PLANK AUGUST 13, 2012
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Just as Democrats were touting Mitt Romney's pick of Paul Ryan as proof that Romney was having to shore up his conservative base rather than play to the center, along comes Jonathan Chait with a characteristically sharp counter. Ryan is in his own way a play for the center, Chait argues -- not on the grounds of policy -- heck, his plan would effectively zero out his boss' taxes! -- but on the ground of "character":
What is the political calculation of the Paul Ryan pick (to the extent that it’s a calculation at all)? It’s not a ploy to gin up the conservative base, which is already rabidly motivated. It’s an attempt to claim for the Romney campaign the political high ground. Romney is now running on a meta message about himself: We are serious, substantive, and good; they are frivolous, dishonest, and mean.
Romney had already adopted the message before announcing the Ryan pick. In an interview with Chuck Todd, Romney piously called for both campaigns to forswear attacking one another’s personal history or business career: “our campaign would be — helped immensely if we had an agreement between both campaigns that we were only going to talk about issues and that attacks based upon — business or family or taxes or things of that nature.” So, under this thoughtful approach, Obama couldn’t attack Romney’s business record, which he’s running on, but Romney could attack Obama’s political record.
How does Ryan make this high-ground gambit possible? Through his "Sad Paul" persona:
One underrated aspect of the new GOP veep nominee’s political arsenal is a recurring persona of his that you might call Sad Paul Ryan. Sad Paul Ryan is less an ideological crusader and more like a wide-eyed boy who has come to Washington full of hope only to have his youthful dreams crushed by nastiness and name-calling. How Ryan’s high-minded belief in the purity of political debate managed to survive his rise to power as a Washington staffer, I cannot say. So emotionally vulnerable is Sad Paul Ryan that even a statistical recitation of the effects of his plan will nearly reduce him to tears. He is capable of complaining that Obama will “affix views to your opponent that they do not have so you can demonize them” — two sentences after accusing Obama of advocating “socialized medicine.”
Yet Sad Paul Ryan appears so genuinely sad when he says such things — quite likely because he lacks the self-awareness that might complicate his earnest dejection — that he melts the cynicism of hardened observers. So Romney’s advisers are now proclaiming, “We are betting that a substantive campaign, conducted on the high ground, and focused primarily on jobs and the economy, will trump a campaign that is designed to appeal to our worst instincts,” and the candidate himself is delivering lines such as “Mr. President, take your campaign out of the gutter and let's talk about issues.”
Will it work? Chait notes that it has in the past:
Now, adopting a persona of high-mindedness does not have a perfect track record in American politics. But it’s not a hopeless gambit, either. George W. Bush in 2000 successfully convinced the campaign press corps that Al Gore was a serial liar, and when the press pack suddenly decided in October of that year that Al Gore’s lies were the story of the race, his poll numbers fatally swooned. Many undecided voters pay little attention to the issues and simply form impressions of the candidates, rooted in broad personal appraisal.
The political upside Romney is trying to capitalize upon with Ryan is his reputation for sincerity and high-mindedness. In this sense, the Ryan pick is an attempt to capture the center — not with substance, but with (perceived) character.
Chait is definitely onto something here, to which I'm going to add just a few thoughts. First, it cannot be overstated just how brazen a gambit this is. As Jonathan notes, the new bid for high ground was being made at the very same events where Romney and Ryan were decrying Obama for "robbing" Medicare of $700 billion to pay for Obamacare -- reductions in the future growth of Medicare (culled from payments to providers, not enrollee benefits) that are also part of the Ryan budget. More striking, though, is that the move for the high ground comes at exactly the same time as the Romney campaign is filling the airwaves with ads accusing Obama of doing away with the work requirements for welfare recipients. This charge -- made by the son of a pro-safety net former HUD secretary! -- has been utterly debunked by countless factcheckers who've noted that Obama's tweak of welfare rules was requested by several Republican governors and would require states to show an increase in work hours by welfare recipients. But far from letting this rebuke dissuade him, Romney has doubled down with a new welfare ad, this one with a 1998 clip of Obama expressing skepticism about the 1996 welfare reform law (because we know that what people say and did in the 1990s is a clear barometer of their true selves.) Yes, the ad is "substantive." It's also as deceptive and cynical as it gets.
So will it work? Here's why one would think not: because Mitt Romney is the candidate at the top of the ticket, not Ryan, and he has not established for himself the sort of credibility with the press that George W. Bush, to the dismay of Democrats, managed to in 2000; if anything, Romney has been put into the Al Gore box of an easy negative caricature. But here's why it just might succeed: because one should never underestimate the press' susceptibility to being played like referees at a Miami Heat home playoff game. In recent weeks, there has been a notable upsurge in the press' reliance on its favorite comfort blanket, the soft, nubbly felt of false equivalence that makes no effort to distinguish among kind and degree of campaign attacks. Consider this summary from Friday's New York Times, which charges both campaigns with being equally guilty of taking their opponent's words out of context, overlooking the fact that while the Democrats have tittered over Romney lines such as "I like to fire people" or "I'm not concerned about the very poor," they haven't turned them into full line of attacks with millions of dollars of ad time behind them, as the other side has with Obama's "you didn't build that" line. Or consider the failure to distinguish between the two hard-hitting ads that debuted last week -- the welfare one from Romney, and the one from the pro-Obama SuperPAC Priorities USA that insinuated that Romney bore responsibility in the death of the wife of a man who lost his insurance when Bain Capital shut down his steel plant. The latter ad was harsh, it pushed the boundaries of fairness, and it leaves itself open to debate: where, exactly, does one draw the line in a capitalist society between the self-interested decisions of corporate overlords and the human consequences that they often lead to, several years down the line? What the ad does not do, however, is to blatantly thumb its nose at reality as Romney's welfare attacks do. It is harsh, not cynical. And the press' inability to make that distinction can't help but leave one thinking that Romney and Ryan just might be able to make that reach for the high ground even as cards like the welfare one keep being played down below.
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20 comments
I agree that we should never, ever underestimate the laziness of most media types. But I do think the point about Romney being at the head of the ticket is most salient. In the end, people will be voting for or against him or Obama, not Ryan or Biden. In addition, thanks to Romney's selection of Ryan, Obama actually has the edge when it comes to boiling down the complicated policy debates to short ads, campaign slogans and bullet points. Romney will gut medicare, social security, college loans, women's health care, etc. It's all in the plan and positions of his VP pick.
- Thunderroad
August 13, 2012 at 1:00pm
The Obama campaign, and not a few liberals, are missing something very important about Paul Ryan: he is unknown outside the beltway. I spent the weekend in the epicenter of Obama Derangement Syndrome, and I was more than surprised that they've never heard of Paul Ryan! I can't count the number of people who asked basic questions about him, who he is, where he's from, what he stands for. He may be well-known inside the beltway, but in the heartland he is an unknown. There's two ways to look at this. One, he is not the darling of the base and will not have the motivational effect being assumed. The other, opposite effect is that he will not be the big risk to Romney that many assume, including Chait and Scheiber. If the base doesn't know who Ryan is, how could they know anything about the Ryan budget and what it portends for social security, Medicare, and every other middle class social safety net program. I fear that the Obama campaign is missing the opportunity to define Paul Ryan because they don't realize they are working with an empty canvas. They can make him anything they wish, but the window is closing fast.
- rayward
August 13, 2012 at 1:19pm
When this election season is over, I'm off to adult education courses to learn my native language, English. I'm convinced that every four years, the English language struggles with democratic tendencies. I admit to reading a lot about the elections but ignoring the campaign rhetoric is difficult.
- Doug12
August 13, 2012 at 1:51pm
rayward, that's an interesting point, but I think the key thing for the Obama camp to do is not so much to define Ryan per se, but to hang his incredibly regressive policy positions around Romney's neck. They'd already planned to do that. Romney simply made their job a lot easier. Now, I realize your point is also or even mainly about timing, as per your comment that the window is closing fast. In that regard, perhaps it would be good if a bunch of ads went out right now pointing out that Romney has picked for his VP someone with these outrageous views, and that these views are Romney's. It could well be that the Obama folks are missing an opportunity, then, though perhaps we'll see such ads and attacks in the next few days. Or perhaps if they do delay, there will be a method to their timing.
- Thunderroad
August 13, 2012 at 2:00pm
When did the Republicans get so soft? Say what you want about Rove, but at least you knew he was coming at you square on the balls of his feet. This iteration of the GOP plays back on their heels, and if you hit them they crumple into a ball and cry. I blame it on the late boomers in charge of the party now. That whole generation is just mushy.
- ATLeft
August 13, 2012 at 2:10pm
I still don't get why Obama is held responsible for the Super Pac Advertisements when Romney told Gingrich Romney should not be responsible for Super Pac Adverstisements. On the Soptic Adverstisement, I think anyone who sees it thinks the claim that Romney "caused" the woman's death is dubious on the face of the advertisement. Romney's advertisements, stitching together phrases in the President's voice, don't leave any such room for interpretation.
- Nusholtz
August 13, 2012 at 2:51pm
Hey, I'm a boomer and mushy I am not. Damn I wish people would stop characterizing an entire generation of people like this. It's a form of bigotry, Mr. AtLeft. Anyway, Nusholtz is correct on the ads too. And, I fear rayward might be correct about Ryan. Not everybody reads TNR and Jonathan Chait etc. Alas. Otherwise they wouldn't have run him up the flagpole if they're serious about winning the election. PS I don't think Ryan is attractive. I am afraid there are some very ignorant, hateful young people on the right who detest older people and don't think we should get any security in our old age and resent everything and everybody on general principle. Are they a majority? I hope not.
- Sophia
August 13, 2012 at 3:14pm
Perhaps, at the end of the day, the truth is that a running-mate choice can never win the presidency for anyone, but it can lose it for them. One thing that is worth doing is hammering away again and again that Romney has knuckled under to an extremist conservative vision with this choice. People don't want a president who is going to be bullied by his VP.
- ironyroad
August 13, 2012 at 3:16pm
Oh come on, that's not bigotry. You're making my case for me! Get over yourself, boomer.
- ATLeft
August 13, 2012 at 3:18pm
I can agree with Rayward to a degree when it comes to the initial bump that Romney will get from Ryan and the little to no negative push back from the base. But I have strong doubts that Ryan as VP choice will persuade a majority of the center. Sure most people do not know Ryan, but they soon will as they discover he hews to a Ayn Randian philosophy of selfishness and far-right partisan economics that, if his budget had been in place, Romney effective tax rate would have been a whopping 0.89%. Can Obama and his proxies successfully paint Ryan as out of touch with the average American? Sure can. Will the press start to take a closer look at what the Ryan budget was / is all about? Sure will. I've already seen that happening just on the Sunday morning talk shows and non-beltway hacksite likes Huff Post talking up the destruction to be wrought by the RomneyRyan Railroading Plan for America. Folks didn't know who Herman Cain was before he ran for the GOP ticket and after a few turns of the media cycle everyone had a good idea what Cain was all about. If anything, Ryan as VP would probably move those undecided GOPers off the fence and get them to the polls only insofar as they're not helping Obama by sitting out the election in protest.
- singlspeed
August 13, 2012 at 4:01pm
I've been having a running argument with a couple of my friends who insist on knowing the facts about Ryan's plan, and how to tackle conservative arguments for Ryan. I've been telling them that the Ryan pick is about imagery, not substance, though Ryan himself, while dishonest and hypocritical, is undoubtedly substantive. Ryan went on 60 Minutes last night, and in answer to a question about the ineffectiveness of Congress, said it was because Obama was a failed leader. Think about it. Congress has an approval rating of 12%, and the man has the stones or the mad skillz to blame Obama, and get away with it. Why? Because the MSM thinks Ryan is a serious guy, a thinker, interested in policy, not politics. I don't think Obama will roll over like Gore or Kerry did, but that doesn't mean Romney won't try.
- austinous
August 13, 2012 at 4:44pm
It's odd, but I first read the headline as "Can Romney Ayn Rand seize the high ground." I suspect lots of dyslectics will suffer from the same confusion.
- hrsn
August 13, 2012 at 7:22pm
Hilarious. Congress is an independent branch of government that actually is more powerful than the President. The fact that Ryan, a man who is so in control of his party that he can draft budgets with little input from anyone else in Congress or the Republican Party turns around and then blames the person whose only job is to sign off on his work for being the reason that he is ineffective at his job and has been blowing spitballs for the past two years (if not more) is the height of folly. An effective House Budget Chairman crafts a budget that can get through the Senate and, if necessary, survive a veto override. He doesn't throw a tantrum that not everyone in Washington believes his bowel movements set the gold standard. I hope the media takes this fraudster down instead of continually running "Paul Ryan is a fiscal hawk" or "Paul Ryan was born in a one-run hut" puff pieces. Of course, I can already envision the Priorities USA ads that will shake the media out of its complacent lull.
- chaitless
August 13, 2012 at 11:43pm
*one-room hut.
- chaitless
August 13, 2012 at 11:43pm
To Rayward's premise, a question: what kind of a "base" is it who doesn't know who Ryan is? Shouldn't we distinguish between the likely electorate and the base? As to the Romney caused-the-woman-to-die ad, it misconceived objectively to analyze the ad and to note the discrepancy between Romney's protesteth-too-much and him doing the same thing. Here perception is reality, which it isn't always. How the ad is perceived and how any nexus between Obama and ad is perceived are what count. My outsider's sense is the reality created by perception here is not doing Obama much good. As for the Ryan dynamic affecting the race, surely we'll have to wait and see. It's all immediately merely speculation. But I for two or three think that Chait makes a compelling point, even if we can't know whether, and how much, character, in the sense Chait describes it, was part of the calculation in choosing Ryan. There's something inveterate about the guy that seems to me to to compel having to argue with him with facts, figures and logic, and that may well radiate out to the campaign generally. Ryan's is a sensational pick, not necessarily good or bad, but sensational in the way Sarah Palin's was, but without her know nothing buffoonery and idiosyncrasy. The race is immediately transformed by his pick in the way the choice of say Biden was not but in the way a Hillary choice would have been. Ryan is just that compelling a figure, whether by way of smoke and mirrors as some say or substance from a clearly delineated ideological perspective or, more likely, some of both.
- basman
August 14, 2012 at 1:13pm
@AtLeft of course it's bigotry. You're blind. Ageism is just as bad as racism. This isn't by the way about me it's about progressive principles. That said, I don't know how old you are but you're absolutely clueless about the challenges faced by people as we progress through life. Well enough said, because you will find out, guaranteed. I don't care if you're rich as a king you're still going to learn, although, being middle or working class or poor or a minority or a woman will most certainly put you closer to the razor's edge.
- Sophia
August 14, 2012 at 1:33pm
@austinous re Ryan: absolutely correct. The media's been fawning over Ryan. Apparently he schmoozes well with the media ergo, he's courageous, brave, brilliant, etc etc etc. Paul Krugman wrote this in the NYT and it definitely is apropos, especially since some Times columnists, even, have been taken in (and by the same token trash Obama for not being sufficiently warm and fuzzy - ) http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/romneyryan-the-real-target/
- Sophia
August 14, 2012 at 1:38pm
The Onion Admit It, I Scare The Ever-Loving Shit Out Of You, Don't I? By Paul Ryan Candidate for Vice President of the United States August 13, 2012 | ISSUE 48•33 When Mitt Romney selected me as his running mate, I knew the Democratic attack dogs would come out in full force. They would say I’m a right-wing ideologue. They would say my views on entitlement programs are far too radical. They would say putting me on the ticket immediately kills Mitt Romney’s chances of becoming president because I’m a liability. But if we’re being honest with each other—if we’re able to put aside the talking points for a few minutes and say what we’re all actually thinking and feeling—I believe we can acknowledge the real truth here. I’m young, I’m handsome, I’m smart, and I’m articulate. And that scares the ever-loving shit out of you. You can pretend like you have this thing in the bag, but you know good goddamn well that this race just got real interesting, real fast. It’s okay to admit it. You’re frightened to death of me. It might actually be healthy for you to face your fears now rather than later, when Mitt and I are leading by a few points in the polls and it looks like this thing might end badly for you. Face it: I’m not some catastrophe waiting to happen, like a Sarah Palin or a Dan Quayle. On the contrary, you have the exact opposite fear. I’m a solid, competent, some might say exceptional, politician. Did you get nervous when you read that last sentence? Is it because you know in your heart of hearts that it’s 100 percent true? Is it because, even if you strongly disagree with my beliefs on Medicare, Social Security, women’s rights, and marriage equality, you know my talent as a speaker and my well-thought-out approach to these issues—no matter how radical and convoluted you find them—might just be enough to win over independent voters? Do you get chills just thinking about how strong my appeal actually is? I have another question for you: How scared are you that I can convince people I’m right? Because I’m good at it. No, I’m really good at it. You see, I know how to turn up the charm and charisma without putting people off. Then I back up what I’m saying with arguments that, when they come out of my mouth, sound completely accurate and well-reasoned. And I do it with such passion that people automatically recognize me as a man with deep convictions he will stand up for, no matter what. The American people love that shit. They love it. Passion, intellect, and a magnetic personality. Pretty damn intimidating combo, if I say so myself. You want to talk about polish? Man, I’ve got polish for miles. Oh, and by the way, I’ll go ahead and say this next thing because, if we’re being honest, why the hell not, right? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m white. Hoo, brother, am I white. Yup, you should be scared shitless of me, because guess who isn’t? The people of Wisconsin. They love me. Republicans and Democrats there love me. Hell, I get Democrats to vote for me even if my policies make zero sense when it comes to their livelihoods. Do you know why? Because they like me. They like my story. Young, good-looking kid who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to make something of himself. Christ, I'm a storybook candidate. I balance out this ticket so well it’s almost too perfect. The people of Ohio are going to think that. And seniors in Florida—the state we supposedly lost when Mitt picked me—won’t be so scared as soon they know that my mother lives in Florida, and that all I want to do is reform the health care system so she can receive care that makes good fiscal sense. Boy, I’m going to sell the shit out of that talking point. And I’m going to do a great job of it. Why? Because I’m Paul Ryan. That’s what I do. And if we’re having trouble getting Pennsylvania on board, just wait until I absolutely wipe the floor with Joe Biden in the vice presidential debates. Don’t think for a second that I don’t know you’re terrified of us facing off, because in the back of your mind you know it could be a bloodbath up there. Well, that’s 77 electoral votes, and by my math that means you can kiss your golden boy goodbye after four short years. All that promise. All that energy. All that potential. Gone in one November night. I’m your worst fucking nightmare. Oh, and by the way, don’t even try to pretend you haven’t imagined me being elected president one day.
- NHRDS
August 14, 2012 at 3:55pm
Republicans who dislike that super PAC ads lack accountability should talk to Scalia, not Obama. It is not a campaign ad; it is a rogue ad by unaccountable campaign finance vehicle lauded by Republicans. Be careful what you wish for...
- smabry03
August 14, 2012 at 5:43pm
OK, smabry03 . . . what SHOULD I wish for?
- skahn
August 15, 2012 at 8:38pm