PLANK AUGUST 1, 2012
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All it had to be was one more slip-up; one more gaffe with which Mitt Romney could have further flooded the gaffe market, further devaluing all the others. That would be the logical plan, and it seemed to be the one his campaign was following after it was reported that Romney had attributed the massive difference between Israelis’ and Palestinians’ per capita GDP to “culture” (and “the hand of providence”) while speaking to Jewish donors in Jerusalem Monday morning. "His comments were grossly mischaracterized,” was the immediate response of spokesperson Andrea Saul, who was traveling with him. Then Romney himself visited friendly territory to deny it further: “I’m not speaking about it, did not speak about Palestinian culture,” he told Fox News’ Carl Cameron. Sure, the Palestinians might have thought it was racist—Palestinian Authority official Saeb Erekat’s word—it might have offended American liberals, and the media might correctly have perceived it as off-message. But, y’know, whatever. Head to Poland, get through the week, and celebrate Friday when the jobs report comes out and all of a sudden everyone can switch to saying that President Obama is the one who is in crisis.
Last night, though, the campaign reversed course. Romney published an op-ed on just how important culture is. That is, he reminded the world of and then stood behind what his own campaign had previously characterized as misstatement. “But what exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture?” he argued, clarifying later, “the choices a society makes have a profound impact on the economy and the vitality of that society.” Such a conspicuous and seemingly counterintuitive strategy could only come out of a belief in political expediency. In fact, it tells us a great deal about the state of current Republican thinking when it comes to Israel, in terms of both ideology and what it takes to win an election. Romney thinks this is a winner for him.
Let’s grant that comparing the Israeli and Palestinian economies is a really poor case study for probing the link between culture and economics, since Israelis reside in a sovereign nation with open borders and full control over its policies, while many Palestinians—and all the Palestinians Romney was referring to—er, don’t. Let’s also grant that when you travel to Jerusalem and praise Israel in front of a bunch of Jewish donors, your first priority probably isn’t to engage in a spot of ersatz sociology for purposes of intellectual stimulation; I'm not going to make myself the first person to compare Mitt Romney to Adlai Stevenson.
Contrary to what many pundits (on both sides) like to say, the election-year focus on Israel has almost nothing to do with the American Jewish vote, which is far too small (barely two percent of the population, and not even 3.5 percent in, yes, Florida) and reliably Democratic (the Republican Jewish Coalition will be rightly thrilled if Romney scores 35 percent of the Jewish vote, and here’s betting he won’t) to merit all this attention. It has barely more to do with Jewish GOP donors, who tend to be already convinced that just about anyone would be better for Israel than President Obama. (If anything, it is the actual outsize influence of Jewish donors that drives the phony outsize interest in the Jewish vote: the Sheldon Adelsons of the world—or, at the least, Sheldon Adelson, who possesses his own gravitational pull—want more Jews to vote Republican, and have enough money to create an artificial demand for converting their wayward co-religionists.)
Instead, Republicans have campaigned on Israel because, to many Americans, Israel is the starkest example of an ally that shares our values—starkest because of the familiar, and not altogether inaccurate, trope of its being a democracy in a sea of dictatorships dictatorships and anti-American democracies. There are few better shortcuts to making the case that Obama Doesn’t Share Our Values than to stand up for those Values’ ultimate totem—and criticizing the president for having sold it out, along with our values.
This has all been beneath the surface—until now. With Israeli “culture” out in the open, Romney has laid the groundwork to use Israel as merely the beachhead for a full frontal attack on Obama’s values and even Americanness. While Israel remains relatively parochial as a political issue, this link between culture and economics is anything but. And, as James Fallows reminds us, it's been nearly 50 years since Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out, "The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society." Moynihan was a Democrat, but through the early neoconservatives this "conservative truth" became a Republican talking point, one that evolved into such a winner that the only Democratic president to win re-election since its advent first had to sign a welfare reform law that was in many ways the fullest realization of that conservative truth.
Fallows and others still think this is a stupid play on Romney’s part—that his entire focus should be on the economy. But we are going to be talking about foreign policy over the next three months; we know for all but certain, for example, that one of the debates will be focused on it. It’s possible that Romney has figured out a way to make a non-economic issue about the economy.
5 comments
Evangelical Christians will decide this election. No, I'm not suggesting they may vote for Obama. Rather, it's how many will overlook Romney's Mormonism and make the trip to the polling place. And no better way to make a personal connection to the evangelicals than Israel (even if Romney will be in Missouri at the apocalypse).
- rayward
August 1, 2012 at 4:08pm
This analysis is too kind to Romney (and who are these people who compare him to Adlai Stevenson? That's a new one to me). Based on his discussion of this same issue in his book, it appears that Romney subscribes to the rather glib notion that cultural differences explain the relative success and failure of Israelis and Palestinians, Ecuadorians and Chileans or what have you. So he was probably repeating this argument for his fundraisers as a way to stroke their egos and to simply repeat one of his own pet theories of How The World Works. The problem is that, once you make that kind of statement, the press will call you on it because it sounds unconventional and your opponent will exploit it. Obama found out the hard way with the "guns and religion" quote (also made in a fundraising meeting and not intended for outside consumption). It's not that Obama's analysis was particularly novel or that he hadn't made those kinds of arguments in his own books, which he did -- it was that it was unusually blunt, had some inflammatory words ("cling") and was made to donors. Same goes for Romney's musings -- he's hardly the first conservative politician to argue that poor values lead to poor lives, or to argue that the Palestinians have squandered their opportunities due to their cultural intransigence, but doing so in a speech to donors and with a pseudo-intellectual sheen is going to create the wrong kind of news for the campaign. And it will be exploited by his opponent to the full extent possible, which may not be that much but will be more than Romney probably would want. Now, Romney will need to answer media queries on whether he thinks we need a Middle East peace process, does he think Palestinian or Arab "culture" is hopeless, what other peoples of the world have an intractably bad "culture", etc. These are not questions Romney needs, and he is not intellectually nimble enough to turn them to his advantage. Does anyone really think that Romney could argue, in the foreign policy debate, that his disparagement of Palestinian culture actually means he can advance the peace process or get Arabs to accept Israel? Or would he simply try to cover his butt with even more gobbledy-gook about Arabs, Jews, values, culture and whatnot? Romney should have excluded the media from this fundraiser the way he originally planned, or else thought twice about including less-than-anodyne remarks in his speech. It's not like the people in attendance would have asked for their money back if Romney didn't bring up culture but simply stuck to the script about how Israel is America's best friend ever.
- wildboy
August 1, 2012 at 4:33pm
Romney should have come home and proceeded to shut up. Now he's opened Pandora's box. I saw a genius comment on the web, sorry I forget where, asking if this means Saudi Arabian culture is superior to ours? Given their enormous wealth - clearly the Sauds are on to something! - and - talk about the "hand of providence!" So, Mitt? KSA and Iran and maybe also The Arctic Circle where Shell wants to drill are superior cultures right and also, very very blessed huh. Swell. PS what about the Shoah. I guess that was "the hand of providence also."
- Sophia
August 1, 2012 at 5:15pm
Also Swiss culture. After all, if your "culture" (clearly in Mitt's mind the only basis for laws and banking rules) allows you to hang onto all the assets of Holocaust victims in your vaults, you're going to be richer.
- ironyroad
August 1, 2012 at 7:57pm
Okay, here's what I don't get. In Mississippi, which epitomizes the culture Mitt adores and wants to replicate throughout this great land of ours, per capita personal income is $31,186, while in ghastly Massachusetts, the very model of a modern socialist layabout utopia, it's $51,552. Well, that must be cherry-picking - so how about South Carolina, the tea partiest state in the union (since 1868!), where makers don't have to share with takers and government doesn't get in the way of people who want to starve to death or walk around with untreated diabetes? It's pathetic too - a measly $33,163. Surely Utah, then; it's got the best darn (pardon my French) culture in the US, for sure. Sadly no, just $32,595. It's obviously dangerous to let material considerations like income, educational attainment, public health and quality of life (all of which favor Mass over Miss) determine which culture is superior to another. It's far better to judge a culture based on how it treats those whom Jesus (would have) called the greatest of these - how much of what they earn do they get to keep? can they see a doctor secure in the knowledge that others can't because they don't deserve to? can they get cheap household help? can they buy $500 socks that cost as much as much as teachers spend out of their own pockets (chumps!) to buy school supplies for their classrooms and poorer students? If so, that's a good culture. If not - if the rich are miserable because the poor are not miserable enough - that's a bad culture. Of course, judged on that standard, Israel's culture, with its high taxes, smarty-pants education and health care for all, sucks, while Palestine gets at least few points because it's poor are a pretty miserable lot. I think Mitt knows that - he was just pandering.
- GeoffG
August 2, 2012 at 2:59pm