Dispatch #18

The Republican Party Convention ended last night with the nomination of Mitt Romney and his acceptance speech. Political conventions in the modern era are theater, mostly bad, sad, sometimes interesting, occasionally weird and embarrassing—as Clint Eastwood’s bizarre speech was last night—but usually interesting only for their badness and sadness. Nothing substantive got said last night nor for the entire week. No surprises. For those who know the facts, these partisan performances reek of self-serving cynicism and hypocrisy, or more generously, typical political expedience; for those ignorant of the facts, these rallies afford simplistic moments of value, vision, and high rhetoric.

Mitt Romney did succeed in re-establishing his fundamental humanity, his well-intended, okay-guyness, though I can’t say he managed to transcend the limitations of his class origins. But the real Mitt Romney, even a super-rich one, has never been the problem. The problem is that Mitt Romney has not, perhaps cannot, create a believable political persona that both derives from his real personhood and the ideological demands of the Tea Party, whom he continues to placate. To appeal to that section of the electorate he needs to win, he would have to champion his moderation and pragmatism; he can only hint at it and carefully calculate his gains, which will be modest.

Given the indifferent performance of the economy, Barack Obama should be doing much worse in the polls than he is, but he manages to retain a slight but discernible lead. By now, most voters have pretty much decided for whom they are going to vote in November. Without an October “surprise” or some clear downward trend in the economy, Romney will lose. The presidential debates do represent an opportunity for candidate Romney, a last chance to shine, but given the extreme demands of his Republican partisans and the conflict they generate with his own personality, by turns stiff and bland, he is not expected to best Obama on the debate stage, whose “cool,” whose media savviness, is documented in the headlines. A strong Mitt showing there would be a different kind of October surprise.  

Dispatch #17

Today Mitt Romney named Wisconsin House Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate and Vice-Presidential candidate. By doing so he has further ingratiated himself with the right wing of his party to insure conservative moral support and campaign activity on his behalf in the general election. Accused in the Republican primary of not being sufficiently conservative, he has taken every opportunity to belie that charge. If you don’t really have a national vision or a grounded political philosophy, as I suspect Mitt Romney has not, you make your decision based on the basis of political, that is to say electoral, expediency. Get the 50.5%. Names such as Condoleezza Rice (former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser to George W. Bush) and David Patreus (Former U.S. Army General and current Director of the CIA) had been floated in the media as possibilities, along with Tim Pawlenty (former Governor of Minnesota) and Rob Portman (Senator from Ohio). The first two names would have been intriguing choices, suggesting an unusual moderation and creativity on the part of Romney; the latter two, only hints of moderation and even more of the same Romney blandness. Not a particularly surprising choice given the options and constraints, not a game-changer, Ryan will serve Romney’s needs well, if he doesn’t manage to upstage him.

The selection of Paul Ryan should improve the political discourse in the campaign, focus it at the very least. To date, the campaigns and their associated but legally unassociated super-PACs have exchanged mostly ad hominem half-truths and counter-charges that these half-truths are complete and outright lies. A tiresome practice, though effective in increasing both candidate’s overall negatives. The VP selection represents the biggest decision Mitt Romney will have made to date, and this one won’t be a disaster, like John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin. But neither will it advance him significantly with independent voters or with contested regions, other than Wisconsin, Ryan’s home state. Ryan is the chief author of the Republican-dominated House of Representatives’ budget proposal, which cuts deeply into popular social programs—the U.S. version of fiscal austerity now going the rounds in Europe. Bad economic policy in the short term and reminiscent of the economic policies that helped to generate our current predicament in the first place, at least the Ryan budget represents a policy that can be debated in relatively clear, even stark, political and economic language, language that the electorate can come to take sides with.

Dispatch #16

Lech Wałęsa, obviously not a reader of this blog, received Mitt Romney last week in Poland and endorsed him for president, wishing him success, success, hoping for his success. Reading later on the Polskieradio website, I believe I noticed that the current leaders of Solidarność, admonished Wałęsa for taking sides with a candidate who has no particular attractions to unions and the working (hu)man generally. Truly, though, Lech Wałęsa and Solidarność are not what they used to be. Mitt’s laying a wreath in Gdansk won’t capture the Polish vote—not this one anyway—any more than those votes are already captured. A Romney aide’s cursing out the press, telling them to “Kiss my ass,” has gotten as much attention as Wałęsa’s endorsement.

Poles, understandably, give way too much credit to Republicans and to Ronald Reagan for bringing down the Soviet Union, which was crumbling under its own weight. Americans themselves give way too much credit to Reagan, and far too little to Poles, Solidarity, Wałęsa, and the Catholic Church, Cardinal Wyszynski and the Pope. And neither Americans nor Poles gives enough credit to Gorbachev, who was probably trying to do the herculean impossible. Poles might be happy to hear Romney declare Russia our main enemy, but it’s not true for two important reasons.

In the first place, thinking in terms of “rivals” or “adversaries” as opposed to “enemies” is probably the more prudent course. We are long past  the post-Cold War. Second, our new main national “adversary” is so obviously China that Romney’s declaration is at best a political feint to distinguish his foreign policy from Obama’s, a tactical geo-political fiction. At worst, it is a blunder. As a lie, it would be dangerous to the U.S. if Romney came to believe it and we him, and even more dangerous if Poles believed it. Unlike the United States, Putin’s Russia may actually be Poland’s chief “adversary,” in which case, Poles would do well to remember that their most vocal champions—Napoleon, Great Britain/Churchill, and the U.S./FDR—fell considerably short of their words and promises. Alas, Yalta.  The Rzeczpospolita’s best and most reliable ally may be Pussy Riot.