He won the governorship (a) by pandering to liberals, (b) because the state has a history of electing Republican governors to counterbalance the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, and (c) because his opponent made Martha Coakley look like a brilliant campaign strategist.
Political skills had very little to do with it.
That, and the hope that he’d use his alleged mad bidniss skillz to get the Big Dig under control, something else he didn’t bother to do. Instead, he devoted the first half of his term to Romneycare and to engaging in personal vendetti, and the second half out of the state campaigning for Prezdit by trying to rebrand himself as a Severe Conservative and making snide anti-Massachusetts-liberal cracks.
Well the skill sets have a moderate overlap. Both require credible public communication skills. Both require the ability to hire good people. Both require public improvisation and political antenna. Campaigning doesn’t involve much negotiation or diplomacy though.
It seems that Romney has a tendency to hire insular finance guys, who strike many as being sort of jackasses, for lack of a better term. In 2008, the other Republican candidates (many of whom were A-list) really disliked his team. More recently James Fallows observes: Political talent includes the ability to tell your immediate audience things it wants to hear – without offending people beyond that audience… At its crass extreme, this is the “dog whistle” – sending a coded signal that the general public will miss but only a select group of listeners will recognize and respond to. Less crassly, it is a skill both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton demonstrated in managing to appeal to some groups without alienating too many others. …
Romney violated this rule at just about every stop on his foreign trip. He told an American TV interviewer that the Brits might not be ready for the Olympics – and of course the Brits heard and took offense. He told the audience at an Israeli fund-raiser that the Palestinians had cultural barriers to success, but of course many people outside that room heard what he said. He extended the comparison to cross-border differences between the U.S. and Mexico, which are real. But resting the explanation for that difference on culture – rather than on rule of law, accountability, land-ownership patterns, and so on – can be tricky when it is heard by the many U.S. citizens who are proud of the American system but also of their Latino cultural identity. [Elsewhere, Fallows wonders how Romney could have quoted Jared Diamond without having his advance men reach out to the scholar and do some ego-stroking. Diamond later wrote an op-ed piece shaking his head at what Romney said. Iron ore? Huh? -mfm]
Here is the point I am building to. Three months before the election, it is fair to wonder about Mitt Romney’s basic skill level as a politician. I am not talking policy and substance, which I will do later. I’m talking about the counterpart to what coaches call “overall athleticism,” “court vision,” “ball sense,” even “football IQ.” In politics this includes an ability to read audiences, to self-edit and self-correct in real time, and to sense effortlessly how your words will sound to people on the other end.
The other problem is that Romney’s key economic advisers are in a tight squeeze given his campaign promises. Now many of those decisions -the delusion that a .33 vs a .36 marginal rate on those whose income tops $250,000 per year will make a difference, death panels, long form birth certificates and the like- are part of the broader conservative Zeitgeist. But cooking up a plan that partially finances a rate reduction for the rich with middle class tax increases and ballooning long term deficits for the remainder is especially dubious. Such nuttiness has the effect of driving out some number of sensible people from your circle --and worse, damaging the judgment of others. Professor Brad DeLong complains: The Council of Economic Advisers chairs of the George W. Bush administration–Glenn Hubbard, Greg Mankiw, and Eddie Lazear–surely did not go to Washington to be shills for policies that would slow economic growth. Yet that is what they did, and if they had any positive impact on the policies actually pursued by the George W. Bush administration, I do not see it. By my reckoning, they now owe us bigtime: Lazear ought to be trying to settle his account by pushing for aggressive labor-matching reemployment policies and for preserving the end to health-insurance job lock in RomneyCare–excuse me, ObamaCare. Mankiw ought to be trying to settle his account by pushing for a restoration of the price-level path to its pre-2008 trend and a carbon tax. And Hubbard ought to be trying to settle his account by pushing for retention of RomneyCare–ObamaCare–policies to bend the cost curve, and pushing for aggressive government-sponsored mortgage refinancing policies. Yet of the three, only Hubbard has stepped up to the plate in a manner visible to me, and only on the last. The big problem with Romney -the elephant in the room- really isn’t Romney. It’s the reality that to become a Washington Republican you either have to be crazy or simulate crazy. Serious thinking has been pushed to the hinterlands. Look what happened to Bruce Bartlett. This was the guy that designed Reagan’s first tax cut. Yet when he made some rather mundane observations about governmental spending in the 2nd Bush administration he was sent to the cornfield.
Of course he will run on his record. It might be framed in a way you disagree with, but there is plenty of material. Domestically, he will claim that the economy is recovering and that a return to republican policies would be disastrous. A complete crash was averted by the stimulus. Healthcare reform is a victory for the middle class. Tax cuts for the middle class. Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform. Saving the U.S. auto industry. Recapitalizing the banks.
Internationally, he will start with the withdrawal from Iraq and the draw-down in Afghanistan. Then there is Bin Laden, of course. Increased Iran sanctions. Helped topple Mubarak and Gaddafi etc..
Obama can make a very strong case asking the country for four more years. It makes sense to let his surrogates beat the hell out of Romney now and then step in later to make his “bright future” pitch.
In what universe is Romney brilliant? Jesus fuck. God damn, Americans are impressed by anyone who doesn’t shit one’s pants, so long as he either makes money or builds bombs. Christ.
I don’t think its a smart strategy. Nationally, some questions may be raised and forgotten early, but many of us don’t live in swing states where apparently voters are hit heavily with ads for months at a time. I don’t have an exact date, but Kerry’s failure to respond quickly and decisively to the swift boating tactics burned him in the end. With Romney, I think he wants to believe these things will go away, and may act like it, but its more that he’s unable to respond than playing some brilliant strategy. As many have pointed out, he only needs to release his tax returns to make this whole question of transparency go away (but it may lead to worst things)
Academically Romney is highly intelligent, doing a dual JD/MBA at Harvard is no easy task.
But like a lot of highly intelligent people, he seems to lack in social skills. And social skills are where political skills come from.
I think Obama intentionally did that with his birth certificate issue, he held it in reserve until he had big news to make his opposition look petty (while people were gloating/obsessing over the birth certificate, the navy seals were killing Bin Laden). Doing that made the opposition look petty.
Could Romney be doing the same thing, holding onto a bunch of non-controversial tax statements to make his opponents look petty? Possibly. He may have nothing to hide and is waiting for some big accomplishment of his to come out, or some big accomplishment of Obamas to come out (if the October job numbers are good as an example) to distract from the news.
The problem with that comparison is that the birther issue was always an issue that only really appealed to the conservative base, who were never going to support Obama anyway. Mitt Romneys tax issue and the implication that he is a plutocrat affects swing voters he needs to win. I heard someone in an article about it say that high school educated whites (who tend to vote GOP and are an important factor in swing states) may not like cultural liberals, but they dislike outsourcing more. The theory that Obama was born in Kenya isn’t going to hurt him because the people who believe that don’t like him anyway, the theory that Romney pays a 3% tax rate and outsources jobs is going to hurt him among groups he needs to win.
If the birther issue cost Obama support among organized labor and liberals, it would be different. But it didn’t.
Also Obama never really had anything to hide with the birther issue. Romney seems like he is hiding something. The fact that his tax rate was 14% when he knew people would be looking at it means he probably did better when he figured people wouldn’t be looking at it.
I’m voting for ‘Romney is backed into a corner and hopes this issue goes away’ over ‘this is political strategy’.
But just to show that I’m not acting on pure bias, I will give Romney credit for using the 2008 election cycle as a vehicle to build himself up for 2012. Romney did then what Reagan did in 1976, built his name brand and name recognition for the next election. Even though Romney is a pretty weak candidate (he alienates the bulk of the conservative base) he still won the GOP primary. Imagine a democratic president who alienates liberals, union members and non-whites but who still wins the primary nomination by popular vote.
I agree the timing was intentional but I think Obama’s motive was more than mere pettiness. He was essentially giving Trump enough metaphorical rope to hang himself with. If Obama had produced the document when Trump first raised the issue, Trump could have just switched to another line of attack: “Okay, he’s proven he was born in America. But can he prove he’s not a Muslim?” So Obama let it play out and gave Trump time to really commit himself to the birther camp. That way, when Obama produced the document, it killed Trump’s campaign rather than being merely a setback.
But Obama was in a position to do this. He already was President and nothing Trump could do in March and April was going to change that. Obama could afford to accept any temporary loss of reputation because he knew he’d win in the long run.
Romney’s not in that position. He’s a candidate not a sitting president. If he lets this issue run on too long it could set in people’s minds to the point where the release of his tax returns won’t change the public perception.
The other aspect is that the birth certificate issue was debunked way back in 2008. There was really nothing Obama could do to make the issue go away completely: it was a matter of timing the release another document to maximize the damage to the nutters.
Again, false and easily refuted claims were made in 2008 regarding raised seals, signatures, certificate numbers and the differences between “Birth Certificate” and “Certificate of Birth”. Republicans found these laughable arguments to be extremely credible. Anybody who took this seriously while Trump was prancing for the camera was either a loon, a gull or a creep.
He is not as smart as he thinks he is if he thinks the tax return issue is going to ever be played out. It will be the gift that keeps on giving right up to the election.
This stuff isn’t easy. Politicians often sound like robots for a reason: they can get badly burnt if they tell the wrong sort of uncomfortable truth, for example. The essence of the problem is that they must cater to multiple audiences, most of whom aren’t in the same room with them when they are speaking.
There are innovators in the game. Rove was one: he realized that it’s best to attack your opponent’s strongest point, using smears if necessary - it doesn’t matter. Gingrich cracked the code for the Republican debates last fall: attacks on the questioner never fail to please the crowd, unless Fox News is sponsoring the event. Romney’s innovation, sadly, is to take advantage of the fact that calling somebody a liar is highly impolite, though it does happen. So he presents utter fabrications like “Obama started his term apologizing for America”. That has no basis in fact and the campaign has never substantiated it. But again: it’s a crowd pleaser (among certain crowds) and the MSM won’t call him on it. That would be biased.
Romney is counting on the possibility that neither the base nor the swing voters care whether he has released 2 years of tax returns. They don’t suss that a guy with his extensive financial interests should really really release 10 years. And that 2 is unusually low. As George Romney’s father said when he was running for President: One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show, and what mattered in personal finance was how a man conducted himself over the long haul. So George Romney released 12 years in 1968. John Kerry released 20 years in 2004, though the Romney campaign is untruthfully claiming that it was 2 years. Bob Dole released 29 years in 1996. But I see that John McCain only released 2 years in 2008. Huh.
Honestly, I don’t think Obama ever considered Trump a potential contender, a threat to be dealt with, or a reason to release anything. Trump was and remains a side show clown. I don’t know what the reasons behind the timing of the document were, but my guess is that they were far removed from Donald Trump.
If it worked like that, politicians would never answer charges against them. They’d just wait for the public to get bored. What actually happens is that if you can’t make an accusation go away and it clicks with enough voters, it becomes a part of how you’re defined.
I think Romney is a smart guy, but he’s not a great campaigner. He may even be a bit below average as a campaigner.
The problem in this delay is that Romney is still a cipher and is allowing Obama to create a persona and hang it on him. Obama’s characterization may be right or wrong, but it doesn’t matter if it’s true if it’s the characterization people believe.
On top of that Romney is pulling a Palin and avoiding the mainstream media, only appearing in echo chambers like talk radio and fox.
So if you aren’t part of the echo chamber he really isn’t getting his message to you. It becomes easier to define someone if they don’t appear on mainstream news outlets.
His only real appearances outside the echo chambers will be the debates, and the primaries showed Mitt isn’t very good at those. He picks short term gain at the expense of long term pain the vast majority of the time, and it makes him come across as pandering and phony. Add in his robotic mannerisms, and I think he will be heavily defined by his opponent.
This.
Who, in all this stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid debate about Romney’s tax returns, thinks that the IRS hasn’t already minutely scrutinized each and every one of them? Does anyone think that if they were released to the public, that anyone would find any examples of impropriety that had somehow escaped the IRS???
Come on!
As far as when he actually “left” Bain Capital, he’s already explained the nature of his relationship with the company during the period in question. There’s nothing particularly unusual or “shady” about it.
Can we all move on to examining the guy’s fitness for the Presidency now?
Of course we can’t! Let’s continue to obsess on digging for dirt and minutae!
I don’t think I disagree but I do have qualifications:
He is better at national debates than 95-100% of the posters here.* Just saying. This stuff isn’t as easy as it looks.
He is above average at debating, even at the rarified Presidential candidate level. James Fallows: Mitt Romney’s presence on the stage of course gives just the opposite impression from [Ron] Paul’s, with all-too-evident calibration of “How will this go over?” But he has become very, very good at the necessary political segue of disposing of the question that was actually asked with a brief phrase, then moving on to what he wants to say. He is objectively good as a debater. Obama: take note. I thought Ronald Reagan looked like an idiot on TV. But he was a highly saavy politician, albeit tempered by emerging Alzheimer’s near the end of his Presidency.
ETA greenslime1951: You may be missing the point. The IRS announced an amnesty of foreign accounts a couple of years ago. Romney may have come clean at that point, with an account of small size to him, but enormous to the average American. Romney's tax returns: Is the 2009 Swiss bank account amnesty what he doesn't want us to see?
More generally, there are all manner of tax dodges that are technically legal but politically damaging. There’s a trope among accountants: the poor evade taxes, while the rich avoid taxes. And some of these tax avoidance schemes can be pretty sleazy. Frankly I’m surprised he hasn’t managed his affairs so that he could release 5 or 7 years of taxes. He’s been angling for the Presidency since at least the early 1990s after all.
No one is saying he has broken the law. The speculation is that he legally avoided paying any tax for ten years.
This x 1,000. If and when the American people find out that a multi-millionaire legally paid zero federal taxes for a significant amount of time, Mitt’s campaign is dead and any and all chatter about once again lowering the tax rates of the “job creators” will evaporate. Which is why Mitt will never, ever release those returns.