Important Notes:
Canada is considered part of the G8, though kind of like the tambourine player is considered part of the band.
Thanks to the combined efforts of US and Canadian governments, the public remains blissfully unaware that at least four American thespians have been eaten during tragic overacting mishaps involving William Shatner.
Canadian money is hilarious.
The 2012 US Election Campaign
In Canada, national political campaigns are famously brief. We begin by pretty much ignoring the whole thing for a few weeks. Then there’s a debate, a little yelling, maybe some pointing, every leader buys a box of Timbits and, boom, suddenly it’s election day.
But in the United States, presidential campaigns last longer than all pregnancies and most wars. Even before the 2008 campaign had ended, candidates were laying the groundwork for 2012, engaging in such unsavoury practices as raising money and visiting Iowa. What follows is a chronicle of sorts of the 2012 US presidential campaign.
This week’s debate among Republican candidates for the US presidency was sponsored by Tea Party Express, which sounds like something you’d find next to the Orange Julius but is in fact an umbrella organization for grassroots groups dedicated to the pursuit of low taxes, small government and—to judge from the debate audience—$6 haircuts.
Broadcast on CNN, the debate began with a display of the gravitas we’ve come to expect from American politics—a snazzy video montage in which each candidate was assigned a cute nickname. Michele Bachmann was introduced as The Firebrand. Newt Gingrich? The Big Thinker! One immediately lamented the absence of Sarah Palin, if only to discover which nickname she’d have been given. (The Little Thinker?)
The frontrunner in the Republican field is Rick Perry, who has the look of a man who’s just returned from hoodwinking J.R. Ewing in an oil deal. The Texas governor scored big with his opening line, in which he vowed to “make Washington, DC, as inconsequential in your life as I can.” He should consider hooking up with a specialist in making things inconsequential, such as the person who wrote the final four seasons of Entourage.
Another of the candidates, Herman Cain, is a former CEO of the Godfather’s Pizza chain. He began by declaring: “I believe that America has become a nation of crises. That’s why I want to be president.” Note his refusal to get boxed into a corner as being for or against crises. Pretty savvy for a political novice.
Each of the eight candidates assailed Barack Obama for the grim state of the US economy. But how would they fix it? Mitt Romney touted a seven-point plan for a stronger economy, which includes balancing the budget, ensuring the creation of “fantastic human capital” and achieving energy security. So check off all those boxes and the economic rebound should kick in by Romney’s seventeenth term as president. Vote Mitt and the twenty-third century shall be ours!
Alas, the pizza guy quickly trumped Romney’s seven-point plan with his “9-9-9” plan, which (a) has more numbers, and is therefore better, and (b) includes a flat 9 percent business tax, personal income tax and national sales tax. The most impressive part is the CEO’s pledge to get all required legislation through Congress in thirty minutes or it’s free.
Meanwhile, Bachmann made her pitch to the Tea Partiers by reminding them that she’s “a person that’s had feet in the private sector and a foot in the federal government.” Add it up and that’s three feet for America. Your move, Rick Perry.
The most delightful of the participants was the former governor of Utah, Jon Huntsman, who was the only candidate with sufficient gumption and insufficient instincts to drop a Kurt Cobain joke on the Tea Partiers. The reference went so far over their heads that it burned up on re-entry. A Huntsman victory at next year’s Republican convention is unlikely, which is a shame because he has a way with words. Specifically, he has a way of making words sound stupid. “Well, let me just say about workers,” he interjected at one point. “This country needs more workers. Can we say that?” He went on to describe the national debt as a voracious, unstoppable zombie. “It’s going to eat, eat, eat alive this country!”
Fear not the Killer Debt Zombie, America! Rick Santorum will defend you. The former senator referenced his own personal courage an amazing six times in the span of a one-minute answer. “You folks want someone with courage?” he asked. “I’ve got a track record of courage.” Pollsters agree that Santorum would be the frontrunner if the main crisis facing America was getting that spider out of the kitchen.
What’s deeply enjoyable about this phase of the US political cycle is the flagrant manner in which candidates ignore the reality of the modern American presidency. Past administrations have demonstrated that a new president has a brief window in which to do a little something before his agenda is smothered by partisan wrangling. But the Republican candidates are dreaming big.
Gingrich said he’d find the money to reform Social Security in a single stroke—all he needs to do is reduce the unemployment rate to 4 percent from 9 percent. (Oh, is that all?) Later, Romney went further by vowing to quickly “reform Medicare and reform Medicaid and reform Social Security.”
And then on Tuesday …
—September 2011
As Republicans move closer to choosing a presidential nominee, more and more Americans find themselves asking that old chestnut of a question: If I could sit down in a bar and have a beer with any of the candidates, why wouldn’t I stay home instead?
This past week saw yet another televised debate for the handful of hopefuls who remain, including Rick Santorum, who looks like he received his share of wedgies as a boy; Mitt Romney, who looks like he delivered a few; and Ron Paul, who kind of resembles one.
In their midst, the new Man to Beat: Newt Gingrich, a politician that charisma forgot, but only after punching him in the belly and running off with his wallet and his capacity to feel. Newt stole the hearts of Republicans in South Carolina—easy for him because to judge from all visual evidence, he used to be the Hamburglar—and now he’s fixing to do the same in Florida.
The challenge? Gingrich is trying to win the nomination of America’s self-proclaimed real family values party despite having cheated on at least one wife and divorced two. Also, he is unpleasant.
(And there’s a Canadian angle! Gingrich has spoken fondly of our prime minister—but there’s an obvious conflict of interest in that both men buy their hair from the same factory.)
The latest debate left one thing beyond doubt: Newt would be the best Trivial Pursuit president ever. He’s like Wikipedia but with weird fat baby hands. While avoiding some question or other, Gingrich went off on a tangent about beet sugar versus cane sugar and how “fascinating” the rivalry is. For a fleeting moment, a fractured nation was united in sympathy for all three Mrs. Gingriches and those long decades of dinner-table conversation.
Newt: Pass the salt. Curious thing about salt: in 1635, a chemist outside Oslo found that if you tweak the chemical formulation for …
[Wife No. 1 suffocates self in mashed potatoes.]
By now we’re getting to know the candidates’ idiosyncrasies. For instance, when Mitt Romney is in trouble during a debate, he reminds everyone that he ran the Salt Lake Olympics. He’s probably aiming to mine a patriotic vein but it usually comes off as dodging.
Question: Governor Romney, will you release more than two years of your income tax returns?
Answer: Biathlon!
Still, you can see why it’s more fun for Romney to reminisce about luge than endure another barrage of criticism for the small sin of changing every view he’s held on pretty much every issue that’s important to conservatives. It’s gotten to the point where Mitt is now skilled enough to execute a flip-flop within the confines of a single sentence. “We’re a great nation,” Romney said during the debate, “but a great nation doesn’t have so many people suffering.” Do you hear me, America: we’re a great nation and also w
e are not a great nation! I HAVE CORNERED ALL SIDES IN THIS DEBATE!
Gingrich has his own baggage, which he forces a poor child to carry around so the kid learns the work ethic. (I’m kidding, of course. Gingrich would actually prefer that inner-city kids work as janitors in schools so they don’t grow up all lazy and welfarey.) The former Speaker’s rivals take delight in casually mentioning how long they’ve been married to their wives. Newt typically responds by shifting to the subject with which he’s most comfortable: Newt.
In a mesmerizing run during the Florida debate, Gingrich took credit for an array of accomplishments, including the election of Ronald Reagan, America’s return to prosperity in the 1980s and, if I’m not mistaken, all three good REO Speedwagon songs. The Soviet Empire grew menacing and Newt destroyed it! A deficit grew large and Newt eliminated it! A toenail grew long and Newt clipped it!
Toward the end of the debate, Gingrich explained his philosophy of attracting voters—and it was a little awkward because frankly it felt like the same thing he’d say to a pretty lady in a bar in an effort to seal the deal at 1:30 AM. “Don’t be for me,” he said, because being “for” someone is superficial. Then he cooed: “Be with me.”
America, Newt Gingrich is trying to hook up with you. How’s he going to break it to the missus this time?
—January 2012
As a candidate, Mitt Romney has several weaknesses. He says a lot of dumb things. He has a history of flip-flopping on the issues. He makes the Grey Poupon guy seem like an average Joe.
But Mitt’s main political liability may wind up being a decision he made thirty years ago—to coax the family dog into its crate, strap the pooch to the roof of the family station wagon and head out from Boston on a twelve-hour drive to the Romney summer home in Ontario.
Along the way, Seamus the Irish setter developed what the media have elegantly described as “intestinal distress,” which manifested in a hydrous, mephitic substance that—aw, enough elegance, the diarrhea pretty much coated the car windows, okay? Cool-headed Mitt pulled into a gas station, borrowed a hose, cleaned up the car, cleaned off the dog and put him back up top for the final leg of the journey.
The story was recounted by Romney’s friends as an example of the man’s calm under crisis. And frankly, you can see why they thought it would be interpreted positively: cleaning up other people’s shit is pretty much all the president does these days.
Alas, the story of Seamus’s rooftop ride has become a political burden. Gail Collins of the New York Times shoehorns it into every political column. An organization called Dogs Against Romney has more than fifty thousand Facebook supporters. There’s even a satirical book, Dog on the Roof!
In mounting a defence, Romney insisted that Seamus enjoyed being on the roof because the dog “liked fresh air.” And hey, if a dog likes fresh air, imagine how much he’d enjoy the kind that comes at him at 120 km/h loaded with bugs.
(Barack Obama has canine baggage as well, having acknowledged that he ate dog meat as a child in Jakarta. But Americans are forgiving because he was a boy at the time and also because many of them don’t know what a “Jakarta” is.)
The Seamus saga has been described as a “character-illuminating anecdote.” Combined with another story from Mitt’s past—a bunch of school chums held down a gay classmate while Romney cut off some of the boy’s “longish, blond hair”—it basically guarantees that future presidential candidates will need to hire campaign staff at puberty to head off potentially damaging anecdotes from youth and early adulthood.
Teenager: I’m going to Dairy Queen.
Strategist: And have the voters of 2048 think you supported the monarchy? I THINK NOT.
As the election draws nearer, the Seamus anecdote is gaining negative traction. Here are three ways for Romney to address it directly:
1. Own it: Embrace the probability that anyone who’ll vote against him because of Seamus was never likely to vote for him. So have some fun with it, like Sarah Palin did with “Drill, baby, drill,” and Dick Cheney did with shooting guys in the face.
Put a doghouse on top of the Romney campaign bus. Point out that over the years plenty of animals have enjoyed riding on top of vehicles—Teen Wolf, for instance. The point is that Romney can reclaim and repurpose the image of the rooftop rider. Potential slogan: “You may have to ride up top, America, but Mitt Romney will get you there!”
2. Enlist third-party validators: Romney could cajole volunteers to ride in a small box on top of a car and say it’s not so bad. Maybe start with reporters who covered the dying days of the Newt Gingrich campaign—compared to that ordeal, a dozen hours of relentless windswept terror sounds like a blast.
3. Go negative on Seamus: It’s not easy to assail the character of a deceased family pet—or it wasn’t until the introduction of super PACs, which can funnel unlimited funds into ruthless political advertising.
Sinister music. A narrator reads in baritone.
Seamus the dog. He claimed to be man’s best friend. But Seamus pooped all over this nice man’s car.
[Photo: Sad Mitt Romney.]
You know who else was known to poop? Hitler. Seamus the Irish setter: he was pretty much dog Hitler.
[Photo: Seamus with a Hitler moustache.]
Bad dog, Seamus. Bad dog.
—May 2012
Perhaps you’ve been following the presidential race closely for the past many months. Good for you. You probably have vague memories of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and that weird pizza guy who kept screaming the number “nine” at everyone. You may even have succeeded in banishing all mental images related to Newt Gingrich’s yearning for an open marriage. If that’s true, I feel kind of bad for having just mentioned it. The open marriage, I mean. The one that would have freed Gingrich to have intimate relations with various ladies while not wearing any—ah, I see now that I’m only making matters worse.
Anyway, with Republicans preparing to gather for their national convention, this is a good time for the rest of us to get caught up on where things stand in American politics.
As you may recall, the current president is a Democrat by the name of Barack Obama. He killed Osama bin Laden—not personally, but (the way he tells it) pretty much. When not killing bin Laden, which he totally did by the way, President Obama passed a law that ensures a modicum of health coverage to everyone except Osama bin Laden, who is dead because Barack Obama killed him.
The Republicans have responded by selecting as their nominee one Willard Mitt Romney, who, had he been in office, would have killed Osama bin Laden even deader.
Romney looks like America’s idea of a president. But he often sounds like America’s idea of an eccentric uncle. Travelling in Michigan, Romney repeatedly made reference to his belief that trees in the state are “the right height.” It’s possible Romney was trying to evoke a timeless image from nature to symbolize American exceptionalism in an age of global volatility. He may also have been high.
Or maybe that’s just Mitt Romney. Even when he says normal things, they can come out sounding a little unusual. This week he hailed the success of NASA’s rover by boasting to a rally: “We just landed on Mars and took a good look at what’s going on there!” He made it sound as though Curiosity was scoping out the chicks down at Applebee’s.
Romney has also been prone to the political gaffe. This past weekend, he introduced his running mate—Paul Ryan, a young congressman with the hairline of Count Chocula and the ideological flexibility of Count Dooku—by describing him as “the next president of the United States.” Wolf Blitzer almost wet himself over that one.
By the way, the selection of Ryan generated the following statement from Obama: “Congressman [Paul] Ryan is a decent man, he is a family man, he is an articulate spokesman for [Mitt] Romney’s vision. But it’s a vision that I fundamentally disagree with.”
This is a rather toothless version of a classic
and always enjoyable form of political attack: the Ol’ Switcheroo. Although variations exist, the architecture is usually the same:
A nice thing.
Another nice thing.
Not a nice thing.
It’s basically a way of attempting to present yourself as reasonable and decent while not passing up a chance to remind voters that your opponent, given the opportunity, would suffocate the American Dream in its sleep just to steal its pyjamas.
Until and unless the independent US voter sours on the Republican vice-presidential nominee, this is a form of criticism you will continue to see from Democrats, many of whom apparently like Ryan despite his hard-right views. In particular, I can imagine Joe Biden giving it a go: “Paul Ryan is a good man, a great man, a beautiful Adonis of a man with whom, if I were even a little bit gay, I would totally make out. But if Paul Ryan becomes vice-president, he and Mitt Romney will not only dismantle Medicare and punish the poor with spankings; they will also shred the very fabric of the space-time continuum. Still, great guy.”
History suggests it should be fairly easy to defeat a sitting president who has presided over a country that has endured economic malaise, high unemployment and two new Maroon 5 albums. But Romney is behind in the polls. According to surveys, two-thirds of Americans think he cares more about the rich than the middle class. Which is weird because Romney relates to the middle class: there’s no class he’s fired more of.
There’s still time for Romney–Ryan, of course. The debates are yet to come. The Republican ticket is backed by several super PACs that will raise and spend massive amounts of money. And Romney will likely get a boost from his party’s convention, assuming they find room for him to give a speech amid all the references to Ronald Reagan.
The Future and Why We Should Avoid It Page 19
