This past week, Mitt Romney finally clinched the Republican presidential nomination. Tuesday’s Texas GOP primary, a largely uncontested election especially with the conspicuous absence of Texas Congressman and perennial presidential candidate Ron Paul, formalized the former Massachusetts governor’s status as President Barack Obama’s general election challenger.
While Romney’s nomination has been virtually assured for a month, Tuesday marked the culmination of several years of work, dating back to his unsuccessful 2008 bid for the presidency and perhaps far earlier.
On the eve of the Tuesday Texas primary Romney told reporters aboard his campaign plane that “It’ll be a big day tomorrow. I’m looking forward to the good news.”
As the GOP stalwart filed into Texas voting booths however, Romney’s focus was hundreds of miles north where he was scheduled to court voters and donors in Colorado and Nevada during a two-state swing punctuated by a Las Vegas fundraiser with right wing fanatic businessman, Donald Trump. The evening event, set for the Trump International Hotel, came amidst fresh criticism from both Republicans and Democrats over Trump’s continued questioning of President Obama’s citizenship. Maybe if Trump ran for the presidency and won, stuff would get done in Congress because Trump seems to be the one force that brings Republicans and Democrats together.
Anyway, Romney has thus far failed to condemn Trump’s false claims, offering a fresh example of the presidential contender’s reluctance to confront his party’s more extreme elements. There have been other examples in recent weeks that have also served to underscore Romney’s delicate push to win over skeptical conservatives while appealing to moderates and independents who generally deliver general election victories.
Recently asked to weigh in on Trump’s support for the so-called birther movement, Romney declined to condemn Trump’s latest assertion that Obama was born in Kenya. “I don’t agree with all the people who support me,” Romney answered. “And my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in,” Romney told reporters before flying from California to Colorado this past Monday evening. “But I need to get 50.1 percent or more and I’m appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people.”
Polling suggests that the 2012 election between candidates Romney and Obama will be close, ultimately decided more than likely by just a few swing states, Colorado, and Nevada among them. Consequently, Romney will begin campaigning in the northern Colorado town of Craig before flying to Las Vegas for an afternoon rally before the Trump fundraiser.
The seemingly endless and painful GOP primary season ended this week, to the collective relief of most of us, Republicans and Democrats alike although I must admit a sense of giddiness as I watched the Republican candidates rip into each other. For his staying power, Romney was awarded 152 delegates in Texas while his former Republican rivals Santorum and Gingrich have already endorsed him. Cantankerous to the end however, Ron Paul has refused to endorse Romney although he has halted all active campaigning. Gingrich, in fact, attended the Trump fundraiser as a Romney supporter.
Under similar circumstance last week, Romney swept all the delegates in GOP primaries in Kentucky and Arkansas and picked up more endorsements from party leaders who heretofore had been more than just a little reluctant to stand up and be counted as Romney supporters.
Romney’s meeting with Trump however has generated more interest than his tightened grasp on the Republican nomination. “I do not understand the cost benefit here” conservative commentator George Will stated on ABC’s Sunday morning news show. When asked by Jake Tapper how Romney expects the American people and the media to take him seriously when he allies himself with Trump, Will looked at Tapper for a moment as if he had not a clue and then responded, “The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious it seems to me. Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics.” Will continued “Again, I don’t understand the benefit. What is Romney seeking?”
Trump revived the false claims about Obama’s birthplace last week citing a discredited story about a literary agency that mistakenly listed that Obama was born in Kenya. While Romney briefly addressed the issue Monday, his senior aide Eric Fehrnstrom also declined to condemn Trump’s remarks in a recent interview. “I can’t speak for Donald Trump,” Fehrnstrom was quoted as saying, “but I can tell you that Mitt Romney accepts that President Obama was born in the United States.” Fehrnstrom added that Romney “doesn’t view the place of his birth (Obama) as an issue in this campaign.”
Mitt Romney has been criticized on several occasions for failing to speak out against extremist rhetoric from his party. The reluctance stands in contrast to the 2008 GOP presidential nominee and current Romney supporter, Senator John McCain, R-AZ., who once corrected a supporter who called Obama a Muslim.
Campaigning in Cleveland earlier in the month, Romney did not initially respond to a supporter who suggested that Obama should be tried for treason. He said after the rally that he didn’t agree.
Some critics also claimed that Romney was slow to condemn conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh who said a college student defending President Obama’s contraception policy was “a slut.” At the time, Romney initially declined to weigh in on the issue before finally saying, “It’s not the language” he would have used.
All of this my friends, is nothing compared to the rhetoric that is to come. You can bet your ever loving last derivative on that.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
My Memorial Day 2012
In Washington, D.C., adjacent to the many towering white marble monuments and memorials that populate that city, there is a wall of black, polished marble. It emerges, “like a gash,” some have said, from the ground and, after making an angular turn, at length returns to the ground once again. On the dark face of that wall are inscribed the names of 58, 132 men and women from the American armed services who either died, or were reported and remain missing in action, during the war in Vietnam.
This is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The dedication reads: “In honor of the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States who served in the Vietnam War. The names of those who gave their lives and of those who remain missing are inscribed in the order that they were taken from us.” Since its opening in 1985, the Wall has been visited by hundreds of thousands of Americans—families and friends of the dead and missing, visiting sightseers in our nation’s capital, and veterans. They all come to remember the war that over its ten year duration claimed a heavy butcher’s bill from America in money, material, time and energy but most of all lives—the war which became, as many claim, “the only war America ever lost.”
Unlike the other monuments in Washington, the Vietnam Memorial has become a type of depository of personal memories to the war dead from their families, friends and brothers in arms and sometimes, even from strangers. Every day, personal notes and other items of significance to the living and the dead are left behind in the cracks between the large black panels of the monument, or on the fringe of green lawn in front of it. These have been collected and stored in a warehouse and have recently begun to be sifted through by writers and edited into publications like The Wall and Shrapnel in the Heart.
Vietnam memorials come in all forms, expressing all types of emotions: pride, anger, frustration, discouragement,sadness and loss, just to name a few.
My first commanding officer in Vietnam was Lieutenant Edsall Frick, killed in action in 1968. The first time I ever set eyes on the wall, I frantically searched out his name in the huge telephone book like directory (there are several), located the panel on which his name had been mounted and found this message from a previous visitor, “Finally, America has awakened and taken home those of us who live and remember you and all the others…I kept your spirit alive till America woke up Sir. I’m done. Rest well my friend, my Lieutenant.”
Another message to another fallen comrade is etched in my memory as deeply as it is carved on the wall, “Still don’t know why. Think you guys may be better off. Strange…”
In many ways these personal messages are a unique dimension in the American experience of remembering those who have made the supreme sacrifice of their lives in our military services. Yet Vietnam still falls in the shadows of the dark, looming question: Why?
In wars fought previous to Vietnam, Americans at least believed they knew what they were fighting and dying for. But my war, the Vietnam War, has no name because there has never been a consensus as to why we fought and died there.
As American soldiers, sailors and air force personnel return from the war in Iraq, and with the soon and hoped for return of our forces from Afghanistan, a discussion of how Americans returning from Vietnam were and have been treated is timely and its significance for our country and for all of us as citizens is appropriate to discuss.
The war in Vietnam ended in 1975, with the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese army. But because of the great conflict and confusion that arose during the war and continued in its aftermath, not only were the veterans often ignored or even hated by their country, but the dead were left without a memorial expressing the appreciation and gratitude which the American people have in the past so freely demonstrated toward their fallen warriors.
The monument we visit today was at last erected in 1985, paid for by the private contributions of citizens, among them many veterans and their families as well as the families of those who had fallen. The time had finally come to speak about the war in Southeast Asia and about those men and women who gave their lives in the conflict. The outpouring of private messages and gifts at the Wall is one indication of how eager so many were to break the silence and raise a memorial to the dead, and in so doing attempt to come to grips with the conflict, confusion and hurt of both personal and national loss.
The more than 58,000 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial represent many personal tragedies but an even greater national tragedy is seen in the fact that the whole generation of Vietnam-era veterans has fallen under a cloud of shame and dishonor and recent efforts to set the record straight have done little to rectify this injustice.
Perhaps, you like me, have wondered why mere exposure to the realities of war, which have never changed, and to the personal losses that result, which again are the constant for those in combat, seemed to shock and dismay those who sit on the sidelines and have never had to try and wriggle their way into the ground to avoid a direct mortar hit, or watch the body of a brother in arms totally disintegrate right in front of them. As long as we kill each other on the field of battle, there will be examples of cruelty and what some might consider dishonor. The thing to keep in mind however is that those acts of isolated loss of control are credibly overshadowed by the thousands of acts of courage, civility and humanity as exhibited by our fighting men and women over and over again.
So have a hotdog for me this Memorial Day 2012, and say a silent prayer for those of our country who are still in the battle of their lives in places like Afghanistan. Pray that they too can come home, that their sacrifice will not be forgotten, or worse, undermined. Most important, let us all as a people work so that Memorial Day 2013 will find no American dying on foreign soil.
This is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The dedication reads: “In honor of the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States who served in the Vietnam War. The names of those who gave their lives and of those who remain missing are inscribed in the order that they were taken from us.” Since its opening in 1985, the Wall has been visited by hundreds of thousands of Americans—families and friends of the dead and missing, visiting sightseers in our nation’s capital, and veterans. They all come to remember the war that over its ten year duration claimed a heavy butcher’s bill from America in money, material, time and energy but most of all lives—the war which became, as many claim, “the only war America ever lost.”
Unlike the other monuments in Washington, the Vietnam Memorial has become a type of depository of personal memories to the war dead from their families, friends and brothers in arms and sometimes, even from strangers. Every day, personal notes and other items of significance to the living and the dead are left behind in the cracks between the large black panels of the monument, or on the fringe of green lawn in front of it. These have been collected and stored in a warehouse and have recently begun to be sifted through by writers and edited into publications like The Wall and Shrapnel in the Heart.
Vietnam memorials come in all forms, expressing all types of emotions: pride, anger, frustration, discouragement,sadness and loss, just to name a few.
My first commanding officer in Vietnam was Lieutenant Edsall Frick, killed in action in 1968. The first time I ever set eyes on the wall, I frantically searched out his name in the huge telephone book like directory (there are several), located the panel on which his name had been mounted and found this message from a previous visitor, “Finally, America has awakened and taken home those of us who live and remember you and all the others…I kept your spirit alive till America woke up Sir. I’m done. Rest well my friend, my Lieutenant.”
Another message to another fallen comrade is etched in my memory as deeply as it is carved on the wall, “Still don’t know why. Think you guys may be better off. Strange…”
In many ways these personal messages are a unique dimension in the American experience of remembering those who have made the supreme sacrifice of their lives in our military services. Yet Vietnam still falls in the shadows of the dark, looming question: Why?
In wars fought previous to Vietnam, Americans at least believed they knew what they were fighting and dying for. But my war, the Vietnam War, has no name because there has never been a consensus as to why we fought and died there.
As American soldiers, sailors and air force personnel return from the war in Iraq, and with the soon and hoped for return of our forces from Afghanistan, a discussion of how Americans returning from Vietnam were and have been treated is timely and its significance for our country and for all of us as citizens is appropriate to discuss.
The war in Vietnam ended in 1975, with the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese army. But because of the great conflict and confusion that arose during the war and continued in its aftermath, not only were the veterans often ignored or even hated by their country, but the dead were left without a memorial expressing the appreciation and gratitude which the American people have in the past so freely demonstrated toward their fallen warriors.
The monument we visit today was at last erected in 1985, paid for by the private contributions of citizens, among them many veterans and their families as well as the families of those who had fallen. The time had finally come to speak about the war in Southeast Asia and about those men and women who gave their lives in the conflict. The outpouring of private messages and gifts at the Wall is one indication of how eager so many were to break the silence and raise a memorial to the dead, and in so doing attempt to come to grips with the conflict, confusion and hurt of both personal and national loss.
The more than 58,000 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial represent many personal tragedies but an even greater national tragedy is seen in the fact that the whole generation of Vietnam-era veterans has fallen under a cloud of shame and dishonor and recent efforts to set the record straight have done little to rectify this injustice.
Perhaps, you like me, have wondered why mere exposure to the realities of war, which have never changed, and to the personal losses that result, which again are the constant for those in combat, seemed to shock and dismay those who sit on the sidelines and have never had to try and wriggle their way into the ground to avoid a direct mortar hit, or watch the body of a brother in arms totally disintegrate right in front of them. As long as we kill each other on the field of battle, there will be examples of cruelty and what some might consider dishonor. The thing to keep in mind however is that those acts of isolated loss of control are credibly overshadowed by the thousands of acts of courage, civility and humanity as exhibited by our fighting men and women over and over again.
So have a hotdog for me this Memorial Day 2012, and say a silent prayer for those of our country who are still in the battle of their lives in places like Afghanistan. Pray that they too can come home, that their sacrifice will not be forgotten, or worse, undermined. Most important, let us all as a people work so that Memorial Day 2013 will find no American dying on foreign soil.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Here Today----Gone Tomorrow
When the late great Washington, DC radio jazz disc jockey, Felix Grant, spoke about his initial success in convincing ABC to keep him on the air but then they ultimately fired him, he remarked, “I won the battle, but lost the war.”
Despite popular opinion, the Tea Party actually cost Republicans Senate seats in 2010 and they are poised to provide Democrats another gift in 2012. Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a poster child right wing attack dog, supported by the Tea Party, upset a united GOP establishment Senator, this time in Indiana. Now, the same GOP establishment who had their head handed to them in a teacup will want Indiana voters to think that Mourdock is a strong and reasonable candidate in a historically red state. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The reality is, Mourdock is a Tea Party extremist who makes Sarah Palin look like Eleanor Roosevelt and Indiana voters in the upcoming general election will reject him just as voters rejected the likes of Ken Buck, Sharron Angle and God save us all, Christine O’Donnell.
Richard Mourdock has put Tea Party politics and his own career ahead of Hoosier jobs time and time again. His position is in sync with the GOP in general and the Tea Party specifically. In this still struggling economy, Mr. Mourdock and his Tea Party cohorts reject protecting and creating jobs in favor of politics. When fighting against the Obama administration’s efforts to rescue the crashing and burning Chrysler Corporation he shared with reporters, “I didn’t take a pledge that I would support every job in Indiana” and later referred to his opposition to the effort to save Chrysler as his “Rosa Parks moment” because he knew that there would be consequences to him turning his back on thousands of Chrysler auto workers. First, for someone like Richard Mourdock to invoke the memory of Rosa Parks as analogous to any position he might take spits on the memory and life of this remarkable woman while trivializing the issues of the American Civil Rights movement.
Indiana is the most manufacturing dependent state in America. Hoosiers will likely respond to this assertion that their elected officials shouldn’t defend their jobs as well as Nevadans did to Tea Party candidate Sharon Angle’s insistence that those worried about job creation should call someone else and that it simply was not her job to protect the economy of the great state of Nevada.
Polling is one of those sciences wherein you can make the results fit whatever position you are trying to support vis-à-vis a poll. One issue however goes against that grain and that is the reality that Americans today want more bipartisanship from their legislators. With an elitist attitude that operates in complete opposition to that desire, Richard Mourdock has pandered to his Tea Party base by referring to bipartisanship as “part of the problem” (Probably taken from a page in Ronald Reagan’s strategy when he uttered the words, “Government is not part of the solution, it is the problem”). In his written statement on the night of the election, Senator Lugar said this about Mourdock: “He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate.’
Mourdoc’s playing to the base worked in the Indiana Republican Party, but as Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell discovered, it could all collapse for him in the general election. With Tea Party approval in Indiana in the 30s, Mourdock will face a long and exhausting campaign defending his beliefs that Social Security, the U.S. Department of Education and Medicare (among other things) are unconstitutional; his call for a national sales tax that would raise taxes on 80% of Hoosiers; or the two million dollars he spent as Indiana’s state treasurer when he took his challenge to the Chrysler rescue to the Supreme Court.
Since 2010, we have all witnessed the impact of the Tea Party in Congress: an angry, divisive body politic where bipartisanship and solutions are not the goal. Extremist legislation like the Ryan budget, which would end the Medicare guarantee and slash medical care for veterans passes the House with ease. Nationally however, Tea Party popularity is declining because Americans across the country recognize that extreme candidates aren’t interested in results. So, ultimately these same candidates will risk vulnerability in a 2012 general election contest.
Meanwhile, Democrats have a candidate in Indiana ready for the general election. Joe Donnelly withstood the Republican wave of 2010 in a Republican congressional district while facing well over $2 million spent against him by third parties and Super Pacs. Joe Donnelly knows what it takes to win under the most difficult of circumstances. Richard Mourdock meanwhile struggled to build a steady state-driven campaign operation and consequently relied mostly on outside dollars and support—much as Ken Buck did in Colorado in 2010.
While Richard Mourdock struggles to find ways to back off his extreme Tea Party record, Joe Donnelly already has a strong record of standing with Hoosier working families. Indiana’s middle class wants someone who will fight for them—not a knee jerk conservative ideology. This is why unlike with my friend the late Felix Grant who won the battle but ultimately lost the war¸ Joe Donnelly will be elected to the United States Senate in Indiana and on a national scale, President Barak Obama will be re-elected to the American presidency.
Despite popular opinion, the Tea Party actually cost Republicans Senate seats in 2010 and they are poised to provide Democrats another gift in 2012. Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a poster child right wing attack dog, supported by the Tea Party, upset a united GOP establishment Senator, this time in Indiana. Now, the same GOP establishment who had their head handed to them in a teacup will want Indiana voters to think that Mourdock is a strong and reasonable candidate in a historically red state. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The reality is, Mourdock is a Tea Party extremist who makes Sarah Palin look like Eleanor Roosevelt and Indiana voters in the upcoming general election will reject him just as voters rejected the likes of Ken Buck, Sharron Angle and God save us all, Christine O’Donnell.
Richard Mourdock has put Tea Party politics and his own career ahead of Hoosier jobs time and time again. His position is in sync with the GOP in general and the Tea Party specifically. In this still struggling economy, Mr. Mourdock and his Tea Party cohorts reject protecting and creating jobs in favor of politics. When fighting against the Obama administration’s efforts to rescue the crashing and burning Chrysler Corporation he shared with reporters, “I didn’t take a pledge that I would support every job in Indiana” and later referred to his opposition to the effort to save Chrysler as his “Rosa Parks moment” because he knew that there would be consequences to him turning his back on thousands of Chrysler auto workers. First, for someone like Richard Mourdock to invoke the memory of Rosa Parks as analogous to any position he might take spits on the memory and life of this remarkable woman while trivializing the issues of the American Civil Rights movement.
Indiana is the most manufacturing dependent state in America. Hoosiers will likely respond to this assertion that their elected officials shouldn’t defend their jobs as well as Nevadans did to Tea Party candidate Sharon Angle’s insistence that those worried about job creation should call someone else and that it simply was not her job to protect the economy of the great state of Nevada.
Polling is one of those sciences wherein you can make the results fit whatever position you are trying to support vis-à-vis a poll. One issue however goes against that grain and that is the reality that Americans today want more bipartisanship from their legislators. With an elitist attitude that operates in complete opposition to that desire, Richard Mourdock has pandered to his Tea Party base by referring to bipartisanship as “part of the problem” (Probably taken from a page in Ronald Reagan’s strategy when he uttered the words, “Government is not part of the solution, it is the problem”). In his written statement on the night of the election, Senator Lugar said this about Mourdock: “He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate.’
Mourdoc’s playing to the base worked in the Indiana Republican Party, but as Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell discovered, it could all collapse for him in the general election. With Tea Party approval in Indiana in the 30s, Mourdock will face a long and exhausting campaign defending his beliefs that Social Security, the U.S. Department of Education and Medicare (among other things) are unconstitutional; his call for a national sales tax that would raise taxes on 80% of Hoosiers; or the two million dollars he spent as Indiana’s state treasurer when he took his challenge to the Chrysler rescue to the Supreme Court.
Since 2010, we have all witnessed the impact of the Tea Party in Congress: an angry, divisive body politic where bipartisanship and solutions are not the goal. Extremist legislation like the Ryan budget, which would end the Medicare guarantee and slash medical care for veterans passes the House with ease. Nationally however, Tea Party popularity is declining because Americans across the country recognize that extreme candidates aren’t interested in results. So, ultimately these same candidates will risk vulnerability in a 2012 general election contest.
Meanwhile, Democrats have a candidate in Indiana ready for the general election. Joe Donnelly withstood the Republican wave of 2010 in a Republican congressional district while facing well over $2 million spent against him by third parties and Super Pacs. Joe Donnelly knows what it takes to win under the most difficult of circumstances. Richard Mourdock meanwhile struggled to build a steady state-driven campaign operation and consequently relied mostly on outside dollars and support—much as Ken Buck did in Colorado in 2010.
While Richard Mourdock struggles to find ways to back off his extreme Tea Party record, Joe Donnelly already has a strong record of standing with Hoosier working families. Indiana’s middle class wants someone who will fight for them—not a knee jerk conservative ideology. This is why unlike with my friend the late Felix Grant who won the battle but ultimately lost the war¸ Joe Donnelly will be elected to the United States Senate in Indiana and on a national scale, President Barak Obama will be re-elected to the American presidency.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
President Obama and American Unemployment
Many Americans may be hard pressed to claim that they are better off today than they were four years ago. We tend to forget how bad things were just four years ago. During the six months leading up to the 2008 election, America lost a total of four million jobs from the private sector. Even the most cynical Republican would not predict that is what will happen in the six month period we are in now—leading up to the 2012 election.
After a somewhat rocky start to his presidency, in which the unemployment rate topped out at 10 percent nine months after he was inaugurated, the American economy has stubbornly clawed its way back to some semblance of normalcy. The jobless rate has dropped .9 percent in the last year and today is hovering at 8.1 percent.
Some Democrats insist that the unemployment rate itself will not determine whether or not President Obama will be re-elected, at least not as much as the trajectory of the jobless rate will. In other words, if the economy continues to improve, voters will support the president’s management of it. The question in the back of everyone’s mind however, is how significantly must the economy improve? As voters listen to both candidates this summer, how many more months of steady improvement will the president need?
Another nightmare scenario for the Obama administration is what if the economy simply stalls? History teaches us that there are lessons to be learned in years of a volatile economy, but what if there is simply stagnation?
Despite Republicans visceral accusations to the contrary, it is well documented that President Obama inherited a wrecked economy, one teetering on the brink of total economic collapse and during the first year of his presidency, the unemployment rate skirted around double digits. The rate failed to shrink noticeably until it fell from 9.5 percent to 9.4 percent in June of 2010, then again from 9.8 percent to 9.4 percent in December of that same year.
The worse however was yet to come. The rise of the Tea Party with all its vicious attacks not only threatened the careers of long standing Republican Congressmen and Senators but also created a legislative environment where the GOP became hell-bent to not support anything that came out of the White House. This political nightmare along with the reality of the overall economy choking itself into a state of near-unconsciousness caused an actual reversal of the economy during the summer of 2010.
Since the beginning of 2011 however, things have begun to improve. After stalling at between 8.9 percent and 9.1 percent from January to October 2010, unemployment has steadily dropped to 8.1 percent. The rate is now .9 percent lower than it was last April.
If the economy remains right where it is today, the election of 1984 suggests that President Obama could win the White House for a second term.
Ronald Reagan won reelection over Walter Mondale under very similar conditions that mirror the state of the economy today. In April of 1984, the economy had recovered aggressively over the previous year, with unemployment dropping 2.5 percent to 7.7 percent. Reagan faced challenges similar to the President today—the unemployment rate was way too high but its trajectory was dropping—the right direction.
Between May and June of 1984, the rate dropped an additional .5 percent and over the last six months of the election, it even rose briefly, with the rate finally settling in November to where it had been in June. With 7.2 percent unemployment on Election Day, a recovery that had seized in place was enough to save President Reagan.
It bears mentioning however, that during the six months leading up to the 1984 election, the economy actually worsened and then improved, with unemployment peaking at 7.8 percent in June before it dropped .6 percent at the end.
I have to say here that in all honesty, the example of President Reagan’s reelection in 1984 doesn’t precisely match the conditions President Obama faces today and despite what some want you to believe, the unemployment rate isn’t everything—unless of course, you are one of the unemployed. Take the jobless rate out of the equation however, past examples like Reagan’s tell us at minimum, that President Obama needs to demonstrate additional recovery in the very near term. He is in better shape than President Bush in 1992; consequently, after some slow but steady improvement over the last year, Obama can afford to be linked to a flat jobless rate for the final six months of his campaign as President Reagan did in 1984.
What Obama cannot afford however, and neither can the country, is for the American economy to worsen in the near term, even if unemployment continues to drop.
The Obama presidency has been like traumatic surgery in the operating room. Someone comes in, shot in the neck, the chest and their legs. Action is taken immediately to stem the flow of blood, get any toxins caused by the bullets and gunpowder out of the victim’s body, repair damaged organs and limbs and then sew the patient closed. The surgery can take hours and more than likely will have to be repeated many times over because the body cannot withstand the shock of so much surgery done at one time. Then the process of healing begins and the time it takes to heal physically can be months—even years while the time to heal mentally and emotionally can last forever.
The one thing you never do however is once the patient has been stabilized and recovery is underway, you never—and I mean never—fire the doctors who took someone moments away from death and brought them back from the abyss.
After a somewhat rocky start to his presidency, in which the unemployment rate topped out at 10 percent nine months after he was inaugurated, the American economy has stubbornly clawed its way back to some semblance of normalcy. The jobless rate has dropped .9 percent in the last year and today is hovering at 8.1 percent.
Some Democrats insist that the unemployment rate itself will not determine whether or not President Obama will be re-elected, at least not as much as the trajectory of the jobless rate will. In other words, if the economy continues to improve, voters will support the president’s management of it. The question in the back of everyone’s mind however, is how significantly must the economy improve? As voters listen to both candidates this summer, how many more months of steady improvement will the president need?
Another nightmare scenario for the Obama administration is what if the economy simply stalls? History teaches us that there are lessons to be learned in years of a volatile economy, but what if there is simply stagnation?
Despite Republicans visceral accusations to the contrary, it is well documented that President Obama inherited a wrecked economy, one teetering on the brink of total economic collapse and during the first year of his presidency, the unemployment rate skirted around double digits. The rate failed to shrink noticeably until it fell from 9.5 percent to 9.4 percent in June of 2010, then again from 9.8 percent to 9.4 percent in December of that same year.
The worse however was yet to come. The rise of the Tea Party with all its vicious attacks not only threatened the careers of long standing Republican Congressmen and Senators but also created a legislative environment where the GOP became hell-bent to not support anything that came out of the White House. This political nightmare along with the reality of the overall economy choking itself into a state of near-unconsciousness caused an actual reversal of the economy during the summer of 2010.
Since the beginning of 2011 however, things have begun to improve. After stalling at between 8.9 percent and 9.1 percent from January to October 2010, unemployment has steadily dropped to 8.1 percent. The rate is now .9 percent lower than it was last April.
If the economy remains right where it is today, the election of 1984 suggests that President Obama could win the White House for a second term.
Ronald Reagan won reelection over Walter Mondale under very similar conditions that mirror the state of the economy today. In April of 1984, the economy had recovered aggressively over the previous year, with unemployment dropping 2.5 percent to 7.7 percent. Reagan faced challenges similar to the President today—the unemployment rate was way too high but its trajectory was dropping—the right direction.
Between May and June of 1984, the rate dropped an additional .5 percent and over the last six months of the election, it even rose briefly, with the rate finally settling in November to where it had been in June. With 7.2 percent unemployment on Election Day, a recovery that had seized in place was enough to save President Reagan.
It bears mentioning however, that during the six months leading up to the 1984 election, the economy actually worsened and then improved, with unemployment peaking at 7.8 percent in June before it dropped .6 percent at the end.
I have to say here that in all honesty, the example of President Reagan’s reelection in 1984 doesn’t precisely match the conditions President Obama faces today and despite what some want you to believe, the unemployment rate isn’t everything—unless of course, you are one of the unemployed. Take the jobless rate out of the equation however, past examples like Reagan’s tell us at minimum, that President Obama needs to demonstrate additional recovery in the very near term. He is in better shape than President Bush in 1992; consequently, after some slow but steady improvement over the last year, Obama can afford to be linked to a flat jobless rate for the final six months of his campaign as President Reagan did in 1984.
What Obama cannot afford however, and neither can the country, is for the American economy to worsen in the near term, even if unemployment continues to drop.
The Obama presidency has been like traumatic surgery in the operating room. Someone comes in, shot in the neck, the chest and their legs. Action is taken immediately to stem the flow of blood, get any toxins caused by the bullets and gunpowder out of the victim’s body, repair damaged organs and limbs and then sew the patient closed. The surgery can take hours and more than likely will have to be repeated many times over because the body cannot withstand the shock of so much surgery done at one time. Then the process of healing begins and the time it takes to heal physically can be months—even years while the time to heal mentally and emotionally can last forever.
The one thing you never do however is once the patient has been stabilized and recovery is underway, you never—and I mean never—fire the doctors who took someone moments away from death and brought them back from the abyss.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Immigration: The Albatross around the GOP's Neck
It may have taken the U.S. Supreme Court just an hour to complete its discussion of illegal immigration this past week, but American politicians cannot seem to get enough of the subject. It will be months before the Court rules on the case in question, which of course concerns the infamous Arizona state law, but Democratic leaders in the Senate are already developing a strategy designed to overturn the decision if the Arizona law is upheld. That vote, would presumably fail, thanks in large part to Republican opposition, but it would allow the Democrats to keep immigration as an election issue in the public eye. Democrats are also attacking Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP nominee for president, for supporting the law. In response, Mr. Romney has dismissed the attacks from the left as an effort to distract Hispanic voters from President Obama’s failings as steward of the economy. The outcome of this presidential race it seems, could conceivably hang on voter’s perception of the state of the economy or laws like Arizona’s that generate indignation among most Hispanics and many Americans across the country.
Just to refresh your memory, Arizona’s bill passed in 2010 was designed to discourage illegal immigration by making it a crime under Arizona law as well as federal law and by instructing state authorities to proactively be on the lookout for illegal immigrants. Civil liberties groups are alarmed by the law’s proclivity to encourage racial profiling resulting in anyone with brown skin being subjected to undue harassment since there is no simple or obvious way for law enforcement to determine a person’s citizenship status without multiple stops and checks.
The prospect of unwarranted checks seemed to particularly concern several justices during the oral arguments on the law before the Supreme Court. But the Obama administration’s solicitor-general explained he was not challenging the law on the grounds that it would discriminate against Latinos. Instead, he argued that the law pre-empts the federal government’s power to set and enforce immigration policy.
The Supreme Court’s verdict will determine the fate not just of Arizona’s law, but of similar measures in five other states. As successive presidents have promised but failed to resolve the question of America’s 10 million or so illegal immigrants, frustration at the federal government’s failure has increased, especially among conservative politicians and the conservative voters who put them in office. Consequently, various Republican controlled state legislatures around the country have attempted to take matters into their own hands, The need for a crackdown on illegal immigration seems to have become a point of faith among Republican primary voters and the presidential bid of Rick Perry¸ the governor of Texas, collapsed into ruin partly because he had signed a law allowing certain undocumented students to pay the same rates as other state residents at state universities.
Even as the debate regarding illegal immigration has become shriller, as debate surrounding so-called social issues tend to become in this country, the phenomenon itself has become less and less of a reality. Our recession has almost more than anything else, helped to stem the tide of job-seekers across America’s borders. This has also been manifested in lower numbers of people caught trying to steal into our country because there are simply fewer people making the attempt. Ironically, as the Supreme Court wrapped up its arguments on the case this week, the Pew Hispanic Center, a research institute, released a report showing that Mexicans, once the largest group of illegal immigrants in the United States are now leaving the country in greater numbers than they are entering it.
Nonetheless Mr. Romney cheerfully joined in the denunciation of Mr. Perry for his breach of party doctrine. By the same token, when Newt Gingrich, another candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, suggested that illegal immigrants of good character and long standing should be allowed to stay, Romney attacked him too. He argues that life should be made so difficult for illegal immigrants that they will choose, in a horrible phrase, to “self-deport”. Democrats hope that all this will dent Mr. Romney’s prospects among Hispanic voters, many of whom see Republican foaming at the mouth against illegal immigration as stony-hearted, if not racist. In a survey conducted last year on behalf of the Pew Hispanic Centre, two-thirds of Hispanic registered voters said they favored the Democrats. Just 20% identified themselves as Republican. In March a FOX News Latino poll found that, in a head-to-head match-up, Mitt Romney would carry just 14% of the Hispanic vote. Earlier polls had found Romney doing better than that, but still considerably worse than the 31% John McCain managed to amass, even while losing in 2008, or the whopping 40% the Spanish-speaking George W. Bush posted in 2004.
Hispanics made up 16% of the population in 2010, according to that year’s census. They are a fast-growing group, although a relatively large proportion of them are below voting age and even those eligible to vote are less assiduous about it than Anglos are. But they account for over 20% of the population in several swing states, including Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico. Democrats hope to make Arizona a swing state this year, thanks both to the 30% Hispanic share of the local population and to the acrimony inspired by the state’s immigration law. A recent poll put President Obama within two points of Mr. Romney in the state, which has been a Republican stronghold recently—not least because of John McCain’s candidacy for the US Senate in 2010 which because of a hotly contested Republican primary drove John McCain further to the right than he has ever been.
Republicans have long tried to find common cause with Latino voters. They point out that, in some respects, Hispanics seem natural conservatives: religious, hard-working and with close family ties. There is even talk that presidential candidate Mitt Romney might bolster his standing among Latinos by picking one as a running-mate—Marco Rubio, a senator from Florida, say, or Susana Martinez, the governor of New Mexico.
Since the immigration debate has such a nativist tone, however, Democrats are doubtful that Republicans can win over many Hispanic voters. “You can’t do it when at a very baseline level you make American citizens feel unwelcome in their own country,” says Joaquin Castro, a Democratic state representative from San Antonio, Texas. It will not help that in the middle of the campaign the Supreme Court will draw attention once again to the Republicans’ conservativism on the issue by ruling on the Arizona law.
Just to refresh your memory, Arizona’s bill passed in 2010 was designed to discourage illegal immigration by making it a crime under Arizona law as well as federal law and by instructing state authorities to proactively be on the lookout for illegal immigrants. Civil liberties groups are alarmed by the law’s proclivity to encourage racial profiling resulting in anyone with brown skin being subjected to undue harassment since there is no simple or obvious way for law enforcement to determine a person’s citizenship status without multiple stops and checks.
The prospect of unwarranted checks seemed to particularly concern several justices during the oral arguments on the law before the Supreme Court. But the Obama administration’s solicitor-general explained he was not challenging the law on the grounds that it would discriminate against Latinos. Instead, he argued that the law pre-empts the federal government’s power to set and enforce immigration policy.
The Supreme Court’s verdict will determine the fate not just of Arizona’s law, but of similar measures in five other states. As successive presidents have promised but failed to resolve the question of America’s 10 million or so illegal immigrants, frustration at the federal government’s failure has increased, especially among conservative politicians and the conservative voters who put them in office. Consequently, various Republican controlled state legislatures around the country have attempted to take matters into their own hands, The need for a crackdown on illegal immigration seems to have become a point of faith among Republican primary voters and the presidential bid of Rick Perry¸ the governor of Texas, collapsed into ruin partly because he had signed a law allowing certain undocumented students to pay the same rates as other state residents at state universities.
Even as the debate regarding illegal immigration has become shriller, as debate surrounding so-called social issues tend to become in this country, the phenomenon itself has become less and less of a reality. Our recession has almost more than anything else, helped to stem the tide of job-seekers across America’s borders. This has also been manifested in lower numbers of people caught trying to steal into our country because there are simply fewer people making the attempt. Ironically, as the Supreme Court wrapped up its arguments on the case this week, the Pew Hispanic Center, a research institute, released a report showing that Mexicans, once the largest group of illegal immigrants in the United States are now leaving the country in greater numbers than they are entering it.
Nonetheless Mr. Romney cheerfully joined in the denunciation of Mr. Perry for his breach of party doctrine. By the same token, when Newt Gingrich, another candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, suggested that illegal immigrants of good character and long standing should be allowed to stay, Romney attacked him too. He argues that life should be made so difficult for illegal immigrants that they will choose, in a horrible phrase, to “self-deport”. Democrats hope that all this will dent Mr. Romney’s prospects among Hispanic voters, many of whom see Republican foaming at the mouth against illegal immigration as stony-hearted, if not racist. In a survey conducted last year on behalf of the Pew Hispanic Centre, two-thirds of Hispanic registered voters said they favored the Democrats. Just 20% identified themselves as Republican. In March a FOX News Latino poll found that, in a head-to-head match-up, Mitt Romney would carry just 14% of the Hispanic vote. Earlier polls had found Romney doing better than that, but still considerably worse than the 31% John McCain managed to amass, even while losing in 2008, or the whopping 40% the Spanish-speaking George W. Bush posted in 2004.
Hispanics made up 16% of the population in 2010, according to that year’s census. They are a fast-growing group, although a relatively large proportion of them are below voting age and even those eligible to vote are less assiduous about it than Anglos are. But they account for over 20% of the population in several swing states, including Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico. Democrats hope to make Arizona a swing state this year, thanks both to the 30% Hispanic share of the local population and to the acrimony inspired by the state’s immigration law. A recent poll put President Obama within two points of Mr. Romney in the state, which has been a Republican stronghold recently—not least because of John McCain’s candidacy for the US Senate in 2010 which because of a hotly contested Republican primary drove John McCain further to the right than he has ever been.
Republicans have long tried to find common cause with Latino voters. They point out that, in some respects, Hispanics seem natural conservatives: religious, hard-working and with close family ties. There is even talk that presidential candidate Mitt Romney might bolster his standing among Latinos by picking one as a running-mate—Marco Rubio, a senator from Florida, say, or Susana Martinez, the governor of New Mexico.
Since the immigration debate has such a nativist tone, however, Democrats are doubtful that Republicans can win over many Hispanic voters. “You can’t do it when at a very baseline level you make American citizens feel unwelcome in their own country,” says Joaquin Castro, a Democratic state representative from San Antonio, Texas. It will not help that in the middle of the campaign the Supreme Court will draw attention once again to the Republicans’ conservativism on the issue by ruling on the Arizona law.
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