Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (52905)	7/18/2012 8:51:53 AM
From: Peter Dierks	2 Recommendations Respond to of 71588

The Campaign's Stupid Moment In 'defining Romney,' Obama may be finally defining himself for a mystified electorate. By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR Updated July 17, 2012, 7:21 p.m. ET In a presidential election season reputations are offered lightly. Take a Bloomberg News contribution by a money manager and Obama supporter named Anthony Luzzatto Gardner, who says at Bain Capital "Romney privatized the gains and socialized the losses." Mmm, that sounds bad, like Fannie Mae. But his argument comes down to the prosaic fact that, under the tax code, interest payments on corporate debt are not taxed as profit. You can argue about the wisdom of the tax code, but to leave a cost of business untaxed is not "socialism." And when debts aren't paid, the pain of bankruptcy is primarily borne by private parties—shareholders, creditors, workers. How do such, ahem, questionable things come to be written? Call it getting on-board. Reflecting the political profession's contempt for the public it's trying to influence, Team Obama has been shouting through the cognoscenti media that now is the time to "define Romney before he can define himself." Hence its $100 million swing-state advertising barrage. Hence a campaign manager calling Mr. Romney a "felon." Hence Mr. Obama taking to the stump to associate Mr. Romney, in crude Pavlovian fashion, with the word "outsourcing." Paul Krugman is certainly on-board, declaiming that the election is about the rich (see, Romney is rich) versus everybody else. We'll argue here that the Democrat effort to "define Romney" is a lot more about formula than about who Romney actually is. But let's first ask a question easy to overlook until it's asked, and then it shouts: What is the definition of Obama? He was against gay marriage before he was for it. The signature feature of his signature act, the individual mandate of his health-care law, he explicitly opposed and vigorously criticized as a candidate. When selling his stimulus, he promised to "start a conversation on entitlements" that he didn't start, unless you count his sotto voce suggestion that there is no problem because the rich will pay. He pronounced a "new energy economy" his most urgent priority. Now he takes credit for a fossil-fuel boom that his policies had nothing to do with. Mr. Obama certainly has spent the four years of his presidency undefining the creature he so assiduously sold us in 2008—the pure soul above partisanship. Funny thing, only now we notice how much more Mitt Romney, and before him John McCain, actually fit the image peddled for Obama. Romney—the GOP blue-state governor who delivered a genuinely bipartisan health-care bill through a Democratic legislature. McCain—who infuriated Republicans with his serial promotion of Democratic priorities, like the McCain-Feingold campaign law and the McCain-Lieberman climate change bill. Mr. Romney has had his flip-flops too—tellingly, the flip-flops anyone might be required to make in going from Massachusetts politics to a GOP presidential nominating contest. His flip-flops don't leave him an enigma or a cipher. Just the opposite. He's a classic CEO type: nonideological, transactional, priding himself on building teams and getting jobs done. CEOs certainly enjoy being well-paid. But if Romney were interested in money he'd have stayed in private equity and become a billionaire (in fact, we know from multiple testimonies Mr. Romney discussed with his family the wealth he'd be giving up to pursue politics). But we are at the stupid moment of the campaign. David Axelrod spelled it out to cognoscenti Doyle McManus of the L.A. Times: "Romney is more vulnerable than Obama because he is less known." Actually, he means voters are vulnerable. So many are still so disengaged and uninformed that, for at least another moment or two, they may be susceptible to Mr. Axelrod's invented Romney if he can just mount a media onslaught so powerful it will penetrate their indifference. If you are one who is easily repulsed by the doers of society's dirty work—morticians, renderers, criminal defense attorneys—Mr. Axelrod (and, to be sure, his counterparts on the other side) may make you want to throw up. But the stupid moment doesn't last. Most elections end up being relatively sensible arguments about getting, keeping or restoring prosperity. In a modern welfare state, another top-of-mind priority also jostles for a sizeable number of voters: hands off my benefits! These perhaps should be two sides of the same coin. In the long run, after all, there can be no benefits without prosperity. But look at Europe: It becomes worrisomely clear that welfare states can devolve into lose-lose fights over a stagnant or shrinking pie. See Greece: Big government also has a way of spawning big corruption. So maybe, when the stupid moment passes, the two campaigns can take up the question likely to be on every lip in any case given the evening news: Whether America is to become more like Europe. online.wsj.com