He has painted himself into a corner and, no matter where Mitt Romney goes in tonight's speech on religion, he is going to leave messy footprints.
Even the locale is a mistake. Meant to evoke a parallel with John F. Kennedy's deft defense of his Catholicism in 1960, it only underscores how much the role of religion has changed in American politics and, in the Bush era, for the worse.
In Kennedy's time, separation of church and state was an article of faith for mainstream politicians of both parties. Until then, Presidents had all been white Protestant men. Kennedy, in trying to broaden the definition to white Protestant or Catholic men, was arguing that religious belief may be a reflection of a President's principles but is not substantively involved in how he governs.
"I believe," he told Protestant ministers in Houston, "in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish...where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all...
"I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office."
Voters agreed and, in Gore Vidal’s 1960 play, “The Best Man,” as a former President recalls the old days when politicians “had to pour God over everything like ketchup,” audiences laughed at the anachronism.
Nobody is laughing now. George W. Bush has erased the line between church and state to the point where Romney, as a candidate, has been pandering to the Religious Right to win the nomination. It is that religiosity, not his religion, that is offensive.
Now Romney, still holding the ketchup bottle, will try to persuade voters that as President he would "maintain our religious heritage in this country," as he recently put it, but that his own particular religious beliefs are beside the point.
Romney is essentially a salesman (in amassing millions, associates say he was the "presenter") who has tailored his pitch on many issues this year to what voters want to hear. If he can sell this one, maybe he deserves to be President and use his skills to persuade the world to stop hating us.
Showing posts with label George Romney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Romney. Show all posts
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Case for Clobbering Candidates
Talk about “media bias” has a pornographic appeal for politicians and bloggers. Revealing MSM hypocrisy is as irresistible as finding Sen. Vitter on the D.C. Madam’s phone records.
Today’s “dirty little secret”: “America's political reporters don't like John Edwards, and have tried to destroy him,” according to Jamison Foser of Media Matters, quoting a piece from Atlantic Online by Marc Ambinder, one of the founders of ABC's The Note and a contributing editor to the National Journal's Hotline newsletter.
(Attribution nosebleed is a side effect of polemical reporting--anyone who agrees or quarrels with this post will be quoting me quoting Foser quoting Ambinder and will then be quoted until it all sounds like “A Partridge in a Pear Tree.”)
The main evidence for Edwards-bashing is the harping on his $400 haircut and working for a hedge fund while warring on poverty in his campaign, an assertion that leads to comparisons by another blogger to “the media's War Against Gore” that “gave us President Bush. It is why we are in Iraq today.”
Time out: Jokes about John Edwards’ haircut are unlikely to lead to another catastrophic war, but if the children will leave the room, we can talk graphically about “media bias.”
That journalists are human is not news and that they may, consciously or not, let their feelings color their reporting is indisputable. But from a lifetime of working, teaching and writing about that enterprise, another perspective:
It may very well be that reporters don’t like John Edwards. They may be put off by his over-acted sincerity, as I am (follow the links to my confession). But there is nothing new in letting that kind of reaction seep into their stories. In fact--and down comes the last veil in this stripping--that may have value for the public the media serves.
In the McCarthy era, we learned objectivity is not enough. If reporters who covered the Senator had done more probing about his methods and motives, it wouldn’t have taken Edward R. Murrow’s “biased” documentary to bring him down.
That kind of drama is rare--only Woodward and Bernstein’s Nixon takedown is comparable. But in subtler ways, the process goes on all the time.
Mitt Romney’s father comes to mind. In 1968, George Romney was the front runner for the Republican nomination. Reporters covering his campaign with a straight face were frustrated by not being able to communicate that the amiable car salesman-Governor was, to put it kindly, a lightweight. When he gaffed about being “brainwashed” in Vietnam, it unleashed headlines and commentary that ended his campaign.
His son and heir is following in that tradition. After his repeated fudging of issues, his defecating dog story and his pathetic swipe at Obama over sex education, yesterday this Governor Romney is pictured smiling over a sign reading “No to Obama, Osama and Chelsea’s Moma.”
Are the media trying to tell us something? I hope so. A little more “bias” in showing Bush the boob in 2000 might have spared the country a lot of grief.
If this sounds arrogant, sorry. Journalists spend their lives trying to be fair and honest--they don’t start out looking for money and power. If they sometimes slip and slide along the way, cut them some slack.
It’s easy (and attention-getting) to carp from the grandstands while they try to do their work of letting us know what the politicians and power brokers are really doing.
John Edwards and Mitt Romney are grown men who made a lot of money and now want the most powerful job in the world. All this attention goes with the process of trying to get it.
Today’s “dirty little secret”: “America's political reporters don't like John Edwards, and have tried to destroy him,” according to Jamison Foser of Media Matters, quoting a piece from Atlantic Online by Marc Ambinder, one of the founders of ABC's The Note and a contributing editor to the National Journal's Hotline newsletter.
(Attribution nosebleed is a side effect of polemical reporting--anyone who agrees or quarrels with this post will be quoting me quoting Foser quoting Ambinder and will then be quoted until it all sounds like “A Partridge in a Pear Tree.”)
The main evidence for Edwards-bashing is the harping on his $400 haircut and working for a hedge fund while warring on poverty in his campaign, an assertion that leads to comparisons by another blogger to “the media's War Against Gore” that “gave us President Bush. It is why we are in Iraq today.”
Time out: Jokes about John Edwards’ haircut are unlikely to lead to another catastrophic war, but if the children will leave the room, we can talk graphically about “media bias.”
That journalists are human is not news and that they may, consciously or not, let their feelings color their reporting is indisputable. But from a lifetime of working, teaching and writing about that enterprise, another perspective:
It may very well be that reporters don’t like John Edwards. They may be put off by his over-acted sincerity, as I am (follow the links to my confession). But there is nothing new in letting that kind of reaction seep into their stories. In fact--and down comes the last veil in this stripping--that may have value for the public the media serves.
In the McCarthy era, we learned objectivity is not enough. If reporters who covered the Senator had done more probing about his methods and motives, it wouldn’t have taken Edward R. Murrow’s “biased” documentary to bring him down.
That kind of drama is rare--only Woodward and Bernstein’s Nixon takedown is comparable. But in subtler ways, the process goes on all the time.
Mitt Romney’s father comes to mind. In 1968, George Romney was the front runner for the Republican nomination. Reporters covering his campaign with a straight face were frustrated by not being able to communicate that the amiable car salesman-Governor was, to put it kindly, a lightweight. When he gaffed about being “brainwashed” in Vietnam, it unleashed headlines and commentary that ended his campaign.
His son and heir is following in that tradition. After his repeated fudging of issues, his defecating dog story and his pathetic swipe at Obama over sex education, yesterday this Governor Romney is pictured smiling over a sign reading “No to Obama, Osama and Chelsea’s Moma.”
Are the media trying to tell us something? I hope so. A little more “bias” in showing Bush the boob in 2000 might have spared the country a lot of grief.
If this sounds arrogant, sorry. Journalists spend their lives trying to be fair and honest--they don’t start out looking for money and power. If they sometimes slip and slide along the way, cut them some slack.
It’s easy (and attention-getting) to carp from the grandstands while they try to do their work of letting us know what the politicians and power brokers are really doing.
John Edwards and Mitt Romney are grown men who made a lot of money and now want the most powerful job in the world. All this attention goes with the process of trying to get it.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Mismatch: Romney Tackles Obama
Now that his defecating dog has been laid to rest, Mitt Romney is on the offensive, trying to soil Barack Obama. He’s way out of his league.
Seizing on a bill Obama supported in the Illinois state Senate with a provision for age-appropriate sex education, Romney pounced.
"How much sex education is age appropriate for a 5-year-old? In my mind, zero is the right number," he said.
Obama swiveled to let Romney fall on his face.
"We have to deal with a coarsening of the culture and the over-sexualization of our young people,” he told a reporter. “Part of the coarsening of that culture is when politicians try to demagogue issues to score cheap political points.
"What we shouldn't do is to try to play political football with these issues.”
The wire-service story went on to report that in 2002 Romney told Planned Parenthood he supported “teaching of responsible, age-appropriate, factually accurate health and sexuality education” in public schools.
Obama’s football analogy is apt. In 1968, a Republican governor observed that “watching George Romney run for President is like watching a duck trying to make love to a football.”
It’s beginning to look like a family tradition.
Seizing on a bill Obama supported in the Illinois state Senate with a provision for age-appropriate sex education, Romney pounced.
"How much sex education is age appropriate for a 5-year-old? In my mind, zero is the right number," he said.
Obama swiveled to let Romney fall on his face.
"We have to deal with a coarsening of the culture and the over-sexualization of our young people,” he told a reporter. “Part of the coarsening of that culture is when politicians try to demagogue issues to score cheap political points.
"What we shouldn't do is to try to play political football with these issues.”
The wire-service story went on to report that in 2002 Romney told Planned Parenthood he supported “teaching of responsible, age-appropriate, factually accurate health and sexuality education” in public schools.
Obama’s football analogy is apt. In 1968, a Republican governor observed that “watching George Romney run for President is like watching a duck trying to make love to a football.”
It’s beginning to look like a family tradition.
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