Though it is distressing to be enduring such a dismal election campaign, it is not unprecedented. As both parties prepare to spend a billion dollars either reelecting a president most Americans do not think deserves to be reelected, or a challenger most of his fellow Republicans don’t think can win (and as in most things, the public may well be right on both counts), it is easy to find the whole process discouraging.
The liberal national media took dead aim at Mitt Romney when he emerged from the debacle of the 2008 McCain campaign as this year’s front-runner. Their great achievement has not been the serial assassinations of the non-Mitts, who were sitting ducks — Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich — but rather the deterrence of the people who could have generated real enthusiasm and might have been stronger candidates than Romney: Jeb Bush, Daniels, Ryan, Rubio, Christie, and Barbour.
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And their second great achievement has been responding to the meteoric rise of Newt Gingrich like Nike Zeus missiles, getting from the ground to 60,000 feet in three heartbeats. If Newt had lasted another month and won a couple of primaries before imploding, he might, as I suggested here at the time, have deadlocked the convention and enabled Republican regional leaders to get behind one of the non-candidates. But they hung the $1.6 million of history lessons at Fannie Mae around Newt’s neck with such efficacy, they made the Ancient Mariner’s albatross look like an inspiriting scapular medal.
As a bonus, Newt, who professed to be surprised by the negative comments on some of the less salubrious aspects of his career, replied, joined by Governor Perry as he ramped up to his 1 percent finish in New Hampshire, by attacking Romney’s business record. Asset-stripping and the reconfiguration and relaunch of companies isn’t industrialism and job-creation like building Microsoft, but it is part of legitimate corporate rationalization, produced strong gains for Romney’s investors, and is a more estimable career than that of most politicians. Obama would have made the same points, but Newt’s gibbering will make excellent fodder for the president’s reelection ads against Romney, and an unseemly swan song for Gingrich’s active political career (unless he wants to be the Harold Stassen of the new millennium).
Gail Collins of the New York Times is a lively writer and usually the first musket to flame from the undergrowth at each new blip of a Republican non-Mitt in the polls. She referred to the continuing non-Mitts last week as candidates who “could not be elected president if they were running against Millard Fillmore.” In writing this, she mistakenly implied that she thought Romney could defeat President Fillmore; that Fillmore was a markedly more unsuccessful president than Barack Obama; that she might civilly describe more impressive Republicans; and that Fillmore had ever been elected president or had even been a major-party nominee to that office.
Millard Fillmore, a former congressman from western New York State, was elected vice president as the running mate of Gen. Zachary Taylor in 1848. It was one of only two presidential victories for the Whig party among 13 Democratic victories between Jefferson in 1800 and Buchanan in 1856. By 1848, the American house was so divided on the slavery issue that both parties chose nominees to national office who had ambiguous views on the question, like 1990s nominees to the Supreme Court who had no paper trail on abortion. Victorious commanders from the jokey wars of the time (William H. Harrison, Taylor, Lewis Cass, Franklin Pierce, Winfield Scott, John C. Frémont) and dissembling political roués (Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Fillmore, William R. King, Buchanan) were favored. More substantial figures such as Henry Clay and Stephen A. Douglas could not hold together a coalition of supporters and opponents of slavery. From the retirement of Andrew Jackson in 1837 to the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln in 1861, the only successful president was the astute, slippery, and colorless former Speaker and America’s first “dark horse,” Polk, who won the Mexican War (adding a million square miles to U.S. territory), settled the northwest frontier with the British and Canadians, and stabilized treasury and tariff matters.
Fillmore helped pass the Compromise of 1850 worked up by Clay, Douglas, and Daniel Webster, and sent Commodore Perry to open the ports of Japan. It was a defensible record that may well bear comparison with Obama’s, given that this president at the end of this term will have added about $2,000 of debt for every man, woman, and child in the country, in order to wrestle unemployment back to where he found it, while partially disarming America unilaterally and possibly welcoming Iran into the nuclear club. (On past form, Ms. Collins would be just as scathing of the Republicans if the contestants for the nomination were Lincoln, TR, Ike, and Reagan.)
Excuse me!!?? FDR??? Military spending is the best way to stimulate the economy?? Are you on crack? No amount of your pontificating and nickel words will convince me you're not just another neo con warmonger. When will you people realize that taking vast amounts of money out of the productive economy and blowing it up over seas, is not good for the economy. Military spending is different than defence spending. That genie has left the bottle and you will not be able to stuff it back in. Although I know you will keep trying.
Sadly, Black is probably correct about military spending being the best way to stimulate the economy, at least in the USA. Worked for the Third Reich, too. In the long run it didn't work for the USSR, we are told; or perhaps things there would have been worse without it.
The reason is that military spending is at its foundation a command economy, in that the government decides what gets produced and how much of it is produced. And, its components are generally manufactured domestically using domestic workers, so the money stays local.
That does not mean that a military-based economy is a good idea, or the way that most of us would like to live.
To put this another way: If by "best" way to travel from one city to one nearby, we mean "fastest and cheapest," then the best way is to steal a car, speed, and run traffic lights when nobody is looking. Low-cost and quick. Not a good idea, though.
The myth that military spending boosts the economy is based exclusively on the post-WW2 scenario. But that scenario is extremely different from the situation the world is in today. Europe and Japan had their manufacturing ability eliminated due to the war, the US was the only one left with intact manufacturing facilities, so naturally it resulted in a huge boost to our economy.
However, military spending only works as an economic boost when you physically destroy your competitors' manufacturing capability. Outside of that scenario military spending is a pure drag on the economy.
So unless you plan on nuking China, devastating Europe, and so on... you'll need a more realistic plan.
Somehow it is difficult to take seriously any political or economic insights of a convicted fiscal felon like Conrad Black. He manipulated the system and is properly serving time. If I were Romney, I would steer far clear of even a lukewarm endorsement from that crook.
Last I heard, even by his prosecutors' account and with everything else dropped or voided, he is in jail for not having properly informed US federal authorities when he removed his own property from his own property on foreign soil.
Whatever you may think of his business methods, he is not in jail for them.
Your ad hominem is off the mark, I believe Lord Black is actually damning Romney with faint praise.
And I don't think your statement is fair, he's hardly a financial criminal, he seems have been convicted of a much lesser charge for the 'crime' of not being prosecutable or the primary charges in the indictment.
He seems more of a victim of spite from Patrick Fitzgerald. Interesting that the U.S. Attorney took the time to do this to Conrad Black, but when it came to investigating corruption in Illinois he looked under every rock but the one Barack Obama was hiding under.
Fillmore got where he was because of tainted strawberries. Zachary Taylor may have held the union a bit longer. He was tough frontier general cut from the same cloth as "By God" Jackson. Fillmore had one attribute: Queen Victoria said he was the most handsome man she ever saw.
Henry Clay said that he would rather be right than President. His opponents said he would be neither. As for John Tyler. He took the oath of loyalty to the Constitution of the United States a second time when he assumed the "duties" of the office upon Harrisons demise. John Quincy Adams called him "his accidency". No where does the Constitution mention a second oath is a requirement for assuming the office of President. It comes automatically. Tyler must have worried about his loyalty as Vice President. He was intuitively right. Tyler was the only ex-president to be elected a delegate to the Confederate Congress in 1861. He died before he had a chance to swear an oath of loyalty to the Confiderate States of America as a delegate from Virginia. Based on prior behavior that oath should have been suspect.
I certainly do not see Mitt Romney as the "most improbable savior," which in and of itself is a very un-conservative statement, insofar as conservatives, generally speaking, do not look to an individual as a "savior," however probable or improbable the individual may be.
Furthermore, one can agree or disagree with Romney's positions, but one can hardly find issue with Romney's competence. By all accounts he has a driving work ethic, a character above reproach, and a spotless personal history. Add those qualities to his life experiences and I would argue that he is a candidate uniquely suited for this current time.
He has twenty-five years of business experience, delving deeply into various companies in diverse industries (known as the "Bain Way") and working to fix the companies. One cannot argue honestly that he was not successful. Not only was he successful, but there is not a single account from co-workers throughout those years of Romney being anything other than a tremendously capable, focused, inspiring leader (look no further than the CEO of Staples for those testimonies).
Those same qualities enabled him to perform an amazing turnaround at the Olympics. And, though not a full-spectrum, staunch conservative as governor, he was still successful -- cutting taxes, reducing spending, and closing a gaping deficit.
He has seen business from all angles -- investor, manager, CEO, elected official. A reasonable case could be made that he is one of the, if not the, most on-the-job-ready presidents in modern times, with the possible exception of Reagan.
I quite look forward to his nomination and his presidency. Dignity will be restored to the White House. The occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania will be a man whose entire career has been marked by success. He may not be the most inspiring, eloquent, firey candidate in our current field, but there is no person more suitable for the presidency, both in character and competency.
I think what Levereter is referring to is that at some point in the 1970's or 1980's, Mitt and his family were travelling in one of those large station wagons with a very large dog that had some kind of gastrointestinal troubles. Mitt's solution was to put the dog up on the luggage rack somehow and drive to wherever they were going.
People of a certain age would recognize this as prudent innovation in the face of adversity.
I've heard Mitt talk about this several times on Boston radio with Howie Carr and I always find it to be a much more amusing than incrimininating. I notice that whenever it is brought up it it is always brought up indirectly without the details and temporal context that make it more of a snapshot of what life was like in a happier, freer time.
I'd say bring that issue on. I strongly doubt it's harmful. As the tradition of mudraking goes, you'd prefer to find a live boy or a dead girl in his background but all you're finding is success in business and a sick dog. Cue Senator Sheets Byrd for soundbites on Man's Best Friend.
Oh, lord, where is the first hole I can crawl in and die? The situation is hopeless... Except for the Obama-type "hope," I suppose. Yes, this article started my day with a ray of sunshine: we are so screwed!
The time is always now, and now is always a good time to pray. If there are any chill-pills left over from the 60’s, perhaps now is the time to pass them out.
It boggles my mind that that have been no worthy, capable people willing to step up and take the Presidency which has been offered on a silver platter by the worst President in American history (but, not insignificantly, one who has been the most successful enemy this country's ever had). How is it possible to have such a stunning display, in a country of 300+ million people, of candidates and possible candidates who either can't possibly win - for various reasons - or don't have the guts to run.
It's like reading 1st Samuel about the Philistine and the Israelite armies squared off, Goliath strutting back and forth taunting and flipping off the Israelis and their God, and then David shows up and, instead of rising to the occasion and schooling Goliath in one of History's biggest smackdowns, dithers on about how he isn't seasoned enough, or doesn't want to leave his sheep flock, or some such.
Our Goliath and the Philistines (parading as Obama and the Democrat/Media complex) struts and taunts, and our Republican leaders cower and dissemble and hem and haw about what to do about it all .... Where is OUR David, in OUR time of need?
Despair not and never lose sight of the fact that nothing happens by chance, especially not when it comes to who gets to become POTUS. The country may have to suffer four more years of decline, maybe something far worse, under O, but rest assured that God put him there and whatever the outcome, is in His plan, even though we don’t understand it from our limited perspective.
I don’t say this as someone who only turns to religion when facing a hopeless situation. The above is my long-held belief and attitude which had allowed me to live through past elections without feeling too much angst and depressed.
And now you know how Democrats felt in 2004, when Dubya was there for the taking (my candidate for "worst President"). Some say if the economy gets worse, Obama is certain to lose. Again, I thought the same in 2004 - Dubya stumbled through the debates and created more phoney color-coded terror warnings to throw voters off the trail. It worked, he beat Kerry rather easily. The incumbent always has an advantage, and if his opponent is less than inspiring to the masses ...
If anyone is expecting a president to deliver this country, we have fallen into the same delusional, idolatrous thinking that helped elect Obama. We have forgotten God, turned our back on Him, denied His existence, and we worship the creature and not the Creator. Will Almighty God deliver our nation from our long slide into destruction? It is indeed time to pray. It always has been.
Sorry, Mr. Black, but the era of "opening ports" via military threat is no longer a good policy. Sorry to say that capturing a millions square miles of relatively desolate territory from a tinpot nation has produced long-term problems, most notably the current demographic disaster for Republicans. Sorry to say that the 1880s influx of European immigrants was a factor that suppressed employment of freed slaves, with negative long-term consequences; not only that, the rise in GDP was largely due to mere population increase, with sever concentration of wealth and negative long-term consequences.
When will the more intellectual writers at NRO, such as Conrad Black, dare to admit that the Constitution was poorly thought out by persons who had excessively high opinions of themselves, little foresight, and little courage to address what would surely become major issues, even in the lifetime of some persons born before the original Constitution was ratified?
