US Election

The Hypocrisy of Mitt Romney – Government Spending Edition

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

mitt-romney-2012-presidential-election

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I missed this when it happened last week, but it appears that during an extended interview with Mark Halperin, Mitt Romney managed to fastidiously lay multiple bundles of high explosive around the foundations of his own economic policy arguments, retreat to a not-very-safe distance, press the plunger and bring the whole thing crashing down around him, revealing his public stance to be the glib, opportunistic sham that it is, with hardly anyone – least of all the interviewer – noticing a thing.

I only found out after being cross-linked through Charles Pierce’s blog at Esquire, where he documents the exchange as follows:

Halperin: Why not in the first year, if you’re elected — why not in 2013, go all the way and propose the kind of budget with spending restraints, that you’d like to see after four years in office?  Why not do it more quickly?

Romney: Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%.  That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I’m not going to do that, of course.

 

I then picked up the thread when Jonathan Chait jumped on Romney in his piece in the New York Magazine:

Of course! Romney says this as if it’s completely obvious that reducing the deficit in the short term would throw the economy back into recession, even though he and his party have been arguing the opposite case with hysterical fervor. Republicans have committed themselves to Austrian economic notions and other hoary doctrines justifying the position that reducing deficits is a helpful way out of a liquidity trap.

I’ve thought that this represents primarily a case of self-delusion in the cause of political self-interest, as opposed to conscious cynicism: Republicans understood that bigger deficits would spur faster growth and reduce their chances of regaining power, so they found themselves more persuaded by theories suggesting bigger deficits wouldn’t really help. But if they had really converted to this belief, wouldn’t there be even a tiny bit of wailing about Romney’s open endorsement of Keynesianism? It’s not as if conservatives have been shy about holding his feet to the fire when he expresses some tiny deviation from their position. Yet I have noticed zero conservative complaints about Romney’s big fat wet kiss to John Maynard Keynes, which suggests their level of actual devotion to this position borders on nil.

It really does take a special kind of nerve – or else just the realisation that he can be a completely convictionless politician and change his public statements to suit the political mood without ever, ever suffering significant fallout – to execute this kind of 180-degree U-turn in a televised interview, and expect to get away with it.

Aside from revealing an important truth about what a Romney administration would actually do were he to win the election, it also demonstrates a total contempt for his supporters, some of whom he must know actually believe that he will take the immediate and drastic action to balance the federal budget that he still promises in his attacks on President Obama.

What a man.

The Last Word On Bain

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Mitt Romney - Bain Capital

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Between them, I think that Andrew Sullivan (writing at The Daily Beast) and Joe Klein (at Time) sum up perfectly the way that Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital can be reasonably and fairly framed in the forthcoming election debate.

First Sullivan:

The point is that a president cannot just maximize profts for shareholders. Being a CEO is not the same as being a president. Moreover, even if you think that Romney’s highly profitable adventures in private equity helped the economy more than hurt it, the rigged system in which he paid lower taxes, exploited other loopholes and made money regardless of the outcome in any specific case is not a pretty picture of real market capitalism.

And then Klein:

It seems to me that Obama’s immediate point is wrong: Romney wasn’t primarily about job destruction and corporate plundering. His larger point–that Romney was not so much about job-creation as he was about profit-creation–is correct, though. But the largest point of all is this: private equity capitalism was all about short-term profits–maximizing shareholder value–rather than long-term growth. It ushered in an era of massive executive compensation and bonuses. It prospered because of tax rules that made debt more profitable than equity, and a “carried interest” tax dodge that enabled Mitt Romney to pay a lower percentage in taxes than your average construction worker. It can be a useful tool in restructuring companies and steering them toward profitability, but it is not the sort of model you’d want to apply to the entire American economy.

A President has to be about long-term growth, not short-term profits–and to the extent that Barack Obama is using the Bain ads to make this larger argument, he is not “stumbling” or attacking “free enterprise,” but he is steering the conversation toward the most important topic this year: what sort of economy do we want to have and how do we get there?

There’s nothing in these arguments that sounds stridently anti-capitalist or envious of wealth creation. The point is simply one of short term vs. long term focus, and whether successful stewardship of a large nation requires additional skills over and above those required to succeed in business.

If – if – Obama can stick to this narrower line of attack, as he did at the recent NATO summit press conference, he will be much less vulnerable to the inevitable, tired charges of socialism and class warfare that are already being warmed up by some on the Right.

Obama The Socialist

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Barack Obama - Socialist - Socialism

 

Who knew: Apparently I would make a passable journalist, and could be well respected and remunerated for doing so. I know this because after I read Paul Roderick Gregory’s article in Forbes, “Is It Within Bounds To Ask: Is Obama A Socialist?” I did two things: I reminded myself of the definition of socialism using two readily available sources (I was smart and used two independent sources just in case one of them was leading me astray), and I cross-checked this definition against the policy positions set out on Barack Obama’s website.

Paul Roderick Gregory, who “journalists” for a living, did neither of these things; he is professionally negligent and apparently just whipped open his laptop and started typing. Either that, or he is professionally negligent and knows the information to be found on these websites very well, but thinks that all of his readers are idiots who are incapable or unlikely of doing the same. Now which could it be?

I am going to leave aside the semantic arguments about the meaning of the word “socialism” that Gregory employs in his companion piece “Is President Obama Truly A Socialist“, but basically Gregory holds his hands up and pleads that he doesn’t mean the traditional definition of socialism. No, he just means “socialism” as practiced by continental Europeans with their welfare states. Of course, this disclaimer is buried very deep within the article, so that the full impact of conflating Obama’s political philosophy with socialism is felt immediately, while the clarification is given only after the statement has had sufficient time to establish itself as fact:

By “socialist,” I do not mean a Lenin, Castro, or Mao, but whether Obama falls within the mainstream of contemporary socialism as represented, for example, by Germany’s Social Democrats, French Socialists, or Spain’s socialist-workers party?

By this criterion, yes, Obama is a socialist.

If Gregory wanted to make this more nuanced argument (still wrong, in my opinion) – that Obama’s policies are closely aligned to European social democracy – then he could go ahead and do so. But he has no interest in doing that. The only reason he even includes this tortured disclaimer is to clear the ground so that he can land his rhetorical punch on Obama, and label him a “socialist”.

From the stirring conclusion to the original article:

The upcoming November election offers American voters a choice that is starker than they understand. Obama brings to the table a deep distrust of free enterprise and a belief in government as the solution to most problems. Romney offers a vision of faith in private enterprise and a distrust of government intervention. Obama will disguise his views with “fair share” slogans and weak protestations of faith in private enterprise.

This is actually the closest that Gregory comes to cogency in either piece. I come from a centre-right perspective and do sometimes think that Obama is heavy-handed in his administration’s oversight of the free market. Interfering with private companies such as Boeing when they come to make decisions on where to locate their production, for example, strikes me as bullying and control-freakish. But I have never felt as though Obama was secretly yearning to nationalise Boeing and create a state-owned aerospace and defence company.

On the flip side, many of Romney’s contemporaries in industry are only too quick and happy to run to the government when it suits their needs, perhaps to ask for bailouts, favourable trading terms or tax loopholes, or to bring down the regulators on a rival that is becoming rather too successful. Hardly unheard-of.

Why am I even bothering to quote this trash? Only because it is emblematic and typical of the lazy type of charges that are levelled against Obama by some on the right. By calling out Gregory now, I free myself from the obligation do the same thing every time another right wing talking head repeats the same “Obama-Socialist” line on Fox News, or in a newspaper column.

So, Paul Roderick Gregory, the unfortunate person who I picked on to embody every die-hard tea partier and overenthusiastic Republican who is tempted to get carried away with the old rhetoric when disagreeing with President Obama’s economic policies: is it “within bounds to ask: is Obama a socialist?”

Sure, it’s within bounds. It’s just really, really dumb.

I had no idea that the bar for becoming a published Forbes contributor was set so low.

Obama The Inevitable – Continued

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

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Just as I was starting to think that everyone had bought into the myth that the upcoming US presidential election is going to be anything other than a landslide for Barack Obama, Jamelle Bouie from The American Prospect brings a healthy dose of perspective to the matter:

I don’t mean to single out partisans; actual Beltway pundits are also too concerned with gaffes and faux controversies. Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei’s assessment of the last month—which has the top spot at POLITICO—describes the Obama campaign as “stumbling out of the gate” and “struggling” with message discipline. It’s everything you would expect from a micro-focus on the election

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How much of this is remarkable, and how much of this is the usual sturm und drang of a presidential election? Campaigns always see blowback on their messaging, on account of the fact that political parties aren’t monolithic entities. Obama may have had a huge fundraising advantage in 2008, but in a polarized country where Democrats have taken steps to regulate Wall Street and raise taxes on rich people, it’s no surprise that Republicans have suddenly emerged with a fundraising advantage, and the support of interested billionaires. It would be unusual if that weren’t the case.

Hear, hear. Finally, some level-headedness on the start of Obama’s campaign.

The Republicans chose Mitt Romney as their nominee. Mitt Romney. And so unless Barack Obama is caught on camera having an extramarital affair, sneaking gold ingots from Fort Knox or peeing on the American flag while whistling jaunty showtunes, he is going to be re-elected president in November. And no-drama Obama ain’t going to be doing any of those things.

Fundamentalist, Self-Righteous Moron Needs To Shut Up

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Not to be outdone by Newt Gingrich, the other candidate running to be the first High Priest of the new American theocracy was also out with a new television campaign commercial, inviting us to imagine the dystopian world that will exist in two years if Obama is re-elected:

 

That’s right, a terrible dystopian land where big government decides what women can do with their bodies and employers can chop and change your healthcare, denying you critical coverage based on their own…oh wait, no that’s the dystopia that we want if we are Republicans today.

Dylan Byers from Politico also notes:

In addition to all the other scary things that happen in this new Rick Santorum ad, which was released today, you’ll notice that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad morphs into U.S. president Barack Obama right about the time the narrator says “sworn American enemy.”

Pay close attention and you will see how President Obama’s face is briefly superimposed over that of Iranian President Ahmedinejad, as the words “sworn American enemy” are uttered.

Keep it classy, Rick Santorum.

Fundamentalist, self-righteous moron needs to shut up.

That is all.