We’re in one of those presidential campaign moments where the campaign “debate,” such as it is, is trapped in a hermetic system with an only indirect connection to the future of the country. Is whether Mitt Romney kept a …
2012 Election
Bained
Back in June of 1988, Lee Atwater took me aside and showed me some stuff that Bush the Elder’s campaign had developed against Michael Dukakis, who was then enjoying a 17-point advantage in the polls. The “stuff” seemed laughable. …
Obama Campaign Says Mitt Romney Is Either a Crook or a Liar
Mitt Romney wants you to know that both of these things are true: 1) He remained the “controlling person” in a number of Bain Capital investments between 1999 and 2002, when he left to work on the Salt Lake City Olympics. 2) He …
Bain Already Killed Mitt Romney Once. And I Was a Witness.
I haven’t studied the details of Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain & Co. And I’m no expert in political tactics; when I write about them, it’s usually to make a larger point about a politician. My only credential for discussing whether Bain will hurt Romney in 2012 is that I lived in Massachusetts in 1994, when he was running for …
The NAACP Boos Romney: A Double Standard and a Breach of Civility
It’s politically fashionable to question the relevance of the 103-year-old National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. But the NAACP is still one of America’s most revered institutions, and deservedly so – …
The Green Team: Jill Stein’s Third-Party Bid to Shake Up 2012
Wednesday morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein spoke to about a dozen people–and a couple dozen empty chairs. She had gone to the capital, in advance of the Green …
Hobgoblin Alert: Behind Barack Obama’s False Abortion Ad
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” –H.L. Mencken
If you live in a swing state, your nation sends its apologies. Perhaps you can just break your television. No grown man or woman should be subjected …
Romney’s Big Fundraising Month and the Culture of Political Giving
Mitt Romney had a banner month in June. His campaign and the Republican National Committee raised $106 million, marking a large post-primary consolidation of Republican funds, and a full $35 million more than President Obama and …
Can Obama’s Attacks on Offshore Accounts Sink Romney?
We are at a potentially critical moment in the presidential race over the Democrats’ attempts to make Romney’s Swiss bank account, Cayman Island investment funds, and secret tax returns into what the Republicans’ Swift Boating effort was for John Kerry in 2004.
The Fault, Dear Romney, Is Not in the Staff
The tepid June jobs report could relegate the calls for a shake-up in Team Romney to the dumpster of stupid campaign controversies, along with the candidate’s ruminations on lemonade, that 13-year-old conservative who isn’t conservative anymore and the rest of last week’s flotsam and jetsam. But now that Rupert Murdoch, Jack Welch …
Rupert Murdoch, Mitt Romney and the Aztec Sacrifice Ritual
Call it the Aztec effect. There comes a point in virtually every major presidential campaign when the gods demand a sacrifice. In contemporary terms, the gods are some combination of powerful party activists and donors as well as …
Campaign Notebook: The President, the Press and the Peach
Port Clinton, Ohio
Just a few miles from Lake Erie, Bergman Orchards is a roadside storefront with the slogan “Acres and acres of farm fresh fruits and vegetables” painted on an inside wall. The side of the building says …
Obama Welcomes Campaign Season with China Trade Complaint
Maumee, Ohio.
“It’s campaign season, again,” Barack Obama announced Thursday, after emerging in the sweltering summer heat behind hay bales and before a giant American flag draped across the roof of a nearby building. …