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The Prospect's politics blog

Rich People: Not That Smart

Paul WaldmanMay 17, 2012
Previously unseen video of shadowy character nobody has ever heard of.

Most of us would agree that Citizens United has been bad for democracy, with corporations and wealthy people now permitted to spend as much as they want to buy the kind of representatives they prefer. But there is one factor that we didn't really anticipate, something that mitigates the harm they can do: it turns out that rich people aren't necessarily that smart with their money.

So during the presidential primaries, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson spent $16.5 million to help out the campaign of Newt Gingrich, whom you might have noticed is not the GOP nominee. And in today's New York Times, we get an interesting story about Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, who is preparing to spend $10 million to defeat Barack Obama. And what is the magic bullet Mr. Ricketts has located, the zinger that will bring down this incumbent president? Jeremiah Wright! Seriously. Jamelle discussed the racial aspect of this story, but I equally interesting is just how naive this demonstrates that influential people can be. Ricketts is going to spend all that money to "Show the world how Barack Obama's opinions of America and the world were formed...And why the influence of that misguided mentor and our president's formative years among left-wing intellectuals has brought our country to its knees." In other words, just about the same thing you could hear every day by listening to Glenn Beck's radio show or tuning in to Fox News.

Rich Republicans Seek to Bring Back Jeremiah Wright

Jamelle BouieMay 17, 2012
(Floyd Brown/Flickr)

In general, I’m not too concerned with civility in politics, but it’s hard not to be shocked by the nastiness and aggression of today’s Republican Party. Congressional Republicans routinely accuse Democrats of treason, or worse, with little rebuke from party leaders. Reliably conservative lawmakers—like Bob Inglis and Dick Lugar—are challenged nonetheless for their insufficient hatred of Democrats.

Tie Goes to the President

Patrick CaldwellMay 17, 2012
(Flickr/acqueline.poggi)

The basic odds make it fairly unlikely that the Democrats will maintain their Senate majority. They only hold a narrow 53-47 edge after the 2010 midterms, and the party must defend 23 seats in 2012, compared to just ten for Republicans. Their troubles only increased when moderate Democrats hailing from conservative states—Ben Nelson and Kent Conrad as the most notable—decided that now was the time to retire, all but ceding their spots to the GOP. Every scenario looked doom and gloom for their chances. But then Republicans decided to sabotage those odds. First Olympia Snowe announced her retirement, after growing tired of her party's partisan rancor. Her seat is expected to go to the independent—but Democratic friendly—candidate Angus King.

Mitt Romney, Servant of the Right

Jamelle BouieMay 17, 2012
(Victor Juhasz)

The defining feature of the Republican presidential primaries was the constant Sturm und Drang over Mitt Romney’s ability to win Republican voters. Pundits claimed that Romney had a “ceiling” with conservatives in the party, and opponents like former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum routinely assailed the front-runner as a candidate whose commitment to conservatism was short-lived and inauthentic—a human “Etch A Sketch,” in the words of Romney’s own campaign spokesperson. 

Crazy and Crazier

Paul WaldmanMay 16, 2012

In the last few years, many different kinds of communication technologies have been democratized. For instance, up until not too long ago, making a film that didn't look amateurish was impossible without a whole bunch of equipment whose expense made it out of reach for almost everyone, not to mention the technical expertise required. But today, you can buy a professional-quality HD video camera for a couple thousand dollars and video editing software like Apple's Final Cut Pro for a couple hundred, and presto, you can make what looks to be a "real" movie. That means that a kid with a dream to be the next Steven Spielberg can see that dream realized. It also means that a crazy person with a conspiracy theory can see his dream realized.

Which brings us to two new movie previews for anti-Obama films that, when you look at them, seem remarkably like "real" movies...

Bush Endorses Romney

Patrick CaldwellMay 15, 2012
(White House photo by Eric Draper. Via Wikimedia Commons)

Mitt Romney clearly coveted the endorsement of George H.W. Bush. He first met with Bush the Elder in December at the former president's Texas home in an appearance everyone assumed equaled a full endorsement. However Romney staged a second event in March for the official endorsement as another photo-op with Bush 41. Meanwhile the other Bush who once occupied the oval office was nowhere to be seen, never rolled out as a public endorser even though Romney clearly wrapped up the nomination weeks ago.

George W. Bush finally entered the fray Tuesday to let the country know whom he plans to vote for this fall:

The Hobgoblin of Little Minds

Paul WaldmanMay 15, 2012
Washington, DC, image from Google Earth

Journalist Marc Ambinder is leaving DC, and on his departure he wrote a pretty good listicle on what he's learned in his time here. His piece goes relatively easy on our nation's capital when it comes to its moral and spiritual depravity, but he makes some excellent points, including this:

Consistency is not a terribly interesting or useful proxy for effectiveness in a politician, and yet it seems to be the value held most high—or the value that, because someone is most easily able to convince you that someone else lacks it, becomes important. Politicians and the media haven't developed the vocabulary to explain how positions evolve.

Marc is absolutely right about this. You don't have to be a flip-flopper of Romnulan (I'm trademarking that word, by the way; feel free to contact me for licensing opportunities) proportions to fear the consequences of anything that looks like inconsistency; even the slightest deviation from what you've said previously can be punished...

Big Sky's the Limit

Jaime FullerMay 15, 2012
(AP/Andrea Helling)

Montana knows all about buying elections. In 1899, just ten years after it became a state, William Andrews Clark, known as the Copper King, spent an estimated $400,000—the equivalent of $11 million today—to buy the votes of state legislators to send him to the United States Senate. After a lengthy investigation, Clark resigned before the Senate could boot him out. The scandal turned from shocking to farcical when Clark, who bragged that he “never bought a man who wasn’t for sale,” returned to Montana and the lieutenant governor reappointed him to the position from which he’d just been removed.

What Romney's Medicare Plan Actually Does

Patrick CaldwellMay 15, 2012
(Flickr/Images of Money)

 

Bombs Away

Bob MoserMay 14, 2012

There’s no arguing that the Romney campaign’s formula for winning the GOP nomination—attack and destroy, attack and destroy—worked. But it also meant that their man left little or no positive impression with voters. The “pro-Romney” ads were overwhelmingly anti-Gingrich or anti-Santorum. In Florida alone, his campaign and super PAC spent a head-spinning $15.4 million on ads; exactly one of them was positive.

Is Mitt Romney a Job Creator or a Job Destroyer?

Paul WaldmanMay 14, 2012

The Obama and Romney campaigns have released to competing ads, both concerning Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital. The Obama ad, which Jamelle posted here, attacks Bain Capital for buying, eviscerating, and then selling off a company called GST Steel in Kansas City, leaving the good hard-working people there jobless and desperate. The Romney ad, on the other hand, tells an entirely different story, that of Steel Dynamics, a company that employs thousands of good hard-working people, thanks to Mitt Romney. So which story should we believe? I'll give you the answer in a moment, but first, let's look at the Romney ad:

Romney's "Boring" Choice

Patrick CaldwellMay 14, 2012
(Flickr/Austen Hufford)

Politico nabbed an incredibly unsurprising scoop this morning: Mitt Romney will probably select an "incredibly boring white guy" as his running mate. That's the description attributed to one unnamed Republican official, stating the obvious. Much of the VP speculation has centered on the exciting young politicians from the class of 2010. Perhaps Romney would select Suzanna Martinez or Marco Rubio in the hopes of peeling away some of the Hispanic vote. Or South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in an effort to rebut charges that Republicans are waging a war on women.

Mitt Romney Reads Rob Portman's Amazon Reviews

Paul WaldmanMay 14, 2012
Not whom Mitt Romney will pick as his running mate. (Flickr/Marc Nozell)

I don't know about you, but when I have to make a large consumer decision — pretty much anything over $100 — I put way too much thought into it. This is partly the curse of the internet, where there is a near-infinite amount of information available about everything. So I read a million reviews, obsessing over every detail, trying in vain to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of every conceivable feature, eventually reaching a point where every option seems like the wrong one and I'm sure I'll be disappointed no matter what I choose. The last time I bought a smartphone it took me about six months.

I suspect that Mitt Romney is going through something similar right about now. Romney is a famously methodical thinker, and I picture him with a 10-page pro/con list for every possible vice-presidential candidate, going over and over them all until none of them looks like a winner. All his options have weaknesses, and none of them seems to have the ability to do anything but make Romney look bad for having chosen them...

Obama Hits Mitt Where It Hurts

Jamelle BouieMay 14, 2012

The latest advertisement from the Obama campaign—which will air in Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Virginia—is, so far, the most important one of the president’s reelection effort.

You Like Me! You Really Like Me! Or Maybe You Don't.

Paul WaldmanMay 14, 2012
Flickr/DonkeyHotey

In an excellent column over at the Daily Beast, former Prospect czar Michael Tomasky points out Mitt Romney's enormous likeability deficit, which seems to grow worse with each passing week. It's not only true impressionistically, polls back it up: Gallup recently found 60 percent of Americans saying Barack Obama is likeable, compared to only 31 percent for Romney. Tomasky does a good job of breaking down all the reasons why, and points out that the last time the candidate considered less likeable won the presidency was 44 years ago, when grumpy Dick Nixon edged smiling Hubert Humphrey. This could well be one of those interesting-but-probably-meaningless correlations, like the taller candidate always winning (which held true for many years until 2004). But given the preponderance of "gut" voting among the American people, it's likely to make a significant difference in November.

But what is it that makes a person–not a politician, but someone you meet face to face – likeable? There are some specific things you could point to: they seem genuinely interested in you, they display values similar to yours, they're modest, they're considerate, they appear happy, they have a sense of humor. Of course, there's also something ineffable, a quality that you can't define but you sense. But if we put that last part aside for the moment, we see that the definable parts of likeability are qualities that every politician has, or at least wants us to believe they have

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