The Commentariat -- Oct. 23, 2012

Presidential Race

Every time you've offered an opinion, you've been wrong. -- President Barack Obama, to Mitt Romney, during the final 2012 presidential debate

Syria is Iran's path to the sea. -- Mitt Romney (The two countries don't share a border & Iran has about 1,500 miles of coastline.)

Obama's bin Laden. -- Bob Schieffer

David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "President Obama seemed to use the authority of his office to put ... Mitt Romney on his heels in their final presidential debate Monday night, telling Romney he didn't understand foreign-policy problems as well as he does." The New York Times report, by Peter Baker & Helene Cooper, is here.

... The full transcript is here, via the Washington Post.

How Obama delivers a prepared zinger -- and perhaps the only memorable lines from the foreign policy debate. It was nice of Romney to provide the set-up:

NEW. Amy Davidson of the New Yorker has an entertaining take on the debate. Read to the end. ...

... NEW. John Cassidy's assessment is more detailed.

Joe Klein of Time: "President Obama won the foreign policy debate, cleanly and decisively, on both style and substance. It was as clear a victory as Mitt Romney's in the first debate. And Romney lost in similar fashion: he seemed nervous, scattered, unconvincing -- and he practiced unilateral disarmament, agreeing with Obama hither and yon -- on Iraq (as opposed to two weeks ago), on Afghanistan (as opposed to interviews he's given this fall), on Libya and Syria and Iran. He didn't have a single creative or elegantly stated foreign policy thought and, indeed, seemed foolish at times, using the word peace about as often as George McGovern in 1972 (not that McGovern was foolish, but Romney has run so hot and aggressive on foreign policy that he seemed a sudden convert to transcendental meditation or Yoko Ono's secret consort)."

Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog thinks Obama should graciously accept Mitt Romney's endorsement. Thanks to Victoria D. for the link.

Josh Marshall of TPM: "Romney looked pained and rambling through most of the debate. I don't think I've ever seen Romney sweat like that, literally or figuratively. And I think national security politics mainly revolves around demonstrations of strength and coherence. To put a finer point on it, dominance. On that count, Obama won hands down."

Steve Kornacki of Salon: Monday's debate was Obama's best debate performance & Romney's worst. Too bad it will likely have a much smaller audience & little effect on the election.

Michael Hirsh of the National Journal: "... in making a vague and restrained case for a stronger America that would nonetheless steer clear of military involvement in hot spots such as Iran and Syria, Romney rendered almost moot any serious differences he might have with President Obama over foreign policy. All of which only raised a question not helpful to Romney's case: Why replace the man in the Oval Office?"

Glenn Greenwald liveblogs the debate. Not too long & definitely worth a read.

Steve Erlanger of the New York Times: "Monday night's American presidential debate on foreign policy presented a skewed vision of the world, even the world defined by American national interests."

Charles Pierce files "a report form the flip-floppy debate." He doesn't let anybody off the hook, including you & me.

Howard Fineman: The Obama campaign says Mitt Romney was just flat-out lying when he claimed he had favored government support of the auto industry bailout. Romney backers can't seem to defend Romney's claim. No link.

Chuck Todd says Romney sounded like he was giving a book report of places in foreign countries. He sez Republicans he talked to were unhappy with Romney's answers. The Obama campaign is feeling good. "Romney never engaged the President on the toughest zingers." You know the night was a bust for Romney when Chuckie doesn't go the he-said/he-said route.

Rachel Maddow (& contributor Victoria D.) report the CBS insta-poll of undecided voters: 53% said Obama won the debate to 23% for Romney. CNN insta-poll of registered voters: 48% for Obama; 40% said Romney won. ...

... Nate Silver analyzes last night's insta-poll results & possible impacts of the debate.

Obama's first post-debate ad, which according to Greg Sargent is going up in nine states. "By contrast," Sargent writes, "Romney's new ad features footage of him at yesterday's debate attacking Obama for his ... fictional apology tour":

... Matt Vasilogambros of the National Journal: "... President Obama's campaign is releasing a 20-page booklet called 'Blueprint for America's Future' on Tuesday and airing a new television ad [above] to support it. While several of his policy initiatives are not new, laid out in the last State of the Union address and during Obama's convention speech in September, they are likely the basis for his campaign's messaging in the final two weeks of the election.... The Obama campaign plans on printing 3.5 million copies of the plan and it will be distributed to campaign field offices...." ...

... CW: there's an online version of the booklet, beginning here. Nice that on every single page, including the overview, there is a campaign contribution form.

Michael Tomasky of Newsweek must have a crystal ball. Otherwise, how could he possibly know that "Romney is going to lie like crazy..., trying to Etch a Sketch away 18 months' worth of war-mongering neocon statements and positions." ...

... CW: We'll just see if he's right. The New York Times will be liveblogging & fact-checking the debate. ...

     ... Update: the Times now has an interactive feature with its fact-checking entries pegged to video of the debate.

Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times: "The Romney campaign is spending so much time on Benghazi only because Mr. Obama's foreign policy record is strong."

Hamed Aleaziz of Think Progress: "Efraim Halevy, former chief of Israel’s spy agency the Mossad, said in two separate interviews on Sunday and Monday that President Obama's approach toward Iran has been "'courageous' and 'brave.'" Halevy said, "What Romney is doing is mortally destroying any chance of a resolution without war."

Michael Birnbaum & Keith Richburg of the Washington Post: "From Europe to China to the Middle East, perceptions of the contest have lagged behind indications that [President Obama & Mitt Romney] are in a virtual dead heat. Obama remains widely popular abroad, and there are signs that many leaders are unprepared for a Romney presidency.... From the Scottish Highlands to the heel of Italy, it's Obama country all the way. One survey last month from the German Marshall Fund found Europeans breaking 75 percent for Obama and 8 percent for Romney. Even conservative leaders have maneuvered themselves to appear closer to the U.S. president...."

Zack Ford of Think Progress: "Mitt Romney's campaign seemed to flip-flop last week on whether he supports an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning same-sex marriage, but the convoluted clarification demonstrated that his positions on the issue are purely political and as insensitive as ever.... Romney clearly doesn't have families in mind -- he just wants to appeal to both conservatives and moderates by having no discernible position at all."

Josh Marshall of TPM: Ronna Romney, an ex-sister-in-law of Mitt Romney who "has a minor role in the Romney campaign..., posted ... grotesque images of the mangled body of the late Ambassador Chris Stevens with the words 'Obama killed him' surrounded by dripping blood.... A few TPM Readers note ... that [she] ... seemed not to realize or not to care that the picture on the right is of the late Libya dictator Gaddafi. Later Update: And she took it down."

Gilma Avalos & Brian Hamacher of NBC South Florida: "A blimp-like aircraft carrying a Mitt Romney campaign message crash landed in a field in Davie, [Florida,] Sunday night, officials said." A commenter writes, "They probably took Mitt's advise and decided to cut a few windows in the balloon once it was in the air." He's referring to this:

Congressional Races

If Claire McCaskill were a dog, she'd be a 'Bullshitsu.' -- Rick Tyler, senior advisor to Rep. Todd Akin, in a tweet playing on Akin's remark in which he compared McCaskill to a dog

Other Stuff

Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times reviews Jeff Toobin's The Oath, a book about the Roberts Court.

William Greider, who covered George McGovern for the Washington Post during the 1972 presidential campaign, writes a fine remembrance of McGovern.

Alan Cowell of the New York Times: "The director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation on Tuesday defended the institution's handling of a burgeoning sex abuse scandal involving one of its best-known personalities, saying the corporation was not trying to 'avoid answering questions' and had begun inquiries that were 'the opposite of an attempt to hide things.'" CW: this story is a proverbial "sticky wicket" for the Times as its incoming CEO Mark Thompson was director general of the BBC when a BBC investigative program dropped its planned story about serial sex-abuse allegations against popular BBC personality Jimmy Savile. Thompson pleads ignorance.

News Ledes

AP: "The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago upheld a lower court's finding that Indiana violated federal regulations when it enacted a law that denied Planned Parenthood Medicaid funds for general health services including cancer screenings."

CBS News: "Massachusetts state officials say they found unclean conditions including visible black specks of fungus in steroids made by a pharmacy linked to a deadly outbreak of meningitis. Gov. Deval Patrick said Tuesday the state has moved to revoke the license of the New England Compounding Center and three pharmacists. The state also said it is launching a criminal investigation into the company that is identified as the source of a 17-state meningitis outbreak."

New York Times: John Kiriakou, "a former Central Intelligence Agency officer accused of leaking to journalists the identities of two former colleagues involved in the agency's detention and interrogation program for high-level Qaeda suspects, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a single charge. The plea deal was a victory for the Obama administration's crackdown on unauthorized disclosures of government secrets."

ABC News: "The housing market is revving up and gaining strength in some parts of the country. Average US home prices rose 1.3 percent in the third quarter -- the biggest quarterly gain since 2006, according to the third quarter Zillow Real Estate Market Reports. But the pace of the recovery is uneven."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 22, 2012

Presidential Race

Anne Gearan & David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "when President Obama meets Republican challenger Mitt Romney in Boca Raton, Fla., he will face an opponent who has already made up tremendous ground on the subject by criticizing Obama as weak, waffling and distracted by his reelection goals."

Matt Spetalnick & Steve Holland of Reuters: "When President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney face off on Monday in their third and final debate, it will be the Republican challenger's last best chance to recover from his botched 'Libya moment' and exploit vulnerabilities in his opponent's foreign policy record. But Romney has an uphill struggle to make his case against Obama, who will be buoyed by the advantages of incumbency as well as polls showing him with an edge -- though a shrinking one -- on the question of who is more trusted in global affairs."

A new Obama ad highlights the contrasts between Romney's foreign policy views & Obama's accomplishments:

CW: I think this American Bridge ad is just a Web video. I hope they run it -- or a 30-second version -- on the teevee:

Mark Murray of NBC News: "Heading into Monday's final debate and with just over two weeks until Election Day, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney are now tied nationally, according the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll." ...

... James Hohmann of Politico: "A new Politico/George Washington University Battleground Tracking Poll of 1,000 likely voters -- taken from Sunday through Thursday of last week -- shows Romney ahead of Obama by two points, 49 to 47 percent. That represents a three-point swing in the GOP nominee's direction from a week ago but is still within the margin of error. Obama led 49 percent to 48 percent the week before." ...

... CW: John Cassidy of the New Yorker has more on polling results, but it's too depressing for me to read. ...

... Nate Silver 2: "The bad news for President Obama: it's been almost a week since the second presidential debate.... But there is little sign that this has translated into a bounce for Mr. Obama.... Instead, the presidential race may have settled into a period of relative stability. There is bad news for Mr. Romney as well, however. The 'new normal' ... is considerably more favorable for him than the environment before the first debate, in Denver. However, it is one in which he still seems to be trailing, by perhaps 2 percentage points, in the states that are most vital in the Electoral College." ...

... Nate Silver 1: "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." ...

... Here's some better news. Sarah Dutton, et al., of CBS News: "President Obama is holding on to a five-point lead over Republican Mitt Romney in Ohio, but that margin has been cut in half since September, according to a new Quinnipiac University/CBS News poll.... A gender gap persists: ... The president enjoys a 15-point lead with women, while Romney is ahead by seven points among men, 51 to 44 percent." Yesterday I linked to a poll that had Obama up in Ohio by only one point, which is to say -- zip.

E. J. Dionne: "There is every reason to wish that Obama would pull [his second-term agenda] together in a more inspiring way. Some of us would like him to be much bolder in addressing income inequality, the huge roadblocks to upward mobility, and the persistence of poverty. But is there is an Obama second-term agenda? Yes, there is."

New Yorker Editors: "The reëlection of Barack Obama is a matter of great urgency. Not only are we in broad agreement with his policy directions; we also see in him what is absent in Mitt Romney -- a first-rate political temperament and a deep sense of fairness and integrity."

Paul Krugman: "Over the past few months advisers to the Romney campaign have mounted a furious assault on the notion that financial-crisis recessions are different.... A white paper from Romney advisers argues that the only thing preventing a rip-roaring boom is the uncertainty created by President Obama.... Nobody should believe them.... The Romney team is willfully, nakedly, distorting the record...."

Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: "A new Romney ad puts in one place five claims that have been previously debunked." CW: Wow! Five big lies in 30 seconds! Could this be a record? Probably not.

Oh, great. Bill Keller tells Mitt Romney what to say in the debate tonight. The usefulness of Keller's advice column is to remind us of how many ways Romney is a foreign-policy jackass. Nonetheless, I expect he will take some of Keller's advice. It's up to Obama -- oh, will he do it? -- to remind viewers of Romney's many stupid, bellicose positions & remarks & suggest -- accurately -- that Romney is a ticking timebomb. Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy" ad seems almost appropriate.

Scott Shane of the New York Times: intelligence officers routinely take several days to prepare public statements to describe intelligence gathered in the field. "The gap between the talking points prepared for [U.N. Ambassador Susan] Rice and the contemporaneous field reports that seemed to paint a much different picture illustrates how the process of turning raw field reports, which officials say need to be vetted and assessed, into polished intelligence assessments can take days, long enough to make them outdated by the time senior American officials utter them."

New York Times Editors: Mitt Romney & President Obama agree: "Government does not create jobs. Except that it does, millions of them.... Public-sector job loss means trouble for everyone.... If not for state and local budget austerity, [a] report found, the economy would have 2.3 million more jobs today, half of which would be in the private sector." CW: I really don't think Obama fundamentally understands macroeconomics. He would be a lot smarter if he read Krugman regularly.

Worse Than You Thought. Contributor Haley S. noticed an important correction to a New York Times editorial I linked yesterday, one which discussed the dire consequences of the Romney-Ryan plan for healthcare coverage: "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." (No link.)

Congressional Races

The New York Times Editors endorse candidates in Congressional races in New York state & Connecticut.

AND Rep. Todd Akin (RTP-Missouri), who is running to unseat Sen. Claire McCaskill (D), likens her to a dog.

A Democrat Self-Destructs. Alex Altman of Time: "During a testy exchange in a Thursday night [Arizona Senate] debate, moderator Brahm Resnik quipped, 'Now I know how Candy Crowley felt.' he said. To which [Democratic candidate Richard] Carmona replied: 'You're prettier than her,' and patted the moderator's hand. 'Not sure how to take that,' Resnik said. Nor should women in Arizona."

Other Stuff

Washington Post Editors: "George McGovern was a product of some of this country's best traditions -- religious and political -- and also of a long, grinding economic Depression that shaped the ideas and behavior of much of his generation. He was a patriot, a war hero and, as most who met or knew him would testify, a remarkably civil and pleasant man." ...

... Former Sen. & Republican Leader Bob Dole (R-Kansas) writes a very affecting remembrance of George McGovern.

... Joan Walsh of Salon writes a very informative post on the career of George McGovern. ...

... Joshua Rothman calls up some old New Yorker stories about McGovern.

** Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog: the lack of public oversight -- in all 50 states -- of privately-owned voting machines is a serious problem that throws into question the integrity & accuracy of election results. For Chuck Todd of NBC News to dismiss this issue as a "conspiracy theory" does a great disservice to NBC viewers. Friedman includes numerous instances of voting machine error or purposeful manipulation of the tally. CW: I don't say often enough that Chuck Todd is a Class A (& you know what the "A" stands for) idiot. ...

Photo by Irene Tanabe.... Audrey McAvoy of the AP: "A photograph of a 93-year-old World War II veteran casting what will likely be his last ballot has captured the hearts of tens of thousands of Internet users. The photo shows Frank Tanabe lying in a hospital bed at home as his daughter Barbara Tanabe helps him fill out his absentee ballot. A half-million people saw the picture on the website Reddit after his grandson posted it there on Thursday, making it one of the most popular items on the social media network for a day after.... Tanabe volunteered to join the Army from behind barbed wire at the Tule Lake internment camp in California.... The Army assigned Tanabe to the Military Intelligence Service, a classified unit whose members were collectively awarded the Congressional Gold Medal last year...."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Tens of thousands of people with chronic conditions and disabilities may find it easier to qualify for Medicare coverage of potentially costly home health care, skilled nursing home stays and outpatient therapy under policy changes planned by the Obama administration. In a proposed settlement of a nationwide class-action lawsuit, the administration has agreed to scrap a decades-old practice that required many beneficiaries to show a likelihood of medical or functional improvement before Medicare would pay for skilled nursing and therapy services."

Los Angeles Times: "Radcliffe Haughton, a 45-year-old Wisconsin man suspected of killing three people and wounding four others in a Sunday morning shooting at a spa, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot, police said. Police said they found Haughton's body inside the Azana Salon and Spa in the western Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield, where the shooting erupted shortly after 11 a.m." The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story is here.

Washington Post: "Authorities in Jordan have disrupted a major terrorist plot by al-Qaeda-linked operatives to launch near-simultaneous attacks on multiple civilian and government targets, reportedly including the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Amman, Western and Middle Eastern officials said Sunday. The Jordanian government issued a statement describing the plot and saying that 11 people with connections to al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq have been arrested."

Washington Post: "As the number of people sickened with meningitis after receiving contaminated steroid injections continues to rise, lawsuits are starting to pile up. At least 12 people have filed separate complaints in federal and state courts seeking damages from the compounding pharmacy that produced the steroids, New England Compounding Center of Framingham, Mass."

Reuters: "Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France< titles and banned for life on Monday after the International Cycling Union (UCI) ratified the United States Anti-Doping Agency's (USADA) sanctions against the American. 'Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling,' UCI President Pat McQuaid told a news conference as he outlined how cycling would have to start again." AP story here.

Romney in Massachusetts

By Marsha Mirkin
Wellesley, Massachusetts

Here I am, a resident of Massachusetts listening to my former Governor speak convincingly and with seeming conviction at the Denver debate. I was startled by my Déjà vu experience and by the assumptions held by my out-of-town friends about Mr. Romney’s governorship. So, as an editor and author of articles and texts about social and political contexts, I wanted to ... share my understanding of Mr. Romney’s governorship and the implications for the Presidency. Massachusetts is known as a liberal state, but we often vote for Republican governors, and the three governors who immediately preceded Mr. Romney were Republicans. Mr. Romney was a one term governor who left office with a 31% approval rating, the 3rd lowest in the entire country. What does our experience in Massachusetts say to the country?

Mr. Romney claims to have experience reaching across the aisle. Maybe he did do some reaching, but not much of it went toward the Democrats. In his first two years of office, he vetoed legislation at more than twice the rate of Republican predecessor Governor Weld. Governor Romney had a record 800 vetoes (most of which were overturned, sometimes unanimously). One example is when the legislature provided a budget amendment to stop contracting with companies that outsource state work to other countries. Governor Romney vetoed the provision. This meant that he supported outsourcing jobs at the expense of U.S. workers. He also started a huge campaign to unseat Democratic legislators, but failed and ended up with even fewer Republican seats than before he took office.

Governor Romney correctly claims that Massachusetts rose to #1 in education—but it was based on former Governor Weld’s education reform plan. Governor Romney moved in the opposite direction--he vetoed bills that would have strengthened preschool education.

However, the issue is not so much how he voted, but that Mr. Romney won the governorship by presenting himself in one way, as a social and fiscal moderate (some saw him as a social progressive), and by the end of his single term, he had acted in an entirely different way. He said during his campaign that he favored stem cell research and then vetoed a bill to fund it. He argued for a lower minimum wage than the state legislature ended up passing (over his veto). He vetoed a bill funding hate crimes prevention, and took back money approved by a former Republican governor for a bullying prevention program. He denied all requests for commutations and pardons, including one from a soldier serving in Iraq whose was convicted at age 13 for a BB gun incident. He vetoed emergency contraception. He raised many fees in my state—even quadrupling the gasoline delivery fees.

Governor Romney certainly approved some pieces of legislation that I did support but that does not change a major problem: Mr. Romney re-created himself and changed his positions during the first Presidential debate in your city because he must sound more moderate in order to win the independent vote. After that, all bets are off. We in Massachusetts know all about that. We elected a governor expecting him to be one thing and then he did something totally different and got on the national stage. He entered the governorship with a 61% approval rating and left with an abysmal 31% and with many of us scratching our heads and wondering whom we elected. The difference between then and now is that you have Mr. Romney’s speeches and positions from this past year and the contradictions during the debate. You can get nonpartisan information from factcheck.org. And, you now know what he was like in Massachusetts. So, I hope the country doesn’t have to go through what Massachusetts went through. Regardless of your political beliefs, this constant turning into something we didn’t vote for is no way to run a state, never mind a country.

Related links:

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/romneys-jobs-record-is-best-or-worst/

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/spinning-romneys-debt/

http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2012/10/15/nine-mass-seniors-would-have-paid-extra-under-medicare-plan-similar-mitt-romney-according-study/njDAnjhUzDqDNrMEEkvIkK/story.html

http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/10/be_your_own_fact-checker_in_ob.html

CW: Mirkin is a professor of psychology at Lasell College in Massachusetts. Contributor Julie obtained Mirkin's permission to publish her letter here. I have made one minor edit (noted at the ellipsis) with Mirkin's permission.

If you wish to comment on Mirkin's letter, which I found tremendously helpful, please do so in the Commentariat.