Political Irony

One of my heroes, Roger Ebert, has written a must-read rant in his online journal. It is short, so I’ll repeat it in its entirety, but you should visit his site to read the comments.

A depression has descended upon me. I look at the blank screen, and those are the words that come into my mind. I do not believe for a second that Mitt Romney will win the election. I do believe that at this moment he is tied, 50-50, in various national polls. Many of my fellow Americans have at least temporarily disappointed me.

It is clear to anyone in either party that in last week’s debate Romney cast aside all of his principles and reversed himself on everything he has said he believes. As Hendrik Hertzberg worded it in the New Yorker:

“By the end of ninety minutes, Romney had retrofitted himself as the defender of Medicare, the advocate of Wall Street regulation, the scourge of the big banks, the enemy of tax cuts for the rich, and the champion of tax relief for the middle class. All these claims are spectacularly false.”

Well, they are, aren’t they? Pause with me a moment to recall the campaign before the debate. If someone had handed you that paragraph and asked you which candidate it described, would you have said it fit Obama, or Romney? The Romney who walked into the debate hall was on record for most of the previous eight years as the opponent of all the items on the list. And his running mate Paul Ryan has been even more outspokenly opposed.

I have no desire to debate the pros and cons of those issues. I simply wish to point out that Romney changed his position on each and every one.

After reversing himself on the central issues of the campaign, Romney’s standing went up in the polls. How? Why? Were the members of the electorate paying absolutely no attention to the campaign? Were they responding only to the general opinion that Romney “won” the debate? Is winning, in the pro football truism, now the only thing?

Something that puzzled me is that there were no howls of protest from the Right. Romney now presented himself as the advocate of positions hated by the Right, and there wasn’t a squeak of protest from the conservatives who have been excoriating Obama on the same issues. Did they all reach a common consensus that if it was necessary for Romney to lie, then let him lie? The Right has been advising him for months to be true to conservative issues. That wasn’t working. Now he was being true to liberal issues.

The silence from the Right reminded me of another deafening quiet when there should have been a response recently. On the infamous tape of Romney addressing a room filled with his millionaire and billionaire backers, he essentially wrote off 47% of the American electorate. But not long after, in an interview on Fox News, Romney rolled that back, saying “I said something that’s just completely wrong.”

The rich men in that room presumably pledged a fortune to the Romney campaign chest. Were any of them offended that Romney no longer agreed with what he told them? We haven’t heard from them.

Obama continues in the Presidential campaign in possession of his own lifelong principles. Romney now seeks the luxury of running on both his principles–and Obama’s. What depresses me is that the polls suggest the electorate isn’t alert enough to realize that. What allows me hope is that, given a little time, I trust the American people will figure this one out.

PolitiFact is widely acknowledged as non-partisan, and to many people even a bit conservative. Even so, it should come as a surprise to nobody that their truthfulness ratings for the presidential candidates are pretty dramatically skewed:

That’s right, the Republicans lead in “Pants on Fire” lies, False, and Mostly False, while the Democrats lead in Mostly True and True. Half True statements are a tossup. Here’s the raw data:

Mitt Romney all by himself accounts for 58% of the “Pants on Fire” lies. Does anyone really want a president who lies so much?

© Adam Zyglis

Not to mention Romney’s previous tax returns.

© Matt Bors

Is this what happens when you evaluate everything based on how much money it makes?

I’ve heard people say a few times that if Barack Obama is reelected that there will be nothing but gridlock with the Republican House. The implication is that electing Mitt Romney would allow more stuff to get done.

But one of my favorite websites, Electoral-Vote, has an interesting analysis of that situation. It is only one paragraph, so I’ll repeat the whole thing:

Suppose Romney were to win the presidency but the Democrats kept the Senate. Then the two most powerful politicians in the country, Mitt Romney and Senate majority leader Harry Reid, would shared a common religion but practically nothing else. Could they work together? It seems unlikely given how much Reid has attacked Romney all year. Romney could find himself thwarted by Reid at every turn. Of course, a second Obama term could be equally thwarted by Speaker John Boehner, but Boehner and Obama don’t have the kind of personal animosity that Romney and Reid have. A Romney-Reid meeting at the White House would be constrained by the fact that they really dislike one another and each one wants the other to fail. An Obama-Boehner meeting wouldn’t have that, but would have a different problem: if Obama and Boehner made a deal on the fiscal cliff, for example, Boehner might not be able to get his troops into line as the tea party Republicans in the House won’t obey him just because he is their leader. Reid doesn’t have that problem. If he were to make a deal with Romney, Senate Democrats would follow his leadership. Either way, unless one party wins all the marbles, the forecast is for gridlock as far as the eye can see.

The good news is that Romney winning the presidency won’t be better news for reducing gridlock over the next four years. So if you are one of those people who like it when the government does as little as possible, you are definitely going to be happy no matter who wins the presidency.