Turn Right? Turn Left? What's the Destination?

As the House of Representatives heads home for a short Christmas break, I am reminded of a story about two men – one a leftist, the other a right winger – who live across the street from each other. Both men are driving to the same venue, but do not share a ride because of their disdain for each other. Before they leave for their destination each man seeks to convince the other that he alone has the best short cut.

“All you have to do is go left at the corner then turn left again, and so on,” the leftist says.

“Oh, BS,” says the right winger. “You go right at each corner. Everyone knows that.”

The men decided to bet on whose was the better short cut. Each took his own route only to end up back in front of their individual homes.

I offer that story because it seems to be where we are in Washington today. No matter what, those on the right want to continue going right, while those on the left want to continue going left – neither acknowledging that adhering to such directions just takes us back to where we started.

This past week, House Republicans showed us just how ignorant making the same right turn time and time again takes us nowhere but back to square one. After a lot of posturing, whining, and maneuvering, House Speaker John Boehner walked away from the negotiation table where efforts were underway to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. Instead of continuing talks with President Barack Obama to close the gap between each other’s deficit reduction proposals, Boehner offered up a “Plan B” that called for tax increases only on those making $1 million or more a year. “Plan B” never reached the House floor for a vote, with Boehner pulling it because he did not have enough support for it among his own caucus.

Meanwhile, those on the left argue that we continue on their route, refusing to acknowledge that while we must preserve the safety net, we cannot adhere blindly to all of its provisions. As the nation ages the cost of Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security will keep rising. While we do not have to eviscerate those programs we must take prudent steps to safe guard them.

The same is true with gun control. We cannot continue with a mishmash of gun laws around the country, a poor mental health system, and a blind adherence to the Second Amendment if we want to save ourselves from the senseless whims of mass murderers. There is not one answer to the question we face on gun control laws, but there are some things that we can put into place to lessen the risks we face as a nation. Will we be able to completely remove guns from our society? No, but we can limit access to high-power weapons and multi-round clips.

Yet, neither the left nor the right seems ready and willing to act sensibly. For the right, any effort to regulate firearms is an attack on personal liberty. The Second Amendment, according to many of them, was intended so that Americans could protect themselves against a tyrannical Federal Government. That the Second Amendment calls for gun ownership as a way to maintain a “well-regulated militia” is lost on the right, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court.

In addition, we cannot fix our fiscal house if we do not recognize some very basic tenets, including that while Federal spending must be brought down, we cannot continue to allow such people as Willard Mitt Romney to pay less than 15 percent in taxes on income above $20 million, while those making much, much less pay a higher rate. We cannot reduce the budget deficit if we do not add jobs to the nation through additional stimulus spending, which could result in greater demand for goods by both businesses and individuals. We cannot tackle the long-term systemic issues in our economy if we do not recognize that the current level of safety net spending cannot be maintained forever.

The same goes for our gun policies. We cannot address mass killings in America if we do not recognize that many of the shooters have been young men in that age range where mental illness becomes most pronounced. We cannot help those young men who are a threat to themselves, and more important, a threat to society if the mental health system is fragmented with few options for parents and others who detect the warning signs of a meltdown. We cannot provide the treatment those young men need if we do not have the facilities or if insurance companies are allowed to limit how much psychiatric care a person can receive.

And we cannot stem the flow of guns into the hands of those who would do the most harm if we continue to allow each state to have varying laws, to allow weapons to be sold at gun shows without background checks, to allow people to buy as many guns as they can carry without red flags going off, to allow people to continue purchasing large amounts of ammunition without some investigation.

The battle over gun control is not just about the mass killings that seem to be occurring more frequently in this nation. It is about the thousands of shootings that occur across the nation every week. It is about making it harder for abusive husbands – and in some cases wives – to grab a gun and kill their spouses. It is about taking guns out of the hands of people who would commit suicide. It is about recognizing that in the majority of murders in the United States the victim and the assailant knew each other. It is about accepting that more guns do not necessarily make the world safer. Mostly, it is about admitting that our love affair with guns as a symbol of freedom is an anachronism, a vestige of time that has long passed.

And the fiscal battle being waged is not about right-wing or left-wing doctrines. It is about the millions of people who remain underemployed or unemployed. It is about a deteriorating infrastructure. It is about investing in education to better prepare our students for tomorrow. It is about reducing long-term costs for safety net programs. It is about restoring a sense of confidence in the American economy and the nation's ability to tackle large issues.

More important, though, it is deciding that if we really want to get somewhere in this nation, if we really want to make that journey together, to reach our destination then we are going to have to make some right and some left turns. Otherwise we will end up back where we started.

Let America be America

If you are still struggling with who won the 2012 presidential election then let me give you a hint: America.

Was it simply because President Barack Hussein Obama was re-elected to the White House, defeating Willard Mitt Romney? No. America won because more people than expected voted, and in doing so they rejected the idea that we must become a callous, vengeful, and barbarous nation, one in which selfishness, greed, and xenophobia stand supreme.

Indeed, voters did not give any candidate or party an overwhelming “mandate” as many have said, but the majority did speak loudly about the type of nation they want. They spoke not only in the voting booth, but also in exit polls in which they addressed questions the answers to which cannot always be discerned by analyzing election results.

Yes, about 48 percent of Americans supported Romney, and about 51 percent supported Obama. More important, though, was the number of voters who in exit polls supported a kinder America. For example, 60 percent of those polled say they agree with increasing taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year as part of a balanced debt reduction plan, compared with 30 percent who oppose any tax increases. In addition, a majority of voters supported protecting the safety net. If the exit polls reflect how people really feel, then that means even some people who voted for Romney support a more balanced approach to dealing with the nation’s problems.

Or as E.J. Dionne said in a recent Washington Post column: “The voters repudiated the very worst aspects of post-Bush conservatism: its harsh tone toward those in need, its doctrinaire inflexibility on taxes, its inclination toward extreme pronouncements on social issues, and its hard anti-government rhetoric that ignored the pragmatic attitude of the electorate’s great middle about what the public sector can and can’t do.”

That voter response would suggest that we should begin moving forward, allowing America to open her arms to all of her children. Of course, that does not mean we will. Already, conservatives are trying to re-fight the election.

Some conservative business people have given walking papers to employees in retaliation for Obama’s win, while others say they will add surcharges to customers’ bills and will reduce hours for workers to avoid providing health care insurance.

The day after the election, Robert Murray, the chief executive of the Murray Energy Corp., a privately held mining company, gave 160 workers layoff notices, citing the re-election of what he called a coal hating president. John Metz, whose company owns and/or manages numerous Denny’s and Hurricane Grill & Wings restaurants, said he will add a 5 percent surcharge to customers’ bills, as well as reduce employ hours to below 17, to deal with the added costs of Obamacare. John Schnatter, the chief executive at Papa John’s Pizza, is willing to give away 2 million free pizzas to the tune of $24 million to $32 million a year, according to a recent Forbes article, but he is not willing to add $5 million to $8 million to his bottom line in order to pay for employees’ health care. He has threatened to cut workers to below 30 hours a week to avoid Obamacare requirements, and has said he would add 11 cents to 14 cents per pie. (Forbes calculated that Obamacare would add an extra 3.4 cents to 4.6 cents per pie at Papa John's.)

In addition, conservative Republicans already have begun the election conspiracy theories, from mysterious black people showing up like extraterrestrials at rural polling places in Maine to Obama using mind control on people so that he and the United Nations can create a communist dictatorship in America.

Of course, no post-election spin can be complete without the doubling down of old conservative standbys, including efforts by the Conservative Majority Fund to start an impeachment drive against the President because he is not a natural born citizen in its view. “Our only recourse now is to move forward with the full impeachment of President Obama,” the fund announced in a recent fundraising letter. “We suspect that Obama is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors and that there may be grounds for impeachment as is laid out in the constitution. Further, he may not even be a U.S. citizen because nobody, I mean no one, has seen an actual physical copy of his birth certificate. Impeachment is our only option.”

We also have seen calls by conservatives to revolt against the federal government, including on-line secession petitions from 40 states. Romney has returned to his disparaging of the “47 percent” of takers in this country, saying in a conference call to his conservative donors that Obama won because he gave “gifts” to minorities and young women. (Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah later corrected Romney’s assertion that 47 percent of the population is moochers. Hatch says it is 51 percent.)

But even with all of that America is still the winner because while overt and subtle racism are up, according to an Associated Press poll released before the Nov. 6 presidential election, the numbers are not as high as they were a decade or two ago. And the racist dogma is being rejected by a majority of America, especially the young. Obama won with a broad based coalition that included blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans, women, white workers, and the young.

Suffice it to say that the 2012 election did not put to rest all of the issues facing our nation. It did, however, give us a greater sense of what the majority of Americans want and how they want to proceed. By rejecting the calls for a return to the 1950s, the voters gave America a resounding victory.

America can, finally, be America again.

The Bitterness Within Us

With the U.S. presidential election entering its final weeks, it might be time to ask ourselves what we have learned this year about our nation and its people. The answers may not come very easily and may not be to anyone’s liking. The partisan divide makes one wonder if this nation will be able to move forward after such a contentious election season.

We appear more divided than ever, with few people able to open their minds to the harsh realities that lie ahead. Too many of us have become trapped in political echo chambers, unable to hear anything but the sounds of the like-minded. Few people actually listen to opposing views. Some seem afraid that respect for another opinion will shatter all previous beliefs, that it would upend the universe. Civility and respect are lost in a cacophony of hateful rhetoric, and the win at all cost attitudes of so many. Chalk it up to the messiness that is democracy, many say.

But what ails discourse in this country goes beyond the messiness of democracy. Our ailments lie in bitter hearts unable to empathize with others, in jaundiced eyes unable to see the tragedy that exists in a world different from our own. Two distinctive incidents recently brought this home.

One was the attempted murder of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan on Oct. 9. The other was the responses to a New York Times column in which Nicholas D. Kristof wrote about his uninsured college roommate, Scott Androes, who was dying of Stage 4 prostate cancer.

Malala, as nearly everyone knows by now, was heading home from school when gunmen boarded her school van, demanded she be identified, and then fired three shots – striking Malala and two other girls. Malala was rushed to a military hospital where she remained until recently being transferred to a hospital in Britain. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it will go after Malala again.

Why? The Taliban said because Malala is “promoting secularism” by pushing for education for women and girls. The attempted murder of Malala was rightfully met with outrage from many corners of the world. On Oct. 14, tens of thousands of people in Karachi protested against the Taliban’s actions.

In the United States, President Barack Obama decried the shooting as “reprehensible and disgusting and tragic.”

“Directing violence at children is barbaric, it’s cowardly, and our hearts go out to her and the others who were wounded as well as their families,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said.

In Britain, the BBC quoted Foreign Secretary William Hague as saying that the attack had “shocked Pakistan and the world,” and that Malala’s bravery was “an example to us all.”

“The public revulsion and condemnation of this cowardly attack shows that the people of Pakistan will not be beaten by terrorists,” Hague said. “The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with Pakistan in its fight against terrorism.”

Unfortunately in America, the shooting of Malala became a political football, a way to attack the Obama Administration. One conservative blog, Redstate.com, took a December 2011 comment by Vice President Joe Biden out of context in an effort to suggest that Obama and Biden had no issues with the Taliban and it’s shooting of Malala.

“Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy,” Biden said in an interview with Leslie Gelb of Newsweek. “That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests.”

During the interview, Biden was seeking to explain U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, in particular those aimed at reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Biden was also discussing U.S. reasons for going into Afghanistan: To oust al-Qaeda, not necessarily to wipe out the Taliban.

Meanwhile, others decided that the shooting was an opportunity to attack Islam in general and the President in particular, rather than show solidarity with Malala. The virulent attacks were numerous and outrageous. One has to ask: What manner of person is unable to empathize with a young girl nearly killed for seeking an education?

The answer may be found in the reaction to Kristof’s column. Kristof wrote that Scott Androes “had a midlife crisis and left his job in the pension industry to read books and play poker.” Androes worked part time and earned $13,000 last year. To save money he did not carry health insurance and did not go to the doctor for wellness visits. During that time, Androes developed prostate cancer that spread to his bones.

Kristof used Androes’s story to argue the merits of Obamacare. While many readers empathized with Androes, many also blamed him for his plight, basically saying he made his bed and must lie in it.

According to Kristof, one Oregon reader wrote: “Not sure why I’m to feel guilty about your friend’s problem. I take care of myself and mine, and I am not responsible for anyone else.”

Another reader wrote that many people in hospitals are there because of their own poor choices: “Smoking, obesity, drugs, alcohol, noncompliance with medical advice. Extreme age and debility, patients so sick, old, demented, weak, that if families had to pay one-tenth the cost of keeping the poor souls alive, they would instantly see that it was money wasted.”

A third reader said, “Your friend made a foolish choice, and actions have consequences,”

It would be easy to chalk up those responses to a few callous people hiding behind the anonymity of Internet posts. To do so is to fail to recognize that in these trying times, people are not only filled with disdain and vitriol, they are even more willing to share that with all of society. Recent Pew Research Center polling found, for example, that such feelings have increased dramatically among Republicans.

And that raises some serious questions about how this nation will move forward, and whether everyone will be invited on the trip.

Selling America's Soul for a White House

Nearly a year ago I wrote that this presidential election was a battle for America’s soul. That is truer today than it was on Oct. 12, 2011, when that post first appeared. You don’t agree? Take a look at this election cycle and you will see what I mean. There is an assault on the ideas that make America great. It is not only the mendacity of the Republican presidential candidate. It is the efforts by the GOP, particularly conservatives, to roll back the progress that has occurred over the last 50 to 60 years, from civil rights to voting rights, from education to worship. No longer do we discourage the corrupting influences of big money in our elections, we revel in it.

And we do it all in the guise of protecting the U.S. Constitution, though many of those who claim to hold that document sacred fail to adequately distinguish it from the Declaration of Independence. We have become a nation of angry tribes whose members cannot see beyond their own myopias, unable to discern fact from fiction, dogma from policy, substance from style, bluster from diplomacy. You sell it, we'll buy it. The market place of ideas has been inundated with cheap products with fake expiration dates.

Willard Mitt Romney’s recent debate performance was a prime example of the obfuscating that is occurring in this election. Indeed, Romney and President Barack Obama have engaged in hyperbole in an effort to win votes. When facts were not available, each has turned to spin and speculation to make a point. But what we are seeing from Romney is a complete abandonment of the ideas that sprung from his “severely conservative” philosophy. His dodging is beyond what we have seen in previous elections. Romney shows the sales skills that helped him become a multi-millionaire, not the skills that are needed to be a leader.

During the Republican presidential primary, for example, Romney promised that his tax cut plan would help the “job creators” (the 1 percent) not the moochers (the 47 percent). During the presidential debate, he declared that he had no tax cut for the wealthy, just a gosh-darn great plan to cut taxes by 20 percent across the board. According to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, as well as other groups, Romney’s math does not add up because there are not enough high-end loopholes to make up for the level of tax reduction he seeks. The center estimated that Romney’s “plan” would cost $456 billion by 2015. Extrapolated over 10 years, including inflation and other costs, the total would be $4.8 trillion, the center concluded. Of course that $4.8 trillion ($5 trillion when rounded) is not a hard number because Romney has refused to give details. But that is not the problem. No, the problem occurred when he tried to suggest that he would not reduce the amount of money that the wealthy pays in taxes, a counter argument to what he had been saying since the Republican primary.

Add to that his statements about having a health plan that protects people who have pre-existing conditions (not so said his campaign after the debate); his claims that he would seek no limits to abortion access (he has said he wants to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v Wade and he wants to defund Planned Parenthood); his support for hiring more teachers (in June and again this week he mocked Obama for wanting to hire more teachers); his claim that Obama wants to drastically cut the defense budget (a plan approved by the House GOP); and one sees the manner in which Romney has distorted the political landscape.

The same is true of his party. Republicans have been claiming since their national convention that they, like much of America, supported the President and wanted him to do well. The problem, they say, is the President was in over his head. That argument requires us to forget that since the first day of the Obama presidency GOP lawmakers have done all they could to deny him a second term. That included taking the nation to the fiscal cliff during the debt ceiling debate, spending more time on voting to repeal Obamacare than helping to fix the economy, and launching all out attacks on women’s reproductive rights, including suggesting that abortions should only be available in the cases of “forcible rape.” (This week House Republicans are investigating "lax" security at the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, although they will say little about more than $400 million in GOP cuts to the State Department's security budget over the last two years.) Add to that local Republican efforts to tamp down the vote through a series of voter identification laws and we see a GOP that has put its interests before that of the nation.

And they have been able to do so because of the shady dealings of a host of conservative billionaires who have created shell groups disguised as grass-roots movements in an effort to buy the campaign without most people knowing. From the Koch brothers to Sheldon Adelson to Karl Rove’s army of check-writing robots, conservative billionaires have decided that no political race will be without their financial influence. (Conservative billionaires have spent $20 million in Ohio alone in an effort to oust Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown.) They have pumped millions upon millions into congressional campaigns not to promote the general welfare, but to increase their own.

David Siegel, the chief executive of the timeshare company Westgate, went so far as to send a menacing email to his employees telling them that their jobs would be in jeopardy if Obama wins next month, according to a story posted to The Huffington Post. While the email was couched in terms of tax increases, it raises questions about whether Siegel was making an indirect threat against his employees. Vote for Obama and you get to be part of the mooching 47 percent. Richard Lacks, the chief executive of the car parts manufacturer Lacks Enterprises, told his workers that an Obama election would result in a decrease in their pay, the Huffington Post article said. Those two incidents came after a Republican coal mine owner forced his workers to take part of the day off without pay so they could be props for a Romney campaign stop.

The result is a close election where few people truly understand the issues or are willing to study them. Instead they are swayed by bluster. Too many voters have decided that the election season is too long and every politician is too corrupt to warrant citizen participation in the political process. More pronounced, of course, are the so called undecided voters, those who have not made up their minds this late in the game. One has to ask: If one cannot choose between Obama and Romney after more than a year of campaigning, then what else does one need before making a choice?

What makes it all the more appalling is the U.S. Supreme Court’s failure to recognize that its Citizen United decision has indeed corrupted the political system, turning corporations into people and making the will of the few more valuable than the needs of the many. The High Court, as well as several lower Federal courts, has all but gutted Montana’s century-old, anti-corruption laws, which were aimed at protecting the electoral process.

It is a Faustian bargain that Republicans have made in an effort to wrest control from President Obama. It was most evident when Romney went from being “severely conservative” to “moderate” in 90 minutes. He leads that team that has put a “For Sale” sign on America’s soul. But what can one expect from a man who – if not for the advantages of his family pedigree – might otherwise be selling used cars in Roxbury?

The Allure of the First Debate Winner

The political pundits and party surrogates have spoken: Willard Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and the Republican presidential candidate, won the first presidential debate in Denver Wednesday night. The problem with that conclusion is that the voters, particularly the undecided ones in the swing states, have yet to speak on the issue.

Indeed, Romney was the more assertive and more focused candidate. He rattled off statistic after statistic, and he seemed in control of the numbers. Meanwhile, President Barack Hussein Obama appeared tentative and disengaged for much of the debate. It was not until late in the exchange that the President seemed to gain his footing.

But once voters get past the style questions of the first debate they might find that the allure Romney projected is much like that presented by a hook up at a party. From across the room, that person looks attractive, worth considering for a long-term relationship. Then you get up close, engaging that person in conversation. The more that person talks and the more you listen the less attractive he or she becomes. Eventually, there comes the realization that the object of your desires, that alluring, generous specimen of humanity is actually very vacuous and self-absorbed, lacking many socially redeeming qualities.

Core values shift depending on with whom the person speaks. The passion comes and goes depending on whom that person is seeking to court. That was Willard Mitt Romney Wednesday night. He was alluring, charming, and warm from 9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., but chances are he will become cold and unattractive at 2 a.m. when the party is well over and the euphoria of the night’s alcohol wears off.

Why? Because that is when one steps back, looks at the real person, and asks: “Did he really say that?”

Yes, America, Willard Mitt Romney really did say that.

After 18 months of proclaiming that he had a multi-billion dollar tax cut plan that included breaks for the top 1 percent of earners, Romney announced Wednesday night that he did not have a tax plan that could cost the nation $5 trillion over 10 years. While the numbers attached to Romney’s tax plan were not of his making, they were a realistic assessment by economists and tax experts – including some whom he claims agree with him – seeking to fill the numbers void left by Romney’s lack of details.

According to Romney, he will not offer any tax plan that adds to the deficit. If that is true, then how does he plan to reduce taxes by 20 percent across the board? Nearly every study looking at Romney’s proposed tax cut says he cannot accomplish his goals by simply closing loopholes and eliminating deductions for the rich. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center – which Romney views as credible when it challenges Obama’s plans, but not when it questions his – suggests that Romney would have to raise taxes on the middle class to reach his goals. So do other studies, including one by Martin Feldstein, a Romney advisor and Harvard economist.

Feldstein’s study showed that Romney can accomplish his tax-cut goals if he eliminates deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and state and local taxes for households making more than $100,000. The problem is Romney views the middle class as including people whose household income reaches $250,000, a figure many economists put above the middle class.

“First of all, I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut,” Romney proclaimed to Obama. “I don’t have a tax cut of a scale that you’re talking about. My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.”

He added later: “With regards to that tax cut, look, I’m not looking to cut massive taxes and to reduce – the revenues going to the government. My – my number-one principle is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”

Of course, such a proclamation sounds great, but in order for it to be true we have to take the word of a man who has often changed his positions on major topics. According to Romney, 47 percent of the people who do not pay taxes in this nation are moochers, a bunch of lazy government draining takers living off the sweat and hard work of the makers. The makers, Romney proclaimed during the Republican primary, need tax relief because they are the job creators. Those job creators are the 1 percent of the population that Romney now says will not receive any tax relief beyond what can be paid for, suggesting that the tax rate cannot drop by 20 percent.

In addition, Romney wants to develop a medical insurance program that allows children to remain on their parents’ policies until age 26; that bans insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions when those people change jobs; that helps to reduce medical costs. To accomplish such Romney has vowed to repeal Obamacare and replace it with . . . Obamacare. He also said recently that sick people can get free health care in emergency rooms, a practice that both Obamacare and Romneycare seek to discourage because of the additional costs incurred in such situations. Romney did not address how he will accommodate the millions of people who would be left uninsured, or how he will replace the preventive care provisions of Obamacare that make contraceptives free for women.

On Wednesday Romney also proclaimed the need to hire more teachers -- a major shift from what he said during a speech to Iowans in June. In that speech Romney claimed that Obama's call for more teachers was an expansion of Big Government that must be stopped.

"He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers," Romney said on June 8. "Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back government and help the American people."

And then there is Dodd-Frank. For 18 months, Romney proclaimed that government regulations, particularly Dodd-Frank, were ruining the economy. That changed Wednesday night when he offered support for regulations and Dodd-Frank, if not in total at least in part.

“Regulation is essential,” Romney said. “You can't have a free market work if you don't have regulation. As a businessperson, I had to have – I need to know the regulations. I needed them there. You couldn't have people opening up banks in their – in their garage and making loans. I mean, you have to have regulations so that you can have an economy work. Every free economy has good regulation.”

It’s getting late and Willard Mitt Romney is losing his luster.

The Enigma of Willard Mitt Romney

The closer we get to the Nov. 6 presidential election the more Willard Mitt Romney reminds me of two quotes. The first was addressed to Mulder in the X-Files. The second is attributed to Winston Churchill and was used in a different variation by Mulder in an episode of the X-Files:

“And a lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths.”

And:

“It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

Both quotes reflect Romney, his campaign, the Republican Party, and the Tea Party. And each may explain why Romney seems to be losing grounds in polls of the critical swing states that are expected to decide this election.

A look at the entire campaign season lends support to that assertion. Ever since the Republican presidential primary Romney has at various times shown that he is out of touch with most Americans. From his comments about the number of Cadillacs his wife owns, to their dressage horse, to his push for tax breaks for the wealthy, to his friendships with NASCAR owners, Romney has shown that he is insensitive to the plight to those unlike himself. Add to that the distortions that he has spread about President Barack Obama’s policies and views, and one sees that Romney is not only insensitive to most Americans, but he is also averse to the facts.

If he is asked how he will dramatically cut taxes with a revenue neutral plan, he defers, saying just trust me. If he is asked how he will create the 12 million jobs he has promised, he defers, saying just trust me. In question after question, Romney slithers away, clamoring for the electorate to just trust him. Then, out of nowhere comes an unguarded moment filed with truth that is sandwiched between lies.

Most recently, it was in his disdain for the so-called 47 percent of Americans who do not pay taxes, who are dependent on the government for handouts, and are, therefore, beholding to Obama. That many of those people are military veterans, the elderly, students, working poor, the unemployed, did not register with Romney, who seems to view so many as the unwashed masses unable to take responsibility for their own lives.

Of course, sensing that his comments have hurt him, Romney began proclaiming his love for the masses, all Americans, the 100 percent. Even as he did he continued to flub other moments with outbreaks of candor.

As evidence of his empathy for the 47 percent he proclaimed all the good his health care reform produced in Massachusetts. According to Romney, as well as several nonpartisan studies, the number of people, particularly children, with medical insurance in Massachusetts increased dramatically after Romneycare was passed.

Yet, even as he highlights such an accomplishment he rails against Obamacare, declaring to kill it on Day One of a Romney presidency the national law based on what is surely his own most worthwhile acheivement. Even more, he proclaims that one reason that Obamacare is not needed is because the uninsured can always receive care in the nation’s emergency rooms, one of the most costly aspects of the health care industry that both Obamacare and Romneycare seek to eliminate.

There are even more examples in this campaign season. And as we get closer and closer to Nov. 6 there will probably be even more from Willard Mitt Romney, the “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

When Truth is Worse Than Lies

If one looks at former Gov. Mitt Romney’s – and by extension the Republican Party’s – push for the presidency this year, one sees that Romney has decided that no lie will go untold. Time and time again, Romney, his vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, and the campaigns sycophants have told lie after lie after lie about President Barack Obama and his policies in an effort to scare Americans into voting the GOP ticket.

What is really scary though is not the lies that the GOP tells. It is the truths that emanate from Romney. For in those truths lie the most horrific of ideas, the most stunning displays of selfishness, the most neurotic self-aggrandizement in a presidential candidate in some time.

If one did not see this before, then Romney’s comments in the last several weeks, and the release of the video from a May fundraiser in Boca Raton, FL., should provide evidence of how out of touch Romney and the Republicans are with Americans and what it means to be an American. Romney's knee-jerk response to the violence in the Middle East last week demonstrates the chest-thumping, sabre rattling that he and the conservatives seek to pass off as foreign policy. His speech in Florida lays out the plutocratic philosophy of the GOP. No longer is there the lip service to compassionate conservatism. No longer is there a pretense of creating a society where all have a chance to flourish. No longer is there a desire to reach out to others – if only in rhetoric.

Romney and the GOP have decided that the world is made up of makers and takers. The GOP is the party of the makers. The takers are all Democrats, a bunch of left-leaning, Socialist moochers trying to redistribute the gains of the wealthy. So let us now return to the Gilded Age, when the rich bought seats in the U.S. Senate from state legislators. Let us return to that time when the wealthy could live without guilt as they walked by the poor and desolate, ignoring their plight. Let us return to that time when one of the richest men in the world was seen as loving and charitable because he gave a poor child a nickel in a photo op outside a church.

We, the makers, are the worthy, the Republicans shout. We, the makers, are the job creators, they rail. We, the makers, shall allow the hoi polli to bask in our greatness, they declare.

Meanwhile, they strike at all that America should be, a country of shared sacrifice.

According to Mitt Romney's Florida comments, the takers are the 47 percent of Americans who pay no federal income tax. They sit on their oversized duffs, demanding more food, more welfare, more housing, more health care, more of everything from the glorious makers. The takers, Romney and the GOP rants, have no desire to work and they are totally dependent on government handouts.

Not the makers though. No, they built everything they have from the ground up, forsaking government assistance, thriving in a free market economy on their hard work and wits.

Of course we know better. In one of its most recent campaign ads propagating the "You didn't build that" taunt the GOP has been throwing at Obama, the owner of a small-business in Wisconsin talks about making it alone, without government assistance. The owner does not mention that the business received more than $300,000 in government contracts in the Obama years alone. Another of Romney's makers boasted about how he had built his business from scratch, while at the same time complaining that under Obama he has not received enough government contracts.

Yet, that is not the most repugnant stench that rises from the Romney camp. No, that stench comes from the trash heap onto which Romney has placed 47 percent of the American electorate, an electorate he says is beholding to Obama because of a dependency on government, an electorate whose members are unwilling to take personal responsibility or care for their own lives.

It makes you wonder what Mitt Romney's father and mother would think of their little boy. After all, George Romney's first years in America was spent on public relief after Congress created a $100,000 fund to care for the Mormons exiled from their colony in Mexico, according to a recent article on NPR's Web site.

Or at least that is what Romney's mother, Lenore, said in an interview in 1962 when George Romney was running for governor of Michigan, according to NPR. The picture Lenore Romney painted of her husband, a fiscal conservative and social moderate, was a touching one, about a man whose family relied on public assistance, but who was able to rise to become an auto executive and later a governor. And it all started with some government help.

Help that George Romney's son does not want to offer 47 percent of the country, those moochers, those takers, those Obama supporters.

Setting the Stage for the DNC

“It’s time for Democrats to stiffen our backbone and stand up for what we believe.”

That quote from Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts resounded through the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Tuesday night. The question is will it resound through the nation because now, more than ever, we must decide what type of nation we want to be. Do we want a selfish, vindictive, xenophobic America? Or do we want a generous, forgiving, inclusive America?

For too long Democrats – as well as moderate Republicans – have been willing to acquiesce to the extreme right of the GOP, to hide for fear that acknowledging the Democratic Party’s basic principles will lead to members being labeled big-government, big- spending liberals. It is a label Democrats have been running from for decades.

But Tuesday, Patrick gave voice to what many Democratic voters have been longing for: A strong party that stands by ideas for the common good, the sense of community over the selfishness of the Ayn Rand acolytes.

“We Democrats owe America more than a strong argument for what we are against,” Patrick said. “We need to be just as strong about what we are for.”

The question, Patrick said, is “what do we believe?”

“We believe in an economy that grows opportunity out to the middle class and the marginalized, not just up to the well connected,” he said. “We believe that freedom means keeping government out of our most private affairs, including out of a woman’s decision whether to keep an unwanted pregnancy and everybody’s decision about whom to marry. We believe that we owe the next generation a better country than we found, and that every American has a stake in that. We believe that in times like these we should turn to each other, not on each other. We believe that government has a role to play, not in solving every problem in everybody’s life, but in helping people help themselves to the American dream. That’s what Democrats believe.”

Patrick was not the only one who pushed for Democrats to be Democrats, but he may have been the most vehement.

First Lady Michelle Obama reiterated Patrick’s lament, arguing that President Barack Obama should be re-elected because those ideas are at the heart of what is and should be America.

The president “believes that when you've worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity you do not slam it shut behind you,” she said. “You reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.”

“I know from experience that if I truly want to leave a better world for my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, if we want to give all our children a foundation for their dreams and opportunities worthy of their promise, if we want to give them that sense of limitless possibility – that belief that here in America, there is always something better out there if you're willing to work for it – then we must work like never before,” she continued.

And there lied the heart of what this election – and America – is about. It is one thing to extoll America’s “exceptionalism.” It is another to live up to it. Most recently, we have failed on the latter.

“The days we live in are not easy ones, but we have seen days like this before, and America prevailed,” said Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio. “With the wisdom of our founders and the values of our families, America prevailed. With each generation going further than the last, America prevailed. And with the opportunity we build today for a shared prosperity tomorrow, America will prevail.”

Indeed it will if we take the right action.

Eastwood, the GOP, and the Harvey Syndrome

I’m a great fan of Clint Eastwood: Unforgiven; Gran Torino; Bird; Play Misty for Me; Sudden Impact; Escape from Alcatraz – all were good, as were the spaghetti westerns. The same can be said of the Dirty Harry movies. I’ll even give him a nod for The Bridges of Madison County.


But the last night of the Republican National Convention made me think he was having either a "senior moment" as Rex Reed declared several years ago when he was accused of shoplifting CDs at a Tower Records in Manhattan; or a Pee Wee Herman moment when he was caught pleasuring himself in a movie theater in South Florida; or maybe it was an Elwood P. Dowd moment when the empty chair on the stage in Tampa seemed to take the shape of a 6-foot invisible rabbit named Harvey.

Either way, the rambling, often off-point speech Eastwood made Thursday night seemed to say so much about the 2012 Republican National Convention. There Eastwood stood, talking to – and sometimes admonishing – an empty chair, not totally aware of what his own actions meant. An American icon reduced to a caricature. It was a disturbing scene, awkward in its execution, so eerie that one could not easily turn away. As Tom Brokaw tweeted: “Clint Eastwood became huge star as a man of few words As a surprise guest on the Tampa stage he had too many words.”

Even worse, Eastwood seemed to be leading tens of thousands of Republicans in a mental self-pleasuring while millions of people watched dumfounded, shocked at what they saw. Indeed – to borrow from Mike Lofgren, a former 30-year Republican staff member on Capitol Hill – the GOP looked like an “apocalyptic cult.” Forget the Kool-Aid; we’ll take the arsenic straight up, no chaser.

That was true of so much of the GOP convention. As I watched the unfolding of the coronation of Willard Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential candidate, I kept thinking of his party as a horde of petulant children. After breaking all the lamps and light bulbs in the house, they complained of the darkness and demanded that someone else pay the repair bill. The Republicans, particularly those in Congress, have spent nearly every day since Jan. 20, 2009, distorting America’s light until all that was left were shadows, a shadiness steeped in claims that President Barack Obama has been a failure, an un-American, post-colonial Kenyan Socialist.

Obama ignored an urgent report by his own 18-person debt commission, the Republicans said this week without mentioning that Rep. Paul Ryan, their vice presidential candidate, led the GOP charge to ignore that urgent report and to strike it down. Obama failed to save a GM plant in Janesville, WI, the Republicans said without mentioning that the decision to close the plant was made six months before Obama was elected. Obama is taking the work out of the welfare-to-work program, the Republicans shouted without mentioning that two Republican governors were among the five who recently sought waivers that would give each more flexibility in meeting federal work requirements.

And there were the claims that Obama had destroyed the economy, despite evidence that Obama has created more jobs in the time since the economic downturn ended than Ronald Reagan did in the same period of his presidency after the end of the economic recession of the early 1980s.

Of course, we expect a certain amount of fudging of facts in a political campaign, a certain amount of hyperbole, and a certain amount of partisanship. Political conventions are infomercials, a chance to sale the nation your candidate, to keep them from ordering the Jinsu knives or the Amway products being hustled on the other cable channels.

But this year’s GOP infomercial went beyond what we normally expect. It was peppered with outright lies and grand omissions, a floundering about in the marketplace of ideas. Racial overtones and undercurrents hovered over the Tampa Bay Times Forum. Concrete details about policies and national direction were as scarce as the number of dark-hued faces in an arena in a state where tans are ubiquitous.

Yet, that was nothing compared to the Hollywood deity who was once the Pale Rider, a gun-toting avenging preacher. He stood talking to a chair, looking not much different than Grandpa Simpson, a crotchety old man. Eastwood would have been better off if we could just chalk it all up to a “senior moment.” We can’t though. No wonder even Republicans take issue with their party. Let’s hope the Democrats do better when their turn comes up.

When the "Big Tent" Collapses

One has to wonder what is happening to the Republican Party and its members. Is the party’s establishment having a Grinch moment, finally coming to its senses on a myriad of issues, growing a heart where one did not seem to exist before? Or is it having a Scarecrow moment, finally realizing that having a brain is about whether one actually uses it? What about its members? Are they having the opposite experience, rejecting both the Grinch and the Scarecrow?

Those are some of the questions that hover over the GOP national convention in Tampa, Fla., this week. While the party of Lincoln appears united in its desire to defeat President Barack Obama, it seems more divided than it has been in some time, with various factions trying to out conservative the others, instigating a battle over such hot button social issues as abortion, making xenophobia part of the party identity, and articulating a disdain for government that has made the GOP far too extreme for most Americans.

Even Republicans – from Dan Quayle to George Pataki to Chuck Hagel to David A. Stockman to Jeb Bush to Mike Lofgren – have articulated the problems stemming from the party’s hard-right turn.

“The Republican Party needs to re-establish its philosophy of the big tent with principles,” former Vice President Dan Quayle told The New York Times recently. “The philosophy you hear from time to time, which is unfortunate, is one of exclusion rather than inclusion. You have to be expanding the base, expanding the party, because, compared to the Democratic Party, the Republican Party is a minority party.”

Former New York Gov. George E. Pataki said: “What I fear is that that very positive desire to limit the power and the role of the federal government could turn into a philosophy that is antigovernment. Sometimes, those who I fear have that antigovernment view, as opposed to the limited-government view, rise to the center of the nominating process. I think that is not a good thing for the Republican Party.”

Indeed, the GOP has moved so far to the right that Ronald Reagan, the man neo-conservatives praise repeatedly as their beacon, would not want to be part of it, according to Chuck Hagel, a former U.S. Senator from Nebraska who now teaches at Georgetown University.

“Reagan would be stunned by the party today,” Hagel told Josh Rogin for a story posted in The Cable on Foreign Policy’s Web site in May. “Reagan wouldn’t identify with this party. There’s a streak of intolerance in the Republican Party today that scares people. Intolerance is a very dangerous thing in a society because it always leads to a tragic ending....

“Ronald Reagan was never driven by ideology. He was a conservative but he was a practical conservative. He wanted limited government but he used government and he used it many times. And he would work with the other party,” Hagel said.

Hagel compared the battle over the soul of the current Republican Party to a similar battle in the 1950s, when such moderates as Dwight D. Eisenhower fought such conservatives as Joseph McCarthy. The moderates won that battle. Their heirs are losing this one.

“Now the Republican Party is in the hands of the right, I would say the extreme right, more than ever before,” Hagel said. “You’ve got a Republican Party that is having difficulty facing up to the fact that if you look at what happened during the first eight years of the century, it was under Republican direction.”

Hagel decried the current Republican Party as schizophrenic and intolerant of dissent. He cited the resignation of Republican senator Lamar Alexander from a leadership post last year as a clear indication of how the party has changed. “There has been a litmus test, purity factor that has been applied over the years. I saw it in the Senate myself,” said Hagel, who was in the Senate from 1997 to 2009.

Hagel is not alone in his assessment.

In an Aug. 13 op-ed piece in The New York Times, David A. Stockman, the former head of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985, described Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan as “the same empty conservative sermon.” Stockman should know since he was the person that oversaw Reagan’s budget office.

“Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to ‘job creators’ (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse,” Stockman wrote. “Mr. Ryan professes to be a defense hawk, though the true conservatives of modern times — Calvin Coolidge, Herbert C. Hoover, Robert A. Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, even Gerald R. Ford — would have had no use for the neocon conservative imperialism that the G.O.P. cobbled from policy salons run by Irving Kristol’s ex-Trotskyites three decades ago. These doctrines now saddle our bankrupt nation with a roughly $775 billion ‘defense’ budget in a world where we have no advanced industrial state enemies and have been fired (appropriately) as the global policeman.”

Stockman went on to say that Ryan folded “like a lawn chair on the auto bailout and the Wall Street bailout.” (Ryan the shrink-the-government radical also sought federal dollars to save a GM plant in his hometown, the same one he has repeatedly accused President Obama of failing to protect. GM announced in June 2008 that it was closing the plant, which happened in December 2008.)

“But the greater hypocrisy is his phony ‘plan’ to solve the entitlements mess by deferring changes to social insurance by at least a decade,” Stockman said. “A true agenda to reform the welfare state would require a sweeping, income-based eligibility test, which would reduce or eliminate social insurance benefits for millions of affluent retirees. Without it, there is no math that can avoid giant tax increases or vast new borrowing.”

The criticisms of the GOP by its old guard go further than just the budget lies being told by Romney and Ryan, and the abandonment of what were once Republican principles. Jeb Bush assailed the party for its harsh anti-immigration stance, saying in essence that the GOP is becoming the party of angry white people. Bush urged his colleagues to recognize that the shifting national demographics mean that the party must soften its rhetoric if it wants to lead.

Possibly more revealing was the warnings presented by Lofgren, who spent nearly 30 years as a Republican staffer on Capitol Hill. In a September 2011 article for Truth-Out.org, Lofgren lambasted both the Democrat and Republican parties for their ties to corporate America. He also described each as being rotten, but he was especially harsh on his fellow Republicans.

“Both parties are not rotten in quite the same way,” Lofgren said. “The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP. To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics.”

The “crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center” of the GOP today, Lofgren said. “Steve King, Michele Bachman, Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy,” he said.

“It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” Lofgren wrote nearly a year ago. “This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.”

He is right.

Pride in the Lies

How does one start to discuss the absurdity and hypocrisy of the 2012 Presidential campaign? Does one begin by detailing the outright distortions – actually lies – that are being bandied about? Does one seek the high road in assailing the transgressions of the candidates? Or does one simply jump into the fray, taking off the gloves and dropping all pretense of neutrality? Deciding which to do in this campaign season is difficult because one cannot be honest without stating the unadulterated truth, without seeming to take sides in a partisan manner.

Campaigns are always filled with innuendo, half-truths, political spin, and hollow promises. What one candidate sees as a strong plan to move America forward, the opposition sees as a plan to move the nation backward. Such arguments are legitimate because one person's great idea is another person's folly. It is part of our political process that we debate such things, that each candidate presents his wares in the marketplace of ideas, and the shoppers choose what they see as the best, the most worthwhile product.

That has not occurred so far in this election cycle. This presidential election has taken lying to a new low, has created an environment where there is a strong aversion to facts, has resulted in the greatest secrecy in the history of modern elections. And so much of it lies with the Republican Party and its presumptive nominee Mitt Romney.

Never before has a campaign shown such a disdain for truth. Never before has a campaign so openly lied to the public. Never before has a campaign so brazenly admitted that it is lying. Never before has a campaign hid from voters details of what its candidate believes for fear that knowledge of those ideas will result in his not being elected.

But Romney has done each. He has resorted to the age-old GOP ploy of turning a campaign that should be about ideas into one couched in racism and resentment. Worse than his actually doing those things is the inability of too many people to see the danger in his lies, to see the deceitfulness in his secrecy, to see the recklessness in his disregard.

A look at the ads offered by the Romney campaign is a good starting point in discussing the deceit and the manner in which it has gone without enough challenge. Early in the campaign Team Romney took a quote from then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama about how the economy would play in the 2008 campaign and presented it as if President Barack Obama had recently uttered those words. The edited quote was a response to Sen. John McCain and the Republicans. When challenged about the obvious inaccuracies in the ad, a Romney campaign advisor said:

“First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business…. Ads are agitprop…. Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It’s ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context…. All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.”

Indeed, ads are about persuading people, convincing them that they must buy what they may not need nor want. Yet, there needs to be some truth in them, a sense that there is a foundation on which to build. Not for Team Romney. Outright lying is all within the framework of its idea of fair play.

The misuse of President Obama's quote was not an isolated incident. Recently, Team Romney took a portion of a presidential speech, edited it out of context, and argued that Obama is against small businesses. That the quote reflects an idea – no one is successful without help from somewhere or someone else – also expressed by Romney during the XIX Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002 was unimportant to Team Romney.

The same can be said of the effort to paint Obama as the "food stamp" or welfare president – code for Obama wants to take the hard-earned money of white America and give it to all those lazy black and Latino people sitting at home on welfare. Instead of honestly debating whether it is right to give states more flexibility in moving people from welfare to work, Team Romney seeks to paint a picture of Obama as simply wanting to send government checks to people unwilling to work. If one listened only to the Romney campaign one would not realize that Romney sought such a waiver while he was governor of Massachusetts or that two Republican governors sought those waivers from the Obama Administration.

The lies and deceit do not stop there.

In a speech in Colorado Thursday, President Obama said:

“I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back and GM is number one again. So now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs not just in the auto industry, but in every industry. I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China. I want them taking root in places like Pueblo.”

Republican sycophants quickly proclaimed that Obama said he wants to create an auto-bailout like policy for other industries.

As if that is not enough, the Democrats and Republicans agreed to cut defense and domestic spending by $1 trillion over 10 years as part of the debt ceiling deal. Team Romney and the Republicans now call those President Obama’s defense cuts.

Romney also refuses to detail how he will cut taxes by 20 percent in a supposedly revenue neutral plan. He says only that he will make changes to the tax code by eliminating deductions. Will those deductions be on capital gains? Mortgage interest deductions on second homes? Multi-million dollar tax right offs for owners of NASCAR tracks? Or will those deductions be the ones that middle- and working-class Americans depend on: the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, the Tuition Tax Credit?

We do not know because Mitt Romney won't say. We could probably bet that most of those deductions he plans to eliminate will not include the areas from which he benefits. Of course we can’t tell for sure since he refuses to release more than two years of his federal tax returns.