Tag: American Election

Election 2012: Who’s Who

On a scale of one to weird, this has got to be the strangest American election ever — and I’m including 1912, when Teddy Roosevelt decided to be a Bull Moose in a china shop and handed the White House to Woodrow Wilson.  With both National Conventions now over, it’s clear that neither party is all that happy with what they have to work with.  Of course, everybody’s saying the right things and putting on those confident smiles, but I’m pretty sure the backroom boys (they’re still mostly boys) are pulling some heavy all nighters.  Even the media is starting to whine.  The problem is nobody — from the principal candidates on down to the guy fetching the coffee — has a clue what’s going on.  Here’s where we stand, and with less than two months until the American people drop the hammer, it isn’t pretty.

Nobody even knows who the candidates are!

Oddly enough, instead of Obama/Biden versus Romney/Ryan the Democrats seem to have decided to run Barack and Clinton against Mitt Romney and George W. Bush.  FYI, that’s Bill Clinton.  Hillary gave the whole convention thing a miss.  She was on an important diplomatic mission to… where?  Rarotonga, actually.  (Find that on a map!)  The media did some heavy speculating that she had contracted 2016 flu, and they made sure everybody saw her in East Timor, a diplomatically hotter spot than the Cook Islands.  America’s First Couple may be Barack and Michelle, but like it or not, in 2012, the Clintons have some serious coattails.  Husband Bill would like nothing better than to be a bigger part of history on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the only way he can do that is if Obama gets re-elected and Hillary becomes the ranking Democrat — with four years to plan.  Meanwhile, the other democratic vice president, Joe Biden, has been locked in a soundproof chamber for the duration.  The Democrats don’t want him touching anything until sometime after November 7th.  It will be interesting to see who shows up to debate Dubya on October 11th, even though George 43 is actually that black cloud hanging over Romney’s head.

On the other side of the aisle, the Republicans are playing it safe.  They’re sending in The Gipper, Ronald Reagan to gang up on Jimmy Carter – again – and if Paul Ryan can get a few kicks in from the sidelines, so be it.  Their thinking is, “We’ve got to be here anyway, and Mitt is the closest thing to a moderate we can come up with.  Let’s try and convince the American people this is 1980, and we’ve got it made!”  The beauty of this strategy is, if Mitt can pull it out of the fire, yippee ki yay; if not, the Republicans have saved their big guns, Christie, Rubio and, yes, Paul Ryan for 2016 when the Obama magic will be safely back in Chicago — where it belongs.

The simple fact is the big boys (yes, they’re mostly boys, also) in both parties don’t want to fight an election with the guys they’ve got.  What are the Democrats going to say?  In the last four years, we haven’t been able to make a dent in perhaps the biggest crisis in economic history.  In fact, we’ve kinda made it worse.  However, if you let us have at it for another four years, we’ll fix it — using those same tried and true techniques that got us this far.

On the other hand, the Republicans have got some cojones just pointing fingers.  After all, they were in charge when this economic powder keg got lit up.  What are they going to say?  We made the mess.  You guys aren’t cleaning it up fast enough.  Give us another kick at the can.

Either way, both parties would be committing suicide if they didn’t have a few tricks up their sleeves — including switching candidates.

Wednesday: How to Win an Unwinnable Election.

Election 2012: Obama’s Turn

The odd thing about elections is that they’re so easily sidetracked.  Major issues give way to pivotal moments that wouldn’t warrant a page five headline in normal times.  Michael Dukakis’ now infamous joyride on an M1 Abrams tank in 1988 comes to mind.  Few, if anybody, really remembers what Dukakis had to say in ’88 but the image is still there – slightly silly – definitely un-presidential.  It’s the simple things that define an election.  The thing is most concepts are just too complex to explain in a sound byte or a television ad.  Thus, candidates have to distill a broad spectrum of ideas into one overwhelming message and hope it sticks to the electorate.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt did it with The New Deal, John Kennedy with The New Frontier and in 2008, Hope and Change carried Barack Obama to the White House.  The problem is these encapsulated messages are fragile creatures, and like Humpty Dumpty, if they shatter, there’s no way to pick up the pieces.

There’s not a lot of talk about Hope and Change in the Obama camp these days.  The mood is more hunkered-down.  The Democratic National Convention still has the hoopla, but the party atmosphere of 2008 is gone.  People are serious.  This isn’t going to be a skate to November like it was last time.  There’s a broad admission that, “We’re not there yet.” and there’s a lot of work to do.

Tomorrow, the Democrats bring out the big guns – Bill Clinton and the president himself.  Barack Obama doesn’t need to convert the faithful anymore; he needs to reconvert the sceptics.  It’s a difficult situation.  In 2008, Obama’s message was one simple idea — I am the solution.  Here in 2012, it’s more complicated than that.   He’s got to tell the electorate that he is indeed still the solution, but he also has to convince them that he’s not actually the problem.  Meanwhile, the Republicans have branded their guy a matte finish Mr. Fix-it.  No gloss, no gleam, just a clear picture of a repairman who can spot-mend the immediate mess and hold the line until Christie and Ryan and Rubio are ready to take over.

So far, there has been no defining moment in this election, but there will be.  If Obama is smart — and I know he is — he will stay away from going toe to toe with the Republicans.  He needs to bring on the glitter, paint the Republicans as joyless suits and ties, and rekindle those personal flames that were burning election night four years ago.  If he does that, he’ll probably get four more years; if he doesn’t, he can get busy planning his library.

Election 2012: A Campaign of Ideas?

I love a good fight, and nothing spells “Smack Down” like pissing off a Scotsman.  The Scotsman in question is Niall Ferguson, and the fight is over nothing less than the most important American election in a generation.  Last week, Ferguson came out swinging in Newsweek, calling the Obama administration everything but nice.  There was immediate retaliation and the war of the words was on.  I’m not going to go into the wherefores and the why right now, but you can read about it here, and follow the links all over the place.  The interesting thing is that maybe, just maybe, the 2012 presidential race is going to be a real election with issues and ideas and all kinds of other good stuff.  It could happen!

Regardless of which side of the aisle you’re on, up until a couple of weeks ago, it was pretty well agreed that the American election was going to be an outrageously expensive snoozefest.  Sure, Barack Obama wasn’t high-flying adored anymore, but he still had enough Evita Peron leftover to dazzle the multitudes.  On the other hand, Romney wasn’t exactly tearing it up in the charisma department.  The Man from Bland was living up to the moniker.  Meanwhile, the media, still a little uncomfortable with the laissez-faire treatment they’d given Barack the first time around, had decided to sit this one out.  Their strategy was that the Republicans would probably be Sarah im-palin themselves again, long before the bicoastal opinionators had to take a hand.  So they were spending their days drinking lattes and waiting for the latest Republican gaffe to Twitter by.  Enter Paul Ryan.

Ryan’s selection as the Republican vice-presidential nominee was a game changer.  Suddenly, the Republicans had something more to do with their time than get all defensive about things like gay rights and abortion.  Ryan made his bones babysitting the Budget in Congress.  He is a man with a plan and, like it or not, his economic theses are going to get nailed up on Obama’s cathedral door.  Basically, that’s what Niall Ferguson (a former advisor to John McCain) was doing — in 10,000 words or less — in Newsweek.

The Republicans know that they haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of beating Obama in a popularity contest – the guy’s just too ubercool.  For example, he won a Nobel Peace Prize a couple days after he signed orders to seriously escalate the war in Afghanistan.  When you think about that objectively, the only thing you can say is “Wow!”  Actually, I’m surprised the Nobel people didn’t just throw in the Literature Prize as well.  After all, somebody wrote The Audacity of Hope.  My point is there isn’t a Republican alive with that kind of star power.  Mano a mano, the GOP’s best shot would be to resurrect Lincoln.  Even then, there wouldn’t be any guarantees.  So what to do to get to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

It not very complicated, really.  For any number of reasons, Obama has not delivered on his promises of change.   It’s obvious he’s made some terrible decisions, but, I think he didn’t have a hope, given the expectations put on the poor guy.  However, regardless of how he got here, even the apologists admit that the last four years have not been kind to him or America.  Now, with unemployment reaching double digits in some places, entitlement programs eating the budget faster than the Treasury can print money, a national debt that’s soaring into the stratosphere and an economy that’s hit rock bottom and started to dig, Obama’s vision of America is on trial.  Mitt has to offer a clear alternative.  He needs to stay away from the culture wars the Democrats love so much and match Obama — ideology for ideology.  Turning this campaign into a contest of ideas isn’t going to be easy, but, if he does, the White House could be well within his grasp.

Ever since John Kennedy took centre stage at the Kennedy/Nixon debates in 1960, American politics have leaned heavily on personality.  It would be totally refreshing if a candidate as unlikely as Mitt Romney could change all that.