What a coup by the Obama campaign! On the front page of The New York Times, today, the President’s announcement on gay marriage and the Romney story about high school bullying. What a brilliant juxtaposition.
And who could understand all the moving parts? The President, among others, that’s who!
I didn’t say he can’t understand them. I said he didn’t know the future. In particular I doubt he knew what stories the Washington Post was researching and when the paper planned to run the story. The story about Obama’s position on same-sex marriage is so much more important than the Romney thing that it doesn’t make sense to assume Obama timed his announcement to the Romney story. I initially thought the Post reported on the bullying story because of Obama’s announcement, but that wasn’t true either because they were planning to run the story earlier and it takes more time than that to work up this type of story.
That’s my point. The juxtaposition of the story about Obama’s position on same-sex marriage with the Romney thing shows how much more important the former is than the latter.
Was he the guy who said “It is better to be lucky than good?” I think not. I am reminded that it is possible to give too much credit even to a person you like. This isn’t a coup by the Obama campaign. It’s fortuitous timing.
The timing is. But campaigns spend a lot of time digging up dirt on opponents. If Republican opponents in the primaries knew about this story they wouldn’t be about to release it, since it would tend to make Romney look good to the base. I think we are going to see lots of stuff that looks bad from the left and center coming out.
I don’t know if this story came from the Obama campaign - but it might have.
Napolean, IIRC. Asked about promoting a general (Marshall Ney?) and told about how brilliant a strategist he was, is said to have asked “Yes, but is he lucky?”
Some of the Romney’s school chums are now Obama supporters, so that’s not impossible. But it’s kind of absurd that two days ago people were asking if Biden’s interview forced Obama to go on the record supporting same-sex marriage rights - which it didn’t, it just made him announce it sooner than he planned to - and today people are asking if Obama timed his announcement to take advantage of a story about Romney he wouldn’t have been aware of in the first place and which is going to be forgotten by practically everybody but diehard Obama partisans within a couple of weeks.
This is the thought that runs through my mind. Not like I was going to vote for him anyways, but now I have a personal stake in this. I will now actually be more likely to tell other people about his character. And I know a lot of people in the Christian Right who will have a problem with it.
I’m willing to let a candidate put their stupid high school years behind them. I would even be willing to let Romney do so. But the problem is, despite me letting him, he hasn’t. The first step to putting stupid behavior behind you is admitting it, and the second is apologizing. Romney hasn’t done either. That tells me that he, right now, is the same immature bully he was in high school, and who he is right now is absolutely, entirely relevant to the election.
I could see President Obama going on time.gov every day shortly before midnight, watch as the time changes to 00:00:00, and meditate for a moment on the beginning of the day. I can think of only one other person who would do that.
Remember in the film Pearl Harbor the scene where Admiral Yamamoto reports to Japanese officers that “The task force is 320 miles south of Pearl Harbor.” The officers nod and Yamamoto looks at one of the officers who then tears off a page on the calendar. What is happening in this scene is that Yamamoto is telling his officers the state of Operation Z at 00:00:00 on December 7, 1941. They did not have time.gov in 1941; of course, they had calendars. This scene could have been made up for the film or it could have actually happened. We don’t know. My point is: This scene really could have happened. Remember, also, that President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy.” That date began at midnight at 00:00:00.
For everyone who’s saying you remember the bad incidents in your past: Well, you remember the ones you remember. Confirmation bias, isn’t it?
How do you know for sure that you didn’t also do something equally bad that you’ve forgotten? Until you run for office and someone reminds you, that is…