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Go Home Growing Up Romney

POLITICS OCTOBER 19, 2012

Growing Up Romney

BY NOAM SCHEIBER

THIS WAS SUPPOSED to be the race that Tagg Romney took easy. When his father ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Tagg signed on as a full-time staffer and even served as the campaign manager for Mitt’s running mate. Four years later, when Mitt began to run for president, Tagg moved his family back to Boston from Los Angeles so he could man a desk at campaign headquarters.

But by the beginning of this campaign season, Tagg had a daughter in high school and twins on the way. He’d recently started a private-equity firm called Solamere. He was in his early forties and gave the impression of someone who had better things to do than hole up in a cubicle piled high with pizza boxes. A new arrangement was struck: He would schlep off to any ballroom or spin-room where he could help as a surrogate. He would be on call to sweet-talk donors and buck up supporters. And, of course, he would always be available for late-night calls with his dad. But he wouldn’t take a job with the campaign or linger around the office. He would continue to run his firm.

It didn’t quite work out that way. This summer, staffers noticed Tagg turning up at Romney headquarters. By September, he had mostly put his day job on hold. When David Wright, a longtime family friend, recently asked how he could tend to the firm while scrambling for his dad, Tagg more or less conceded he couldn’t. “I’ve fortunately got great partners,” he said.

Earlier this month, Politico outed him as the leader of a family “intervention” that resulted in the kinder, gentler, more moderate Mitt Romney on display at the first debate. Though Tagg insists the story is pure fantasy—“News to me,” he cracked when I saw him at a recent event—his own stump speech acknowledges his ever-escalating involvement. “A few months ago, I told the campaign that, at crunch time, I’d be willing to do whatever it takes,” he told an audience of well-wishers. “I kind of thought they would have me on the road a day or two a week. Well, it turns out they put me on the road seven days a week.”

The punishing schedule—one friend compares it to “coughing blood”—is especially curious in light of how badly Tagg wants to be seen as more than his father’s son. Indeed, if all families have their own myths, a kind of founding narrative that’s passed down through the generations, for the Romneys it’s about personal initiative. George Romney’s family fled the Mexican revolution destitute when he was five years old, heightening his pride in the wealth and power he attained later in life. Mitt Romney speaks often about giving away his inheritance so that whatever he achieved would be his alone. “Everything that Ann and I have, we earned the old-fashioned way, and that’s by hard work,” he said at the notorious Boca Raton fund-raiser in May. For his part, Tagg “has a high desire to make Solamere a big success,” says one close friend, adding that he’s determined to “create his own name.”

What’s so strange about the Romney myth is that its grip hasn’t weakened even as it has become less true. The affluence Mitt was born into paid for his elite education and financed his first home. The wealth Tagg stands to inherit has given him the freedom to pursue any career and take any professional risk he wants.

That’s not to say he set out to trade on his pedigree. Not long after graduating from Harvard Business School, he turned down offers from several prominent firms to join an obscure start-up called eGrad, whose meager resources gave it a kind of grunge aesthetic: secondhand furniture and heating so erratic he brought in blankets to keep warm. When Tagg wasn’t cold calling would-be corporate partners, he could sometimes be found packaging merchandise and mailing it. But making it on your own is never so clear-cut when you’re a Romney. Some of the biggest meetings he landed were with Staples, which his father had funded at Bain Capital, and General Motors, a company where his last name still carried weight.

Tagg’s biography is littered with similar stories—short cuts he couldn’t have taken without his last name, obstacles that melted away before he was even aware of them. And yet, thanks to the Romney myth, he and his family believe that most of what he has achieved comes from old-fashioned industriousness, not older-fashioned status and wealth.

Tagg’s blind spots, however, are largely forgivable. Everyone looks in the mirror on occasion and sees a taller, thinner, more virtuous version of himself. The problem is that Tagg’s blind spots are also Mitt’s. And Mitt’s peculiar version of reality doesn’t just drive him personally; it skews his politics and shapes his policies. It distorts his entire vision of how a president should govern.

 

THE HOME WHERE Tagg Romney grew up in the Boston suburb of Belmont was large but hardly extravagant. There were no full-time maids or butlers, certainly no car elevators. His father preferred to live below his means and, until Tagg was 14, Mitt was just a moderately affluent consultant, not the private-equity titan he would become. If Mitt so much as saw an overpriced item at the supermarket, he’d grumble—and in some cases even bolt. He’d get especially peeved about the cost of movie tickets. “We’d be like, ‘Dad, you can afford it,’” explains Tagg’s younger brother Josh. “And he’d say, ‘That’s not the point. These guys are charging an unfair price.’ It would get embarrassing.” The sense of modesty was so ingrained that when Tagg, then serving in France on his Mormon mission, heard that his family was buying a five-bedroom, $1.25 million villa, he suddenly became queasy. “How can you afford that house?” he asked his dad, according to The Boston Globe.

Tagg wasn’t known around Belmont as a rich kid; he was known as the kid with the cool, if slightly eccentric, parents. For breakfast, the Romney sons subsisted on sugary cereals. After school, classmates would stop by for cookies Ann Romney had baked. Like many prepubescent wise guys in the 1980s, the Romney boys were fanatical about “Saturday Night Live.” Even though the show didn’t come in for many endorsements in Mormon parenting guides, Mitt and Ann would be sure to watch it, then let the kids see a recording if the jokes weren’t too raunchy. The Romneys were, in fact, unusually tight-knit. One visitor recalls a family ritual: Every night at around 9:30 or 10:00, Mitt and Ann would meet at the foot of their staircase, clasp hands, and escort each other upstairs to the bedroom, in full view of their brood.

At the Belmont Hill School, the tony prep academy that he and his brothers attended, Tagg didn’t play a varsity sport or turn up at parties. He never dominated class discussions. Between his acne and his middling grades, he seemed timid and unsure of himself. “I didn’t have a lot of friends until my sophomore or junior year, when I got more self-confident,” he says.

His most distinctive feature was his Mormonism. Schoolmates remember Tagg as the only Latter Day Saint in a graduating class of about 70, which sometimes made him hard to relate to. His responsibilities as a Mormon teenager included attending a daily seminary class at 6:15 in the morning, a time the typical high school student is either asleep or catatonic. While classmates were frantically applying to Ivy League schools, Tagg had all but settled on Brigham Young University (BYU).

The featured speaker at graduation was Tagg’s grandfather George, ever the distinguished-looking statesman even in his early eighties. But the speech itself was a shock—a jeremiad about the importance of chastity and the false god of evolution. “My wife isn’t a descendant of orangutans,” George thundered. “It was pretty offensive,” says Tony Maws, a classmate and admirer of Tagg’s, who recalls his friend slinking down in his chair. It was a perfect illustration of the Romney paradox: Being the grandson of such a prominent figure was a telltale sign of Tagg’s establishment credentials. And yet the speech was a reminder that he was still something of an outsider, part of a community that aroused suspicion.

What Tagg shared least of all with other teenagers was their preoccupation with the opposite sex. Though he dated casually in high school, it wasn’t until he arrived at college that he expressed serious interest in women. “The year we lived together at BYU,” says Kurt Christensen, “if you were to ask me what Tagg was most interested in, it was finding his Ann.” He found her pretty quickly. Christensen was staying with the Romneys the week before Tagg got married to Jennifer Thomas, and he happened to be in earshot when Mitt spoke to his son, then age 22 and alert to the wonders of human physiology, about the birds and the bees. “We had been two Mormon boys who had remained relatively naïve about sexual matters,” Christensen says. “Obviously, Mitt felt it was probably important he talk to Tagg.”

Tagg had always been the most Mitt-like of the five Romney boys. Matt, two years his junior, was athletic and popular. Josh, who is five years younger, had a gift for working a room. Both were laid back while Tagg was high strung. Tagg also inherited his father’s earnest hokiness— a kind of camp-counselor enthusiasm. Except for a few years during early adolescence when Mitt got on his eldest son’s nerves—“It bothered me that he would be so nice,” he later told Michael Kranish and Scott Helman in The Real Romney—Tagg has long admired his dad and sought to emulate him. Like Mitt, Tagg worked at a managementconsulting firm and set his sights on business school. He was the only Romney child who interned at Bain Capital.

More so than his brothers, whose childhood circumstances were cushier, Tagg soaked up the earn-everything-you-have ethos that animated his father and grandfather—flinty, hard-driving figures with little tolerance for slacking. “If I drown in a stream, look for me upstream,” George used to quip. Mitt would wake his sons up early on Saturday mornings with a bulky list of chores. When he created a trust fund for his children, valued at some $100 million, he made the disbursements discretionary rather than have them pay out at regular intervals or when the kids reached a certain age. He wanted to send the message that Romneys don’t join the leisure class. “Look, he would like to make sure his family always has the money for the health care and education they need, or if they decide they want to be missionaries,” says one person familiar with the trust. “But you’ve got to work hard. The trust is not going to support them so they can be trust-fund kids.”

That was never a worry with Tagg. While at eGrad, his colleagues noticed him carrying around a very Romneyesque totem: the beat-up, brown leather briefcase that Mitt used for his first job out of grad school. “The hardworking aspect is what that symbolized to me,” recalls John Fees, the company’s co-founder. “He could have afforded whatever he wanted, looked cool if he wanted. But he carried his dad’s briefcase.”

 

A FEW YEARS out of business school, there was nothing exactly wrong with Tagg’s career—he’d worked for a major pharmaceutical company as well as a start-up. But he gave little indication of being the next Romney overachiever.

Then, around his thirtieth birthday, inspiration struck. Tagg was a lifelong sports fan who treasured his Red Sox season tickets. But he hated how time-consuming it was to unload his seats when he couldn’t make the games. So he conceived of a company that would buy up tickets people couldn’t use and sell them to other fans—kind of like StubHub. When he shared the notion with his dad, Mitt half-jokingly said, “That’s the first good business idea you’ve had,” according to Greg Davis, a friend from business school. Tagg abruptly quit eGrad and launched Season Perks, Inc.

He felt as if he was on the cusp of something big. After merging with two rivals to form Season Ticket Solutions in 2001, the new business signed contracts with the Boston Celtics and the Colorado Avalanche and was exploring major deals with the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League. But that September, Ticketmaster pulled out of an agreement to purchase the company for $12.5 million. The corporate giant seemed determined to replicate Season Ticket’s software and muscle it out of existence. Tagg abandoned the company shortly afterward.

When Mitt returned to Massachusetts to run for governor in early 2002, he found his son in transition. Tagg’s first business hadn’t quite panned out, and his plan B wasn’t much beyond the cocktail-napkin stage. “He was living in Boston, was in between jobs,” says Josh Romney. Tagg began serving as an aide to his dad.

It was the first time since his Bain Capital internship that Mitt was essentially his boss, and it seemed like a violation of his do-it-yourself code. But the operation had a start-up feel, which played to Tagg’s organizational strengths. Working out of his parents’ basement, Tagg secured office space, purchased I.T. equipment, and helped recruit personnel.

There were other reasons to take the assignment, not least Tagg’s devout sense of loyalty. “He’s pretty intense about his father, in the sense of defending him, getting upset if people aren’t one hundred percent followers,” says Tony Kimball, a family friend. Mitt had long been skeptical of political professionals, so part of Tagg’s function was to keep a close eye on the help. He was anointed one of six deputy managers and sat in the campaign war room. “No question that his primary role was to watch his father’s back, watch the money,” says one Romney adviser. “Mitt put in six million bucks [for the race]. I think he wanted to trust but verify that he was getting a full day’s work out of people.”

Tagg was widely liked nonetheless. He drove a beat-up green Camry and took pains to play down his sway with his father. By the fall, he’d even established some chops as an operative, having run the lieutenant governor campaign of Kerry Healey—a first-time statewide candidate who could have embarrassed Mitt by losing her September primary.

When the campaign ended and Romney prevailed, Tagg was keen to join him at the state capitol. But if the son had suspended his need for independent success, the father emphatically had not. One evening during the gubernatorial transition in late 2002, the family invited a reporter from Boston Magazine to dinner. The Romneys were still giddy from the campaign, and none more so than Tagg:

“I loved it,” Tagg says, seated at his father’s right hand at the dinner table. But while Tagg nods at a visitor’s suggestion that he might play a role in the new administration, his father frowns. We campaigned aggressively against the patronage and nepotism culture on Beacon Hill, says Mitt to Tagg’s silent but obvious dismay. Adding Tagg to the payroll “wouldn’t look right.”

After sitting in on some early transition meetings, Tagg spent the next several months tending to administrative scut work—settling up with campaign venders, completing Federal Election Commission filings—while figuring out his next move.

 

IN LATE 2005, after a few years with Reebok, Tagg landed a dream job: head of marketing for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He got to hobnob with Tommy Lasorda, the World Series-winning ex-manager, and was officially the boss of Vin Scully, the team’s legendary broadcaster. Having tried to crash the sports industry as an outsider, he was now on track to run it from the inside.

Perhaps more importantly, it looked as if he’d left the family business behind. At the time he took the job, Mitt was nearing the end of his term as governor, and there were indications he would seek higher office. “I remember our conversation vividly,” says one close friend. “I said, ‘Tagg, your dad’s going to run for president, ... you’re going to have to work on your dad’s campaign. Why move to L.A. for a year?’ He said, ‘Look, I’ve got to do my own thing. I’ve got to focus on business.’”

Only a few months into the new gig, however, Tagg was backsliding. He joined several family members urging his father into the presidential race, and when Mitt took their advice, Tagg moved his family back into the same house in Belmont—down the street from his parents—that he had put on the market a year earlier but hadn’t sold. As in 2002, Tagg took a paid job on the campaign and served as an intermediary between his father and the consultants Mitt didn’t entirely trust.

Since Tagg had walked away from a career as a sports executive to help elect his father, he faced a choice when Mitt stumbled in the primaries. Another corporate job could be a letdown after the Dodgers. And while founding a company still appealed to him, he was in his late thirties, with three children to feed, and he had just spent a year on sabbatical. Starting from scratch was suddenly less practical. He kicked around ways to parlay his campaign experience into a business venture and settled on launching a private-equity firm with his father’s 28-year-old fund-raising chief, Spencer Zwick.

It was hardly an obvious move. The sum total of their private-equity experience was Tagg’s two summers interning at Bain Capital. But they did have at least one qualification any money manager needs: the ability to scare up money. “They met a lot of people doing the national campaign, wealthy families,” says Greg Davis, part of a group of business school friends who meet each year to discuss their careers and families.

It didn’t hurt that the Romneys themselves were backing the fund. Solamere Capital—named after an exclusive neighborhood in Utah where the family had a vacation home—was incorporated in February of 2008, only weeks after the campaign ended. Its first office address was the Romney campaign headquarters in Boston’s North End. One of its first big commitments was $10 million from Ann Romney’s blind trust.

Solamere’s business model is perfectly legitimate but only available to people who are exceptionally well-connected, even by Wall Street standards. Most private-equity firms raise money from investors so they can buy up companies or stakes in companies. But Solamere invests most of its money with other private-equity firms, acting as what’s known as a fund of funds. It takes a high-powered Rolodex to enter this business, for the simple reason that the most profitable private-equity funds are extremely choosy about the money they accept. “Tagg being who he is, it helps him get into funds others wouldn’t be able to get into,” says Davis.

As it happens, most of the game is simply getting in the door. Once that’s accomplished, it’s a pretty foolproof way of earning millions of dollars each year: Solamere collects money from wealthy investors, pools it together, and places it in a group of brand-name funds, like Bain and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. “They’re not choosing funds you’ve never heard of,” says one person who gave them money. (They nonetheless took on a third partner with private equity experience.)

Predictably, Zwick and Tagg have not been shy about touting their connections when pitching investors. According to a copy of the Solamere prospectus that The Boston Globe obtained, they promised “unique access” to lucrative deals that the partners would land thanks to their “close personal and business relationships.” The New York Times reported that the firm ultimately raised money from a variety of Romney donors and fund-raisers, including John Miller, a longtime family friend and former corporate CEO, and Meg Whitman, the former head of eBay.

Tagg insists that only a fraction of the money he raised came from his father’s network, and that most Solamere investors “are people I or Spencer have known in other areas of life.” But given Mitt’s prominence, even investors outside his orbit must find the name reassuring. In January of 2010, Mitt addressed Solamere’s first investor conference, presumably to vouch for the company’s prospects, at least implicitly.

It’s no shock, then, that the Romney network and the Solamere network are highly intermingled. It’s part of what makes it possible for Tagg to stay put at the firm while giving over increasing amounts of time to his father’s campaign. One friend who is both a partner at a private-equity firm that Solamere invests in as well as a top Romney fundraiser, describes the relationship this way: “When I’m on the phone with Tagg, or we’re at a meeting together, we inevitably talk about Solamere investments—and also how much money we have working for the next campaign event.” A few beats later, he added, “There are a lot of guys like me.”

 

GIVEN THAT Tagg and his father place so much stock in making their own way, you might think this path to success would be a source of mild embarrassment, or at least sheepishness. This is not the case. “There are lots of people out there with connections having similar meetings, but we’re able to close the deal because we built a pretty good model,” Tagg says. A close friend puts it this way: “Tagg is too self-aware and too honest to not admit that there’s been some benefits professionally from his dad’s fund-raising network.” But this friend insists Tagg would be successful no matter what: “With or without that pedigree, Tagg works hard.”

There is no doubt about that. On the day of the vice presidential debate in October, I caught Tagg just past noon in the Washington exurbs, where he was addressing a crowd of his father’s supporters. In person, he looked remarkably like his mother, with her toothy smile and bird-like eyes. He spoke winningly about his family, including what he described as the one credential he had over his father: a daughter. Roughly nine hours and four stops later, I saw Tagg turn up at the University of Virginia, a good 100 miles from Dulles airport, where he was flying out early the next morning. When I left, around 11 p.m., he was still shaking hands and posing for photos, looking just as put together as ever, with a line of waiting admirers snaking through the room.

But the question isn’t whether Tagg works hard. It’s whether hard work accounts for as much of the Romneys’ achievements as he and his father assume. “Tagg likes to talk about advice my grandfather gave each of us and Dad,” says his younger brother Josh. “That is, success comes when luck meets preparation. He talks about that a lot. He wants to be in position to achieve success.” But capitalizing on the kind of break Tagg got—being born into the right family—requires a lot less preparation than most.

In any other circumstance, the Romney myth would be innocuous enough, even constructive. The danger arises when a family myth intersects with a governing vision, when the stories a presidential candidate tells himself shape the policies he favors for everyone else. Though he has always been generous with his fellow worshipers and neighbors, Mitt has supported a budget that would likely slash programs people without his means depend on, such as child care and food stamps. He has endorsed cuts to Medicaid that could leave seniors unable to pay for nursing homes and middle-class families unable to fully provide for disabled children. His advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to borrow money from their parents, even though most parents can’t oblige, however much they’d like to. Once you understand the Romney ethos, it makes sense that Mitt coolly dismissed nearly half the electorate as entitled takers.

Romney recently said that “ninety-five percent of life is set up for you if you’re born in this country,” implying that his sons have had only marginally greater opportunities than those of his secretaries. It’s what allows him to believe that his family has earned every dollar they’ve accumulated, unlike the underachieving masses, who would rather accept government goodies than shape their own destinies.

The disdain Romney seems to feel for those who need government help, the condescension toward people who aren’t as privileged or successful, is jarring enough in its own right. But it’s even more jarring when you consider that almost all of us—Mitt and Tagg very much included—have needed help at some point in our lives. It’s just a matter of where that help comes from. That Mitt Romney would roll it back for those who have no place else to turn but government isn’t an act of virtue or tough love. It’s an act of hypocrisy.

Noam Scheiber is a senior editor at The New Republic. This article appeared in the November 8, 2012 issue of the magazine under the headline “We Built That: Fathers, sons, and the Romney family’s myth of self-reliance.”

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107 comments

This is a lot of words to say that the Romneys are privileged and oblivious.

- zuludown

October 19, 2012 at 12:50am

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"But they did have at least one qualification any money manager needs: the ability to scare up money." Tagg is a chip off the block. Though Mitt Romney would have us believe he is a green eye-shades "turn-around expert" (whatever that is), in truth his primary contribution at Bain was to "scare up money", to convince wealthy investors to trust their money with Romney and Bain. And, as we know, Mitt Romney was exceptionally good at it. Those in private equity are today's snake-oil salesmen, dressed up in MBAs and three piece suits, but at bottom snake-oil salesmen. David Stockman, famous for making the "Trojan horse" gaffe while Reagan's director of OMB (the 1981 tax cut was a "Trojan horse" to lower top tax rates, believing as he did that trickle down economics was a fraud) and who made his fortune in private equity after leaving government, recently penned an op/ed in The Daily Beast in which he said this about Mitt Romney and private equity: "Mitt Romney was not a businessman. . . . He was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. . . . Bain’s billions of profits were not rewards for capitalist creation; they were mainly windfalls collected from gambling in markets that were rigged to rise."

- rayward

October 19, 2012 at 8:06am

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This is a good piece of journalism. I can see where the Romneys would neglect human resources over money and connections because that is how it has worked for them for two generations. What I would like to know is the relationship between Bain and that huge business enterprise, the Mormon Church.

- Nusholtz

October 19, 2012 at 8:44am

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"What’s so strange about the Romney myth is that its grip hasn’t weakened even as it has become less true." Geez, gang, that's what myths *do*. Has nobody read Joseph Campbell? And why do I have the queasy feeling that this is not only a dissection of Mitt's mind (such as it is these days), but also a preparation for Tagg's inevitable run for office somewhere? (And good grief, who gives out the names in this family?)

- cspencef

October 19, 2012 at 8:56am

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For those of us who have been both poor and had the privilege of being well enough off that we have very few worries; who have started in houses with no running water and country schools, but ended up in major universities and positions of influence in major corporations - for any such person who is remotely honest with themselves, the notion that you do anything on your own, or that simply choosing to not start with Daddy's millions in the bank somehow puts you on equal footing with those who start from behind with nothing at any point they didn't have to fight for is just ludicrous. Hard work matters. Hard work is essential to advance. But without the support and mentoring and safety net provided by connections or by a society that makes sure even the disadvantaged get them, very few will rise from disadvantaged to advantaged conditions. That the Romney's think otherwise demonstrates only demonstrates their essential cluelessness and lack of fitness to lead. That they actual revel in their stories makes me ill.

- IowaBeauty

October 19, 2012 at 10:08am

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cspence, if Mitt loses--as he is bound to do--Tragg ain't running for office nowhere.

- AaronW

October 19, 2012 at 10:08am

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An new line of attack on Romney: do we seriously want to elect a president who has never, not even once, been drunk?

- AaronW

October 19, 2012 at 10:10am

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I'm very concerned about the voting machines. The media is not mentioning the fact that Bain owns voting machines being used across the country and particularly in the swing states. Why isn't this being brought out in the press?

- midgesimba

October 19, 2012 at 11:25am

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Noam, An excellent, illuminating piece of journalism for 90%; but then you take all of that good work and spindle, fold and mutilate it to justify an accusation of hypocrisy that your own writing would not seem to warrant. Where do these good people show disdain for the less fortunate? Is it when they challenge federal welfare programs as having gone beyond their original mandates as safety nets to actually become part of the problem? This is a conclusion that's been out there for decades (e.g., Pat Moynihan). It's nothing new, and cannot be seriously disputed. So, successfully instilling a work ethic in his children despite his great wealth isn't a wonderful accpomlishment in and of itself? And it's not possible to develop self reliance even when given a significant boost through family networking? Hogwash. MR is a good and decent man of faith, charitable beyond description (I recently learned Mormons not only take care of each other, but give incredible amounts to millions of people around the world regardless of religious affiliation), and a devoted father who with great success instilled values in his children, as you describe, that any father would want in his own offspring. Wanting to see those values rerooted in American society in general is not disdain, nor condescension, but a wonderful goal, something that anyone who truly cares for the less fortunate should want.

- SSciaretta

October 19, 2012 at 11:49am

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"do we seriously want to elect a president who has never, not even once, been drunk?" I used to think the question "would I have a beer with this guy?" was vacuous in some respects but I realize now that it can serious foreign policy consequences. The fact that Mittens has never had a hangover let alone had a drink in 65 years, how pray tell will Mitt 'man up' when it comes time to do multiple shots of vodka out in the Siberian wasteland while negotiating with Putin? I suspect it will go something like this....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUAueFkVYvA&feature=player_detailpage#t=31s

- singlspeed

October 19, 2012 at 11:53am

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"I used to think the question "would I have a beer with this guy?" was vacuous in some respects but I realize now that it can serious foreign policy consequences." Would you buy a used car from this man?

- stanmvp48

October 19, 2012 at 12:48pm

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I was struck by this passage on p. 2: "When he created a trust fund for his children, valued at some $100 million, he made the disbursements discretionary rather than have them pay out at regular intervals or when the kids reached a certain age. He wanted to send the message that Romneys don’t join the leisure class. 'Look, he would like to make sure his family always has the money for the health care and education they need, or if they decide they want to be missionaries,' says one person familiar with the trust." Although the parental spirit of Mitt's regulation of the fund is laudable, the comment by the individual "familiar with the trust" reveals a strange mindset that I believe Romney himself shares: that for Americans to make sure their children get "the education and health care they need" they should all establish trust funds. If they don't, they are clearly not taking responsibility.

- ironyroad

October 19, 2012 at 12:57pm

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Parents who don't start saving for their children's education from very early age are not responsible parents. It's pretty basic stuff. Can't see what the problem is with this principle, or why it should be referred to as a "strange mindset".

- Noga

October 19, 2012 at 1:31pm

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Iowa: I couldn't agree with your insights more. Starting from a rural background without running water or electricity, I felt like I'd stepped into an alternative universe at university. Everyone's parents were professionals and the vast majority of them were supported to some extent financially. That support makes a serious difference as to how much time one can put into their studies. If you don't have to work 20+ hours/week in order to survive that's 20+ hours that can be used to succeed academically. After graduating those with the privilege with connections can immediately call their uncle and have a cozy career if they wish, whereas my connections could get me a fine position as roughneck on a drilling rig, but that's about it. Clearly there is no difference between that experience and that of the Romney's. It could have been worse of course. I completed a Master’s degree concurrently with a student that was able to produce stunningly beautiful semi-closed form solutions to emulate 3-D stress analysis. The beauty of his work took my breath away and in spite of 17 publications during his Master’s degree, he was unable to find a single job. However, his name was Reza, which didn’t play well with potential employers. But again, connections have no affect on a career trajectory. I can't actually believe that the Romney's truly believe this position. Rather, I believe that they see the serviceability to the myth and the ability of it to advance their agenda. You can't "relate" to the common individual if you start from a position of "I was born with more privilege that you will ever achieve in your lifetime." Noga: While my daughter has yet to hit her first birthday and already has an education savings plan in place, I think it is important to recognize that for a great number of families, an educational savings plan is a luxury that is simply not affordable. Tough to justify when you're stretching a budget so that your child can eat for the last few days in the month.

- jamesson

October 19, 2012 at 2:07pm

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"MR is a good and decent man of faith" I don't believe you can apply this description to anyone who lies their way through the political process in anything like the fashion Romney has. "good and decent" people don't pretend belief for the purpose of increasing their own wealth and power. "good and decent' people hold their beliefs, advocate for them, and accept their consequences. Romney does none of these things. He discards principles like most people discard candy wrappers. "good and decent" people don't demonize half the population of this country as unwilling to take responsibility for their own life, just to ingratiate themselves with other wealthy and powerful individuals. (It doesn't matter whether Romney believed what he said, what matter is his willingness to prostitute himself to such an outrageous proposition to fill his pockets) "good and decent" people don't channel their "charity" through an organization that primarily is about the aggrandizement of it's own power and influence. Bill Gates is a full-court-press competitive businessman, who is also manifestly a good and decent person wanting to improve the world. Mitt Romney is a ruthless business exploiter, willing to lay waste to entire companies for his own enrichment, and evidently completely convinced that he's "entitled" to pay a lower tax rate than my son earning $15000/yr. I have no doubt Romney loves his wife and children, and can be generous to people who are very like him. That's a pretty damned low bar, though. If that qualifies as good and decent, then some of the worst examples of humanity in history were "good and decent."

- IowaBeauty

October 19, 2012 at 2:08pm

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Nothing wrong with that principle, Noga; what's wrong is Romney's assumption that parents who don't have the means to save enough for their children's education (and health care), some of whom have to spend every penny they can scrounge by working two jobs just to provide their kids with a home and food, are irresponsible.

- VAliberal

October 19, 2012 at 2:08pm

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Noga, I have nothing against responsible saving for a child's later education (except to note as others have that it suggests a middle-class existence with some room to maneuver in terms of family income) and it was in fact the health care part of the comment that struck me more.

- ironyroad

October 19, 2012 at 2:37pm

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S Sciaretta: I couldn't have said it better.

- rvogel

October 19, 2012 at 3:15pm

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Iowa, I think you have no specifics to base your ad hominem attacks against Romney. In particular, your characterization of the Mormon charitable giving seems entirely bigoted. As I stated in my comment, the Mormon Church provides incredible amounts to an array of charitable endeavors around the world, not just to preserving theiri own. This information is easily found, unless you are inclined to shy away from anything that might contradict your own predudice. This latter view is extremely discreditable and is disturbingly reminiscent of how the anti-Jewish propaganda was received by the German popoulation in the 1930's. You can disagree with people's policies and philosophies, but when your opinions devolve into such generalized, unsupportable tripe (where does one see any evidence that all MR wants is to only line the pockets of himself and his friends) you have to be called out on it for what it is: pure class warfare and religious bigotry.

- SSciaretta

October 19, 2012 at 3:34pm

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"I think you have no specifics to base your ad hominem attacks against Romney." I don't want to particularly speak for Iowa, as he may have different evidence to offer, but I would note that the video record of the "47%" speech has been out for several weeks now. It would be difficult to find a more memorable exercise of dismissal of almost half the electorate of the United States by the presidential candidate of a major party -- who's been trying of course to put as much distance as possible between himself and his comments. And before anyone jumps in to remind us that Obama was also caught on tape with the God and Guns speech, I'd like to remind them that Obama's comment was in the context of people who might be considered likely Democratic voters but who had taken a different path due to -- if you actually read Obama's remarks in '08 -- some compelling experiences in their lives. Romney's 47% commentary is of a different nature.

- ironyroad

October 19, 2012 at 3:57pm

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This is a typical TNR hatchet job on the family of a political opponent. I believe very little of it.

- Nicomachus

October 19, 2012 at 4:06pm

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I think Romney probably got his 47% groups mixed up. He probably meant to say that 47% of the people have already decided not to vote him. A different 47% of the population don't pay income taxes. And if you believe Democrats, at least 47% of our population are members of some sort of `victim' group by virtue of not being white, heterosexual, male, Christian, wealthy or of European ancestry. Mitt got carried away. But in the world of fund raising it's probably a forgivable sin.

- rvogel

October 19, 2012 at 4:18pm

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I'm with rvogel and s sciaretta. For all I know they me be democrats. I know in my head I'm one notionally--I'm a Canadian. They transcend the mindless vituperation and the infantilism on the left and the right self righteously evident in demonizing any politicians who hold sharply different views than they do.

- basman

October 19, 2012 at 4:31pm

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Kreskin you read my mind: I'd quarrel with any principled distinction between the 47% and the clinging comments. This--"Obama's comment was in the context of people who might be considered likely Democratic voters but who had taken a different path due to -- if you actually read Obama's remarks in '08 -- some compelling experiences in their lives"—makes no persuasive sense to me. The people Obama was speaking to were very affluent California Ds who were putatively hip, sophisticated, in the true know, and who take a little limousine with their liberalism. Obama was talking about working class white voters who, most of them, wouldn’t vote for him, sneering at them, and condescending to them, with people he felt comfortable with and one of. Rvogel has it pretty right on the context of Romney’s stupid comments, which were inelegant and ill thought through. That they reflected a plutocrat’s disdain for all who are poor and struggling is as nonsensical as saying “you didn’t build that” referred to entrepreneurial effort as opposed to its social enablement. Side shows all swallowing circuses.

- basman

October 19, 2012 at 4:46pm

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I think it's pretty undeniable that the tone of Obama's remarks was noticeably different from that of Romney's, as the wider quote suggests: "But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." I think my previous description of Obama's remarks, which I wrote without looking up the quote (I just did that a minute ago), turns out to be pretty accurate. What is quite striking, too, is the fact that Obama underlines that neither the Bush nor the Clinton administration did a great deal to redeem promises to these people.

- ironyroad

October 19, 2012 at 5:01pm

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"...you have to be called out on it for what it is: pure class warfare and religious bigotry." SSciaretta, This sounds like the party line of the Right. Not very original--or accurate. But Romney and his posse have certainly used that inaccurate party line ad infinitum. " This latter view is extremely discreditable and is disturbingly reminiscent of how the anti-Jewish propaganda was received by the German population in the 1930's." I, too, have compared some of the tactics that Republicans use to those that the Nazis used. But yours is a false analogy. But If Romney wins in November, the Mormon Church will have some of the most powerful political and economic connections of any religious organization in history, which it will aggressively take advantage of, I assure you. Jews in Nazi Germany had no political or economic connections at all. The LDS is a very aggressive church and Romney is very aggressive, too, both in his business and his political life. If he wins the election, I fear for America.

- magboy47.

October 19, 2012 at 5:10pm

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SSciaretta, I think the evidence is pretty clear. Romney has changed positions as a matter of convenience more often than any politician in memory. He tacked center-left to run in Massachusetts, far right to win the Republican primary, and now is trying to sound centrist again. If you know what he believes about anything, it has to be through divination. As for the 47% comments: They are on tape. If you're willing to say that, whether or not you believe it, to raise money for your campaign, you hardly are good and decent. It was a gross mischaracterization of many hard working and some very unfortunate people. With respect to the Mormon church: Mormon charity is a fraction of the vast dollars they rake in in tithes. According to some estimates, less than 1% goes to charity for people who are not primarily members of the church, but even if it is a couple times that, the case stands. Most protestant churches spend 10X proportionately on charity, and no other church, other than the Catholic, maintains anything like the sprawling, opaque for-profit empire run by the Mormons. (These are just facts, not judgments). As for Bain capital - like most uber-capitalists, Romney clearly is able to put the downstream effects of his financial decisions out of mind. Good for him. Does'nt make him "good and decent." No politician is perfect. You can't get to that point without some compromises, but character matters. Romney's doesn't pass the smell test. Basman - comparing the 47% remarks to Obama's garbled syntax on "You didn't build that is ludicrous." Obama clearly said something in a way that conveyed his meaning poorly. Romney has done the same ("I like firing people" is a good example, that Democrats shamelessly took out of context). Happens to everybody. Romney on the 47% was an extended, and reasonably eloquent exposition of a theme. You could no more mistake his meaning than that the sun rose here this morning. Obama's "guns and religion" comments would be a better comparison, and they were certainly inappropriate and offensive. But even those comments were an attempt to explain, not to dismiss.

- IowaBeauty

October 19, 2012 at 5:18pm

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magboy, You couldn't have read what you wrote...really? Said Herr Hitler: "The Jews (Mormons) are too powerful economically; they are controlling and aggressive; unless they are stopped these vermin will destroy us...I fear for the Fatherland." To say I have used a false analogy certainly doesn't prove it. In that regard your comment was dismissive and without real substance. But when you overtly invoke fear of a religion as a reason to be concerned about our future...with NOTHING to back this up...well, that makes me fear for the America I know and love. And, no, I'm not one to invoke any party line, unless that line ties in with my own thought process. When it comes to religious bigotry, against Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc., I give no quarter.

- SSciaretta

October 19, 2012 at 5:25pm

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"I think it's pretty undeniable that the tone of Obama's remarks was noticeably different from that of Romney's" Of course it is "undeniable". How can anyone make a logical argument against a totally subjective and unquantifiable attribute such as the "tone" of a statement. Its like arguing whether the color green is nice or not. Surely Obama was being sweet, when he declared that these people are mindless automatons whose deeply held beliefs are derived entirely by the deficiencies of their inadequate lives. Also, they are bigots. And... without out benevolent assistance (i.e. government intervention), these simpleminded yokels will be lost in their hopeless ineptitude. Nice tone.

- Nicomachus

October 19, 2012 at 5:42pm

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"I'd quarrel with any principled distinction between the 47% and the clinging comments." Basman, the "principled distinction" between the two comments is that Obama was attempting to describe, however inaccurately, the mindset of a segment of the electorate that was unlikely to vote for him and outlining a theory as to why such folks "cling" to political side issues like guns and religion and vote against their own economic interests, and it is abundantly clear from the tone of Obama's comments that he is actually sympathetic to such voters' plight and that he would like to get through to them and win their support if only he could figure out how. Romney, by contrast, quite obviously holds the people he's talking about--the 47%--in contempt. He describes them as refusing to take responsibility for themselves. He considers them politically unreachable, a write-off, and he blames their unreachability on their own benightedness. While both men are describing voters who don't like them, it is their attitude toward such voters that differs, Obama's being sympathetic and inclusive, Romney's being contemptuous and exclusive.

- AaronW

October 19, 2012 at 5:55pm

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Iowa, So Catholics are suspect also because of the Church's alleged opaque, sprawling, for-profit empire? And, I suppose, shouldn't be considered for the presidency?

- SSciaretta

October 19, 2012 at 5:55pm

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Not at all -- tone is certainly open to subjective interpretation, but I teach English and the questions of diction, register, vocabulary and the like all involve real choices and affect the tone of a piece of writing or a speech. Just because something is unquantifiable in a scientific sense doesn't mean that it is closed to analysis. Obviously, there's a range but I don't see where Obama implies that anyone is a mindless automaton. Yes, you can absolutely slam him for the term "clinging" but the wider comment is not about bigotry, ineptitude, and certainly there's nothing in there about "inadequate lives" (as opposed to Romney's talk, where he in fact comes closer to saying that). Indeed, one of the failures of your quasi-parodic reprise of Obama's remarks, Nico, is that the tone yours is laced with an angry contempt noticeably absent from the original.

- ironyroad

October 19, 2012 at 6:01pm

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Thanks for researching the Romney mindset, as I am sure it was frightening at times. Your article was very insightful, especially the depth of their need for the proper image. To hear that Mitt told Tagg about the birds and the bees on his wedding night at 22, almost explains "binders full of women", and his Ward Cleaver view of the world. They are a startling eerie clan, those Romneys, like their whole world is laminated to prevent their interactions with the other inhabitants of the planet, except their limited, narrowly confined class of like beings. Sounds miserable.

- smabry03

October 19, 2012 at 6:05pm

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Nicodemus, Obama did not suggest that people's religion--their most deeply help beliefs--is derived from deficiencies in their lives. He suggested that the political importance such voters assign to religion is misguided and out of keeping with the economic deficiencies of their lives.

- AaronW

October 19, 2012 at 6:07pm

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Gotta now but want to reply to some of this.

- basman

October 19, 2012 at 6:27pm

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And at some point people have to understand that sons are not their fathers, that unless there was either a trauma in the family or a son unduly worships his father than we really have to stop with the armchair psychologizing. My two brothers and I have very different politics, my father supported Hillary Clinton last time, I supported Obama, my two brothers supported McCain. All I care about is that Mitt Romney seems to be a solipsistic narcissist, how or why I don't care, all I care about is his losing the election. If he wins, well I will be content to let the historian pluck over his damaged psyche. By the way, Tagg is a religious themed word in the Mormon church. I guess living in an area with heavy immigration different names just kind of pass right on by without much thought. If he were unhappy with his name he would have chosen a nickname and used that. I have a close friend whose first name is Domciccio, his family calls him chi chi, everyone esle knows him as Chuck.

- blackton

October 19, 2012 at 8:29pm

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Irony, you may teach English, but I practice psychiatry. Granted English is my second language, but I can tell you without a doubt, that most of "tone" is interpret not based on words, but on people's predispositions. Lets take the vice presidential debate as a vivid example. Lefties interpreted Biden to be energetic, commanding, and candid. Conservatives saw him as rude, condescending, and over the top. Both sides exchanged charges of "liar". One would think these people saw two different debates. It is pathetically predictable how partisans will behave. The truth is that you do not really have a logical argument on why Obama's gaffe was any better than Romney's, thus you fallback on this intangible "tone" charge, which is entirely subjective and can't possibly be refuted. Did you see what I just did? I assigned motivation to your behavior, which is of course presumptuous given that we are merely acquainted. That is exactly what Romney and Obama are both guilty off, everything else is minor detail.

- Nicomachus

October 19, 2012 at 8:34pm

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SSciaretta, I never said Romney shouldn't be considered for being President because he's a Mormon. I can imagine circumstances under which I'd support a guy like Jon Huntsman for President. I said that donating big sums of money to the Mormon church doesn't make him a good and decent man. And it doesn't, particularly as he is or has been a high officer of said church, who benefits directly in terms of influence in the church from his donations. It certainly doesn't make him generous to the poor and needy - the $3M he gave to the Church, as I understand the available evidence, nets out at $30,000 or so to genuine charity. That's only 2 to 3 times what my family gave to organizations that spend upward of 90% of their budget on direct aid, from an income that was less than 1% of Romney's - and I don't consider myself particularly generous on the basis of my dollar donations. I also implied that the Mormon church is in many respects a charity in name only, and I stand by that. By the way, had Romney wanted to be of real help to the poor and needy, he could have donated that $3M to LDS Philanthropies, rather than to the Church, so that it went almost entirely to "Mormon approved" relief efforts.

- IowaBeauty

October 19, 2012 at 8:46pm

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"The Jews (Mormons) are too powerful economically; they are controlling and aggressive; unless they are stopped these vermin will destroy us...I fear for the Fatherland." But SSciaretta, under Hitler Jews did not have political or economic power. In America today Mormons and other religions are extremely powerful and wealthy. I'm not against Mormons in particular. I just don't want a bishop in a church, Romney, being president. Under Bush Evangelical extremists became very powerful in our country. They were a huge influence in our invasion of Iraq, which cost America thousands of deaths, tens of thousands of casualties, and, if you count the cost of rehab of our veterans, at least $2 trillion. I don't want a Catholic bishop in the Oval Office either, even though I was raised Catholic. And, yes, the Catholic Church actively participated in mass murder in occupied territories under Hitler, and it also helped Nazi war criminals escape Europe through the Odessa Network after World War II. It even nominated a Croatian mass murderer for sainthood. If Romney were just a schlep in the LDS, I wouldn't care. But he's now the most powerful person in the Church. And in America churches are not supposed to be be involved in state policies. Under Romney at least one church will, even if it's behind the scenes. It's simply human nature. Church leaders, when they smell power and money, are no more able to resist temptation than anyone else. History proves that.

- magboy47.

October 19, 2012 at 9:15pm

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Nico: "I assigned motivation to your behavior" You did? Have you no shame, sir!? Joking apart, I don't see where you did that. In any case, I would reiterate that any reasonable assessment of the language of the two extended comments, taking into account the larger rhetorical environments in which they were expressed, would show distinct differences between them in terms of argument, diction, and register. Any entirely quantitative account -- e.g. counting the verbs or graphing the syntax or something like that -- would of course miss rather important phenomena. Incidentally, I want to emphasize that this is, of course, at root nothing to do with partisan politics at all. It's discourse analysis and linguistics folks do it all the time. Just as a personal (subjective) note, I would say that John McCain, for example, could make and has made comments about torture that are all the more effective coming from a conservative as opposed to a Code Pink radical precisely because there's a certain tone (a "register" if you prefer the more academic term) that he can strike in those contexts, and others can't.

- ironyroad

October 19, 2012 at 9:24pm

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What exactly is the point of this compare and contrast the two gaffes in their respective contexts? Is it to prove that Romney is a not a decent man while Obama is? Anyone can be caught up in the momentum of circumstances where they they lower the guards, they are less vigilant, and out come a sequence of words which cannot be undone and is at the very least a regrettable momentary lapse in niceness and decency. I will repeat what lingers in my mind as Obama's least salutary moment: " Appearing on the late night talk show, the president compared his skills at bowling to those of a handicapped athlete. Asked by Mr Leno, who hosts the show, if he had been practicing bowling in his Washington office, Mr Obama joked that his highest score was the extremely low total of 129. “That’s very good, Mr President,” Mr Leno interjected in a sarcastic tone. Mr Obama then countered that the score was “like the Special Olympics or something”. Not such a nice decent man, eh? Or was it just a momentary lapse? Has anyone ever suspected Obama of harboring nasty thoughts about handicapped people ever since? How come no one made such a big deal out of it the way Romney's unfortunate remark is being treated, like the man is an evil sociopath with ugly positions?

- Noga

October 19, 2012 at 10:27pm

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Uh, Noga, the point is that Basman compared the two statements and found them to be equivalent. Given that Iowa had previously cited Romney's 47% comment as evidence of his lack of decency. With that in mind, if we are to accept Basman's assertion that "cling" and "47%" are equivalent, we must either reject Iowa's assertion that Romney's statement shows him to lack decency or we must accept that Obama is similarly lacking in decency. I reject both possibilities, but to do so I must reject the proposed equivalence of "cling" and "47%." This is why we--why I, anyway--have sought to compare/contrast the two gaffes.

- AaronW

October 20, 2012 at 1:37am

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The truth is that you do not really have a logical argument on why Obama's gaffe was any better than Romney's Oh please, this is absurd. This is what Obama said: "And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," This is certifiably true. I am from Pa. and a lot of my relatives are precisely this way. To pretend no one is anti-immigrant or anti-trade is nuts. And yes, people in Pa. do cling to guns and religion. Come here in hunting season sometime. And I am talking about my own family here so if I am not offended by this truth how can you be? Obama also did not give it a number of 47%, he referred to a real honest to God subset of people who are this way. Compare that to Romney: There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that's what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. If he had said there a some Democrats...no one would have cared, what was odious is the number and inference that nearly half of America are people who take no responsibility for their lives. Never mind he also said virtually every Democrat is subhuman scum. And watch the whole video, it is a dark journey into the fetid recesses of the mentality of this crowd. Even areas that are not meant to be serious shows how twisted this man is. For example early on he said: Thank you—and by the way, start eating, those of you who have food in front of you that's warm, start eating. I'm standing up so I can see you, but I'm not standing up so you that you have to stop and look at me. It's important to look at your food as you're eating it. Look at that line, it is important to look at your food as you're eating it. Who talks like that except to a child? Later on he goes worse as he looks at a woman and says: I'm just gonna taste this by the way. I just wanna show you how it's done: You take this in your fork…[Audience laughs.]…you put it in…That's good, that's good. [To audience member]: Please, go ahead. These are people who just gave him 50k each and he is teaching her how to use a fork? Now I get these people laughed but they laughed because they were already sold on him, and the woman questioner went along because she thought he was just teasing her, but why would he do that? Watch the whole video, it is chock full of disturbing statements, too numerous to mention here. I will be honest and say I can not imagine GWB making such a speech, nor Reagan, nor McCain, nor GWHB so this is not partisan. Romney is a genuinely shitty human being.

- blackton

October 20, 2012 at 1:39am

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For my money there's a world of difference between "cling" and "47%". In the first instance O was trying to explain a group of folks he's interested in as potential supporters to a group of wealthy Californians who are already supporters that have only the most superficial understanding of the former group. In the second instance, Romney is writting off nearly half the country as a buch of losers who will never support him, reinforcing the negative preconceptions about the general public that he shares with the wealthy donors he was addressing.

- Robert Powell

October 20, 2012 at 6:01am

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Bob, that was nicely, succinctly put. I let my blood get up about that bloodless creature known as Romney.

- blackton

October 20, 2012 at 10:15am

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...Uh, Noga, the point is that Basman compared the two statements and found them to be equivalent. Given that Iowa had previously cited Romney's 47% comment as evidence of his lack of decency. With that in mind, if we are to accept Basman's assertion that "cling" and "47%" are equivalent, we must either reject Iowa's assertion that Romney's statement shows him to lack decency or we must accept that Obama is similarly lacking in decency. I reject both possibilities, but to do so I must reject the proposed equivalence of "cling" and "47%." This is why we--why I, anyway--have sought to compare/contrast the two gaffes.... I'm in the labour room waiting for my daughter to have her first baby, my third grandson. While I wait, I'll respond to some of the above by taking my comments off from what I just cited. It's imprecise to say that I asserted the 47% and clinging to be equivalent. I found them comparable, rather, in their offensiveness. 47% is asserted to be evidence of Romney's lack of decency. In context, as Rvogel has pointed out, Romney was speaking to fellow fat cats trying to say in essence that 47% of Americans who are locked into voting for Obama, no matter what, will never vote for him, and that they or a lot of them comprise a constituency of citizens who are dependent on government support for their means, and that Obama embodies--my daughter is pushing as I type--that form of government. Romney thinks that beyond a minimal safety net, the kind of government Obama embodies does these citizens no favour. Romney thinks that the form of government he wishes to embody as president is better for these citizens and has a better chance of lifting them out of their dependence on government. He also thinks that, like Clinton did, a welfare mentality ensues from continuous government dependence, and moving people off welfare is essential to braking that mentality. So that will be the inclination or his policies. So those so dependent, obviously not those after a life of hard work or like circumstances who for that reason don't pay income tax, will never vote for him. Baby' s just about to come. That was the gist of Romney's comment. He said it poorly, betrayed some plutocratic impulses, was insensitive, haughty and dismissive in his remarks, granted. Baby's coming. But his life's evidence, his immense charitable giving, his work for his church, the testimonials as to his decency, generosity and humility speak volumes as against his stupid comment and brackets it as that. Baby's just about out, will return.

- basman

October 20, 2012 at 11:26am

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Robert, that is a distinction without a real difference. Blackton, now you are criticizing the man for telling people to eat food. You must not go to many conventions, it is a common platitude when someone is giving a speech and food is served to tell people "don't pay attention to me, eat your food". "Dark journey", please give me break! Partisans are like prosecutors and defense lawyers rolled into one. They zealously prosecute the opposition, searching out faults everywhere, not matter how minor or petty. They reject any reasonable defense or plausible explanation in favor of the most odious scenario. The hurl hyperbolic and inflammatory charges such "liar" and "Nazi". At the same time, they vigorously defend and advocate for their candidate, intellectually bending over backwards to defend the indefensible. They explore every possible excuse in favor of their candidate. You can show partisans a video of their candidate saying "A" and they will argue that he really said "B". And of course, they never afford such charity to their opponents. If you think about it, its a rather predictable and intellectually pathetic frame of mind. Far be it from me to stop folks from having their fun, but the level of acrimony has gone way too far. The nation is divided. Whoever wins the election will do so with the slightest of margins. The losing 49% will oppose and obstruct the victor by any means necessary. These hyper-aggressive methods will quickly lead to an adversarial situation in which hotheads dominate the discourse and there is a hardening of positions on both sides. This volatile and dysfunctional state, a la Israel/Palestine, will result in long term strife, severe rancor, and national paralysis. I ask the people that can still think clearly, is this what we really want? If not, lets stop this crap about people's family's, gotcha gaffes, tax records, birth certificates, etc. and focus on what really matters.. Is it in the nation's interest that Obama's policies are continued? What exactly is Romney's plan? Who has the best long term energy plan? What is Romney's plan to fix the cost crisis in health care? etc.Today, these questions get 10% of our time, while "cling", "47%", and "Nazi" get the rest.

- Nicomachus

October 20, 2012 at 11:46am

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Baby's out. I helped. Fantastic experience. Finish off my comment l8r.

- basman

October 20, 2012 at 12:04pm

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nico, no, it was not his saying eat your food, it was his telling them how important it is to look at your food when you eat, and then later physically demonstrating how to put fork to mouth. Do you have a serious reading comprehension deficit? Did you watch the entire video? other parts he says his being President alone would make the economy begin to improve. He is a shameless liar, he built a convention on a distortion of the line "you didn't build that", imagine if the Democrats did the same by distorting his "I like to fire people" And he has no sane policy. He claims he wants to cut taxes 20%, increase defense spending by 2 trillion, restore 716 billion to Medicare, and begin to balance the budget without once specifiying a single serious program he would cut or which big loophole he would close. Everyone knows what Obama's plan is, he laid it out with his solution to entitlements that he presented to Boehner, which Boehner walked away from because it had more than one penny in tax increases. Romney is no GWHB. The Republican party is not the party that had GWHB. As to tax records, you don't think people have the right to know his taxes? So his personal life, how he made his money is now no ones business? If he were a poor man no one would care, but there is a serious question if he took a tax amnesty to avoid prosecution for failing to pay taxes on money hidden abroad. Look, I get it, you hate Obama for whatever reason, because he is black, because he beat Hillary, because....whatever, but to say that they are equal is just crazy. Romney is a solipsistic narcissist without any common touch. He is a manager, not a leader. It would be a painful 4 years if he is elected.

- blackton

October 20, 2012 at 12:59pm

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blackton, most of your talking points were partisan nonsense; however, you did say something that peaked my interest.. "Everyone knows what Obama's plan is, he laid it out with his solution to entitlements that he presented to Boehner, which Boehner walked away from because it had more than one penny in tax increases" I must have missed this. Could you please point me to Obama's official proposal document that details his solution to entitlements. I would like to study it.

- Nicomachus

October 20, 2012 at 2:12pm

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Magboy:" But SSciaretta, under Hitler Jews did not have political or economic power. " The Jews immediately before Hitler were at the pinnacle of German cultural institutions and were enormously statistically overrepresnted in highest reaches of German industrial and financial concerns, particularly the banks. This was precisely the focus Hitler employed to such grotesque effect to whip up the mania of the German population, which catapulted him into the Chancellorship and, soon thereafter, ultimate dictatorial power. Magboy, I just think your stated concern and suspicion that Romney's affiliation with the Mormon Church is so insidious that people should vote against him for this reason is really, really scary. I have fairly distinct memories of JFK's election and the very real, but terribly bigoted, concerns many had about his Catholic faith. He was a big-time Catholic, as was his father and his entire family, perhaps the most prominent Catholic family in the nation. And more than one bigot expressed concerns that Kennedy would subjugate his loyalty to the country to his loyalty to the Pope; that the Pope could pull his strings. Seriously sick, right? But how are your stated concerns / unsupported suspicions about Romney any different? They aren't, and that's scary. Indeed, if one were to take the last paragraph of your comment and substitute "catholic" for "LDS" and "Kennedy" for "Romney" your comment could have been pulled out of some crazy John Birch - type literature in 1960. You otherwise seem like a bright, reasonable guy (for a lib), so I would seriously suggest you rethink your concens about Romney being a prominent Mormon. Iowa: The Catholic Church / Mormon Church comparison also applies to your problem with Romney's charitale giving. I am not that well read on Mormon charitiies, but it seems you too have this overarching suspicion of the Mormon Church. Just because Romney elected to give his money to the Church and not to Mormon Philanthropies doesn't make him less charitiable, usnless your mind-reading has become so finely tuned you can tell he did this to merely enhance his position within the Church. But as a Catholic I can give directly to a diocese rather than to Catholic Charities with the same charitable intent. Or, to put it in more secular terms, I can give a large sum of money to Charity X that has a very large overhead and where only, say, 25% goes to acutal research or aid, rather than giving it to an orgainization which operates much more efficiently and gets 95% of their donations into direct research / aid. Stupid me, but that doesn't make me less charitable. The same goes for MR's Mormon giving. The point, ultimately, is that he has given millions in accordance with the tenets of his faith; hopefully, it is well-used. He's a good guy for doing this. Saying otherwise is terribly small-minded.

- SSciaretta

October 20, 2012 at 2:32pm

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Nico, I noticed you skipped over my response to you above, so I would just emphasize that if tone were entirely subjective, no human communication of a complex nature could take place at all. It's true that rhetoric and discourse are not exact sciences, because once the quantitative data is left behind one is in the area of interpretation, but it is entirely possible, to suggest a few examples, for the following to take place: -- A parent reprimands a child: "Please don't use that tone with me," and both parties know exactly what is being said. -- A group of people come out of a meeting with their boss and start chatting; one says "You know, Joe was using an odd tone of voice when he talked about that issue," and others nod their heads in agreement. -- Someone in my field is discussing a short story with a college undergrad class (actually, it was me a few days ago, and the story was Edith Wharton's "Xingu") and poses the question as to whether the tone of the narrative is ironic, and if so, how we as readers know that it is. The class concludes after discussion that there are certain markers inserted into the narrative that, almost subconsciously, trigger our suspicion that what is being said is not the complete meaning of what is being communicated. The ironic tone serves to draw the reader into a complicit act of judgement with the narrator. Note: the class also discusses the real possibility that someone could read the text and simply not "get" the tone. So the upshot is that I have no doubt whatsoever that one can make a very good case for at least a dispassionate, if not scientifically objective, evalution of the tone of Obama's remarks vis-a-vis Romney's.

- ironyroad

October 20, 2012 at 2:33pm

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"They transcend the mindless vituperation and the infantilism on the left and the right self righteously evident in demonizing any politicians who hold sharply different views than they do." Basman: congrats on the addition to the family. I think, personally, you would sound more convincing if you did not channel jamiechuch. I don't know what's got into you, but you don't sound like your normal self. No one on this thread demonstrates the least bit of vituperation and infantilism, on the right or the left, and you're the only one launching ad hominems. I say this as someone who has no problem being either vituperative or infantile, but the way; and that should tell you something.

- icarus-r

October 20, 2012 at 2:36pm

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irony: Thanks for this. I discern an interesting parallel between Nico's denial of the relevance of tone and Noga's denial of historical racial context in Peretz's "his Generals had to explain it to him" riff on Obama, on which we had some 400 exchanges. Nico, of course, takes an interesting approach to many things, for example denying, in a different context, that "context" of argument matters in determining, ethically, the honesty of the utterer: so he asserts that Obama's differing arguments on the character of the mandate and related penalties before Congress and the USSC evinces an unethical lack of honesty. To a lawyer - to anyone, in fact, involved in public policy - Nico's alleged "ethical" argument is absurd, precisely because it denies the relevance of context in communication. And now this. Which, as I noted in another passage, is quite fascinating for someone with the handle "Nicomachus" - as Aristotle clearly understood the relevance of context, by writing two books on Politics and Ethics. One of the best passages on the subject of context, in my view, may be found in Michael Eisner's speech on the email. This is the excerpt that I distribute, once a year, as a reminder, to all my employees:

As any drama coach can tell you, when accompanied by varied intonation and facial expressions, identical words can come across completely differently. If a person says “you dope” with a smile over the dinner table, it can be endearing. But, in the hard, cold cathode-ray light of e-mail, the same two words—“you dope”— stand there starkly and accusingly. Just as an expletive seems more shocking when it is spoken on stage, so too do words carry more impact when they are transmitted in writing. I’m afraid that spell check does not check for anger, emotion, inflection or subtext. Only we can do that.
Full text of the speech is here: http://www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/specialevents/commencement/documents/PastSpeeches-Eisner.pdf It's an excellent piece.

- icarus-r

October 20, 2012 at 2:51pm

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Most of this analysis isn't original with me. But I adopt it. The context was Obama explaining his getting small-town, working-class voters: “It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Which is to say, as Obama would have it, terms, religion is the lament of the oppressed, an instance of false consciousness. For the claim is that "they" "cling" to their religion out of economic frustration. But in 2004 said resoundingly that blue state Americans also "worship an awesome God.” Obama wrote in Dreams From My Father of his own religious awakening upon hearing Wright’s “Audacity of Hope” sermon, and of his complex religious commitment. Why couldn't he grant to the clingers the same gravity to their beliefs that he accords to his own. Obama also anchored the clingers' anti-trade sentiment to economic frustration — as if there are no respectable arguments against more free-trade agreements. But he made those very arguments, IE, exploiting this sentiment that he decries. Were we then entitled to assume Obama’s opposition to Nafta and the Colombian trade pact is merely cynical pandering to frustrated Americans? As for small-town Americans’ alleged “antipathy to people who aren’t like them”: what percentage of small towners' harbour that antipathy? Based on what data? How many people was Obama unjustly enfolding into his characterization? My understanding is that data shows that Americans have become far more tolerant and respectful of minorities who are not “like them.” If so, did Obama simply flatter his wealthy San Francisco donors by remarking the moronism of small-town life? Too, gun ownership is a hallowed and original American tradition. People have good reasons to, a constitutional right to, own guns. Obama himself acknowledges this and presents himself as reasonably sympathetic to gun owners. So, on these remarks, Obama seems superciliously disdainful of small-town America. He patronized the citizens whose votes he couldn't get; what entitled him to? So I say the offensiveness is comparable.

- basman

October 20, 2012 at 3:59pm

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Where here did I attack anyone personally as opposed to their arguments? If I can be shown examples of it, I'll repent and seek forgiveness because it's a form of argument I stand against. I do it sometimes, lapsing from my own standard certainly, but try not to and am not aware, as I say, of having been ad hominem on this thread.

- basman

October 20, 2012 at 4:03pm

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nico, Noam Schieber wrote a book about it. Yeesh. It is called "The escape artist." How is it you have a subscription to the magazine and you missed the literally hundreds of posts about this topic? Jon Chait wrote many such posts himself. In fact Mitt Romney mentioned the book himself on a number of occasions.

- blackton

October 20, 2012 at 4:11pm

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oh come one Basman, if you don't see the difference in my saying these nearly identical statements "there is a pathology in a small segment of the black community wherein they get involved in gangs, drugs, and crime" and saying "there is a pathology in 100% of the black community wherein they all get involved in gangs, drugs, and crime" Don't forget, Romney equated all of the 47% as being Democrats, meaning that 100% of democrat minded individuals feel entitled to jobs, healthcare, homes...and he can never convince them to take responsibility for their lives. He has poisoned the well with most Democrats about as bad as he can. The worst that can be said about Obama is he poisoned the well with the Honey Boo Boo demographic. And here is your quote: As for small-town Americans’ alleged “antipathy to people who aren’t like them”: what percentage of small towners' harbour that antipathy? The precise point is he does not say so, so your take is therefore it is somehow zero? Now listen to Obama's full quote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTxXUufI3jA I defy anyone to say it is in any way comparable to Romney. Notice how Obama said that there are elements like these people in big cities, and people very different in small towns, and he ends by saying "you show up" you continue to try to make inroads with these people. Romney said he was not going to worry about them at all, that he would write them off. Obama also sounds sympathetic, Romney is literally sneering when he said who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. The you name it is especially condescending. I am sorry this is not a partisan issue. I can not imagine Bush, Huckabee, Santorum, McCain, in fact I can't imagine a lot of Republicans talking the way Romney did. Santorum is a self righteous ahole but he is a real Catholic, he believes in subsidiarity, he believes in redemption and never writing people off. Santorum pushed for restoring voting rights to felons, and made a point of mentioning black ex cons. I can never imagine Romney taking a principled position and forever sticking with it if it is against his interests. Never.

- blackton

October 20, 2012 at 4:35pm

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P.S. I just want to add that calling both the left's and the right's demonization of Romney or Obama as the case may be infantilism and vituperative seems not ad hominem to me. I think that that demonization is, well, infantile and vituperative.

- basman

October 20, 2012 at 4:40pm

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basman: "So, on these remarks, Obama seems superciliously disdainful of small-town America." Maybe. The big problem is, however, that superciliousness and disdain are not observable in the remarks, their larger rhetorical context, or the delivery in as much as one can intuit a spoken comment from its written record. The only way you are able to get the remarks to show superciliousness and disdain is -- as Nico did -- to recast them or rewrite them. The use of "clinging" is your single original item of evidence that the remarks are derogatory or hostile in intention. Then it becomes a somewhat different argument as to whether "clinging" was a rhetorical misstep or the accidental revelation of an underlying attitude (or some mix of both). What it is provably not, however, is of a piece with the broader context in which Obama is clearly setting out a way of understanding or even empathizing with, rather than dismissing, a particular group of people.

- ironyroad

October 20, 2012 at 5:01pm

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FOOTNOTE: It suddenly seems important to emphasize that I am not in any way arguing that one can't disagree with what Obama says in his remarks, or characterize his analysis as mistaken or even grotesquely off-target. That is, however, a very different thing from declaring Obama's comments themselves to be supercilious and disdainful in their tone or implication.

- ironyroad

October 20, 2012 at 5:16pm

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Basman: in principle, and aside from any contextual analysis, there is a material difference between saying, "we failed them and we appear to have lost them and how do we get them back" and saying "47% are moochers and I don't need to worry about them." Of course, the problem with the 47% comment is that it is false on every level you can imagine. Don't take my word for it. Go to The American Conservative, the site of Pat Buchanan, and read the analysis of the two comments there.

- icarus-r

October 20, 2012 at 5:27pm

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Icarusr to ironyroad: "I discern an interesting parallel between Nico's denial of the relevance of tone and Noga's denial of historical racial context in Peretz's "his Generals had to explain it to him" riff on Obama, " The same thought occurred to me, icarus. When ironyroad tried to attribute racist undertones to Peretz's rather straightforward and easily verifiable statement that Obama's military cluelessness needed to be corrected by his generals, I realized how far we have sailed off from the realm of rational argument towards the fallacy that if I feel something to be so, it must be so. ironyroad NEVER managed nor could manage proving that Peretz's statement had anything whatsoever to do with racist nudge/winks. Same applies to this here case, in which ironyroad is trying to plead that Romney's "tone" was that of condescension and contempt and strutting his experience as an English prof as the ultimate authority in this matter. Reminds me of a discussion we once had on CR where one participant, with a particularly virulent hatred of everything Israel, explained how he watched a certain Israeli leader being interviewed on CR: "I looked at his eyes for a long time and I saw nothing but darkness and cruelty in them". I suppose this will be ironyroad's next step in the evolution of his highly intuitive critical skills, deducing from a man's looks his entire ethical core. If a tone of voice can do that, why not an visible expression? Much of literature makes a lot out of a man's facial expression, no? (His face lit up, his countenance fell, his eyes shone with love, his nose quivered in disgust, etc etc)

- Noga

October 20, 2012 at 7:17pm

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SSciaretta, You misinterpret me. I am not against Romney being in the Oval Office because he's a Mormon. I'm against him being president because he's a bishop in a rich and powerful worldwide church. If Romney were a Roman Catholic bishop, I would be even more opposed to his presidency, because the Catholic Church is even more rich and powerful than the Mormon Church. I would be out in the street demonstrating, if Romney were Catholic. Religions simply cannot be allowed to have close connections to national leaders. The Russian Orthodox Church has cooperated with the government in the murder of many millions of people throughout history. The Catholic Church cooperated with Hitler in exterminating people. Islam is responsible for the leaders of their nations murdering untold millions. In Tudor and Stuart England religion's close ties to the crown fomented bloody wars and purges. I'm not saying Romney would be involved in any of these types of atrocities, but he could be influenced by the Religious Right to invade Iran, for instance, like the Evangelical G.W. Bush was prodded to proceed with our disastrous invasion of Iraq by religious nuts like him (they wanted a strong U.S. presence near the Holy Land). And an invasion of Iran could do great harm to the American people, as well as many other peoples. JFK was a layman in the Catholic Church. Religion was not the center of his life, as it is with Bishop Romney. I understand the Catholic Church in America does not allow its priests or bishops to run for political office. It has shown a democratic restraint that the Mormon Church has not. In a true democracy a high-ranking church member cannot be the nation's leader. True believers corrupt and twist everything in political society. Look what G.W. Bush and his faith-based economics did to America, let alone his faith-based foreign policy. The religious nut in Bush almost wrecked America. You say my apprehension about a church bishop in the Oval Office is scary. I say a church bishop in the Oval Office is scary. A President Romney would not only be empowering Mormons, but all Christian leaders who flock to his office for a piece of the power-and-money pie. Now THAT'S scary. If there's anything more corrupt than a politician, it's a religious leader. And, as president, Bishop Romney would be doubly corrupt.

- magboy47.

October 20, 2012 at 7:40pm

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Hey, blackton. Let's hear an Amen to my above comment. I'm dyin' up here.

- magboy47.

October 20, 2012 at 7:44pm

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So you should be, as you advance nothing but conspiracy theories by way of arguments, and actually expect to be supported for them.

- Noga

October 20, 2012 at 8:14pm

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Noga, I advance historical examples. The most important thing in Bush's life was his religion, and look where he took us. And in my study of history I don't get into conspiracy theories. Religious, political, and business leaders are all obsessed with power and money. And they cooperate with each other to further their ends. That's not conspiracy. That's just how the world works.

- magboy47.

October 20, 2012 at 8:27pm

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SSciaretta, I don't understand your argument at all. If you give to an organization in which you are a powerful player, and from which you derive significant benefit (influence within that organization, e.g.), that than is indeed less charitable than giving with no expectation of personal benefit. As for my argument impugning giving to the Catholic church equally with giving to the Mormon church, I'm not too fussed that you feel that way. Both organizations are pretty toxic - intolerant, backward looking, misogynist, and bent on accumulating wealth and influence far beyond any spiritual justification. I'm happy to lump them together for these purposes. Your argument about it being stupid to give to an organization that only spends 25% of what it takes in on charity - now that I'll buy. It is stupid. But Romney is not stupid, and given his position of influence in the Mormon church, there is no more chance that his choice of charity was due to lack of diligence than there is likelihood I will vote for him. But I didn't not vote for him because he's Mormon, any more than I would not vote for Biden because he's Catholic. I didn't vote for Romney because he represents much of the worst this country has to offer - a sense that wealth and power belong together, that personal enrichmnent is justification enough to pursue business practices that amount to little more than legalized robbery (and believe me, private equity is little better than legal robbery - read David Stockman for a nice primer), that wealth proves virtue and ability. Romney is at least as Randian as his running mate - his 47% comments demonstrated that for all to hear - and roughly as good at hiding it under a veneer of piety and religion. Again, I have no doubt Romney loves his wife and family. That he has been loyal and generous to people who have worked for him. And, again, that's a low bar to call him "good and decent." The real bar is how you behave toward people you don't know, and his comments and policy suggestions pretty much tell the tale there. If you're not rich like him, it's because you're less capable, or too lazy, or feel too entitled.

- IowaBeauty

October 20, 2012 at 8:59pm

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irony, no one is saying that "tone" is not a part of communication, of course it is. However, arguing over tone is entirely unproductive. You wrote 'A parent reprimands a child: "Please don't use that tone with me," and both parties know exactly what is being said.' I am going to speculate that you either do not have children or your children are unusually pliable. When I make the same remark to my children, I usually hear "what did I say?! I did not say anything bad!". So you are correct in one sense, people understand the concept of tone. Everyone agrees that there is a communication variable called "tone". Disputation starts when you attempt to assign a specific value to that variable. Go outside of your undergrad class, for example to the comment forum at redstate.com. See how they interpret Obama's tone in the "cling" quote. Surprise, surprise, they find his tone objectionable. Then take a look at their comments regarding "47%". No way! They found apologies for Romney. Now, go argue with them about "tone", see how far you get. I expect exactly as far as I have gotten here ;) If you want to add to the acrimony, continue arguing ad nauseum about intangibles like tone, I am sure some of your TNR comrades would be happy to pitch in with a few well worded inflammatory insults. It is a lot easier and more cathartic to do that, than to say build a nation consensus around a difficult issue like the health care cost crisis. By the way, this is an area where Romney has offered absolutely zero, nothing, zilch, but are we having a dialogue over gaping hole? Nope, we are arguing about the merits of tone. At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself - what am I trying to accomplish?

- Nicomachus

October 20, 2012 at 9:25pm

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"the fallacy that if I feel something to be so, it must be so." Of course, a discussion of historical context, and specific "winks and nudges" within that context is quite different from "feeling" something, just as you bristled the moment I mentioned Congreve's name. I agree that when people talk about a look of cruelty in someone's eyes, that is pretty much BS. But, given your own capacity to draw implied and suggested meanings out of straight-forward words of those with whom you disagree, I am surprised that you deny the possibility of conveying meaning through tone and emphasis. You know, when the trailers for the movie version of "The English Patient" were running, I always wondered why the emphasis was on English rather than on patient (had not read the book yet). Then I read the book - and saw the movie - and got it. The difference in emphasis conveyed an entirely different meaning. Had nothing to do with my feelings about it.

- icarus-r

October 20, 2012 at 9:25pm

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I should add, that what Romney said was noxious because of its falsehoods and the sentiments it expressed, not because of its tone. For my part, I did not find his tone problematic (I actually only recently saw it - only read the transcripts). If anything, Romney is so studied in his performance that I find it is impossible to read anything in his tone.

- icarus-r

October 20, 2012 at 9:27pm

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blackton, I am not following, I have to read Noam Schieber's book to find Obama's proposal to address entitlements?

- Nicomachus

October 20, 2012 at 9:29pm

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"Again, I have no doubt Romney loves his wife and family. That he has been loyal and generous to people who have worked for him. And, again, that's a low bar to call him "good and decent." The real bar is how you behave toward people you don't know, and his comments and policy suggestions pretty much tell the tale there. If you're not rich like him, it's because you're less capable, or too lazy, or feel too entitled." I agree, Iowa. It's the easiest damn thing in the world to be good to yourself and yours (including your church). But a real Christian would at least feel empathy for those who actually are lazy. They didn't get that way in a vacuum. Romney's message to them might be, "First, we'll find you a job and help you experience the spiritual satisfaction that comes with work. But wait, there are no jobs. My rich friends tell me they don't want to employ Americans, because that would cut into their CEO bonuses and dividends. Never mind."

- magboy47.

October 20, 2012 at 10:06pm

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icarus, there is no need for any imagination to draw implicit meanings from your comments, since they are always served up with many a spice and a dazzling array of insults and barely concealed contempt and innuendos. I wouldn't exactly describe your style as discreet, subtle and nuanced. But I thought it was never your intention anyway to come across as anyone who might ever entertain the slightest doubt or hesitation about anything. Can't recall the Congreve incident. Are you referring to the 18th century English playwright?

- Noga

October 20, 2012 at 10:08pm

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nico, yes. if you were too lazy to follow Obama's offer for entitlement reform during the height of crisis about raising the debt level don't expect me to offer a history lesson. I mean, seriously, give me a break, if I want stupidity I would go to the yahoo comment pages. I do expect people to be reasonably informed of politics and world events here. And you again ignore the fact that what Obama said was certifiably true (and you can not dispute it as I personally experience it where I live in Pa. when Bethlehem Steel closed and a lot of my extended family lost a lot many did become resentful in just the way Obama described) and how can you possibly justify what Romney said. He has never even had the decency to apologize. He simply said it was wrong, like he forgot to carry the one in a math test. He is a serial liar beyond every other major politician I have ever seen. And damn right I have the right to despise a man I think who is motivated strictly by ambition to be President. I have always said I liked George Bush, I think he was a well meaning schmuck but truly well meaning. Look at Romney's history. As a young man he held down another kid, forcibly assaulted him by cutting his hair and when confronted decades later claimed not to remember. A decent person would have taken it as a chance to seek redemption, to confess to being young and stupid, instead he blatantly lied. He also played a large number of malicious pranks as a young man. All could be forgiven if he sought forgiveness, but has that man ever apologized for anything? His history in his church, as Magboy laid out, is self serving. Being in a position of spiritual authority is heady stuff, to deny that is delusional. As stake President in Mass. he demanded to be called Mr. President. I don't believe he is evil, I think he is solipsistic, opportunistic, who convinces himself that whatever he thinks and does at any given moment is justified because of his essential correctness in life. Even his campaign is a train wreck, you can not remotely explain how Romney will do what he promises, the problem is the American people are too stupid not to see him for what he is. He looks Presidential and Obama hasn't brought unemployment down to 3% while Romney claims he will, so why not give him a shot. He wants to repeal Obamacare, which essentially will screw over my kids who have genetic conditions and will not be able to get insurance as adults. And when people ask him about them, he says...hey, go to the ER. But if they went to the ER no ER would give them their daily medicine, so they would have to wait until they were very sick to go, at which point the damage would be done. Now if he were ignorant I could accept this, but in Mass. he laid out an argument why going to the ER was inefficient, so his position now is based soley on expediency. About the only hope we have is if he is elected that Democrats hold the Senate and will prevent the real radical agenda. There will be huge tax cuts, the deficit will explode, but America will survive, Social Security and Medicare will survive and in 2 years the House will turn Democratic as well. He will end up having to govern more or less like GHWB. I don't have much of a problem with that, if it were Huntsman I would say meh, ok. It will be 4 years where climate change will remain unaddressed, 4 years of no immigration reform, 4 years more of growing income inequality... but America will survive. ick. He does sneer when he says: you name it. And that night he blatantly lied to the American people that his comments were somekind of nuanced statement about electoral strategy. He could have said...you know what, I am sorry, sometimes I say stupid and terrible things, that I feel resentful towards people who won't vote for me and take it too personally and said terrible things about them. But he simply can't do it. If he is elected he better hope for 4 years of not much happening in the world because he just doesn't have leadership skills.

- blackton

October 20, 2012 at 10:28pm

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magboy, Reed Smoot was one of the 12 Apostles in the LDS and was not seated for months due to the controversy. I think the LDS is a truly bizarre church as to their beliefs but a lot of religions have really bizarre beliefs, it is their attitude to the world that frightens me. Down in Mexico there are always young missionaries who spend all day trying to convert people, then they dun these poor people 10% of their pitiful wages, much of which goes back to Salt Lake City. They literally do absolutely nothing good for the people's lives. OTOH, There is a priest there who risks his life protecting migrants from Central America so on the local level the church can do a great deal of good. Read this: http://elenemigocomun.net/2010/12/migrants-attacked-kidnapped-oaxaca/

- blackton

October 20, 2012 at 10:41pm

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"I wouldn't exactly describe your style as discreet, subtle and nuanced." Curious this, because you proceed to read a dazzling array of meanings, none of which would have occurred to my unsubtle mind, in the smallest sentence I write. :) I do say exactly what I mean. Let's agree on that, next time you distort and mangle in order to impugn and besmirch :). "But I thought it was never your intention anyway to come across as anyone who might ever entertain the slightest doubt or hesitation about anything." Quite amusing, this observation, given the number of times I freely, and gladly, admit I don't know something or have no views on the subject. The problem is, of course, my hesitation or doubt is about matters on which you yourself entertain none, and when I do express these, you go on the attack, with your usual subtlety, accusing me of either "wailing" or not having moral fibre or whatever. In any event, that you could possibly think this, in the light of the specific argument we have had on Peretz and here, is particularly rich. After all, those who argue for context admit to a large measure of doubt and certainty about meaning - that's why we look outside the text itself, to make sure we get it right; it is those who insist that the text is all times clear and independent of any historical or social context who are arrogant enough to think they really know better, to be certain of their reading of that text :) ...

- icarus-r

October 20, 2012 at 11:47pm

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"If you want to add to the acrimony, continue arguing ad nauseum about intangibles like tone" Nico, I don't believe I added to any acrimony -- indeed if you find that degree of hostility in my comment, I'd appreciate knowing where, because it's not intentional -- and if you're nauseated by discussions of tone then I'm sorry that's the case, but you're not obligated to either read or respond to my posts. Other than that, I take your point kids will certainly protest that they didn't adopt any particular tone but that certainly doesn't mean that they don't know the truth (in fact, I thought that that was what I was pointing out). You seem to have no issue with the other two examples.

- ironyroad

October 21, 2012 at 12:05am

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blackton, Thanks for mentioning Jon Huntsman. He's a Mormon, but not a bishop in his church, and his religion is not the center of his life. And he's a political and cultural moderate. I would have no problem at all with him occupying the Oval Office. But there's no chance of him being nominated for president by today's GOP. Unlike Romney, he's not a sociopath. But if the Dems ever come up with a weird candidate like Al Gore again, and the Republicans manage, by some quirk, to nominate Huntsman, I'd vote for Huntsman. That's right, SSciaretta--the Mormon Republican. I like the guy.

- magboy47.

October 21, 2012 at 12:55am

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Agreed, magboy. And he was our ambassador in Beijing, so he actually has some concrete foreign policy experience.

- ironyroad

October 21, 2012 at 1:33am

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Irony, its not about me or you in particular and of course I am not personally offended. I just think the situation is unfortunate for all concerned.

- Nicomachus

October 21, 2012 at 1:56am

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blackton, you wrote: "if you were too lazy to follow Obama's offer for entitlement reform during the height of crisis about raising the debt level don't expect me to offer a history lesson." I am just asking you a simple question. Can you point me to the document Obama has published that outlines his plan for fixing entitlements. This should not require a history lesson, or following the debt ceiling issue, reading books by Noam Schieber, etc. Obama should have a standing plan, a proposed bill he is backing, etc. He has had four long years to come up with one. Just cut and paste the link and you have won this point. In case you are still confused, let me show you what a real plan looks like. Paul Ryan has a plan that addresses medicare and medicaid. The latest version is documented in the widely circulated 2013 Republican proposed budget, "The Path to Prosperity", you can find it at http://budget.house.gov/uploadedfiles/pathtoprosperity2013.pdf. Ryan introduced this proposal as a bill, which was passed by the House, and there is an official congressional record of it. Now, whether you like this plan or not, at least the Republicans have one. It is defined, documented, and published for all to review and scrutinize. So where is the president's version? It does not exist, which is why you can't point to it. He never put forward a real plan for public scrutiny. You seem to be implying that he whispered a "plan" to Boehner during debt ceiling negotiations. So at best the president has a secret plan that he dares not write down or subject to public scrutiny. That is laughable to say the least and represents a significant failure of leadership on the part of president Obama. If you are intellectually honest, you would either (1) produce a link to Obama's publication of the plan or (2) admit that he never brought one forward.

- Nicomachus

October 21, 2012 at 2:41am

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Nicomachus--in terms of "a distinction without a difference", I don't think that's supportable by the facts. Although both men's remarks can be seen as condescending, Obama's had the distinct advantage of being at least arguably true, and designed to inform his audience's better understanding. Romney's were not only untrue, they were clearly intended to dismiss practically half the country as bums in order to cater to his audience's presumed predjudices. That said, I have to agree with your basic description of the larger problem. I've had a hard time here in the past getting beyond immediately vituperative and defensive reactions to criticism of left-Democrat dogma, and the same thing has happened in conversation with Tea Party types when challenging parts of their catechism. It's a phenomon that makes pragmatic problem solving much more difficult.

- Robert Powell

October 21, 2012 at 6:38am

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"l, those who argue for context admit to a large measure of doubt and certainty about meaning -" Is that so? Where do you see any doubt in yours or ironyroad's reading of what Romney said? I can see ironyroad still arguing for the truthfulness of perception as mediated by "tone". There has not been a dent made in his conviction that HE KNOWS BEST what Romney meant, what Obama meant, what Peretz meant, etc etc. As for you, well, there is no way of mistaking your tone. Perhaps your braggadocio comes from a feeling of uncertainty but how am I to know that? Do you expect me to show charity and respect to the way you choose to convey your opinions? What about the Congreve? Can you enlighten me?

- Noga

October 21, 2012 at 7:22am

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Noga: like most highly vindictive and morally righteous people, you have a memory like a steel trap; more to the point, you are good with google and have already said that you save statements of people in your own personal files. You know full well what I am talking about, and even if you did not remember - which I highly doubt - literally ten seconds on Google would have given you the reference. I don't know what game you are playing, but I know you are playing it. :) I will indulge you. Only because it demonstrate how quickly you got Congreve the last time, how disingenuous your "little old Congreve" comment is above, and how utterly vacuous and self-serving are your attacks on context. The one person who has been patient with your wilful distortions, has now lost patience - and you don't like that one bit. Wow :) ... Congreve, was it? He had it right, it would seem ... 03/11/2011 - 6:55pm EDT | K2K about 24 hours ago, malahat asked "and all that ain't better than watching a blank TV screen? C'mon!" excuse me, but yet another re-run of "NCIS" beckons :) 03/11/2011 - 7:25pm EDT | noga1 "If you don't understand that there's a difference between intention and non-intention, there's really nothing more I can do about it." I think I understand that you want to emphasize that you expressed uncertainty about Marty's intentions. Somewhere along this thread you turned the question of whether Marty's statement was a racist slur into a question about whether it was intentional or not. And that gives you the cover you need to claim that you do not speak out of "blind certainty". And here is the proof: Haven't you repeatedly stated that you cannot be sure about Marty's motivations? But that's not the question, is it? The issue was and remains whether Marty's statement could be smoothly and rationally interpreted as the racial slur icarus mimicked. This issue was not settled. YOU could not make the case that this is a straightforward racial innuendo. Despite the historical background that keeps playing in your head, there is nothing in Marty's statement but complaint and contempt for Obama's cluelessness. You cannot inject into it meanings that you cannot prove are there, through words, or terms, or even allusions. For there to be intention, there has to be something done or said that is clearly and generally accepted as bad faith. You did not establish the necessary premise that Marty's statement is in actuality a racial slur. So whether you think it was intentional or not is irrelevant. It's you speaking to yourself. If you were to write an article about Obama and how he is rejected, consciously or unconsciously, by certain Americans because of his colour and background, you would bring examples from signs carried in rallies, from politicians' speeches, from underhanded innuendos on Fox, etc. Would you feel justified and comfortable in citing Marty's statement as one of the recent examples that illustrate your theme? 03/11/2011 - 7:34pm EDT | noga1 There is something zany and quite disturbing about icarus's last comment. This is after all just a message board, not a soap opera. And we are discussing Marty Peretz's criticism of Obama. Not some torrid love story. Is icarus being sexist? Would he have made a similar comment to a male poster? 03/11/2011 - 7:59pm EDT | icarusr "Is icarus being sexist? Would he have made a similar comment to a male poster?" Subtexts ... funny things, aren't they? :) Thanks so much, Noga, for finally making my point. Congreve, in response to a male poster, would mean nothing - well, at least, in the context of that particular exchange you had with Molly and that particular line. Your being a woman specifically colours an otherwise neutral statement about a poet. Marty's line in reference to the generals coming to the rescue of a President - a black President - who can't understand Pakistan had exactly the same effect on me that the mention of Congreve, in this context, had on you. The same effect as a lawyer's asking ... view full comment 03/11/2011 - 8:27pm EDT | ironyroad "The issue was and remains whether Marty's statement could be smoothly and rationally interpreted as the racial slur icarus mimicked." Not so, Noga. That's your and icarus's issue. Let's keep this straight. My issue -- the one I'm concerned with -- is whether the, as I see it, unmistakeable provenance of Marty's formulation is an intentional use of a particular racist motif. The answer is, I don't know and to be honest I'm not even sure Marty would know. As I said, if Marty came out and claimed it was not, I'd believe him a long day before I'd believe, say, Sarah Palin. 03/11/2011 - 8:47pm EDT | noga1 "But yes, as you with my mention of Congreve, I found Peretz's characterisation quite disturbing." There was nothing remotely subtextual about your comment, icarus. Your innuendos (shades of roi, there) were served on the table with much fanfare and cranberry sauce. The mention of Congreve just clinched the matter. You added it on purpose, just so as I wouldn't miss your point.

- icarus-r

October 21, 2012 at 11:57am

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"braggadacio" blah blah blah Actually, if you had paid any attention at all to when the issue came up, I have referred to more than one source, other than myself, mostly on the right, as to what Romney was understood to have said. So the whole line of attack on MY lack of doubt of uncertainty or braggadacio - whatever you mean by that - is just stupid. THE FUCKING CHAIRMAN OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DEFENDED THE STATEMENT IN PRECISELY THE TERMS IRONY AND I HAVE BEEN EXPLAINING. Sorry for yelling, but your idiotic defence of Romney, and your even more asinine attacks on me for, er, braggacio, are just silly when Romney's own people defended him at the time - see Priebus, see Hannity, see Beck, see Fox News, see Steyn, see NRO, see Redstate, see Malkin - and the "thinking" conservatives Brooks, Scarborough, Will, Frum, McKinnon, The American Conservative - attacked him, again, on precisely the same terms as Irony has set out. It was not some crazy liberal who called Romney Thurston Howell. Am I certain I am right on my reading? Well, with Priebus clarifying exactly what Romney meant, with Michele Malkin revelling in Romney finally saying it like it is, who am I to argue?

- icarus-r

October 21, 2012 at 12:06pm

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nico, must you be so tiresome? Fine, here it is: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/13/the-white-houses-medicare-plan-isnt-that-hard-to-find/ For the record it took me less than 15 seconds to find it.

- blackton

October 21, 2012 at 12:48pm

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and if Nico finds it so burdensome to go to that link, here is a summation: Both Ryan and Obama — but not Romney — have proposed to back up their promises with an enforceable cap on the program’s future growth. Whether future Congresses would actually enforce such caps is, of course, an open question. So there’s a conflict of policy visions. But it’s simply a conservative myth that the White House hasn’t put forward a Medicare reform plan. What that line really means is that White House hasn’t put forward some variant of Ryan’s plan, which in many Republican circles, has come to be seen as the only policy change that counts as “entitlement reform.” But Obama’s plan is, without doubt, far more detailed than anything Romney has put forward, and Republicans are well aware of its existence. One Republican accused Obama of a “bureaucratic approach to controlling Medicare costs” which “empowers a board of 15 unelected officials — the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB — to hold the growth of Medicare spending.” He said the cuts would be so severe that they “would simply drive Medicare providers out of business, resulting in harsh disruptions and denied care for seniors.” That Republican? Paul Ryan. It is the willful obtuseness that gets so damn tiresome. I expect it in teaparty circles, not here.

- blackton

October 21, 2012 at 12:53pm

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Magboy, Maybe we should wrap this up, but I have to say your comments border on pure paranoia regarding the undue influence of religion on national leaders. First of all, just google around the topic of "Romney Mormon Bishop" and you'll discover in about five minutes, as I did, that Mormon "bishops" are essentially part time lay administrators of several congregations who are otherwise employed. They are far from being "high church officials" as you fret. In fact there are about 28,000 world wide. They are not at all like Catholic or Episcopalian bishops. The actual Mormon church officials are in entirely other categories. Recall also that Jimmy Carter was a lay preacher in his Baptist Church. There is every reason to believe that as laymen the Kennedys were as devoted to the Catholic Church as layman Romney appears to be to the Mormon Church. Second, your religious paranoia really reveals itself with your harping about GW Bush and his push to invade Iraq and his econiomic policies as being products of his Christian zeal. That's just plain nuts. And, I repeat, scary. There are few things out there that threaten our liberty more than religious paranoia, which morphs quickly into intolerance and bigotry. Your comments regretably seem completely steeped in all of the above. I just don't understand it.

- SSciaretta

October 21, 2012 at 1:01pm

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Is this a classic case of projection, icarus? I think I intimated before that I am always transparent; maybe to your disappointment, there is no mismatch between what I say and what I think. Whatever venality you attribute to me is probably a faithful reflection of the way you see the world, as a power struggle and a constant competition, sharp elbows and boiling words. It is interesting only up to a certain point. Once I realize this is the rule, not the exception, it becomes just tedious and a waste of time.

- Noga

October 21, 2012 at 1:28pm

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Perhaps Magboy has been reading, or watching, too much Slavoj Zizek ...

- Noga

October 21, 2012 at 1:31pm

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"tedious and a waste of time" - "projection" ... "Whatever venality you attribute to me is probably a faithful reflection of the way you see the world, as a power struggle and a constant competition, sharp elbows and boiling words." Blah blah blah. You attack and then as soon as one reacts, it is "projection", "boiling words" and "braggadacio", right out of a remaindered pop-psychology paperback written by a Jerry Springer "expert". Whatever. But you do amuse me :). Every time you are disarmed, you return with a variation of "I find you tedious". As Irony says above, "you're not obligated to either read or respond to my posts." Peace.

- icarus-r

October 21, 2012 at 2:20pm

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Magboy, re Huntsman: Terrific!! I'm going to go away from this thinking that you would vote for Huntsman because you like his policies and that you would vote against Romney because you dislike his policies; and that the religion of these men would have nothing to do with your decision. SS PS: Sociopath?!? Really???

- SSciaretta

October 21, 2012 at 2:24pm

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"As Irony says above, "you're not obligated to either read or respond to my posts." ironyroad wrote this, addressing me? I'm curious: Are you launching this attack on my personality, ethics and intellectual skills, on behalf of ironyroad (I believe you do. You can't stop referencing his name)? Has he, in any way whatsoever, led you to believe that such attacks would be acceptable to him? I have a reason for asking, though it is nearly impossible for me to imagine that this is so. But one never knows; Obama seems to have this deranging effect on people.

- Noga

October 21, 2012 at 2:44pm

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Just to clarify, that was a small part of a comment of mine directed at Nicomachus, who expressed some dismay at my continuing to post on a topic he had apparently used his authority to declare closed.

- ironyroad

October 21, 2012 at 3:35pm

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SSciaretta, sociopath might be a strong word, but character does count. I dislike Santorum because of his policies, not because of his character (though his personality can be quite unctuous, I get him). The same is true of Huckabee, whom I like a great deal personally. Romney is utterly outside my experience. I simply can not relate to him at all. The cases of his egomaniacal attitude are too manifold. Not long ago he did a half hour interview with Univision, he demanded that he be able to bring in a large portion of his audience so they would cheer for him. Obama accepted that the audience would be all local, and there was no clapping outside of the beginning and end. Obama did a full hour, Romney did a half, and when the interviewers made note of it at the introduction he refused to go out until they retaped the introduction, threatening to cancel the interview. He is a genuine jerk. He alienated the British by his know it allism by running his mouth about the Olympics thinking because he ran a winter one he now somehow owned all the Olympics everywhere. A natural politician would have said before he went that he is sure Great Britain will run a great Olympics and he is looking forward to being there. He left Mass. at the end of his term with very low ratings and did not even attempt to run again as he knew he would lose.

- blackton

October 21, 2012 at 6:50pm

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That was a really odd moment, in London. I've never seen a person with a lifetime of political experience (in one form or another) put his foot in it with such seamless confidence. I mean, people talk about Obama and that odd story about the Churchill bust alienating the Brits etc, but if you had seen that presser with Cameron afterwards -- he was furious. He as good as called Romney an ignorant blowhard.

- ironyroad

October 21, 2012 at 7:29pm

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Blackton, I'm not going to pretend to know enough about Romney to go tit for tat pointing out evidence that contradicts your anecdotes. Maybe he is, or at least can at times act like, a jerk. I'm not sure, however, that this is a real indictment of character. (On the other hand, getting BJs from a 20 year old intern in the Oval Office would seem to be a bit more definitive on the character question.)

- SSciaretta

October 21, 2012 at 8:32pm

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" I've never seen a person with a lifetime of political experience (in one form or another) put his foot in it with such seamless confidence." I have: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HOBTUCv4o0 I couldn't help noticing how nobody wishes to touch this moment. How can its crudeness be ignored? Because the butt was not savvy Londoners but disabled athletes.

- Noga

October 21, 2012 at 8:57pm

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Noga, as usual, you distort, you impugn, you go off the deep end - for no apparent reason. I merely quoted irony, not in relation to you, but simply because what he wrote appeared to me relevant to the occasion. And I specifically cited Irony because I know you - if I had not, you would have said something equally snarky and stupid along the lines of "you are quoting Irony without even referring to him. As usual, no original idea; even in your dismissals you have to to resort to others." Or some such blather. You soooo astonishingly predictable in your malice, it is a bore to even reply. But there you have it. Anyone with a smidgen of good faith and dollop of reading ability would have understood that the fragment was not meant to indicate that Irony had said that about you - just read Irony's comment, and it is clear - but that I was merely quoting the fragment. Every time I think you have outdone yourself in silliness, you do ahead and outdo yourself again. Irony: my apologies to you.

- icarus-r

October 21, 2012 at 9:07pm

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As for the Obama clip ... again, the same usual "squirrel" argument you consistently use whenever you run out of arguments on merits. :) Amusing, if it weren't so utterly, tediously, boringly, predictable.

- icarus-r

October 21, 2012 at 9:10pm

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"Anyone with a smidgen of good faith " A smidgen of good faith? Towards you?? Why?

- Noga

October 21, 2012 at 9:23pm

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"small part of a comment of mine directed at Nicomachus, who expressed some dismay at my continuing to post on a topic he had apparently used his authority to declare closed." LOL. Obviously, I never made pretense at any authority. I simply asserted that it is asinine to be fiddling over minutia while Rome burns.

- Nicomachus

October 21, 2012 at 10:12pm

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"Towards you?? Why?" I always knew you had no good faith towards me - how else to explain the relentless lies and the malicious distortions. You are a proved liar; now you are a self-confessed arguer in bad faith. That will be the response to any drivel from your poisoned keyboard. Thanks for the honesty - novel and oddly refreshing coming from you. Peace.

- icarus-r

October 22, 2012 at 9:42am

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I would propose a mild suggestion here that if what I write is drivel, you wouldn't be spending so much time, space and effort to prove it is. Drivel is recognized to be drivel by the very fact of its drivelness and doesn't need to be either pointed out or explained and shown to be such.

- Noga

October 22, 2012 at 12:18pm

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BTW, a thought occurred to me. I'm curious: What have I written in this thread, or elsewhere, that is a lie or poisonous?

- Noga

October 22, 2012 at 12:20pm

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Scheiber has outdone the lowest lows of yellow journalism. New Republic has become a disgrace to publish this trash.

- dmking316b

October 24, 2012 at 11:19am

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