Momentum

Most people believe that Mitt Romney clobbered Barack Obama in last week’s debate. That number includes all those who didn’t watch the debate, as well as many who did. Most important, the people of the press, of all persuasions, reported on a focused and more accessible challenger and a dispirited and uninspiring president. As a result, the momentum has changed. It is particularly notable in the words we read in headlines. Romney is now described as energized, forceful, accessible, whereas Obama has become listless, a loner, tired. All the words add up to the new presumption that one man has fire in his belly and the other does not.

Momentum feeds on itself. The words we read and hear do affect our views of the candidates’ personalities and their performances. Momentum has a way of fulfilling itself.

And yet, what really has changed? The issues that have made the campaign so divisive have not changed. This is still an election in which we are asked to choose between two contrasting views of America’s character and its future, and as such it remains one of the most important elections of our lifetimes.

Momentum is not about changing minds. It is about exciting your base and depressing your opponent’s. And that is what is happening here. This election will be decided, not by attracting new voters, but by which party gets its people to the polls in a few swing states.

That . . . and the huge amounts of SuperPAC money about to be unleashed.

Doctors, No

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania recently collected almost $200 million in fees from companies engaged in “fracking” across the state. The industry lobby simultaneously congratulated itself for its benevolence and complained about a burden that was “staggering by any measure.” When it became law in February, Pennsylvania’s Act 13 was touted for bringing order to a chaotic field in a state where fracking was out of control and the energy companies resisted paying any fees for their infant industry. (For the record, Chesapeake Energy, one of the largest drillers, has a market capitalization of $13 trillion.)

Of course, if Act 13 were that simple, it wouldn’t need to be 174 pages long, passed with only 2 Democratic votes, and had parts of it already declared unconstitutional.

For despite the industry yelping, its fingerprints are all over this bill, as Sandra Steingraber noted in a recent Orion article.

It simply dispensed with zoning, forbidding municipalities to ban drilling even in residential areas, a provision the Commonwealth Court struck down by a 4-3 vote (with Robert Simpson of Voter ID fame a dissenter).

It requires health professionals to justify their medical need to know and to sign a confidentiality agreement before getting access to a list of trade-secret chemicals to help them treat patients.

And it exempts such chemicals from Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know law.

In the name of economic progress, Act 13 runs roughshod over communities and puts corporate profits before public health.

Since 2000, nine Pennsylvania legislators have been convicted of crimes against the public trust. The body appears to have many slow learners. Perhaps it’s something in the water.

Satirony

My daughter Annie told me I should have labeled Friday’s post as satire, lest people think that Mitt Romney had actually said all the things I attributed to him. Because I clearly need to polish my ironic tone – or “satirony” as George Bush famously might have said – let me clarify. All Romney’s quotes from the past were verbatim, while those in the present tense, he has not said . . . at least not yet, for Mitt Romney shifts his positions radically and unapologetically to appeal to the audience of the moment. In 1994, when he ran for the United States Senate against Ted Kennedy, he denied any connection to the Reagan and Bush presidencies and took enough positions on social issues that Kennedy said, “I am pro-choice. My opponent is multiple choice.”

In 2004, as governor of Massachusetts, Romney declared: “Deadly assault weapons . . . are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.” Two years later he became a life member of the NRA.

In the Republican presidential primary, all the other candidates attacked Romney as a closet moderate, prompting him to insist, “I was a seriously conservative Republican governor” in one of the rare times he mentioned his relationship to Massachusetts.

In last week’s debate he wrapped himself in the mantle of bipartisan effectiveness for passing universal health coverage with a legislature that was 87% Democratic, Ted Kennedy’s help, and the requirement of an individual mandate.

Stumble of the Week

Breaking news: “I am pro-choice,” says Romney. Mitt Romney announced yesterday that it’s time for the federal government to be less involved in our personal lives. “As I said 10 years ago, ‘the choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the government's.’ All the government adds is red tape.”

Pressed by reporters on his “evolving positions on abortion, guns and health care,” Romney said, “Heck, that Massachusetts gig is going over a lot better with voters these days than it did with Rick, Newt and Michelle. Talk about reaching across the aisle – 85% of the Massachusetts legislators I dealt with were Democrats! I barely knew half their names – I called the other 47% ‘fella.’ But we got Romneycare done . . . although I had to work like heck to push the personal mandate through. Thank goodness Teddy Kennedy helped me twist some arms. It was Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill all over again.”

Asked about the seeming discrepancies, Romney said, “What discrepancies? Completely different situations require completely different approaches. In 2002 I was running for governor of Massachusetts. Last fall I was seeking the Republican nomination. Now I want to be president. Totally different.”

Asked if he planned to release more tax returns, he replied, “Honestly, fellas, I’d like to. But I have said no, and I need to be consistent.”

Romney’s aides ended the interview when a reporter shouted out a question about Massachusetts’ assault weapons ban.

The Gentleman from Massachusetts

I am beginning to worry I may be biased. The pundits seem unanimous in their agreement that Mitt Romney cleaned Barack Obama’s clock in last night’s debate. The challenger looked presidential and talked forcefully, while the president let pass the distortions and untruths of his opponent. Perhaps. But I had a hard time warming to the supercilious half-smile/half-sneer with which Romney ended each of his lectures.

As for the non-body language, Obama missed a huge opportunity to remind people of the 47% Romney had dismissed, especially as the latter waxed prosaic about his sympathy for the middle class. Nor did the president adequately respond to Romney’s false charge that he would restore the $716 billion the administration had cut from Medicare.

For me, though, the debate was defined by the absence of two critical domestic issues: the assault on the environment and the abandonment of the poor.

It is one thing to canonize the middle class. It is another not to even mention the country’s most vulnerable and marginalized people.

And the closest we came to an environmental discussion was Romney’s statement, “I like coal . . .  and oil and gas” and his mockery of Obama’s green energy subsidies. Obama failed to counter that any national policy that dismisses all alternatives to extraction, destruction and pollution is derelict.

And Romney, the vigorous defender of Medicare, the populist opponent of big banks, and the representative of bipartisan politics in Massachusetts . . . well, that is a Romney we had not seen in the Republican debates.

Legislating from the Bench

Robert Simpson is yet one more example of why electing judges is a horrible idea. Simpson, elected as a Republican to the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, initially upheld the legislation requiring voters to produce photo identification at the polls. The law, which passed without a single Democratic vote, had one aim: It's “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania,” said Mike Turzai, the Republican floor leader.

When Simpson’s decision was challenged in Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, lawyers could not produce a single instance of in-person voter fraud in the state. But they did show that the law disproportionately affected – indeed, appeared to be aimed at – four groups: the elderly, the poor, minorities and students. They have two things in common: they are less likely than others to have the required document and they are more likely to vote for Barack Obama.

The Supreme Court returned the case to Simpson, instructing him to account for its practical impact at the polls. Yesterday Simpson delayed implementation of the law in a decision in which he, unlike King Solomon, actually tried to cut the baby in half.

Poll workers, said the judge, have every right to ask for the identification, but if you don’t have it, you can still vote. Out with fraud, in with intimidation, which has a far uglier history in American politics. How can someone demand to see something that has no bearing on my right to vote? What’s next – a poll tax that is refundable when I produce the required papers?

Either the law is valid or it is wrong. This law is wrong.

Of Human Life

It’s astonishing how far America’s social and cultural conversation has shifted to the right, almost without notice, because partisans have manipulated the language without changing the subject. Take contraception, which I believe most people think is a good thing, and one long settled in the public arena. It has been 44 years since Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical against birth control, Humanae Vitae, which even then seemed a last gasp to hold back the secular world. In 1968 both the women’s and environmental movements were stressing the perils of unwanted births, and soaring birth rates threatened the economies, environments and the liberation of women in the developing world.

Realizing that contraception was a settled matter, Republicans redefined the issue as “religious freedom” – just as they redefined the removal of the economic safety net as an issue of personal freedom. And so in 2012, when Barack Obama sought to require hospitals to provide patients the option of birth control, the backlash was so ferocious that even Democrats jumped ship in droves. Senator Mario Rubio introduced a bill called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act; Rush Limbaugh, who only looks pregnant, called the law student who testified for birth control a slut; and Rick Santorum called contraception “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

This is about freedom: freedom from them and their efforts to restrain the human spirit. On this issue, at least, Mullah Omar, the pope and the Republican Party have more in common with each other than they do with me.

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Rich States, Poor States

Nine of the 10 states with the highest median household incomes in America voted for Barack Obama in 2008. (The exception was Alaska, whose governor was the Republican candidate for vice president.) That trend holds this year (except Virginia and New Hampshire are currently toss-ups). Nine of the 10 poorest states are solidly Republican – both in 2008 and today. New Mexico is the sole blue exception. The other nine are rural, southern states. All 10 states receive far more in federal payments than they pay in federal taxes.

But why do poor states overwhelmingly support candidates whose policies favor economic inequality, while rich states vote for higher taxes and more government?

False consciousness? Karl Marx wrote that, because the powerful control the public conversation, they can induce the working class to vote against its own interests. But that doesn’t explain the behavior of the rich states.

The help? Are servants outvoting their employers in Greenwich and Palm Springs? But the domestic vote isn’t what it used to be.

I think the explanation is historical: With the break-up of the New Deal coalition came the rise of third-party movements (Strom Thurmond in 1948, George Wallace in 1968) that led white southerners out of the Democratic party. Nixon’s “southern strategy,” and “Reagan Democrats” realigned the parties around social and cultural issues: abortion, guns, evolution, environmentalism – and, let’s be candid, race.

Far from the distractions people try to make them, these are the issues over which this election is being contested.

Richest States         1968 Vote                           Poorest States         1968 Vote

10. California                 DEM                                    10. Oklahoma               GOP

9. Delaware                    DEM                                    9. South Carolina          GOP

8. Hawaii                        DEM                                    8. New Mexico              DEM

7. Virginia                       DEM                                    7. Louisiana                  GOP

6. New Hampshire        DEM                                    6. Tennessee                 GOP

5. Massachusetts           DEM                                    5. Alabama                    GOP

4. Connecticut                DEM                                    4. Kentucky                    GOP

3. New Jersey                 DEM                                    3. Arkansas                   GOP

2. Alaska                          GOP                                    2. West Virginia           GOP

1. Maryland                    DEM                                    1. Mississippi                GOP

Stumble of the Week (Q &A)

Question: Why don’t candidates want to release their tax returns? Answer: Take Massachusetts’ 6th Congressional District as an example. Republican challenger Richard Tisei’s last 10 returns show that twice he paid no taxes at all. Tisei, who spends much time running for office, is not a rich man, and his real estate business faltered in the Bush recession (2006 and 2008). His returns are straightforward, and none of this would have been a problem . . .  if only Mitt Romney hadn’t made that comment about the 47 percent. Meanwhile, John Tierney, the 8-term Democratic incumbent, finally released his returns yesterday morning after vigorous prodding from The Boston Globe. They were clean . . . some argue too clean, as they make no mention of the $223,000 prosecutors say his wife received from her brother’s illegal offshore gambling operation. John and Patrice Tierney say those funds were gifts from family members that needed neither to be taxed nor even reported. The congressman’s lawyer has threated libel, the brother remains on the lam in Antigua, Patrice Tierney served a month in jail, and the notion of public service has taken another hit.

Question: Do you think Obama will carry Kansas?

Answer: No. But at least he will be on the ballot after a birther withdrew a petition to have him removed. The petition had enabled GOP Secretary of State Kris Kobach to demand Obama’s birth certificate once again and to raise doubts about the eligibility of a man who has been president for four years.

Question: Was Independence really declared in 1976 as you wrote yesterday?

Answer: Um. No. Next question.

Consensus and Vision

OneMaine is one of several groups that have arisen to combat America’s toxic political conversation. Its purpose is to support candidates across a broad spectrum who reject hyperpartisanship, represent their constituents not special interests, and seek principled compromise on behalf of the whole community. Clearly we are at the limit of strident discourse and unbending gridlock. We need more civility, more thoughtfulness, more effort to understand, rather than react to, each other. But is compromise the way out of this mess?

Compromise has worked best during times of prosperity, as the 1950s, or national consensus, as the “era of good feelings”, or one-party dominance, as the New Deal.

It has not worked when there has been a crisis of vision. In 1776 the colonies issued a declaration, not a joint agreement. All the compromises that tried to resolve the slavery issue only put off the day of reckoning – and ensured it would be horrendous when it came. Those who rejected compromise – William Lloyd Garrison, Robert Barnwell Rhett – were condemned as fanatics. But they knew what Lincoln learned, that a house divided cannot stand.

Perhaps the one exception is the much-maligned 1960s, when the nation seemed bent on tearing itself apart. There was much ugliness: 50,000 dead in Vietnam; federal troops in our city’s streets; the Cuyahoga River bursting into flames; vigilante violence in the South. But out of those times came a new vision and some of the most important civil rights and environmental legislation in history.

Once again, two visions are competing for America’s soul. We do need more civil conversation, but I believe that one vision must triumph before consensus is possible.

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Conversion and Conversation

“Working with the private sector, the program will identify the barriers to investment and trade and entrepreneurialism in developing nations. In exchange for removing those barriers and opening their markets to U.S. investment and trade, developing nations will receive U.S. assistance packages focused on developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law, and property rights.”             Mitt Romney, Clinton Global Initiative, Sept. 25, 2012 “I would like to begin today by telling you about an American named Chris Stevens. . . . .As a diplomat, he was known for walking the streets of the cities where he worked, tasting the local food, meeting as many people as he could, speaking Arabic, listening with a broad smile."            Barack Obama, United Nations, Sept. 25, 2012

Each excerpt represents an approach to foreign policy. Mitt Romney lays out the traditional American position of opening markets and removing obstacles to private investment in developing countries. This approach, which has been used by administrations of both parties, rewards compliant nations with aid packages meant to strengthen the institutions that capitalism requires. One new wrinkle is the emphasis on microfinance and entrepreneurship, which has a large following across the political spectrum and is also the policy of the World Bank.

The policy epitomized by the late Chris Stevens starts from a place of respect for the culture of others – walking their streets, tasting their food, speaking their language and, above all, listening to them.

Perhaps it is the difference between a Peace Corps volunteer and a missionary, but imposing our values hasn’t worked. It is time to understand theirs.

From I to We

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”                     Leo Tolstoy I thought of the opening lines of Anna Karenina as I watched my ecstatic son and daughter-in-law marry each other on Saturday. I thought about all the histories that had brought them there, about the future they envisioned together, and about the meaning of the seemingly simple ceremony that joined them. And I thought that each family creates its own balance of happiness and sadness as it faces the vagaries that life throws its way.

We spend much of our lives navigating between individuation and communal attachment, between asserting “I am” and longing for “we are.” In a civil ceremony in a non-denominational church, Jake and Emily spoke of a marriage in which each of them could grow and both of them could grow together. They spoke of the role of the “we” in preserving the “I” and the importance that each as an individual brings to both of them as a couple.

That concept of marriage often gets overwhelmed. In some cultures it remains little more than the transfer property. In others it is solely for dynastic or religious procreation. In our own, it has spawned an ugly debate about who can marry whom. Marriage is not bondage. It is a celebration of the most intimate of all love – that between two people, often but not always young.

After the ceremony we all marched through the streets of town behind a brass band playing songs of joyful celebration.

Triumph of the Week

Tomorrow my son Jake is marrying the wonderful Emily Oakes. It had been my understanding that the father of the groom had nothing to do except bask in reflected glory and pay for a few things. It turns out there is stuff to be moved besides audiences, games to be played and wine to be tasted.

I will be back in print next week.

In the meantime, I am a proud and happy man.

Out of Poverty

I believe that the model of extractive economic growth has more than run its course. It is overwhelming the environment limits of a finite world and creating institutions that destroy the social fabric of community. In his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond traces the disappearance of societies to their inability to adapt to catastrophic environmental change, often abetted by political corruption and hostile neighbors. The single most important factor was overpopulation relative to the environment’s ability to support human life. The lesson for today’s world should not be lost on us.

In search of an alternative way of living, many have turned to reviving local communities, practicing sustainable food and energy production, and focusing on the quality of our lives. A recent report on “The 10 Poorest Countries in the World” reminded me that it’s not that simple.

Nine of the poorest countries are in Africa and the poorest of all is Haiti. Six have per-capita incomes under $1,000 a year – in Congo people live on 63 cents a day. Several countries have or had rich natural resources – from Zimbabwe’s now-ravaged land to Sierra Leone’s diamonds to Equatorial Guinea’s oil and gas. Yet the bulk of the people rely on subsistence agriculture, which is not the romantic yeomanry that many of us like to envision, but a way of life that ravages both the people and the land.

We do need a new path forward, but for the 135 million people in the 10 poorest countries, that path may not be into the past.

In His Own Words

“My dad . . . was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company. But he was born in Mexico, and, uh, had he been born of, uh, Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot at winning this.” Mitt Romney’s rather lame effort to make rich donors laugh comes from the same talk he gave in which he asserts that 47 percent of Americans “will vote for the president no matter what” because they are dependent upon government, believe they are “entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. . . .And the government should give it to them. . . .These are people who pay no income tax. My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Acknowledging his remarks were “not elegantly stated,” Romney is standing behind their substance. And well he should, as the image he paints of a nation in which almost half the people are freeloaders being carried by the half who produce the wealth is a dominant, if sotto voce, theme in his campaign.

As David Brooks points out in this morning’s column, the comments betray Romney’s ignorance of America. Most government beneficiaries are the elderly poor, disabled veterans, the unemployed, and the working poor – who do pay payroll taxes. Romney’s campaign increasingly reveals a party for whom a united nation has become as much of a pariah as the United Nations.

Whether Mr. Romney is himself part of the 47 percent, we do not yet know.

Tragedy of the Commons

What does it mean to denigrate someone’s religion? This is not a rhetorical question. In the last few days Barack Obama has admonished us not to do so, while the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood has demanded “criminalizing assaults on the sanctities of all heavenly religions.” Meanwhile a foundation in Iran has again raised the bounty on Salman Rushdie’s head, and Igor Stravinsky’s “Rites of Spring” is preparing to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of its opening, which brought howls of (non-murderous) protests for its pagan theme.

While every religion wants its beliefs and practices respected, it seems that only the fundamentalist wings of the three Abrahamic religions demand their beliefs be held sacrosanct in the public arena. Never mind that half the things those people say offend my religion, which is a combination of spiritualism, rationalism, humanism and optimism – a singular religion, to be sure, but one I have a first-amendment right to espouse.

I think of the world as a commons that we all share and for which each of us is responsible. Right now two things most endanger the commons. One is hate, which drove the production of “Innocence of Muslims.” The other is fear, which is driving the reaction to those who violently protest a film most haven’t even seen.

Hate poisons the commons. Fear closes the commons – as surely as fear of being mugged keeps us out of a park. The best way to protect the commons is to stand up to those who would claim it for themselves, even if they put a bounty on your head.

Stumble of the Week

Amendment 1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment did not stumble this week, as the U. S.  government took an appropriate and principled position by (1) strongly condemning the attack on our Benghazi consulate, (2) deploring the content of the film, “Innocence of Muslims,” whose trailer allegedly ignited the deadly riots, and (3) explaining why it could and would not prevent the film’s production and distribution. Never did our government waver on the issue of First Amendment rights nor excuse the murderous actions that followed.

The First Amendment is our most difficult amendment. It is also the most important. It is no coincidence that the first rights totalitarian regimes strip from the people are those it enumerates. Consequently, those rights must be safeguarded above all others. It is pretty easy to protect the right of people to say things we find harmless or agreeable. It is when someone says something stupid, obnoxious or uncomfortable that we need the first amendment most.

The “Innocence of Muslims” trailer is obnoxious. (One reader called it “cyber bullying, with tragic consequences.”) But above all it is stupid. In fact, it is so puerile and badly made that it is hard to understand how it could evoke any reaction but derisive laughter. That it invoked, instead, deadly retaliation is truly frightening.

Beyond Benghazi

Mitt Romney’s responses to the fatal attacks in Benghazi were predictably appalling in both their timing and their content. In his desperation to be president he has become a two-dimensional man: one dimension toadies to the Republican Party’s major donors and immoderate base; the other attacks President Obama with unfiltered ferocity. After being pummeled by the neo-conservatives for not mentioning Afghanistan, Iraq or our troops in his convention speech, Romney was quick to get his saber out yesterday, and his first target was the president:

“It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

The accusation is untrue, its timing disgraceful, coming before the facts were clear and on the heels of the deaths of four American diplomats. That was a time to come together.

In his effort to extricate himself, Romney dug deeper: "It's a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values. It’s never too early for the U.S. government to condemn attacks on Americans and defend our values.” Which is what the administration did.

And what are those values? This is a question few address lest they be accused of disloyalty. But for me this election is about values, about what kind of a country we want America to be. I believe our values of compassion and community, of standing up to bullies and for human rights, of protecting the earth and looking out for each other, are in greater danger of being derailed by what is happening here than what is happening elsewhere.

9/12

I write this with deep respect, but most of the people who died on 9/11 were not heroes. They were victims, and we should never forget that – or them – because there but for fortune went you or I. Many people behaved heroically that day and after: those who rushed the cockpit of Flight 93 over Shanksville; the first responders; the volunteers who came to the site in New York and put themselves at risk; and those who performed anonymous acts of bravery and kindness as they were trapped in their burning tombs. I think a lot about those people and the terrible horror of their last hours. By calling heroes those whose lives end tragically, often at the hands of bad people, we risk turning human beings who were murdered into icons . . . and turning 9/11itself into a day of national idolatry, rather than one of painful remembrance. We may not all be heroes, but we are all humans.

Writing this was made more difficult by yesterday’s events in Libya, where the U.S. ambassador, Christopher Stephens, and three aides, were killed by a mob enraged over an anti-Islamic film made by a California real estate developer and promoted by Terry Jones, the Gainesville preacher who set off riots of his own when he threatened to publicly burn the Koran two years ago. Ambassador Stephens had knowingly put himself in harm’s way and was deeply respected in Libya for his knowledge and courage, both during the revolution and as ambassador. He was a hero.

Note: The rainfall map failed to load on yesterday’s emails. I apologize. . . but it does give me a chance to plug my website, www.jamesgblaine.com, where you will find it.

Oil, Food and Water

This is a rainfall map of the United States taken from Wallace Stegner’s fascinating book, Beyond the 100^th Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West.

In one way, neither the map nor the story of the West have changed much in the 20 years since the book was published or the 150 years since the story unfolded: the defining difference between the country’s two halves remains water. But that water has become much scarcer, and the pressures on its use and its allocation among users have increased dramatically.

For the first time in history, my son Jake wrote me recently, electricity produced from natural gas exceeds energy produced from coal. To many, that is a good thing because gas burns “cleaner” than coal, and America has a lot of it. But also for the first time in history, we use more water to produce energy than we do to produce food – and nowhere is that change more critical than in the arid west, where we grow most of our food and produce most of our energy.

Hydraulic fracturing uses enormous quantities of water, particularly in the drilling stages, and scientists have raised significant concerns about the chemical contamination of the groundwater from “fracking.” Now, with a searing drought throughout the west, the oil companies are willing to bid a thousand times what farmers can pay for water.

“The West’s cardinal law,” wrote Marc Reisner in Cadillac Desert, is “that water flows toward power and money.”