Dispatch #15

According to the Christian Science Monitor online, even as economic indicators have been weak and weakening, however slightly, President Obama’s poll numbers have been improving. This positive movement should not be happening. Why? Who knows.

My guesses are as follows: the uncharismatic and not particularly likeable Mr. Romney hasn’t come up with a campaign message or strategy other than Mitt Romney for President: Because. The candidate has gone overseas in a bid to seem presidential and immediately muffed his Olympian opportunity by criticizing—however accurately—the preparations for the London games, taking flak from the British press and pols for that undiplomatic breach of etiquette and judgment, then pronouncing that everything’s fine after meeting with the Tory prime minister. So much for his alleged understanding of the deep “Anglo-Saxon” connections between Great Britain and the United States. He’s off to Israel and Poland. To my Polish friends, best not to expect too much.

My second guess is that it is summer, with four months until the election, and that it has been sweltering here, in the high 20s°C, even in the 30s. Much of the country bakes in drought, and the Republicans have not figured out how to blame the President for the weather. And if they tried, it would suggest the more general problem of global warming, about which they are still in pretty complete political and intellectual denial. Long-range forecasts predict warm and dry conditions until October, leaving only a month until the election—which is all the longer a presidential campaign should be anyway.

Odds are still better than even that Barack Obama will be re-elected. If only Mr. Romney would find something intelligent to say that might appeal to independents, he might make a genuine contest of it. It will be close, it seems, but not because of anything Mr. Romney has done or said so far.

Dispatch #14

When I began this blog on the 25^th of February, unemployment in the U.S. stood at 8.3%; the Dow-Jones Industrial Average stood at 12,943; and gas prices hovered at about $3.59 per gallon, record highs for the month of February. Six months later, unemployment has declined only slightly to 8.2%; the Dow ended the week at 12,822, but had hit 12,943 last week, having been as high as 13,279 over these last six months and as low as 12,101 at the beginning of the summer. The Dow, which can signal economic hope or fear, signals mostly uncertainty these days. Still. Gas prices have fallen to the point that we don’t complain about them as much as we did in February and blamed President Obama, but lower gas prices actually indicate weaknesses in the world economy. At any rate, we haven’t given the president any credit for the price declines.

All of this is to say the U.S. economy hasn’t gone anywhere and is churning more or less in place. Given the weakening growth projections in China and the continuing budgetary struggles in Europe and the political fallout from them, economic movement in the right direction will not likely be forthcoming before the election. If the economy remains depressed or begins to sink, the election will be very close, with a slight advantage going to Romney. If the economy recovers slightly, or begins to move forward visibly in any way, Obama should win re-election.

The polls show Obama and Romney about even at the moment, at 46% and 47%, too close to call. Obama should be doing much worse in the polls, owing to the flatness of the economy, but Romney has been taking a beating in the media, at the hands of the Obama campaign, for not releasing his income tax records. He’s a very rich man, and his records likely show a very rich man paying comparatively, perhaps considerably, surprisingly, and remarkably, less in tax than the average person would expect. He’s also being baited as a “vulture,” not a “venture,” capitalist, someone whose former company, Bain Capital, preyed upon weakened companies, scavenged the remains for their own profits and outsourced the work to foreign countries where labor costs were lower. This strategy certainly represents “success” in contemporary managerial practice; it’s just that Mr. Romney would prefer to be seen as the general image of it, of “Success.” The details of how that success was achieved and where the fruits of that success were squirreled away make for a less agreeable narrative and and a less sympathetic candidate. Mr. Romney is failing to take political advantage of the country's economic doldrums.

I see on Polskieradio that Mr. Romney is planning a trip to Poland this fall. I recommend Poland highly to him. I recommend him to Poland less highly.

Dispatch #13

This week, the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of what has come to be known as ObamaCare, or more officially, as the Affordable Care Act. Despite a host of popular prognostification anticipating a robust rejection of its constitutionality, and more expert analysis indicating a mixed decision supporting at least some of its provisions but not likely all of them, the Court, as I guessed—luckily—ruled 5-4 in its favor. (Much as I recommend competence and knowledge of the technical details in all things, it’s better sometimes, easier anyway, to be lucky.) The only surprise in this ruling is that the swing vote came this time from the Chief Justice, John Roberts, a rather conservative appointment and jurist. With the legal and constitutional arguments essentially settled, the arguments about its wisdom as policy return to the political arena: Mitt Romney has vowed to repeal the act. Although he had authored and passed a similar bill for health care in the state of Massachusetts, his signal political accomplishment, he will oppose the national Obama version because his supporters require it, despise Obama and ObamaCare for no good reason, except that they have been propagandized to despise Obama, therefore anything of Obama, like caring for people’s health.

This court victory will bolster Obama’s reputation, if not particularly as a legislator, at least as a constitutionalist, but more importantly, as a winner. “Success,” as Napoleon Bonaparte observed, “is the greatest orator in the world.” [Davies, Europe: A History, p. 701] And insofar as rhetoric matters, he will need all he can muster. Before the decision, a larger plurality of Americans—ill-informed on a complex piece of legislation most of whose mandates won’t take effect until 2014—polled negatively on the Act. After the decision, a slightly higher plurality of ill-informed Americans approved. This success provides Obama with an opportunity to remake the case that while Obamacare may not be the “big F-ing deal” that his Vice-President gleefully whispered, he can remake the case that it is a serious and significant step forward, a major administrative achievement. Along with managing to prevent a second Great Depression and taking out Osama bin-Laden, he actually has a record of some success advancing the national good. Mitt Romney does not, which is a plus among Republican voters. But the election will be decided by so-called Independents, of whose existence we can be more or less thankful.