The Party Conventions -The iPINIONS Journal

This will be my last (and, for that reason, relatively lengthy) commentary on the horse race between Romney and Obama until late October. At that time I’ll review their debates, which I suspect will be even more scripted and predictable than these conventions were, and I’ll restate my prediction for Election Day. I’m tuning out because I see no point in commenting on the bickering over inconsequential political gaffes, audaciously dishonest ads, and meaningless tracking polls that will be raining down on us like confetti between now and then.

That said, this week’s Democratic National Convention (DNC) followed on the heels of the Republican National Convention (RNC) that was held last week. As fate would have it, I was unable to watch either show; although, this was probably one of those proverbial blessings in disguise.

In fact, anyone who knows anything about quadrennial party conventions had to have known that neither would produce anything newsworthy. And based on the video highlights I’ve seen, this was in fact the case – notwithstanding some admittedly memorable moments.

As a case in point, the highlight of the RNC was the way actor Clint Eastwood made a doddering old fool of himself by mumbling to an empty chair, in which he insisted President Obama was sitting, for 12 cringe-inducing minutes. He seemed to have completely forgotten that he was allotted just five minutes to endorse Mitt Romney. Now “Eastwooding” (i.e., mumbling to an empty chair) is surpassing Tebowing as the nation’s wackiest social phenomenon.

It was damning enough that Clint showed Tea Party-like disrespect by using this august occasion to caricature the first Black president of the United States as a hapless Invisible Man. But far more so was the way the self-righteous Christians who comprise the base of the Republican Party betrayed their faith by cheering on his profane schtick as if he were Billy Graham preaching at one of his famous crusades.

Apropos of which, it speaks volumes about real Christian values when you juxtapose the way the RNC’S practically all-White delegates egged Clint on with the way Obama turned the other cheek by declaring that, despite the disrespect, he’s still “a huge Clint Eastwood fan.” He also poked fun at Clint’s diss by tweeting a photo taken from behind of him sitting in a chair with just the back of his head and signature Dumbo ears showing with the caption, “This seat is taken.”

On the other hand, like movie critic Roger Ebert, many of you probably found Clint’s performance just “sad and pathetic … and unworthy of him.” Except that this erstwhile tough guy has been playing along in emasculated stupor for over a year now as his trophy wife makes a spectacle of his career and good name by trying to get the Eastwoods to keep up with the Kardashians on reality TV.

But enough about Clint, because the real reason the RNC does not matter is that it did nothing to inform voters about the way Romney and the Republicans would actually govern, if elected.

For example, watching the RNC you’d never know:

that the only plan they have to grow the economy and create jobs is the same concoction of trickle-down policies, including deregulation to allow banks to revert to operating like casinos, that caused Bush to leave behind the worst economic mess the country had seen since the Great Depression for Obama to clean up; or
that Romney aped congressional Republicans by taking a cult-like pledge to reject any compromise with Democrats to balance the budget and reduce the national debt – even if that compromise grants 90 percent of the cuts in government programs for the poor and middle class Republicans want and only 10 percent of the increases in taxes on the rich Democrats want; or
that they consider it an article of faith to repeal Obamacare, which provides the basic healthcare that every president from Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton tried to no avail to provide for nearly 40 million poor and uninsured Americans; or
that they are determined not only to abolish a woman’s right to an abortion (and all it takes is giving Romney the opportunity to appoint one Supreme Court justice), but also to curtail her access to family planning services; or
that they are hell-bent not just on rekindling Cold War hostilities with Russia, but also on igniting them with China, which would make the trillions Bush wasted on Iraq seem like chump change; or
that, instead of moderating Israel’s fiery rhetoric about bombing Iran, they are adding fuel to it.

Most galling of all, though, you’d never know:

that the prominent RNC speakers blaming Obama for failing to grow the economy and create jobs are the very politicians who met on day one of his presidency to formulate a party-line scheme to ensure the so-called failure they are now complaining/gloating about.

Meanwhile, despite their almost treasonous scheme, Obama has presided over almost four years of positive economic growth, while championing the most progressive legislative agenda since FDR’s New Deal at home and restoring America’s prestige abroad; in a phrase: GM is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead.

Which is why the choice between Obama’s undeniable record of accomplishments and his agenda to keep the country moving forward and Romney’s plan to move it backward in so many ways should be a no-brainer.

I appreciate of course that another commentator could present an equally damning review of the DNC. Except that he would have to propagate the “Big Lies” that informed much of what was said at the RNC. For example, it is a logical fallacy for Romney and the Republicans to damn Obama as a clueless community organizer trying to perpetrate a socialist agenda on America given that he bailed out Wall Street and his policies have led to a near doubling of the U.S. stock market. Incidentally, this latter point exposes every corporate CEO who has complained about his presidency being bad for business as just an overpaid Republican hack.

We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.

This, according to the Washington Post (on August 30, 2012) is how no less a person than Romney Pollster Neil Newhouse responded to reports about speeches at the RNC being riddled with misstatements and outright lies.

In point of fact, VP nominee Paul Ryan himself demonstrated that Republicans are not going to allow facts to get in the way of scaring up support by painting a completely distorted version of Obama’s presidency. This is why it’s pointless to counter their partisan talking points with objective facts. Instead, it would be far more effective to damn them with their own words.

For instance, Romney insisted that the most important decision for any presidential candidate is selecting a VP running mate who is qualified to serve as president on day one. (Sensible Republicans will not hesitate to tell you that John McCain fatally undermined his candidacy four years ago by picking a clearly unqualified Sarah Palin.) To make his point, Romney ridiculed Obama as the most unqualified person ever elected president because he had no business experience.

Actually, according to a May 30, 2012 report in Forbes, Romney stated that a presidential (and vice-presidential) candidate should be required to:

spend at least three years working in business before he could become president [or vice president] of the United States.

Well, it’s disqualifying enough that Obama has had to point out to Romney the elementary differences between running a company with the sole objective of maximizing shareholder profits and governing a country with the multifaceted objective of ensuring the general welfare of an entire nation. (Perhaps this explains why Romney thinks it’s more important to provide tax breaks for the rich than to provide healthcare for the poor.)

But it betrays how uninformed and unreliable Romney’s highly touted business mind is that, by his own standards, some of the most successful presidents in U.S. history, including Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, would not have been qualified to assume office.

More to the point, though, Romney impeached his own candidacy by selecting Ryan – a VP candidate who, again by Romney’s own standards, will not be qualified to serve as president on day one. After all, Ryan has even less business experience today than Senator Obama had in 2008. And if Obama’s lack of business experience made him so hopelessly unqualified back then (as Romney contends), then surely Ryan’s lack thereof makes him even more so today, no?

Not to mention the truly Palinesque spectacle of Ryan turning out to be a pathological liar – given the whoppers he’s already been caught telling. Those include major things like denying he begged the Obama administration for Stimulus money while condemning the Stimulus program as a symptom of what is wrong with “big government,” as well as minor things like claiming he ran an impressive sub-three-hour marathon when his actual time was closer to four hours.

Which begs the question. Why should any voter trust Romney to honor any of his campaign promises when he can’t even be trusted to honor his own word in selecting a VP running mate?

The truth of course is that Romney betrayed his self-professed sound business judgment in this respect because he was/is only interested in appealing to the conservative base of the Republican Party – Ryan’s fitness (or lack thereof) to serve be damned. In this sense he’s no different from Republicans in Congress who were/are only interested in undermining Obama’s presidency, the economy and security of the nation be damned.

This, I submit, is reason enough to deny Romney and the Republicans their shameless and unprincipled power grab. It is also why I encourage Democrats to exploit the political liabilities inherent in Romney picking Ryan instead of engaging in Republican-style dog whistling about Ryan’s personal life. I’m referring here to the spin Democrats are putting on reports that he dumped his Black girlfriend of 10 years in 1998 to make himself more suitable to Republican voters. Especially since blaming Ryan for dumping her for this purpose is probably just as unfair as Ryan blaming Obama for the closing of an auto plant in his hometown that was in fact closed while Bush was still in office.

It is instructive in this respect that, even though the Republican scheme to make him a failed president was, to a significant degree, racially motivated, Obama has ignored the exhortations of prominent pundits like Joe Klein to “play the race card.” Nevertheless, here’s how I think not just the race card but the religious one too will play out in November:

Whites have a shameful history of polling for Black politicians but then voting for White ones on Election Day. By the same token, I suspect Christians now polling for the Mormon Romney will end up voting for the Christian Obama. And, ironically, it is that very shameful history that will militate against fair-minded (Independent) Whites – who gave George W. Bush (and many other mediocre White presidents) two terms – voting to get rid of the first Black president of the United States after just one.

That said, I will suffice to note that the highlight of the DNC was the way speaker after speaker ridiculed the lies of commission and omission that characterized the RNC. It also helped that Obama capped things off by delineating his plans for a second term, which he promises will be highlighted by infrastructure development, innovation and job training, and comprehensive immigration reform.

To be fair, both conventions featured rousing speeches. Interestingly enough, the Democrats demonstrated that they have on their presidential bench not one but two Hispanics, in San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro and his twin brother, who are every bit as impressive at the podium as the Republicans’ Marco Rubio.

Except that, despite their best efforts, no speaker became the breakout star Barack Obama became at the DNC in 2004. And even though Michelle Obama’s speech received far more media acclaim than Ann Romney’s, even Michelle’s struck me as little more than a retelling of the same family stories she has told a thousand times. Indeed, what is truly noteworthy is that so many Twits for brains reacted as if they were hearing her tell them for the very first time….

More important, for those hailing Bill Clinton’s speech as the key to Obama’s re-election bid, I am constrained to note that if Bill were all that he would’ve been speaking at this DNC on behalf of his wife, not Obama. Clinton is simply shrewd enough to know that the best way to get Hillary elected in 2016 is to get Barack re-elected in 2012. This is what inspired his stirring keynote speech.

But this lauding of Clinton just exposes the reflexive, intellectually vacuous and herd-like mooing that passes for political commentary these days. Because virtually every pundit declared that he made a far better case for Obama’s re-election than Obama himself ever could. Yet these are the very same pundits who were hailing Obama just four years ago as the best political orator since Cicero. And, not surprisingly, Obama had them all eating their words the very next day when he made the best case for re-election that any president has ever made.

At any rate, given that lingering resentments now define their strictly “transactional” relationship, it would be remiss of me not to comment on an article in the current edition of the New Yorker that quotes Clinton dismissing Obama in 2008 by saying to Ted Kennedy that:

A few years ago this guy would have been carrying our bags.

Clinton denies it of course. The problem is that I’ve heard him say things about Obama and other Blacks that are even more racist. Moreover, I have written many commentaries lamenting the way White liberals get away with saying things about Black folks that would get White conservatives tarred and feathered, rhetorically. But this is not the time for any further airing of the Democrats’ dirty laundry….

Finally, one of the oldest strategies in sports is to guilt-trip the refs by complaining about them favoring the other team. This invariably results in the refs over-compensating to appease the complainers.

This, in effect, is the strategy Obama’s critics have been executing ever since he declared his candidacy for the 2008 campaign. Specifically, they have accused the media of engaging in a “slobbering love affair” with him. More to the point, it is why so many commentators are now going out of their way to seem tough on Obama – much to the delight of conservatives whose bias against him has always made any media bias in his favor seem like a fantasy. So don’t be surprised this fall when you see talking heads on NBC reporting on Obama as if they are reading from a script written for those on FOX News.

* This commentary was originally published on Saturday, September 8, at 2:03 pm