- The Perry family leased a hunting property with the name “Niggerhead” painted on a rock at its entrance. There are conflicting accounts of how long it took the Perrys to obscure the name.
- House Republicans return to Washington divided.
- A profile of Eric Cantor, Grand Bargain saboteur.
- Bloomberg reports that Koch Industries bribed officials in Africa, India and the Middle East, and sold equipment to Iran.
- How one millionaire swung North Carolina’s elections.
- Florida flouts the RNC, moves its primary to Jan 31 and upends the calendar.
- 700 arrested in Wall Street protests.
- Another liberal attorney general splits with states seeking mortgage fraud settlement.
- Another poll shows Elizabeth Warren statistically tied with Scott Brown.
- One legacy of the U.S. financial crisis: risk aversion.
- And Glenn Beck will launch Liberty Treehouse, a kids show.
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The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy
More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.
