The following paragraph in a post on TheMacroTrader.com caught my eye today:
This is a good time for a disclaimer-Some people might call me right of the right wing when it comes to personal views and voting. When it comes to trading, politics absolutely need[s] to be put aside. I take a pragmatic view of things and never confuse politics with policy.
Which, in turn, reminded me of one of my posts that had the following poll result:
Which brings me back to the claims in the first post I referred to: “When it comes to trading, politics absolutely needs to be put aside.” I get TheMacroTrader’s point: when creating policy, we need to operate from facts. But remove all politics from the equation? I’m not so sure about that proposition. Remove all politics, and any sane person would vote for Romney, based on the poll result I posted above. But the fact is that all kinds of considerations enter into virtually all of our decisions. In the case of Romney, many won’t vote for him because of his stand on abortion, but they’d be happy to have him managing their financial affairs. Likewise, facts can only tell us so much about oil: that we’ve probably passed peak oil; that many reasons other than Obama account for the recent rise in the price of gas; etc. But then there’s this in that TheMacroTrader.com post:
T Boone Pickens is not lying when he says that every President since Nixon has declared that we will be energy independent and then has proceeded to do nothing.
Is this time different? Will one of the candidates–including our current President–step up and do something? And so we’re back to politics.
So Molly Ball of The Atlantic thinks people–read, the media–have misjudged Romney’s sense of humor. Welcome to the party Molly. I’ve thought that all the time. Instead of the gaffe machine the media portrays (and fairly, in some cases), Romney actually can tell a good joke. Or as Ball says,
For all the hype about his woodenness, Romney, I submit, actually has the most sophisticated — and underappreciated — sense of humor of any presidential candidate. It is dry, self-deprecating and a bit dark, a far cry from the safely hokey laugh lines of most politicians on the stump. And it bespeaks a confidence and flair not often attributed to the much-maligned candidate.
That’s what I’ve always thought. I have some experience with his sense of humor, as I mention in another post. I was interviewing him once in the lead-up to the SLC Olympics as part of a panel of journalists and TV news people, a panel that included ESPN and some guys from KFI out of LA. We all sat around a half-moon shaped table, with Romney sitting in the middle of the straight side of that table. One by one, each reporter asked his or her series of questions, most of which revolved around security, given the recent events on 9/11.
Finally it was my turn to ask questions. I introduced myself as representing the Marriott School Alumni Magazine. He knew I was there to ask about his CFO Fraser Bullock for a profile piece. But for my first question I asked Mitt what he was going to do so that the Los Angelenos coming to the Games wouldn’t confuse Utah’s powder with their favorite nose candy. I asked the question as pokerfaced as I could. Now I admit that my joke was of the you-had-to-be-there variety. But in that setting and at that moment, my timing was excellent and the line worked. It caught him totally off guard, and he laughed hard.
So add that to the evidence that Mitt Romney has a sense of humor. He laughed at my joke. If you do that, ipso facto, you have a sense of humor, even a sophisticated one.
Jeff Goldblum utters one of the great movie lines of all time in the movie The Big Chill. He’s talking with the Tom Berenger character about rationalization:
Michael: I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.
Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?
Now, I have friends who would dispute Michael and agree with Sam, but that’s not my point. My point is that everybody needs to rationalize, sometime, someplace. For example, take Bill Burton, former Obama 2008 campaign press secretary now founder and head of the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA. Today he appeared on Andrea Mitchell’s show on MSNBC and had to address the question of how Bill Maher got away with his slur against Sarah Palin (among others), yet Rush Limbaugh is being pilloried in the press for his slur against a 30-year old Georgetown Law School student.
Okay, so granted, this is the political season, and yes, the GOP has challenged Burton to give back the $1 million that Maher recently donated to his Obama super pac. But does anybody think Burton believes the rationalization he used to distinguish what Rush said (and apologized for) from what Maher said (and never apologized for)? Anybody?
On another note, from what Mr. Burton said, sounds like the Democrats think that Romney will be the Republican nominee.
I support Romney. And I’ve tired of the ridiculous questions about his religion. Most I’ve read have betrayed more about the questioner than they ever will about Romney or his Mormonism. That said, there are legitimate questions. Sarah Posner, Senior Editor at Religion Dispatches, has an article at Salon.com where she asks some of them. What about Blacks and the Mormon priesthood? What about Mormonism and feminism, particularly in the 70s and 80s? And so on. Sarah’s tone is generally fair, as are the questions she asks. I’m interested in how Romney would answer them. Judging by what I’ve already heard about how he felt about the priesthood ban and by what I’ve read in stories like Peggy Stack’s 2008 article for the Salt Lake Tribune, I think he’d do just fine.
That said, the questions do present a problem that Posner fails to acknowledge. Responding to even these appropriate questions involves going deeper into Mormon belief than even the most interested journalist may be willing to go. And that might result in a poor, even unfair story being written by a reporter who tuned out as soon as she heard the bit she wanted to hear. To me, that’s one reason Romney may be reluctant to talk about his religion. Like me, he surely holds his beliefs sacred. Like me, he probably would rather that people understood how the Book of Mormon impacts how he deals with some of these difficult issues. Allow me to give an example of what I’m talking about.
I grew up in the 60s and served my mission in the Brazil North Mission from June 1971 to June 1973, before the 1978 so-called Revelation on the Priesthood. I supported the practice of not extending the priesthood to Blacks. Now, stop there, and I’m a racist. But that’s not even close to the truth. The truth is, I wasn’t a member of the Church because of the ban; I was a member in spite of it. And even that statement just scratches the surface of the story of me and the priesthood ban.
So imagine you’re a reporter, and you want me to go beneath that surface. Do you have the time and interest to hear me explain what I mean by what I just said? Are you ready for me to go into what the Book of Mormon means in my belief system and how it affects so much of what I do? Are you willing to listen to, then write fairly about, what the idea of living prophets means to me and why that belief would affect how I dealt with the priesthood ban? How receptive will you be to the evidence I would muster to demonstrate to you that I have always–always–treated people of color with love, that I have never condescended to them, that I’ve tried to treat everybody everywhere as equals, and so on?
If I were Romney and I could be sure that I’d get a fair hearing and that the writer would report my responses fairly, honestly, and without any mind reading, I’d jump at the chance to talk about the priesthood ban and any other Mormon questions they might have. But like Romney, I have doubts that would happen, and so I hold back. My sacred and deeply held beliefs don’t fit on bumper stickers. They aren’t made–aren’t appropriate–for 15 second sound bites. They just aren’t. Unfortunately, the political public seems to thrive on a diet of gossamer statements truncated to fit on the rear fender. And there’s the conundrum.
Blogger Ann Althouse asked that question in a poll that gave all the current Republican presidential candidates and President Obama as potential choices:
Now I’d characterize Althouse as an agnostic on the Republican candidates, though I’m guessing she’d vote Romney, push come to shove. She voted for Obama in 2008. Those who comment on her blog, and there are a lot of them, seem to disparage Romney much more than they praise him. Some are not fans at all. I’d wager that 75% of them have claimed they would vote for someone else in an election; many of them that they would vote Democrat. All this, by the way, is just my impression as one who reads her blog and the comments regularly. Of course, it is possible that a bunch of Romney fans flooded the poll, though I doubt it. Ann gets plenty of traffic on her own; certainly, enough people drop by daily to account for the number of votes in the poll. That said, here are the results:
Now be honest. You would have voted for Romney in that poll as well, wouldn’t you? Now, who are you going to vote for as president? If your answer is anyone other than Romney, why?
UPDATE (8.22.12):
I just re-posted this on Facebook and in re-reading it, I noticed a contradiction in what I wrote vis a vis what’s in the poll. I’ve fixed that problem. Changes are in bold.
If you’ve never read James Taranto’s “Best of the Web” column in OpinionJournal.com, you should. Here’s his most recent effort. I particularly like his take on New York Times columnist Charles Blow. Enjoy.
I planned on writing about Romney’s tenure as bishop and stake president. I may still do so. But for now, this will do.
A few years back, a hive of hornets decided to make its nest on top of a second-story swamp cooler outside my cousin’s Boston-area home. My cousin made an ill-fated attempt to remove the hornets, which resulted in a two-story fall and a broken arm.
“This looks like a job for your home teacher,” said my cousin’s home teacher.
The home teacher brought over his own ladder and clothed himself in homemade beekeeping gear. He then made his way to the hornet’s nest and gathered the whole thing up in a garbage bag, avoiding any stings or the more severe injuries that had beset my cousin. He did this with no public fanfare, no accolades, and no thought of collecting payment for his efforts.
And who was this noble home teacher? A man by the name of Mitt Romney.
And Romney’s out of touch? Don’t think so.
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