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By Gregory Taggart, February 21, 2012 7:19 pm

Pat Buchanan is no more–at MSNBC–and Stanley Fish misses him. The left-leaning network dismissed the right-leaning commentator because, apparently, network president Phil Griffin “declared himself uncomfortable” having a man of Buchanan’s views in the mix. That’s too bad, Fish says. Buchanan offered a perspective on politics tempered by a been-there-done-that ability to put political events in their historical context.

Like Griffin, I sometimes felt uncomfortable with some of the views Buchanan expressed. Unlike Griffin, I would never have dismissed him from my network, if I owned a network. I could never put my finger on the reason why until Fish helped me.

My own disappointment at Buchanan’s departure goes in another direction — in fact in two. First, Buchanan is an extraordinarily acute observer of the political scene. His knowledge of past campaigns — including knowledge of what went on behind the scenes — is encyclopedic. No one is more skilled at contextualizing a present moment in our political drama so that viewers can understand the history informing a decision or action that appears on its surface to be inexplicable, even zany. When Buchanan offers that kind of analysis, his pugnacious junkyard-dog persona falls away and is replaced by a precision that is almost professorial. It is a pleasure to watch, just as it is a pleasure to watch some coaches-turned-analyst who can explain what is going on in an athletic contest because they have been there.

Buchanan has also been there. That is the second thing I will miss: the contributions of someone who is not only reporting on history in the making, but has been part of that history himself.

In today’s world of blow-dried, blond, and busty commentators, a world of college drop-out cum talking heads, I’ll miss Buchanan because his opinions are informed by more than his agenda, his appearance on TV a consequence of his knowledge rather than his looks.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 20, 2012 11:29 am

Who wrote this:

“. . . farmers are also digging and planting corn and other crops that will be turned into ethanol that can replace gasoline in our cars. Most cars in America can’t run on ethanol, however, so who is going to install ethanol pumps at the gas station without the cars to run on it? At this point I would say to all of my hard-core conservative friends: Hold on to your hats.

“What we need is a government mandate! We need to mandate that all cars sold in the United States, starting with the 2010 model year, be ‘flex-fuel vehicles’ – that is, they should be able to run on a blend that is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline (the so-called E85 blend), or even a coal-derived methanol/gas mixture. This mandate would cost a fraction of the new fuel economy standard with the added benefit of saving barrels more oil.”

For the answer, we go to the name under the title of the piece:

So, he’s for “smart” mandates–of course. He’s just against health insurance mandates, especially if they’re mandated in Massachusetts and if Romney’s behind them. Or Obama.

HT Andrew Kacsyinski at BuzzFeed.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 19, 2012 2:45 pm

Hey, you can attack Mitt Romney on a number of fronts. Yes, he’s made his share of gaffs. Yes, he apparently has trouble connecting with some people (he certainly didn’t have that problem with me*). Bain. Negative ads. Pick your poison. But the SLC Olympics? Don’t bother.

To my knowledge, he’s never claimed that he, and he alone, saved the SLC Olympics. In most everything I’ve ever read on the subject, he’s been generous in his praise of all the work others did to put on the Games. And in almost everything I’ve ever read, people in the know give him great credit for his leadership in saving the games. So when I read the following petty political comments in an article in today’s Deseret News, I just shook my head:

A trio of former local government elected officials, all Democrats, held a press conference on the steps of the Salt Lake City-County Building earlier Saturday to criticize Romney’s tenure at SLOC.

Romney is guilty of “arrogance and of acting as if we couldn’t possibly do it ourselves. He had to come in to save us and ride in on his white horse,” former Salt Lake City Councilwoman Sydney Fonnesbeck said.

Former Salt Lake City Councilwoman Joanne Milner and former Salt Lake County Councilman Joe Hatch offered similar accounts based on their experiences with Romney.

“He was not the savior of the 2002 Olympics,” Milner said. “It was the people of Utah.”

Did Romney say he was the savior of the Olympics? No. You have to put the word ‘helped’ in front of the word ‘save’ to capture the credit he has taken. The following, from the same story, is typical of what he might say in a town hall meeting:

“There’s power in unity,” Romney said. “We came together as a group of people not caring about who got credit, but caring about putting on the best Games in the history of sport and you did that.”

Later, at a special “Stars on Ice” show at Energy Solutions Arena, Romney said the community’s hard work showcased “the character and the passion of the people of Utah.”

He told the arena audience that he loved them, too, and “the experience that we shared together,” noting that when he took over the Games in 1999, he feared no one would sign up to volunteer.

Instead, nearly twice as many people as needed came forward. Some gave millions to bolster the Games’ budget, he said, while others worked for 17 days straight without pay or even tickets to events.

His comments in debates are not so extended, but even there, he’s never said anything less than he “helped save the Games,” and in some cases he quickly acknowledged the help of others. In any case, the SLC three appear to be all the DNC could scrape from the bottom of the barrel of people in Utah it asked to criticize Romney’s involvement in the Games:

A video released Friday by the Democratic National Committee also accused Romney of accepting the same kind of federal bailout for the Olympics that he now criticizes on the campaign trail.

But state Democratic Party Chairman Jim Dabakis said Utah’s minority party has “no gripe with Mitt Romney’s handling of the Olympics. He did a commendable job. I don’t think it’s useful for the Utah Democratic Party to say anything other than the truth.”

The DNC reportedly lobbied hard for state party support of their national effort to discredit Romney’s claim of turning around the Salt Lake Games, a key component of his campaign, even reportedly using a top adviser of President Barack Obama.

Good for them.

*In order to write the article I referred to in an earlier post, I had to interview Romney at the SLC Olympic headquarters in Salt Lake. Romney sat at a half-moon shaped table, surrounded by something like 10 different news organizations, including someone from ESPN and a couple of guys with KFI out of, you guessed it, LA. And then there was me, representing the Marriott Alumni magazine. Each took turns asking his or her questions, until it was my turn. I began by making a crack, something about LA, snow, and cocaine–I’m sure you had to be there–catching Romney completely off guard. He laughed out loud, and won my heart as a result. What can I say? I’m easy.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 17, 2012 4:55 pm

The AP’s Kasie Hunt and Jennifer Dobner go round and round before they essentially acknowledge that, yes, Romney played a big part in saving the Salt Lake Olympics, a conclusion I came to years ago. During the run-up to the Games, I wrote an extended profile on Fraser Bullock for the Marriott Alumni Magazine, a publication of BYU’s Marriott School of Management.

Bullock was Romney’s right and left hand man and the CFO of the olympian bid to save the SLC Olympics. I interviewed Bullock extensively and Romney once for the article, among a variety of other people. To quote from my article:

According to his boss, SLOC President and CEO Mitt Romney,“he is one of the best CFO/COO’s in the country, if not the best.” And Romney needed the best because when he took over on 11 February 1999, SLOC was tottering at the top of a very challenging bobsled run of its own, one littered with tawdry headlines of tarnished Olympic rings, unhappy sponsors, and financial mis-management. “I always joke that I was already living in Utah, and Mitt wanted to save the relocation expenses,” Bullock adds.

Actually, saving those expenses was a harbinger of things to come. In short order, Romney and Bullock discovered that what you don’t know can hurt you. It was no secret that the media’s new favorite target was SLOC, that the Justice Department was looking for skeletons in SLOC’s closet, and that radio talk show hosts were shouting SLOC’s name from the rooftops. Moreover, SLOC had no operations plan, they weren’t using appropriate financial systems, and they had no Paralympic organization—SLOC is the first organizing committee to do both games. Morale was nonexistent. “The organization was virtually paralyzed; it didn’t know which way to turn,” Bullock explains.

What wasn’t readily apparent at the time of the scandal was that there was a severe financial crisis. Adding up all the numbers, Bullock and Romney discovered that SLOC was headed for a projected $400 million budget shortfall. And the previous twelve months gave little reason for confidence that they could fix the problem: SLOC had raised only $13 million the year before the scandal hit the headlines. “It doesn’t take a math degree to figure out that with about three years to go, the Salt Lake Olympics were in trouble; and at that rate, we weren’t going to be able to raise the funds to close the budget deficit, ” Bullock explains.

Now imagine Santorum or Paul, Gingrich or Obama in the same situation. Hard to do, isn’t it?

So how did Romney and his crew manage? Well, according to my article:

As of the end of October, SLOC had raised $859 million dollars, $395 million more than Atlanta,the previous high. Because SLOC gives 40 percent of what it raises to the United States Olympic Committee and because some of the donations were in kind and therefore not budget relieving, the net impact of the fund raising was to reduce the budget deficit by about $200 million dollars. Add that to the $200 million Bullock and his team were able to cut, and the snake was dead. “So at this point, we believe we’re in a break-even situation, which is exactly where we want to be,” reports Bullock, who recently relinquished one of his SLOC titles, CFO.

Read the story(beginning on page 21). It tells of a turnaround effort that should cause everybody to take a second look at Romney–and then beg that he ask Bullock to be his VP.

UPDATE: On my Facebook page, BYU Professor Warner Woodruff responded to this post:

Warner Woodworth – This sounds too naive, or at least too one-sided. This guy must be a Mormon or a Republican fanatic to have such a love affair with Mitt’s Olympics. From the sources I knew who helped manage the games in 2002, it was a lot more complicated, and Mitt was made to look better than his leadership really warranted. But maybe they were all wrong back then.

And I responded:

Gregory Taggart – Warner, this guy is me, and the article was for an alumni magazine–your school’s–and written before the games even started, so yes, it is one-sided. Nevertheless, the sources I know give him great credit, even as they acknowledge that Mitt didn’t carry the Games on his back, something I don’t think he has ever claimed. Finally, I plead guilty to being Mormon–how did you guess?–and a Romney fan. Fanatic? No. Neither am I naive. Just someone pulling for a guy I like, gaffes and all.

I’ll add that I’m vaguely aware that some of the people involved in bringing the Games to SLC were put out that Romney got so much credit and they so little, due in large part to the scandal. I can understand that. My feelings at the time were that the original organizers were unfairly tarred by the so-called scandal. Not that there was no scandal, mind you. There was, but the goings on seemed to be part and parcel of the bidding process, a process–tainted as it was–that apparently had been going on for years. The unfairness was that it came to light on SLC’s watch. (I stress that these are vague memories, so don’t quote me on this.)

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By Gregory Taggart, February 17, 2012 9:21 am

Interesting article by David Pimentel of Florida Coastal School of Law on overprotective parenting, the resulting laws, and the implications for so-called free-range parents (I’m probably one). From the abstract:

In the last generation, American parenting norms have shifted
strongly in favor of Intensive Parenting, placing particular emphasis
on protecting children from risks of harm. Recently, a backlash to
this trend has emerged. “Free Range” parenting is based on the
concern that coddling children through overprotection inhibits the
development of their independence and responsibility. Indeed, a
growing body of literature suggests that parental overreaction to
remote and even illusory risks of physical harm is exposing children to
far more serious risks to their well-being and development. But the
powerful influence of media has sensationalized the risks to children,
skewing popular perceptions of the genuine risks children face and of
what constitutes a reasonable or appropriate response to such risks.
Consequently, individuals who do not buy into Intensive Parenting
norms, including those from different cultural and socio-economic
backgrounds, may be subjecting themselves to criminal prosecution
for child neglect and endangerment.

It appears that I’m on the anti-nanny-state warpath this morning, what with my Tweet about Santorum’s take on gambling.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 16, 2012 7:04 pm

To me–a Mormon–Protocol of the Elders by Yair Rosenberg is a welcome relief from the myriad uninformed, and sometimes deluded, stories by those who dare tell of–yea, expose–the mysterious world of Mormonism. Sally Denton is one of the latter and one who Rosenberg quotes a few times before he writes of her “specious argument.”

Tellingly, the sort of specious argument that Salon’s Denton makes about the perils of Mormon theocracy is exactly the sort of conspiracy theory that the same publication rightly denounces when it comes from Robert Spencer about Muslims and the threat of creeping Sharia. The latter narrative is clearly seen as false, but the equally problematic nature of the anti-Mormon argument is obscured by partisan blinders.

Sadly, Sally has been spreading her spurious conspiracy claptrap for some time now. I first heard of her when American Heritage magazine gave her the last few pages of one issue to peddle her poorly researched and very biased account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. She now has a book out about how the Right plotted against FDR–and apparently loves to draw parallels between that day and this (she was on NPR peddling her book the other day–NPR! What were they thinking?). I guess America loves a secret exposed–so to speak. Just look at Sally’s bio at American Heritage:

Sally Denton is an investigative reporter and author who writes about America’s hidden history. She has written six books, including her most recent, Pink Lady: The Many Lives of Helen Gahagan Douglas, released in 2009. She was honored with the Woodrow Wilson Public Scholar Fellowship in 2010, and entered the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 2008. (emphasis mine)

Sorry, but you’re going to have to find links to Sally’s sad oeuvre by yourself. I’ve already given her more publicity than she deserves–and nobody reads my blog. I will, however, give you a link to a review of her very bad book on Mountain Meadows.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 16, 2012 4:11 pm

So I”m reading my Twitter feed again, and I see this by the Washington Post:

The Washington Post @washingtonpost Man seated next to crying child on plane opens door, deploys emergency slide:

I click on the accompanying link and read the first body paragraph:

HANOI, Vietnam — A mom with a screaming child wanted a quick getaway from a plane on the tarmac in Vietnam and asked for help. The man next to her obliged by opening the emergency exit and triggering the escape slide.

But that’s as far as they got.

Do you see the problem? The headline gives the impression that we’re going to get a great story about a man doing what everybody has wanted to do once a baby starts crying on the airline. But no. The story is really about how an apparently kind man helped a stressed mother who was looking for a quick exit for her and her crying baby.

In this case, no harm, no foul. Yes, I was disappointed that the story didn’t live up to its headline, but that’s it. But how about this headline: Romney on Birth Control, or worse, the Tweet the lead me to it, both by David Frum:

davidfrum @davidfrum Endorsed “greatly expanded programs of …. family planning services to all those who want but can’t afford them.”

Yes, I know Frum was being cute, but was he being fair? Did he have an obligation to be fair, especially in this birth-control charged moment? You be the judge.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 16, 2012 11:10 am

So on my Twitter feed this morning, I read this:

David F. Mitchell @dfmitchell330 @EdMorrissey [Romney] just panders to everybody all the time. While he’s criticizing Rick, he’s “considering” him for VP. Story of his career!

And just a couple of Tweets later, I find Byron York saying:

Byron York @ByronYork Seeking votes in Michigan, Romney says Massachusetts is home. ow.ly/96SaD

And:

Byron York @ByronYork Romney is asked: ‘Tigers or Red Sox?’ Answer: ‘Oh, Red Sox, I’m afraid. I’ve lived in Massachusetts for how many years now? Forty years.’

Who’s right? If you’re pandering, you’re going with the Tigers in Michigan. If you’re pandering, you’re not saying you call Massachusetts home when you’re seeking the votes of Michiganders, especially when you could truthfully call Michigan home. And didn’t Romney speak out against subsidies in Iowa and fail to Gingrich on the space program in Florida? Has he ever said something that sounded like pandering? Certainly. Was it actually pandering on Romney’s part or wishful thinking on his critics’s part?

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By Gregory Taggart, February 13, 2012 10:49 pm

I support Romney. To me, he’s far and away the most competent and experienced person to run for President in, like, forever. I won’t review his resume here in detail–2001 Olympics, Governor, Bain, etc.–but it is impressive, especially when punctuated by his $250 million net worth. Likewise, Reagan was competent and experienced. He was president of SAG. He did the lecture series for GE. He was governor of California. He had run for president once before. The guy had experience in spades.

Now contrast R & R with the others running for office. Santorum has 12 years in the Senate and a few years in the House. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but where’s the executive experience? Gingrich was Speaker of the House, where he had a successful run until it was no longer so successful. Since then he has headed a bunch of pompous sounding organizations, set up, I gather, to advance his ideas. Oh, and then there was that lobbying, er, historian stint with Fannie Mae. Paul? Enough said.

So where do their supporters retreat? To the Garden of Eden of Reagan conservatism. And Romney–to them–doesn’t measure up. To what? To Reagan’s conservative credentials? Okay. Romney is not as conservative as Reagan–or Santorum or Gingrich (balderdash on that one). But he matches and even exceeds Reagan as an executive and as a fixer. Add 2 (executive experience) + 1.5 (conservative credentials) and you get 3.5, which is at least .5 points more than I would give Santorum, Gingrich, or Paul. At least that’s what I think.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 2, 2012 4:49 pm

This

Caused me to think of this

Mitt, Trapped by the Donald?