One more factor is working against Obama in the debates. When the economy is bad and an incumbent is beset, the challenger’s task is simplified. He doesn’t need to belabor the case against the incumbent. Reality has already done that; everyone knows what’s wrong with the president they have now. All the challenger has to do is say: “Look me over. I’ll be okay in this job. You can feel comfortable with me.” This is what Ronald Reagan did in 1980, and Bill Clinton in 1992. Meanwhile, the incumbent has to work twice as hard, in order to make two arguments at once. He must prove something about himself: that, while battered, he’s still energetic, visionary, and up to the job. He must also prove something about his opponent: that he is bad for the country, unready, and overall worse.
And he must do all this without seeming defensive or tense; while appearing easily in command to those who see images without hearing words; and, in Obama’s uniquely straitjacketed case, while avoiding the slightest hint of being an “angry black man.”
His strengths, again, are faultless preparation, crisp and precise expression, a readiness both to attack and to defend, and an ability to stay purely on message. His weaknesses are thin factual knowledge on many policy issues, a preference to talk in generalities—and a palpable awkwardness when caught unprepared and forced to improvise.
“He gets prickled when he sees debates moving away from what he is prepared for,” Steve Bogden said. “He feels a need to be in character; and without planning, he doesn’t know what his character would say.” A man who worked closely with Romney in his years as governor told me, “He has strong core family values, and religious values. But he doesn’t really have core policy values. If you’re busy trying to remember what to say, it is harder to come across convincingly.”
And what of the president? His advantages are obvious. He is the president; he has been on this stage before; there is almost no question or criticism he has not heard and handled in the past four years. Moreover, the consistent evidence about Romney’s strengths and weaknesses simplifies Obama’s strategy for attack. “It is very important to unbalance Romney,” as Robert Reich put it. “When you have someone who is that scripted and wooden, you have to push him into spontaneity”—with a factual-knowledge point, a new sort of criticism, or a policy choice that somehow Romney has not yet thought through.
The main “known” of these debates is that they will probably matter. One major unknown is whether they will matter mainly because of a positive revelation, like Mitt Romney’s demonstrating, as Ronald Reagan did against Jimmy Carter, that he is a comfortable figure to whom people unhappy with Barack Obama can turn. Or because of a negative one, like Richard Nixon’s sweaty discomfort in 1960, Gerald Ford’s misstatement about Poland’s freedom in 1976, or Dan Quayle’s comparing himself to John F. Kennedy in 1988.
Each candidate has strong incentives to “go negative.” The fundamental logic of Mitt Romney’s campaign is that the Obama administration has placed America on the wrong track. Probably in every debate, he will say: “The president said he would fix the economy; he didn’t; he has to go.” Barack Obama has no choice but to argue that, as bad as things might be now, under Romney and a Tea Party–powered Republican government they would be much worse.In my view, Obama should compare the US economy to the rest of the world's (particularly Europe's), and not to try to compare to George W Bush or to what might happen. He should point out that the policies Romney is proposing were tried - in Great Britain, and those conservatives are not fxcking nuts as ours are!
"The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics."
I did learn much from Hitchens, but never how to function in quite this manner. What allowed him to live such a packed life was a trait that any of us would relish: He never forgot what he had ever read or learned. His mind was always expanding. That was a natural gift that few of us possess. He could not teach it. But observing Hitchens practice his craft and thrust and parry with intellectuals almost as sharp as him was as valuable an experience as I could have imagined. It sure beat attending J-school.
In a way it’s reassuring that America’s billionaires are still so civic-minded that they buy laws and political parties: it’s a sign that they’re invested in the country and are here for the foreseeable. And the one law they’re not going to repeal any time soon is the most important one — the one which says that US citizens have to pay US federal taxes on their global income, no matter where they live. (Or at least demonstrate that they’ve paid at least that much in taxes elsewhere.) American plutocrats, almost uniquely, are tied to their home country in a way that other members of the global elite can barely imagine.He says Americans are more likely to buy fourth or tenth homes in the USA before buying one abroad.
when examined carefully and in context, the pouting refusal to have any ideas except those supplied by her lord and master turns out not to be evidence of winsome innocence but a soft cover for a specific sort of knowingness and calculation.And this:
hey certainly make it difficult if not impossible to accept her at her own paradoxical valuation, as merely a self-effacing hostess and decorator.Regarding Camelot:
Now consider: The nation has just buried a president whose books were replete with the language of valor and grandeur—fit rhetoric forProfiles in Courage. Arlington cemetery has been garlanded as never in the century. The bugle calls can still be heard wafting on the air. And then: Oh, mercy me, why do I worry my pretty little head?—why, all I can call to mind is some plonking ditty from Lerner and Loewe that even the Broadway critics found a tad paltry.My mother could not abide fakery of any sort, but especially female self-effacing. I feel proud of her insight.
Was the Byzantine system of government especially complex?Only compared to those of medieval Europe.
alludes to that (and is very readable too).Dellums hopes he gets the chance to meet Obama at Sunday’s dedication of the King memorial.
“I’m going to be the voice of God,” he said, using the theatrical term for an anonymous announcer. “I get to announce all the good folks, including the Queen of Soul,” he said (Aretha Franklin is scheduled to perform). “I’m excited to do it because I love Martin Luther King Jr. And the president is a brother!”
What would be even better is if he were to get the acting role of his dreams: to play Obama in the biopic of the 44th president.
“There are certain roles you just know you’re born to play,” Dellums said.
“I have no desire to play the first black president,” he adds. “I want to play the greatest president that ever lived.”Erik is an idealist and a purist, which is why I love him. And fearless. And we just love debating politics!
Plouffe’s take is a bit more sanguine, but far from Pollyannaish. “The president right now is sitting with a job approval rating of just over 50 percent, despite the economy,” he says. “In a presidential-election-year electorate, the Latino vote is playing a stronger and stronger role. So from an Electoral College standpoint, right now I’d rather be us than the other side. That said, we live in an enormously close, 50-50 country. So we should assume—and it may be hard for me to take this approach if Sarah Palin is their nominee, but I will try—that whoever runs against us is a deadly serious threat and we’ll be in a very close election. You have to assume that you’re gonna have to do everything right to get 270 electoral votes.”
