A Change in the Wind

Can the Romneytron 9000 elicit emotion from humans?

Bright young Brit Tim Stanley reports on the ground from South Carolina and very convincingly argues that Newt Gingrich didn't win the primary.

Willard Romney lost it. 

Newt Gingrich will deny it, but the South Carolina vote was really a referendum on Romney. He lost it because he is slipping in the area that was previously his one selling point: electability. The Bain mess and his absent tax returns were compounded by the overturning of his “victory” in Iowa. Without the illusion of being unbeatable, there is no reason for conservatives to vote for Romney. Crucially, they told exit pollers that they now believe Newt is more likely to win against Obama than Mitt in November. That’s an illusion, too. But when you hate someone as much as some sections of the Tea Party hate Romney, you don’t see them as they really are. Poor Romney has become, unfairly, a stand in for all the elitism and bad faith of the Republican establishment. He has a tough fight ahead.

What can Romney do? How can he connect with the public? Election experts agree that he remains the best-funded, least offensive, and most-likely-to-succeed candidate for the GOP.

But like Richard Nixon, no one seems to actually like the guy. He needs to show something human that people can latch on to and trust emotionally. Hell, even Richard Nixon had to do that. 

Won't be easy. The joke on Romney is that he's either just boring (SNL) or actually a robot (from Rall, Drum, and others).

The Romneytron 9000 as Kevin Drum put it. 

In the South Carolina debates, Gingrich successfully turned attacks on his character into attacks on the press,  and more importantly, in doing so connected with the audience. They thrilled at his fiery attack on "elites" -- meaning the likes of handsome, well-paid, well-educated, intelligent questioner John King. 

(Curiously, in his looks John King is almost exactly as stolid and Ken-like as Mitt Romney.In a dramatic sense, they are worthy if slow-moving opponents, in an Megatron vs. Optimus Prime sort of way. And as mentioned below, Prime got a terrific shot in on Megatron in the last battle over Megatron's income tax returns.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Nixon had a somewhat similar problem, when he was running for Governor of California in the early 60's. People just didn't like him. After a bad loss, he lashed out at his famous "last press conference." In true bitterness he said: 

"You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentleman, this is my last press conference." 

In a practised, familiar, move, Newt Gingrich turned his negative into a positive, by blaming the press for his situation. Will Romney try something similar? 

Surely it's too late to play "me too" -- Newt's all but patented that move.

Maybe he'll find a way to tug at the heartstrings, such as Richard Nixon's infamous Checkers speech?

No -- no one can pity the billionaire unable to buy his wife the coat she wants.

Romney has been accused of being Nixonian -- by his neighbors, in fact. According to a story in the New York Review of Books:

When I ask locals about their impressions of Mitt, I get a recurring response: Nixonian. “The overriding passion of his life seems to be to become president,” a conservative economics professor tells me. “I can’t think of a single issue over which Romney would risk reelection in order to stick to a principle.” A University of Massachusetts journalism professor puts it more positively: “He can be as cagey as Nixon, and he can be almost as smarmy, but he is also able to think strategically.”

Romney may be able to think strategically, but can he act strategically?

That appears to be his challenge. Can he pick up the mantle of Reagan -- or at least, Nixon -- and make some sort of emotional connection with the electorate? 

What are the chances? Hasn't managed it yet, near as I can tell.   

Will Romney live up to his own father's standards?

Though attacked for asking a personal, sexual question of Newt Gingrich at the beginning of the South Carolina debate, CNN anchor John King came back later in the debate with an even tougher question for Newt's rival Mitt Romney. He laid it out beautifully, and listened as Romney flailed to answer. 

As Romney failed to live up to his father's example, the crowd actually turned against him.  

 

Romney had to know the question was coming, but could not have expected that King would so artfully juxtapose Mitt's furtive secrecy against his father George Romney's open disclosure. As Andrew Sullivan said -- brilliant. 

Willard got terrible reviews for his evasive answer from across the political spectrum, and now the Washington Post picks up the gauntlet and in an editorial repeats the reporter's question. 

THURSDAY NIGHT’S Republican presidential debate produced more equivocation from former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney about when he would release his tax returns and how many he would release. He was asked by moderator John King if he would follow the standard set by his own father, George, the former Michigan governor who was the first presidential candidate to release his tax returns. He put out 12 years’ worth in November 1967, as he prepared to run for the White House in 1968 — a point also being made in a Democratic National Committee video. All Mr. Romney could muster was an awkward “Maybe.” Wait until April, he said.

More disclosure, sooner, would be better, as is already obvious even to such supporters of Mr. Romney as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R).

Give King credit for asking a great question (and doing Newt and us all a great favor). And wonder what is in those tax returns that the Mitt-bot is so reluctant to reveal. 

To the stars, through the thorns: Gov. Jerry Brown

Jerry Roberts knows more about California than you, and me, and probably most of the people in the state put together. He's edited major newspapers, for decades; written columns, for decades; launched websites, written books, taugth at university -- his rap sheet is as long as a cliche. He left teaching a year ago to concentrate on his writing, he said, and from the opening to his latest column in the Santa Barbara Independent, it's clear he made the right move. To wit:

Letting loose a little Latin lexicon, Jerry Brown offered up some context from the classics to describe the political challenges facing Sacramento in 2012.

“Ad Astra per Aspera,” the Jesuit-trained governor intoned in a look-ahead interview about the legislative session that began this week.

Chatting with public radio’s ace Capitol correspondent John Myers, the governor translated the expression as, “To the stars through the thorns.”

The whole column is worth reading, but that is beautiful. 

Sometimes it's so easy to see the Jesuit in Jerry Brown.  

Why does the White House disrespect Paul Krugman?

The great Steve Brodner wants to know why the White House ignores the left's most knowledgeable, effective, and lauded advocate.  

He writes: "Paul Krugman, locked out of Obama’s party with the 1%. Three years on, who had it right!!???"

From Romney to Rome to murder: today in inequality news

The inequality news from just one day in December 2011:

The likely GOP contender is almost certainly a member of the 1% (from a great story in the Times): 

During his political career, Mr. Romney has promoted his experience as a businessman while deflecting criticism of layoffs caused by private equity deals by noting that he left Bain in 1999. But records and interviews show that in the years since, he has benefited from at least a few Bain deals that resulted in upheaval for companies, workers and communities.

One lucrative deal for Bain involved KB Toys, a company based in Pittsfield, Mass., which one of the firm’s partnerships bought in 2000. Three years later, when Mr. Romney was the governor of Massachusetts, the company began closing stores and laying off thousands of employees. More recently, Bain helped lead the private equity purchase of Clear Channel Communications, the nation’s largest radio station operator, which resulted in the loss of 2,500 jobs.

Much information about Mr. Romney’s wealth is not known publicly. Federal law does not obligate him to disclose the precise details of his investments. He has declined to release his tax returns, and his campaign last week refused to say what tax rate he paid on his Bain earnings.

But since Mr. Romney’s payouts from Bain have come partly from the firm’s share of profits on its customers’ investments, that income probably qualifies for the 15 percent tax rate reserved for capital gains, rather than the 35 percent that wealthy taxpayers pay on ordinary income. 

The U.S. economy today is significantly more unequal than Rome at its imperial height, if you judge from the amount of total wealth owned by those at the top. From ThinkProgress:

"In the United States, the top 1 percent controls roughly 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. According to the study, which examined Roman ledgers, previous estimates, imperial edicts, and Biblical passages, Rome’s top 1 percent controlled less than half that at the height of its economic power, as Tim De Chant notes at Per Square Mile:

Their target was the state of the economy when the empire was at its population zenith, around 150 C.E. Schiedel and Friesen estimate that the top 1 percent of Roman society controlled 16 percent of the wealth, less than half of what America’s top 1 percent control.

Of course, the millions of Romans at the bottom of the empire’s class structure — the conquered and enslaved, the poorest Romans, and the women who had little civic or economic empowerment — would probably disagree with the study’s conclusion. Still, it serves as yet another highlight of how large the income gap in the United States has become over the last three decades."

And, most startling of all, a great story in The Guardian about how in Ohio unemployed men were lured to their death by offers of $300 a week [corrected] and a trailer to live in.

[Ron] Sanson, 58, replied to a job advert on Craigslist in October looking for a watchman on an Ohio farm. The position paid just $300 a week but came with a trailer home to live in free. The applications flooded in from desperate men across the country willing to work for low pay just to have a little income.

Except there was no farm and no job.

Richard Beasley, a self-styled preacher with convictions for burglary, is alleged to have posted the advert to lure men to an isolated wood and shoot them.

Beasley and a 16-year-old schoolboy, Brogan Rafferty, are accused of shooting four men, killing three of them, who travelled from as far as Virginia and Florida as well as from Ohio. The police suspect there are more victims.

Here's a picture of Beasley's alleged co-conspirator:

 

How to pitch an article: James Wolcott

From a first rate review by Charles McNulty in the Los Angeles TImes. The witty Wolcott, now at Vanity Fair, first worked at the Village Voice, and learned from reading other pitches how to write to intrigue: 

"Avoid preamble — flip the on switch in the first sentence. Find a focal point for your nervous energy, assume a forward offensive stance, and drive to the finish line, even if it's only a five-hundred-word slot …."

It's a lot harder than it sounds, but a good reminder on what to do, and what not to do. 

Meanwhile the LA Times itself is headed for another editor and another excursion to hell. Painful. Despite all its woes, it's a good paper. To be punished for trying so hard has got to hurt.  

Is it too late to stop climate change? (the Onion)

Reporting from Geneva, the Not the New York Times:

A new report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned Monday that global warming is likely to become completely irreversible if no successful effort is made to slow down the trend before 2006.

Unless greenhouse-gas emissions are drastically reduced by then, the report concludes, it will be too late to avoid inflicting a grave environmental catastrophe upon future generations.

"We have absolutely no time to waste," said Dr. William Tumminelli, lead author of the report...

It's a joke, but as usual these secret satirists get it exactly right.

Let me offer an example, from my recent trip to the ginormous annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, where the Moscone Center is invaded every December by 18,000 scientists.

At perhaps the biggest press conference this year, with James Hansen, the world's pre-eminent climatologist, Ken Caldeira, a leading expert on ocean acidification, and Eelco Rohling, a European paleoclimatology expert, I think most of the reporters asked the irreversibility question.

Probably the most published of scientific reporters, Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press, began by asking the panel if we have passed the tipping point of global warming. 

(Interestingly, he asked the question but didn't write about Hansen's warning at this conference, if his Twitter stream can be trusted.)

Perhaps the veteran AP reporter considered it old news. Hansen has been staying the same thing at nearly every one of the American Geophysical Union conferences I've attended, going back to 2007, which is that the situation is dead serious and "we simply can't afford to burn all the fossil fuels."

But it wasn't just Borenstein. The Independent, The Nation, and another reporter, each in his own way, asked the same basic question.  

For Hansen, the question misses the point. Even we have tipped over into a new climate regime, as seems obvious to most Americans, we can still choose to moderate the damage. 

Or not. 

[Hansen in the press room at the AGU, talking to enterprising Steve Connor of The Independent] 

Dumb headline of the year: Sugar bombs edition

Washington Post, you're better than this: 

Some Children's Cereals Packed with Sugar, Study Finds

Really?

Didn't Calvin tells us this, what, twenty-five years ago? 

I know, it's a study by the Environmental Working Group, but that's no excuse for the lack of imagination. 

Here's Grist's:

Cereal Offenders

Ah. That's better. 

The writer who fired the producer: Brett Radner

Yesterday Mark Harris at Grantland eviscerated Brett Radner, the man chosen to produce the Oscar telecast this year, for his "rehearsal is for fags" comment, and lame subsequent apology.

Harris wrote: 

I’ve had to listen to versions of every one of these mea-not-quite-culpas over the years and seriously, I’m no longer interested in patiently witnessing the slow arc of a public figure’s learning curve. What I do care about is what the Academy does, which should be either to ask for and receive his resignation from the show or to drop him as the producer of a show that is supposed to represent the best the industry has to offer. There’s not really a long, nuanced debate to be had about this. If he had used an equivalent racial or religious slur, the discussion would go something like, “You’re fired.” Apology or not. The same rule applies here. You don’t get a mulligan on homophobia. Not in 2011.

Tuesday -- Ratner is fired! Er, resigns. Whatever.

We are the new PETM: National Geographic

Their headline is a little less wonky: Hothouse Earth. 

No matter -- it's still a typically great National Geographic story. 

Just how much carbon was injected into the atmosphere during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, as scientists now call the fever period, is uncertain. But they estimate it was roughly the amount that would be injected today if human beings burned through all the Earth's reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas. The PETM lasted more than 150,000 years, until the excess carbon was reabsorbed. It brought on drought, floods, insect plagues, and a few extinctions. Life on Earth survived—indeed, it prospered—but it was drastically different. Today the evolutionary consequences of that distant carbon spike are all around us; in fact they include us. Now we ourselves are repeating the experiment.

The PETM "is a model for what we're staring at—a model for what we're doing by playing with the atmosphere," says Philip Gingerich, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Michigan. "It's the idea of triggering something that runs away from you and takes a hundred thousand years to reequilibrate."

Even better than the story, perhaps, is the pic of the Arctic then and now: 

But best of all, sez me, is the conclusion:

Fossil fuel burning has released more than 300 billion tons of carbon since the 18th century—probably less than a tenth of what's still in the ground or of what was released at the PETM. That episode doesn't tell us what will happen to life on Earth if we choose to burn the rest. (Global emissions set another record last year.) Maybe there will be a burst of evolutionary innovation like the one that gave rise to our primate ancestors; maybe this time, with all the other pressures on species, there will be mass extinctions. The PETM merely puts the choice in long perspective. Tens of millions of years from now, whatever becomes of humanity, the whole pattern of life on Earth may be radically different from what it would otherwise have been—simply because of the way we powered our lives for a few centuries.

People talk about changing the world. We're doing it right now, every day.