Romney sought to broaden his appeal to women by softening his tone on
reproductive issues, saying: “Every woman in America should have access to
contraceptives.”
Emphasizing his record of diversity as governor based on his own recruiting, he
said, “I brought us whole binders full of women.”
It is a bit of conventional wisdom that undecided voters seek comity in their
leaders. There was none of that Tuesday.
At times the back and forth was personal in small ways. Having already invoked
the 14 percent effective tax rate that Mr. Romney personally paid, Mr. Obama
mentioned Mr. Romney’s investment in Chinese companies. Then Mr. Romney asked if
Mr. Obama had looked at his own pension for its investments.
“I don’t look at my pension,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s not as big as yours.”
But at other moments the verbal sparring took on a deeper, emotional resonance,
such as when Mr. Romney suggested that the administration was intentionally
misleading in its shifting explanations for the attack on the American mission
in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the deaths of the American ambassador, J.
Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans there.
“The suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the secretary of state, our
U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve
lost four of our own, Governor, is offensive,” Mr. Obama said, standing and
looking intently at his opponent. “That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do
as president.”
Mr. Obama noted that he had gone to the Rose Garden the day after the attack to
say “this was an act of terror.”
Mr. Romney asserted that Mr. Obama had not said that until 14 days later,
prompting the moderator, Candy Crowley of CNN, to interject, “He did in fact,
sir.” Mr. Obama, interjected with a hint of anger, “Can you say that a little
louder, Candy?” (She said Mr. Romney’s broader point, about shifting
explanations, was “correct.”)
The vitriol that has been coursing through the campaign for months, in
television ads and dueling speeches, played out at exceptionally close range for
much of the 90-minute debate.
The exchanges were intense and personal, with Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney
repeatedly leaving their stools and invading each other’s space on the stage,
Mr. Romney frequently looking at the president intently from his stool and
interrupting as much as the president interrupted him.
At times they were within striking distance of each other as they forcefully
made their points.
“If I could have you sit down, Governor Romney,” Ms. Crowley said. “Thank you.”
But while Mr. Romney was on the defensive for much of the debate, his arguments
were built around a theme he returned to again and again: the Obama
administration’s record and its failure to restart the economy, saying his
business know-how was what was called for now. He used a litany of statistics to
make his case that the economy has not improved and that the president has not
lived up to his pledges.
At least a half-dozen times, Mr. Romney said that 23 million Americans are out
of work. And he said that 580,000 women had lost jobs in the last four years.
“The president has tried, but his policies haven’t worked,” Mr. Romney said,
calling Mr. Obama a great speaker with a poor record.
The two tangled over tax policy, health care and spending, delivering what have
become familiar arguments at this late stage in the campaign, but they also
covered new ground under questioning from an audience of undecided voters. One
woman said she was disappointed by Mr. Obama, but worried that Mr. Romney would
return to policies of the Bush administration.
In blunt terms, Mr. Romney distanced himself from former President George W.
Bush, criticizing him for leaving behind a rising budget deficit, failing to
deal aggressively on trade deals with China and for favoring big business over
small ones.
“President Bush and I are different people,” he said, “and these are different
times.”
Ms. Crowley, the moderator, defied the rules of the Commission on Presidential
Debates — negotiated by the two campaigns — pressing the candidates for a
follow-up after the very first question. Ms. Crowley had made it clear that she
would do that and had not signed anything agreeing to those conditions, but she
also stood to the side and let the two men go after each other throughout the
debate.
The questions came from voters who said they had not decided between Mr. Obama
or Mr. Romney or were open to changing their minds in the final three weeks of
the race. A question about the nation’s immigration laws prompted one of the
longest exchanges between the men, with Mr. Romney pointing out that the
president did not meet his promise of achieving comprehensive immigration
legislation during his first term.
“This is a president who has not been able to do what he said he’d do,” said Mr.
Romney, who pledged to pass an immigration overhaul in his first year as
president, a sharp departure from his anti-immigration tone in the Republican
nominating fight one year ago.
The pressure on both men was intense.
Three weeks before Election Day, there was a sense within both parties that Mr.
Romney had succeeded in using the first debate to break an important
psychological barrier by putting himself on equal footing with Mr. Obama and
showing a presidential bearing before an audience of roughly 70 million people.
And Tuesday night was Mr. Obama’s opportunity to try to restore his campaign’s
momentum,.
Mr. Obama’s performance came just as the Romney campaign was starting its own
huge advertising blitz — after months of lopsided pummeling by Mr. Obama on
television — in the closing phase of the race.
On Tuesday his campaign placed $12 million more in commercials in the nine major
battlegrounds,.
And, unannounced, it began running a new commercial featuring a woman who
identifies herself as a former Obama voter who researched Mr. Romney’s record on
abortion and found it was not as anti-abortion as Mr. Obama has said, noting,
for instance, that he supports abortion in cases of rape and incest.
It is no secret that Mitt Romney and his running-mate,
Representative Paul Ryan, are opponents of abortion rights. When Mr. Ryan was
asked at last week’s debate whether voters who support abortion rights should be
worried if the Romney-Ryan ticket were elected, he essentially said yes.
They would depart slightly from the extremist Republican Party platform by
allowing narrow exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the woman. Beyond
that, they would move to take away a fundamental right that American women have
had for nearly 40 years.
Mr. Romney has called for overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling
that recognized a woman’s constitutional right to make her own childbearing
decisions and to legalized abortion nationwide. He has said that the issue
should be thrown back to state legislatures. The actual impact of that radical
rights rollback is worth considering.
It would not take much to overturn the Roe decision. With four of the nine
members of the Supreme Court over 70 years old, the next occupant of the White
House could have the opportunity to appoint one or more new justices. If say,
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the oldest member, retired and Mr. Romney named a
replacement hostile to abortion rights, the basic right to abortion might well
not survive.
The result would turn back the clock to the days before Roe v. Wade when
abortion was legal only in some states, but not in others. There is every
indication that about half the states would make abortion illegal within a year
of Roe being struck down, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The Center for
Reproductive Rights, which challenges abortion restrictions around the country,
puts the number at 30 states. For one thing, abortion bans already on the books
in some states would suddenly kick in. And some Republican-controlled state
legislatures would outlaw abortion immediately.
Even with Roe and subsequent decisions upholding abortion rights, more than half
the states have enacted barriers like mandatory waiting periods, “counseling”
sessions lacking a real medical justification; parental consent or notification
laws; and onerous clinic “safety” rules intended to drive clinics out of
business.
Mr. Romney is a vocal supporter of this continuing drive in the states and in
Congress to limit the constitutional right, even without overturning Roe. To a
large degree, the anti-abortion forces have succeeded. In 1982, there were about
2,900 providers nationwide; as of 2008, there were less than 1,800. In 97
percent of the counties that are outside of metropolitan areas, there are no
abortion providers at all.
We do not need to guess about the brutal consequences of overturning Roe. We
know from our own country’s pre-Roe history and from the experience around the
world. Women desperate to end a pregnancy would find a way to do so. Well-to-do
women living in places where abortion is illegal would travel to other states
where it is legal to obtain the procedure. Women lacking the resources would
either be forced by the government and politicians to go through with an
unwanted or risky pregnancy, attempt to self-abort or turn to an illegal — and
potentially unsafe — provider for help. Women’s health, privacy and equality
would suffer. Some women would die.
Mr. Romney knows this, or at least he used to. Running for the United States
Senate in Massachusetts in 1994 against Edward Kennedy, Mr. Romney spoke of a
young woman, a close relative, who died years before as result of complications
from an illegal abortion to underscore his now-extinct support for Roe v. Wade.
In a report in Salon last year, Justin Elliott, a reporter for ProPublica, found
that when the young woman passed away, her parents requested that donations be
made in her honor to Planned Parenthood. That’s the same invaluable
family-planning group that Mr. Romney has pledged to defund once in the White
House.
After Fiery Florida Rally, Obama Focuses on Debate Work
October 11, 2012
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and TRIP GABRIEL
CORAL GABLES, Fla. — To campaign or to study? For President
Obama, that has become the question.
On the calendar, there are 25 days until the election. But if there is one thing
that emerged after Mr. Obama’s performance in last week’s debate in Denver, it
is that it may be better for him to spend his time preparing for the next one
than to stump for votes.
So his advisers are sending the president to study hall. He will hole up in
Williamsburg, Va., starting on Saturday to get ready for debate No 2 on Long
Island next Tuesday, and then will do the same thing next weekend at Camp David,
the presidential retreat in rural Maryland. His aides have been impressing upon
him the need to aggressively confront Mitt Romney — who spent part of Thursday
on debate practice himself — for shifting his position on a variety of issues.
On Thursday, in a speech at the University of Miami’s basketball arena, the
president sounded like a student who has been paying attention in class. He
delivered a full-throated, derisive attack on Mr. Romney’s move to the center.
“Now, Governor Romney thinks we have not been paying attention for the last year
and a half,” Mr. Obama said. “He is going to say exactly anything he can to
close the deal.”
Then the president adopted the cadence of a Baptist preacher: “Now, Florida, we
gotta tell them his plan will not create jobs; it will not help the middle
class. We can’t afford it, we’re not going back, we’re moving forward, and
that’s why I’m running for a second term as president of the United States.”
Mr. Obama, when he wants, is light years more effective on the stump than he is
in a debate hall. At the University of Miami, the president was energized,
displaying the fire that he did not show during the debate. He worked the
audience, making people laugh and cheer. And he directed zinger after zinger at
Mr. Romney.
Mr. Romney, the president charged, “is trying to go through an extreme
makeover.”
“After running for more than a year in which he called himself severely
conservative, Mitt Romney’s trying to convince you that he was severely
kidding,” Mr. Obama said.
He chuckled. “Suddenly, he loves the middle class. Can’t stop talking about
them. He loves Medicare, loves teachers. He even loves the most important parts
of Obamacare,” he said, referring to the health care overhaul.
Where this Barack Obama was during last week’s debate is anybody’s guess. But
here, he took Mr. Romney to task time and again.
“Tax breaks for outsourcers? He’s never heard of such a thing!” the president
said. “Kicking 100,000 young Floridians off their parents’ insurance plan — who,
me?”
Yet the new study schedule, which leaves the president with a bare 16 days to
campaign after debate preparation, could take away his more potent weapon:
himself. Mr. Obama’s advisers, aware that far more people watch the debates than
a campaign appearance, say they must strike a balance.
The tightened race — polls show that Mr. Romney has narrowed Mr. Obama’s lead in
some crucial states — heightens the impact of the shortened time frame. That is
particularly true here in Florida, which has 29 electoral votes and which became
the nation’s most infamous swing state after the Bush-Gore election recount in
2000. Its electorate is a diverse mix of conservative Southerners, Hispanics,
African-Americans and elderly and Jewish voters.
Mr. Romney faces similarly vexing demands on his time. After debate practice
Thursday morning, he traveled to Asheville, N.C., a state that has received
fewer visits from the two presidential campaigns than other battlegrounds, even
though polls show the race to be tight there.
Some local Republican strategists expressed frustration that Mr. Romney had not
already taken the state out of competition, given that North Carolina’s
unemployment rate is the fifth-highest in the nation and Mr. Obama’s margin of
victory in 2008 was the slimmest of any state.
They questioned the Romney campaign’s messaging strategy in the state, which
seems generic rather than tailored to North Carolina. Mr. Romney has run an
advertisement starring Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who is not well known in
North Carolina, and he appeared at an Asheville rally with House Speaker John A.
Boehner of Ohio — a symbol to independent voters of gridlock in Washington.
A key reason for Mr. Romney’s trip to the state was to pay a visit to the Rev.
Billy Graham, a religious adviser to Republican presidents since Dwight D.
Eisenhower. Retired and frail at 93, Mr. Graham remains a potent symbol to
evangelical Christian voters, an important part of the Republican base Mr.
Romney will need to turn out strongly in a state where registered Democrats
outnumber Republicans.
Helene Cooper reported from Coral Gables, and Trip Gabriel from
Asheville, N.C.
Do you remember that moment in the first Austin Powers movie
when Dr. Evil, back in action after being cryogenically frozen for 30 years,
gets his hands on a nuclear warhead? “If you want it back,” he snarls to a group
of world leaders who have gathered in a secret United Nations bunker, “you will
have to pay me” — here he pauses for dramatic effect — “one million dollars!”
The assembled leaders burst into laughter because it was such a pathetically
small sum.
Campaign finance these days reminds me a lot of that scene. I lived for a few
years in Washington, right around the time that Congress, aroused by the
Watergate scandal, was reforming the country’s campaign finance laws. It
instituted a system for presidential elections that combined small contributions
from individuals ($1,000 or less), public financing from the taxpayers and a cap
on how much the candidates could spend. In the Gerald Ford-Jimmy Carter year of
1976, the two candidates were allowed to spend — can we pause here for dramatic
effect? — around $35 million each.
Fast forward 36 years, to last weekend’s news that the Obama campaign had raised
$181 million in just one month, September. Not all that long ago, the ability to
partake of public financing was a sign that you had arrived as a serious
candidate; today no candidate in his right mind would want to be so constrained.
Four years ago, Obama became the first presidential candidate since campaign
reform was instituted to opt out of public financing for the general election.
He raised $750 million. John McCain, who accepted public financing, was only
able to directly spend the $84 million or so he was allotted under the system.
(Although the Republican Party raised millions more.) This election season, Mitt
Romney and President Obama could end up spending more than $1 billion each. They
seem to spend more time fund-raising than pressing the flesh with voters.
According to Brendan Doherty, a political science professor at the United States
Naval Academy, Obama has held six fund-raisers in a single day. Twice.
And that doesn’t even account for what’s truly different about this election:
the rise of the “super PACs” and 501(c)4s, which are essentially a form of
campaign money-laundering, allowing wealthy people to contribute millions toward
supposedly “independent” spending on campaign advertising, polling and other
expensive campaign goodies. Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul, whose main
political interest appears to be Israel, has pumped $10 million into Restore Our
Future, the biggest Republican super PAC. Although individual contributions to a
particular candidate remains severely restricted — no more than $5,000 — the
amount someone can pour into a super PAC is limitless. The means by which the
country finances its campaigns is utterly broken.
In a recent cover story in The Atlantic, James Bennet, the editor, traces how
that happened. He focuses on a man named Jim Bopp Jr., a lawyer from Terre
Haute, Ind., who has largely devoted his life to freeing the nation of campaign
spending limits. To him — and, indeed, to the majority of the current Supreme
Court, in the Citizens United case — limits on political spending are a
violation of the First Amendment.
What is astonishing is the way Bopp makes unlimited spending seem actually
democratic. “Most people don’t even know who their congressman is,” Bopp tells
Bennet. If there were more spending on campaigns, voters would be more educated
about the candidates. The Supreme Court majority, meanwhile, has essentially
said that, by definition, campaign spending that is independent of the candidate
cannot be corrupting.
But, of course, what we are learning in the real world is that super PACs and
501(c)4s are hardly independent. Karl Rove, who absolutely knows what the Romney
campaign needs at any given moment, runs the most important of the Republican
super PACs. Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and Obama’s first chief of staff,
is helping to raise money for a Democratic super PAC.
What we also know in the real world is that unlimited spending will not serve to
enlighten voters. It will deaden them to political argument — as is happening in
just about every swing state, where the ads are running with such frequency that
people are tuning them out. Finally, we know from hard experience that the money
that comes into politics has the potential to corrupt.
In Congress we see it every day. A congressman gets on an important committee,
begins to raise money from the companies that care about the committee’s issues
— and, suddenly, the congressman is writing legislation the company wants.
What feels different now is that the sums are so large, and that it has the
potential to influence not just Congressional and Senate candidates but the
presidential candidates as well. If Romney wins, will he really be willing to
take a position on Israel that is different from Adelson’s? One suspects not.
“This can’t be good for Democracy,” Bennet told me in an e-mail. It’s not.
Two-thirds of the $50 million spent on Mitt Romney’s behalf in
Ohio has come from outside “super PACs” and other so-called independent groups,
and yet Mr. Romney has lagged behind in all of the major Ohio polls. Hundreds of
millions in third-party spending from unlimited checks, much of it from
undisclosed donors, has also failed to give Mr. Romney a clear lead in any of
the other swing states.
If Mr. Romney loses the presidential race — which is far from a sure thing —
does that mean the big check writers will declare the process a waste of money
and stay out of politics the next time around? Don’t count on it.
This is only the first presidential election in the Citizens United era of
unlimited spending, and the first since 1976 in which both presidential
candidates spurned the public finance system. All the big players are learning
lessons about how the process works in an ugly new world, and will be
fine-tuning their strategies once they determine what was effective and what was
not.
There may be some changes in how unlimited money is spent, but now that it has
been unleashed, only a constitutional amendment or a careful system of
regulation can bottle it back up. The need to do so will remain one of the most
urgent challenges facing every lawmaker.
Most of the approximately $593 million that has been spent so far by outside
groups during this election cycle has gone into television advertising, and it
has oversaturated hundreds of markets in the important swing states, in
combination with ads from the campaigns themselves.
Iowans have had to endure an unending stream of political ads, in some cases six
times as much as in 2008. The two presidential campaigns and associated
“independent” groups have run more than 100,000 ads to win the state’s six
electoral votes, as many as six an hour in Sioux City. And that’s nothing
compared with Ohio, where ads run all day in the big markets, as many as 10 per
half-hour.
In many cases, reporters and campaign officials have found that the ads have
reached the point of diminishing returns. Viewers are muting them, or mentally
tuning them out. “People just aren’t paying attention to political ads the way
they used to,” David Winston, a Republican pollster, told The Wall Street
Journal.
Chances are super PACs and related “social welfare” groups will find more
effective ways of spending their money. There is already evidence that many
groups are moving their spending from the presidential race to Congressional
contests, where they can have a bigger impact, and are buying vehicles other
than TV ads. Karl Rove, founder of one of the biggest Republican groups,
American Crossroads, recently said the group would spend $32 million to keep the
party’s House majority. The group intends to spend money on research, direct
mail and calls, and polling, along with ads.
It also seems likely that more spending will shift to the primaries, where the
relentlessly negative tone of the independent ads has a stronger effect on party
regulars. Mr. Romney would not have become the Republican nominee without the
power of his super PAC ads pounding on his party rivals.
More than two-thirds of the independent money in this election cycle has been
spent on behalf of Republicans, according to the Sunlight Foundation, and the
business interests behind those hundreds of millions are not going to give up
the influence and the power that spending has given them. That’s the reason this
unlimited money is so corrupting: win or lose, it binds lawmakers, corporations
and special interests ever closer.
Drop in Jobless Figure Gives Jolt to Race for President
October 5, 2012
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN and MARK LANDLER
The jobless rate abruptly dropped in September to its lowest
level since the month President Obama took office, indicating a steadier
recovery than previously thought and delivering another jolt to the presidential
campaign.
The improvement lent ballast to Mr. Obama’s case that the economy is on the mend
and threatened the central argument of Mitt Romney’s candidacy, that Mr. Obama’s
failed stewardship is reason enough to replace him.
Employers added a modest 114,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported
on Friday, but estimates for what had been disappointing gains in July and
August were revised upward to more respectable levels.
Unemployment fell to 7.8 percent from 8.1 percent, crossing what had become a
symbolic threshold in the campaign. Mr. Romney was deprived of a favorite line
of attack, mocking the president for “43 straight months with unemployment above
8 percent.”
The new numbers may have less economic than political import, since they
represent only one month of data that can be quite volatile and give little
indication that the plodding recovery has accelerated.
“We’ve been amazingly resilient thus far in the face of all these headwinds,”
said Ellen Zentner, the senior United States economist for Nomura Securities
International, referring to global obstacles like the slowdown in China and
domestic ones like the looming expiration of tax breaks. “But it’s awfully hard
to see getting significantly above that growth range given that these headwinds
are still in place.”
Still, an energized Mr. Obama seized on the statistics as he campaigned in
Virginia and Ohio, seeking to regain his footing after a listless performance in
the first debate this week. Mr. Romney, whose muscular showing in Denver had
emboldened his campaign, scrambled to play down the report, saying it merely
confirmed that millions of Americans had given up looking for work.
In back-to-back rallies in Virginia, the president declared, “This country has
come too far to turn back.” His Republican challenger then insisted, “We don’t
have to stay on the path we’ve been on. We can do better.”
Some Romney backers, led by the former chief executive of General Electric, John
F. Welch Jr., suggested that the White House had massaged the Labor Department
data to make it more favorable. The Obama administration, economic experts and
some Republicans dismissed that notion as a groundless conspiracy theory.
The jobs report was preceded by other signs of growing economic strength,
including a jump in consumer confidence, the strongest auto sales in four years,
rallying stock prices and, at long last, a stabilization of housing prices.
According to the monthly survey of employers, the bulk of the gains came from
service jobs, particularly in education and health care. Though government
downsizing has been a drag on the recovery, government over all added 10,000
jobs in September, the third consecutive month of gains.
The nation’s employers have added an average of 146,000 jobs a month in 2012,
just ahead of the numbers that are considered necessary to absorb new workers
into the labor force. “This is not what a real recovery looks like,” Mr. Romney
said in a statement.
Areas of weakness included manufacturing, one of the bright spots that Mr. Obama
has showcased throughout the re-election campaign. It lost 16,000 jobs after a
revised 22,000 drop in August in the face of a global slowdown. The number of
temporary jobs, usually considered a harbinger of future growth, fell 2,000.
Speaking to a rain-soaked crowd of 9,000 at Cleveland State University, Mr.
Obama said, “Today’s news should give us some encouragement. It shouldn’t be an
excuse for the other side to talk down the economy just to try to score some
political points.”
“We’ve made too much progress to return to the policies that led to this crisis
in the first place,” the president said to cheers.
The nation now has nearly the same number of jobs as when Mr. Obama took office
in January 2009. Since the economy stopped hemorrhaging jobs in February 2010,
there has been an increase of more than 4.3 million. A mere 61,000-job increase
would allow Mr. Obama to claim a net gain in jobs over his tenure.
The White House has already made that claim based on one measurement. In an
annual recalibration last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said 400,000
more jobs were added in the 12 months that ended in March than previously
thought. Such revisions are common, but the adjustment process is slow — that
new benchmark will not be incorporated into the monthly jobs figures until early
next year.
Mr. Romney, on other hand, said the lower rate spoke to a nation short of hope.
The rate, he asserted, would be about 11 percent if the same percentage of
people were looking for work now as on the day Mr. Obama was elected.
“If you just dropped out of the labor force, if you just give up and say, ‘Look,
I can’t go back to work, I’m just going to stay home,’ if you just drop out
altogether, why, you’re no longer part of the employment statistics, so it looks
like unemployment is getting better,” Mr. Romney said at a farm equipment
dealership in Abingdon, Va.
That was true in August, when the rate dropped to 8.1 percent, from 8.3 percent.
But this time, the statistics showed that more people were working, not that
discouraged job seekers had stopped looking for work.
The jobs report is based on two surveys, one of businesses and one of
households, that can present different pictures.
While the survey of businesses showed mediocre growth, the household survey had
a whopping increase of 873,000 people working in September. The household survey
is much more volatile and prone to sampling error, but it captures aspects of
the labor market that the business survey does not, like self-employment and
household workers. Economists said that this month’s household survey probably
overstated the improvement, but that its credibility was bolstered by an
unexpectedly robust rise in consumer confidence.
The polling firm Gallup pinpointed the improvement in consumer confidence last
month to the first day of the Democratic National Convention and attributed it
almost entirely to increased optimism among Democrats, while confidence among
Republicans remained at low levels. But Gallup could not say whether politics or
economic conditions had driven the change.
The employment gains were not spread equally. While for older workers, the
unemployment rate was the lowest in years, the unemployment rate for black men
improved only 0.1 percentage point and the portion of all black men with jobs
actually fell, to 57.5 percent.
There was no movement between August and September in a broader measure of
underemployment, which includes the jobless who have stopped looking for work
and those who work part time but would like to work full time. That stayed at
14.7 percent, though it is down from 16.4 percent a year earlier.
And 4.8 million people are in the group that has had the toughest time finding
work — those who have been unemployed for longer than six months.
Sarah Thurman, a civil engineer in Kansas City, Mo., has been looking since May
2010. “The smaller firms are starting to post job openings, and that hasn’t been
like that for over two years, but there’s so many of us without jobs that
there’s so much competition,” she said. “I’m hearing from the headhunters that
it’s going to be opening up, it’s going to be opening up — but when?”
Like Republicans and Democrats, consumers and businesses have divergent views of
the economic situation. Consumers have brightened along with the better outlook
for employment, calmer stock markets and whispers of rising home values.
Business leaders have been hanging back, more focused on a global slowdown and
domestic concerns. They say they are uncertain what the election will mean for
the business climate and are waiting in part for a resolution of the host of tax
increases and budget cuts that will be set off at the end of the year if
Congress fails to act.
The discrepancy between consumers’ mood and companies’ outlook can be easily
explained, economists said. “Businesses are much more forward-looking,” said Ms.
Zentner at Nomura.
In a survey of 400 chief financial officers conducted this summer, Grant
Thornton, a management consulting firm, found that only 37 percent foresaw the
possibility of adding workers while 18 percent said they expected to shrink over
the next six months.
Harry Kazazian, the chief executive of Exxel Outdoors, a maker of camping
equipment based in Alabama, said the election, the fiscal cliff and rapidly
shifting regulations had put him in a cautious mood.
With sales on the rise, Exxel has slowly resumed a capital investment plan that
it suspended three years ago. “We’re moving forward, but we’re doing it in steps
rather than being much more aggressive and putting ourselves out there,” Mr.
Kazazian said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if things start turning the other way,
meaning down.”
But at a Walmart in Atlanta, shoppers were loosening the reins a bit, buying
what they described as small indulgences like scented candle oil and seasonal
beer.
Michael Peacock, 43, said that although his house was in foreclosure, he could
sense enough activity in his chosen field, online marketing, that he could
afford to turn down some work outside his specialty. “I’m not superconfident in
the economy. But in my line of work, things have been getting better. There
seems to be some improvement.”
John H. Cushman Jr. contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following
correction:
Correction: October 5, 2012
An earlier version of this article misstated the increase in jobs since February
2010 and the number of jobs needed for President Obama to claim an increase
during his tenure. More than 4.3 million jobs have been added since February
2010, not more than 400,000, and an increase of 61,000 jobs, not 62,000, would
allow Mr. Obama to claim a net gain. The earlier version also misidentified the
city where Sarah Furman lives. She lives in Kansas City, Mo., not Kansas City,
Kan.
DENVER — Somewhere in the wonky blizzard of facts, statistics
and studies thrown out on stage here on Wednesday night was a fundamental
philosophical choice about the future of America, quite possibly the starkest in
nearly three decades.
As President Obama and Mitt Romney faced off for the first time, their largely
zinger-free styles may have disguised a fierce clash of views not only over
taxes, spending and health care, but over the very role of government in
American society in a time of wrenching problems.
On one side was an incumbent who, while recognizing that government is not the
solution to all problems, argued that it plays an essential part in promoting
economic growth and ensuring fairness for various segments of the population. On
the other was a challenger who, while recognizing the basic value of government,
argued that its greatest goal was to get out of the way of a free people and
unleash the American entrepreneurial spirit.
“Governor Romney has a perspective that says if we cut taxes skewed towards the
wealthy and roll back regulations, that we’ll be better off,” Mr. Obama said. He
asked: “Are we going to double down on the top-down economic policies that
helped to get us into this mess or do we embrace a new economic patriotism that
says America does best when the middle class does best?”
Mr. Romney fired back with an indictment of Mr. Obama. “The president has a view
very similar to the view he had when he ran four years ago, that a bigger
government, spending more, taxing more, regulating more — if you will,
trickle-down government — would work,” he said. “That’s not the right answer for
America. I’ll restore the vitality that gets America working again.”
There was little of the overt nastiness that has characterized the campaign this
year. Instead, the debate was perhaps as direct an articulation of the profound
schism in this election as has been heard over the course of the campaign. The
candidates spent much of the 90 minutes here at the University of Denver
defining it in narrow policy details that may have bled some of the passion out
of their arguments and made them sound smaller than they were. But at its core,
the debate brought home a divide over domestic policy greater than any since
President Ronald Reagan and Walter F. Mondale faced off in 1984.
Mr. Romney came in with the greater hurdle of explaining his vision for the
future and convincing the shrinking pool of undecided voters that it represents
a better path for a country plagued by stubborn unemployment and rising national
debt. He calmly and persistently rebutted Mr. Obama’s characterizations of his
plans while pressing his more-in-sorrow line of attack on the incumbent.
Whether he succeeded enough to change the dynamics of the race may take a day or
two to become evident.
But the Romney camp hoped his performance was strong enough to fuel a sense of
comeback heading into the final month of the campaign. After a rough few weeks,
Mr. Romney’s advisers were heartened coming into the debate by new polls showing
that the race was close nationally and somewhat closer in a few battleground
states. The Obama team arrived here worried that a bored news media would
exaggerate any perceived turnaround by Mr. Romney to promote a more compelling
race.
What they got was a substantive if sometimes hard to follow dialogue over
far-reaching issues. Both cast their positions in terms of concern over everyday
Americans, but from opposite ends. Mr. Obama expressed worry about those who
would lose out if government programs are cut too deeply, while Mr. Romney
talked about those who feel constrained by excessive government taxation and
regulation.
“The magnitude of the tax cuts that you’re talking about, governor, would end up
resulting in severe hardship for people, but more importantly would not help us
grow,” Mr. Obama said.
Referring to possible cuts in Medicaid, he said, “that may not seem like a big
deal when it just is, you know, numbers on a sheet of paper, but if we’re
talking about a family who’s got an autistic kid and is depending on that
Medicaid, that’s a big problem.”
Mr. Romney talked about the impact of the continuing economic problems, noting
that the cost of gasoline, electricity, food and health care has grown. “I’ll
call it the economy tax,” he said. “It’s been crushing.”
The Republican focused on the impact on small business of Mr. Obama’s policies.
“It’s not just Donald Trump you’re taxing,” he said. “It’s all those businesses
that employ one-quarter of the workers in America.” He added, “You raise taxes
and you kill jobs.”
Mr. Obama cited Abraham Lincoln and his efforts to finance a transcontinental
railroad, land-grant colleges and a National Academy of Sciences. It was those
sorts of investments, made by presidents of both parties, that helped make
America great by providing opportunity for progress, the president argued.
“If all Americans are getting opportunity, we’re all going to be better off,”
Mr. Obama said. “That doesn’t restrict people’s freedom. That enhances it. And
so what I’ve tried to do as president is to apply those same principles.”
Mr. Romney pointed to the president’s efforts to stimulate the growth of clean
energy with $90 billion in taxpayer assistance as an example of what government
should not be about.
“The role of government is not to become the economic player picking winners and
losers, telling people what kind of health treatment they can receive, taking
over the health care system,” he said. “The right answer for government is to
say how do we make the private sector become more efficient and more effective?”
In a way, it was the inevitable culmination of a polarized debate that
ultimately spawned the Tea Party backlash against activist government. Mr. Obama
has searched for the right blend of policies and messages to diminish antipathy
toward government, debt and liberalism. Mr. Romney, while an imperfect messenger
from the right, advanced a revision of the Great Society social compact that
even President Reagan never could achieve.
As it happens, both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney may actually be more moderate at
heart, given their records. But the debate exposed little nuance or agreement.
As they battled it out Wednesday night, neither shied away from the fight of a
generation.
Taking Stock of Some of the Claims and Counterclaims
October 4, 2012
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER
Mitt Romney repeatedly questioned President Obama’s honesty at
Wednesday night’s debate — likening the president and vice president at one
point to his five sons repeating things that were not true — but he made a
number of misleading statements himself on the size of the federal deficits,
taxes, Medicare and health care.
“I will not reduce the share paid by high-income individuals,” Mr. Romney said
to Mr. Obama, describing his plan to cut tax rates by 20 percent. “I know that
you and your running mate keep saying that, and I know it’s a popular thing to
say with a lot of people, but it’s just not the case. Look, I’ve got five boys.
I’m used to people saying something that’s not always true, but just keep on
repeating it, and ultimately hoping I’ll believe it. But that is not the case,
all right?”
But among other misleading statements, Mr. Romney falsely stated that Mr. Obama
had doubled the deficit. “The president said he’d cut the deficit in half,” Mr.
Romney charged. “Unfortunately, he doubled it.”
Mr. Obama made a number of misleading statements of his own — mainly by filling
in the blanks of some of Mr. Romney’s vague plans, usually in the least
politically palatable way. He described Mr. Romney’s tax plan as a $5 trillion
tax “cut” and said the average middle-class family would pay more, contrary to
Mr. Romney’s pledges.
Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama are hardly the first presidential candidates to use
debates to challenge the honesty of their opponents.
But this year, as the line between acceptable political debate and sophistry has
often been crossed, the accuracy of campaign statements has emerged as a
campaign issue. Here is an examination of some of the claims and counterclaims.
Doubling the Deficit
Mr. Romney said Mr. Obama had doubled the deficit. That is not true. When Mr.
Obama took office in January 2009, the Congressional Budget Office had already
projected that the deficit for fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 30 of that
year, would be $1.2 trillion. (It ended up as $1.4 trillion.) For fiscal year
2012, which ended last week, the deficit is expected to be $1.1 trillion — just
under the level in the year he was inaugurated. Measured as a share of the
economy, as economists prefer, the deficit has declined more significantly —
from 10.1 percent of the economy’s total output in 2009 to 7.3 percent for 2012.
JACKIE CALMES
The $5 Trillion Tax Cut
Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney repeatedly sparred over whether Mr. Romney has proposed
a $5 trillion tax cut.
It is true that Mr. Romney has proposed “revenue neutral” tax reform, meaning
that he would not expand the deficit. However, he has proposed cutting all
marginal tax rates by 20 percent — which would in and of itself cut tax revenue
by $5 trillion.
To make up that revenue, Mr. Romney has said he wants to clear out the
underbrush of deductions and loopholes in the tax code. But he has not yet
specified how he would do so.
This week, in a television interview, Mr. Romney did shed some light — floating
the idea of capping each household’s deductions at $17,000.
“As an option, you could say everybody’s going to get up to a $17,000 deduction.
And you could use your charitable deduction, your home mortgage deduction, or
others, your health care deduction, and you can fill that bucket, if you will,
that $17,000 bucket that way,” he said. “Higher-income people might have a lower
number.”
The deduction cap has the virtue of avoiding the tough negotiations over which
tax expenditures to unwind. Many tax expenditures are highly popular, like the
deduction for charitable giving. Moreover, many are important to the stability
of the economy. Suddenly ending the home mortgage interest deduction, for
instance, would threaten to destabilize the housing market.
But a number of unanswered questions about Mr. Romney’s tax plan remain.
For instance, Mr. Romney did not address how his proposed cap on deductions
would affect tax credits. (Generally, deductions lower a family’s level of
taxable income and credits erase part of their overall tax bill.)
It is also unclear whether his proposal to cap deductions would raise enough
revenue to pay for his income tax rate cuts — at least not without increasing
the tax burden on families making less than $200,000 a year, which Mr. Romney
has vowed that he will not do. ANNIE LOWREY
Government ‘Takeover’ Of Health Care
Mr. Romney said that Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul would allow the federal
government to “take over health care,” an assertion rejected by the president.
The 2010 health care law clearly expands the role of the federal government. But
it also builds on the foundation of private health insurance, providing
subsidies for millions of low- and moderate-income people to buy private
insurance.
Under the law, close to 30 million Americans are expected to gain health
coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Many of them would
receive insurance through the expansion of Medicaid. The federal government will
initially pay the entire cost of Medicaid coverage for newly eligible
beneficiaries and would never pay less than 90 percent.
In addition, the federal government would subsidize the purchase of private
insurance for millions of people with incomes up to four times the poverty level
(up to $92,200 for a family of four). Private insurers would thus have many new
customers.
Projections by the nonpartisan office of the actuary at the Department of Health
and Human Services show that federal, state and local government health spending
will account for nearly 50 percent of all health spending in the United States
by 2021, up from 46 percent in 2011. The federal share of all health spending is
expected to rise to more than 31 percent, from slightly less than 29 percent.
The changes reflect the expansion of Medicaid eligibility and the new subsidies
for private insurance, as well as the increase in Medicare enrollment as baby
boomers join the program.
When Mr. Romney and other Republicans complain of a federal takeover, they are
referring to more than spending and enrollment in government health programs.
They say the new health care law will require most Americans to purchase
“government-approved insurance” or pay a new tax. The tax issue was at the heart
of the Supreme Court’s much-debated 5-to-4 decision in June to uphold the
president’s health care overhaul law, the Affordable Care Act. ROBERT PEAR
Green Energy
Mr. Romney said that half the companies backed by the president’s green energy
stimulus program have gone out of business. That is a gross overstatement. Of
nearly three dozen recipients of loans under the Department of Energy’s loan
guarantee program, only three are currently in bankruptcy, although several
others are facing financial difficulties. Mr. Romney also said that “many” of
the companies that received such loans were supported by campaign contributors.
George Kaiser, a major fund-raiser for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign, was an
investor in Solyndra, the failed solar panel maker, but there are also examples
of Republican and Democratic campaign contributors who also invested in firms
supported by the loan guarantee program. JOHN M. BRODER
The $716 Billion Cut From Medicare
Mr. Obama first brought up Mr. Romney’s frequent criticism that the president
cut $716 billion from Medicare, by saying the cost savings were from reduced
payments to insurance companies and other health care providers. But Mr. Romney
repeated the claim, suggesting that the $716 billion in Medicare reductions
would indeed come from current beneficiaries.
While fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked this claim, it remains a standard
attack line for Mr. Romney.
The charge that Mr. Obama took $716 billion from Medicare recipients to pay for
“Obamacare” has several problems — not least the fact that Mr. Romney’s running
mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, included the identical savings in his budget
plans that House Republicans voted for in the past two years.
Mr. Obama did not cut benefits by $716 billion over 10 years as part of his 2010
health care law; rather, he reduced Medicare reimbursements to health care
providers, chiefly insurance companies and drug manufacturers. And the law gave
Medicare recipients more generous benefits for prescription drugs and free
preventive care like mammograms.
According to nonpartisan analysts, it is Mr. Romney who would both cut benefits
and add costs for beneficiaries if he restored the $716 billion in reductions.
Restoring higher payments to insurers and other companies would in turn increase
Medicare premiums because beneficiaries share in Medicare’s total cost. Marilyn
Moon, a vice president at the American Institutes for Research, has calculated
that a Medicare recipient’s out-of-pocket expenses would increase $577 a year on
average by 2022.
Also, the Obama reductions added eight years to the life of Medicare’s
financially troubled trust fund, to 2024, according to Medicare trustees. If the
cuts were restored, the insolvency date would revert to 2016.
But the cuts to providers could cause private Medicare plans to raise their
premiums, which is expected to reduce enrollment in them. Those changes have not
materialized yet.
October 3, 2012
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERG
DENVER — Mitt Romney on Wednesday accused President Obama of
failing to lead the country out of the deepest economic downturn since the Great
Depression, using the first presidential debate to invigorate his candidacy by
presenting himself as an equal who can solve problems Mr. Obama has been unable
to.
The president implored Americans to be patient and argued that his policies
needed more time to work, warning that changing course would wipe away the
economic progress the country is steadily making. The two quarreled aggressively
over tax policy, the budget deficit and the role of government, with each man
accusing the other of being evasive and misleading voters.
But for all of the anticipation, and with less than five weeks remaining until
Election Day, the 90-minute debate unfolded much like a seminar by a business
consultant and a college professor. Both men argued that their policies would
improve the lives of the middle class, but their discussion often dipped deep
into the weeds, and they talked over each other without connecting their ideas
to voters.
If Mr. Romney’s goal was to show that he could project equal stature to the
president, he succeeded, perhaps offering his campaign the lift that Republicans
have been seeking. Mr. Obama often stopped short of challenging his rival’s
specific policies and chose not to invoke some of the same arguments that his
campaign has been making against Mr. Romney for months.
At one point, Mr. Romney offered an admonishment, saying, “Mr. President, you’re
entitled to your own airplane and your own house, but not your own facts.” He
forcefully engaged Mr. Obama throughout the night, while the president often
looked down at his lectern and took notes.
A boisterous campaign, which has played out through dueling rallies and an
endless stream of television commercials, took a sober turn as the candidates
stood at facing lecterns for the first time. Mr. Obama, who has appeared to take
command of the race in most battleground states, seemed to adopt an air of
caution throughout the evening that left some of his liberal supporters
disappointed in his performance.
“Are we going to double down on the top-down economic policies that helped to
get us into this mess,” he said, “or do we embrace a new economic patriotism
that says, ‘America does best when the middle class does best’ “?
For much of the debate, the candidates commandeered the stage, taking control
away from the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, as they kept trying to rebut one
other. At times, the moderator seemed as if he had walked off the stage, a
result of new rules that were intended to allow for a deeper and more
freewheeling discussion.
On a basic level it was a clash of two ideologies, the president’s Democratic
vision of government playing a supporting role in spurring economic growth, and
Mr. Romney’s Republican vision that government should get out of the way of
businesses that know best how to create jobs.
Mr. Romney sought to use his moment before a prime-time audience of tens of
millions to escape the corner Mr. Obama and his allies have painted him into,
depicting him as an uncompromising adherent to policies that have been tried
before. He instead turned the focus on his opponent’s record.
“You’ve been president four years. You’ve been president four years,” Mr. Romney
said at one point. He ticked through a list of promises he said Mr. Obama had
not lived up to, and said, “Middle-income families are being crushed.”
Neither candidate delivered that knockout blow or devastating line that each
side was hoping for. Still, style points went to Mr. Romney, who continually and
methodically pressed his critique of Mr. Obama. The president at times acted
more as if he were addressing reporters in the Rose Garden than beating back a
challenger intent on taking his job.
Throughout the evening, Mr. Romney escaped Mr. Obama’s attempts to pin him down
on which deductions he would eliminate in his tax proposals.
“At some point,” Mr. Obama said, “the American people have to ask themselves: Is
the reason Governor Romney is keeping all these plans secret, is it because
they’re going to be too good? Because middle-class families benefit too much?
No.”
Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Romney for his answer to a primary debate question last
year in which he joined his fellow Republicans in saying he would not accept a
budget deal allowing $1 of tax increases for every $10 in spending cuts. “Now,
if you take such an unbalanced approach,” Mr. Obama said, “then that means you
are going to be gutting our investments in schools and education.”
Mr. Romney said his position on the tax-for-revenue deal was because of the
state of the economy, not necessarily ideology. “I’m not going to raise taxes on
anyone because when the economy’s growing slow like this, when we’re in
recession, you shouldn’t raise taxes on anyone,” he said.
He said his proposals were unlike those of other Republicans because he was
combining tax reform with lowered tax rates. “My plan is not like anything
that’s been tried before,” he said. He said he would not support any tax cuts
that added to the deficit, in other words, that were not paid for.
The debate, held at Magness Arena on the campus of the University of Denver, was
the first of three face-to-face encounters between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney. It
took place even as voters across the country were already casting early ballots.
All year Democrats have been waiting for Mr. Romney to make a more overt appeal
to the sort of moderate voters he needs to win over by highlighting the more
centrist positions from his years as Massachusetts governor. And on Wednesday he
seemed to highlight his record in ways he had yet to do.
Even as he repeated his plans to repeal the president’s health care plan, he
happily embraced the plan he pushed into law in Massachusetts — the basis for
the president’s — that is anathema to many in his party.
“I like the way we did it in Massachusetts,” Mr. Romney said of his health plan.
“We had Republicans and Democrats come together and work together.”
But an argument for bipartisanship animated much of Mr. Romney’s message through
the night. He said he had worked with Democratic legislators in Massachusetts.
And he said that he would do the same thing on his first day in the Oval Office.
The claim drew one of Mr. Obama’s sharpest retorts of the night. “I think
Governor Romney’s going to have a busy first day,” he said, “because he’s also
going to repeal ‘Obamacare,’ which will not be very popular among Democrats as
you’re sitting down with them.”
Mr. Romney pressed Mr. Obama on a provision of his health care overhaul that cut
$716 billion from the growth in Medicare, saying that by cutting fees paid to
providers it was certain to affect treatment. And he emphasized that his plans
for Medicare would not affect current beneficiaries or people close to entering
the system.
But Mr. Obama interjected, saying that if “you’re 54 or 55, you might want to
listen because this will affect you.” He said that Mr. Romney’s plans to offer
subsidies for private insurance would mean “the traditional Medicare system will
collapse.”
The discussion between the candidates often unfolded in a staccato of
statistics, making it difficult to follow. The candidates quarreled over
subsidies for the oil industry, Medicare cuts, taxes and government spending.
In the opening half of the debate, Mr. Obama sought to link Mr. Romney to former
President George W. Bush. For his part, Mr. Obama sought to link himself to the
economic policies of former President Bill Clinton.
Mr. Romney pushed back against Democrats arguments that he is proposing a form
of “trickle-down” economics that would benefit the rich and hurt he middle
class. He accused Mr. Obama of proposing “trickle-down government.”
“We know the path that we’re taking isn’t working, and it’s time for a new
path,” Mr. Romney said.
Both campaigns acknowledged that the race is close enough that the first debate
could reorder a contest that has recently appeared to be tilting in Mr. Obama’s
favor, in spite of continued economic hardship throughout the nation and a
slower recovery than he promised four years ago. The candidates meet for their
second debate on Oct. 16 in New York.
While acrimony has deepened between the rivals, the men smiled broadly as they
strode briskly onto the stage Wednesday night and exchanged a hand shake that
lingered for several seconds. The president opened his remarks by wishing his
wife a happy 20th anniversary and offered her a promise: “A year from now, we
will not be celebrating it in front of 40 million people.”
Mr. Romney congratulated Mr. Obama and drew laughter from the crowd when he
joked: “I’m sure this was the most romantic place you could imagine — here with
me.”
Resurfaced ’07 Talk by Obama Renews Questions on Race
October 3, 2012
The New York Times
By JEREMY W. PETERS and JIM RUTENBERG
In the summer of 2007, his campaign for the White House well
under way, Senator Barack Obama waded into the minefield of racial politics and
accused President George W. Bush of sitting idly by as a “quiet riot” simmered
in black communities.
The news created a stir. NBC News featured it on its “Nightly News” broadcast.
The Washington Post and The Chicago Tribune wrote about it, and it was mentioned
in a New York Times Op-Ed column. The conservative writer and pundit Tucker
Carlson devoted an entire segment to it on his MSNBC program.
Then the speech largely faded away — until last month, when someone calling
himself “Sore Throwt” started e-mailing conservative activists and news media
outlets claiming to have a bombshell video that would jolt the presidential
election.
On Tuesday, the eve of the first presidential debate between Mr. Obama and Mitt
Romney, Mr. Carlson’s current venture, The Daily Caller, a Web site started with
financial help from the conservative donor Foster Friess, put the video back in
circulation.
And its report brought to the forefront a wave of questions that have long been
favorite topics in conservative circles: about Mr. Obama’s views on race; his
associations with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.; and
whether the mainstream media was willfully ignoring embarrassing episodes from
Mr. Obama’s past.
The video of Mr. Obama’s 2007 remarks shows him saying complimentary things
about Mr. Wright, questioning whether race was a reason that federal aid was
slow to reach New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and speaking in a more
distinctly African-American cadence than he normally uses in public addresses.
By Wednesday morning, it had mushroomed into a lead story on the network news
programs, a dominant theme of cable news coverage and a developing story online.
For conservatives like Mr. Carlson, the episode was complete vindication. Months
ago, many Republicans rushed to distance themselves from an aborted plan by
another conservative donor, Joe Ricketts, to finance a campaign that would have
touched on similar themes, and Democrats dismissed the video this time as old
news. Yet with the campaign moving into its final stages, and Republicans
struggling to overcome the fallout from a video in which Mr. Romney was secretly
taped making disparaging comments about the “47 percent,” the Obama video
quickly caught fire.
Mr. Carlson and the editors of his Web site, which was founded with $3.5 million
in seed money from Mr. Friess, who was a leading backer of Rick Santorum’s
“super PAC,” immediately saw the relevance of the tape to their conservative
audience. To them, what Mr. Obama said in the video was a perfect confluence of
all their complaints about the way the mainstream media has covered Mr. Obama:
credulously and insufficiently.
The Drudge Report picked up word of the news before it broke, alerting readers
on Tuesday afternoon that a major scoop was coming. “The Accent ... The Anger
... The Accusations,” the headline teased.
After Mr. Carlson posted the article on his Web site, timed for the prime-time
Fox News programming lineup, he appeared on the Sean Hannity program on Fox to
explain what he had found. More than three million people tuned in, a
substantially larger audience than usual. There was the president, speaking in a
way that he usually does not in public, telling a black audience, a group of
clergy members at Hampton University in Virginia, that the government did not
care about them.
The president was using racial tensions to try to divide America into different
classes of people, Mr. Carlson argued. And the accent? To him, it was further
evidence of the argument that many Obama opponents on the right have been
pushing in their writings, talk shows and films for years: We don’t really know
who this man is.
A conspiracy theory cottage industry has sprung up around the notion that Mr.
Obama is somehow foreign, if not by birth than by ideology. Donald Trump
breathed new life into a career as a cable news pundit by repeatedly questioning
if the president’s birth certificate was authentic.
Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative author and filmmaker, has a new movie in
theatrical release called “Obama 2016” that argues that Mr. Obama’s father, a
Kenyan, instilled anti-Americanism in his son at an early age.
One of the film’s financial backers was Mr. Ricketts, the founder of TD
Ameritrade, who considered getting behind a multimillion-dollar ad campaign that
would have linked Mr. Obama to his former pastor, Mr. Wright, who became a
source of embarrassment for the president.
In many ways, Mr. Hannity was an ideal first stop for Mr. Carlson. Throughout
the year Mr. Hannity has featured a segment called “Vetting the President,”
often focusing on foibles from Mr. Obama’s past or over his tenure. As Mr.
Hannity said in March, “We call it ‘Vetting the President.’ Because the
mainstream media, they’re not going to do it. They helped elect him. They hid a
lot of things about his past.”
And after the video’s release on The Daily Caller and Mr. Hannity’s program, it
was the talk of the rest of the conservative news media. “Clearly race-baiting,
clearly angry, and I’m telling you: This is who he is to this day,” Rush
Limbaugh told his radio audience on Wednesday. Mr. Carlson declined to say on
Tuesday how he acquired the video, which news networks have had in their
libraries since it was shot. He said only that he had received the video in the
last few days.
The video had apparently been circulating in conservative circles at least a
week. One person contacted about it described receiving an e-mail pitch from
someone calling himself Sore Throwt, a pun on Deep Throat, who helped uncover
the Watergate scandal.
Sore Throwt wanted to be paid in exchange for handing over the video, this
person said, speaking anonymously in order to divulge a conversation he had
promised to keep confidential.
Mr. Carlson would not say whether he paid for the tape.
But he scoffed at the notion that he was merely recycling old news. What he
thought was most provocative about it — Mr. Obama’s apparent attempt to link
race to the slow Katrina recovery effort — did not, he said, receive coverage at
the time, including on his own program. “We’ve already seen this? Really? That’s
untrue,” he said, objecting to criticisms that the tape offered little new. “I
feel like I’m in an alternative universe.”
“How long
did you rehearse the scene where those third graders freak out about the
Electoral College?” I’ve been asked that several times after screenings of
“Electoral Dysfunction,” from which this Op-Doc video is adapted.
The answer is we didn’t. We simply held an election: Colored Pencils vs.
Markers. When Markers won the popular vote but Colored Pencils prevailed in the
Electoral College, it got ugly fast. Turns out third graders have an uncorrupted
sense of fairness.
The men who foisted this system on us were hardly more enthusiastic about it.
Delegates to the Constitutional Convention voted at least 60 times on how
presidents were to be chosen. They rejected the idea of popular election — and
they repeatedly scrapped versions of the Electoral College. In other words, they
were against it before they were for it.
Proponents like to say it was created to protect “small states,” which is a much
nicer way of saying it was created to protect “slave states.” Indeed, that’s one
of the reasons it was created. Under the Constitution’s 3/5 clause, each slave —
otherwise treated as 0/5 of a person — was counted as 3/5 of a person, thereby
bolstering Southern states’ share of electoral votes.
Today it certainly favors states with smaller populations: about 139,000
eligible voters in Wyoming get one Electoral College vote. But it takes nearly
478,000 eligible voters in Pennsylvania to get an Electoral College vote. (Does
Wyoming really need to be protected? I’m pretty sure the Cowboy State can take
care of itself.)
Most of these smaller states are red, which may be why I’ve found more
Republicans than Democrats defending the Electoral College. But Mitt Romney is
polling better nationally than in swing states. And three Republican electors
have threatened to cast their votes — votes that actually count — for Ron Paul.
They can do that.
Should Romney win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College vote, both
sides will have been burned in 12 years. And the Electoral College will lose its
accreditation faster than you can say “one person, one vote.”
One effort to eliminate the Electoral College has momentum. The National Popular
Vote Initiative is an interstate compact under which participating states pledge
their Electoral College votes to the national vote winner. It will take effect
only when states totaling the winning number of 270 electoral votes commit.
States with 132 electoral votes have already signed on.
I don’t know if this initiative will succeed — but if it does, it will transform
American presidential contests by making them truly national races, in which
every vote counts equally.
And I know a bunch of 9-year-olds ready to vote for it.
Mo Rocca is a correspondent for “CBS Sunday Morning” and the host of “Electoral
Dysfunction,” a feature-length documentary airing on PBS in October, from which
this Op-Doc — the third in a series of four — is adapted. He also wrote the
foreword to “Electoral Dysfunction: A Survival Manual for Voters” by Victoria
Bassetti, which includes a chapter on the history and flaws of the Electoral
College.
