July 29, 2012 at 15:54:58
Great news this week for
majority rule:
CNN
polling reported 63% think Bain Capital exploits make Mitt Romney more
likely to "make good decisions handling" the economy over the next four years.
What else matters to hardscrabble anguish in towns like Peoria, Illinois? Let's
hire a tough, no-nonsense CEO to remake America as Bain remade venture capital
-- and none of that feel-good, sentimental socialism.
Moreover, six in ten
honorable voters (CBS/NY Times) won't let jaw-dropping Bain revelations "matter
to their vote" (so much for predation, outsourcing, job demolition, and
tax-avoidance sleaze). Finally, 54% (USA Today/Gallup) affirm Mitt's
"personality and leadership qualities" are what a "president should have."
Exactly what "qualities," pray tell, other than deviant capitalism a and
gaffe-filled, policy-free pageant that glorifies his zealous "elasticity"?
When did we ever nominate,
let along elect a slippery, fabulously wealthy corporate raider? Not once. So, why not worsen terrible times with
more Reagan-Bush-Cheneyism? Look, do we honor majorities or not, however they
tilt to ruthlessness over familiarity, the economics of hard-knocks over mushy
Obama rhetoric? Of course, early polling tracks the devil voters don't yet know
(really?) vs. the champion, in this corner, of podium populism loved or hated
by one and all.
Ruthlessness, devoid of
"ruth"
Predictably, more telling Romney
assessments are less kind: NBC/WSJ folks confirm he's the first GOP
presidential nominee whose unfavorable ratings (40%) continue to surpass
favorables (35%). That means a 65% majority isn't charmed by Mitt's compassion-free
conservatism and/or weird personality. Could Bain's modus operandi of take-no-prisoners,
ruthless pragmatism have no impact? Add that to the GOP's politics of austerity,
and let the good times roll from a Romney presidency. Hail, the righteous rich in charge, sanctifying
the status quo even beyond that of Obama's miscast, non-job-creating duo, Summers
and Geithner? Hail, the self-consuming dogma that socializes corporate risk
while privatizing profits.
So, let's not altogether
abandon distinctions between the "devoutly non-ideological," ex-liberal
Democrat who fudges major campaign promises (but "means well") vs. the plastic
Romney eagerly morphed into radical extremist. Brace for hard-knuckled,
Republican Ruthlessness with two capital R's and no "ruths" (its word root
being "pity"). Romney's like the
17-year locust, muddling along underground for decades, only to emerge with a
rock-hard shell and insatiable appetites. Incredibly, the GOP's guy displays
more ambition than Obama, the careerist politician who never met a higher
office he didn't like better. Romney's locust eyed the White House for at least
17 years, when Obama was neither Muslim nor socialist.
For pragmatic Yanks, Romney's
merciless solutions, per Gallup survey, award him the edge vs. Obama in "getting
things done." Echoes of Larry the Cable Guy: "Git-R-Done." I wait
breathlessly for this era of "fooling some of the people all of the time" to
end. If neither centrist voters, labor, elected officials, nor intellectual
elites can offset fat cat reactionaries, the public only gets a choice of
political fakes, here divided into genuine fakes (W. or Obama) vs. fake fakes
(Romney).
Distinction without a
Difference?
Thus, Dubya exemplifies the
genuine fake, his calculated oafish manner in sync with benighted Tea
Baggers. Likenesses attract so W. never presumed great intellectual or
educational
prowess (rightly so). His mind was
so genuinely ordinary that completing an entire book made news, more
evidence this
genuine fake was educated outside of Texas. W. wasn't nearly as stupid
as he
appeared, though clumsy articulations encouraged many to
misunderestimate his
tenure. In the end, while he conned the majority (and got re-elected),
one
sensed this dim bulb only got part of the con. Bush's one talent: making
fakery
seem downright, down home genuine, like another great phony, Sarah
Palin.
Hokey, western, cowboy, chainsaw manliness made Bush "easy to have a
beer with"
-- and genuine fakes rarely threaten the intellectual comfort zone of
others.
Though far more literate,
smarter and self-aware, Obama sadly qualifies as genuine fake, especially
compared to the utterly fake fake called Romney. The president is a genuinely
fake liberal, despite populist rhetoric and one truly progressive speech a
year. He has a woefully, genuinely fake awareness of economic and military
matters, displaying no more expertise now than three years ago. Is backdoor
plutocrat Geithner not still in charge, with or without scandals? Is not militarism
in high gear, what we'd expect from a fake anti-war candidate? Worst of all for
a law school instructor on the Constitution, not only has he extended the
Bush-Cheney whack job, he embraces transparently phony legal stances, alleging
the Supreme Court wouldn't dare, even lacked the authority, to deny his health
insurance reform. Oh, yeah?
In not protecting the
middle-class decline, Obama nearly matches Dubya's duplicity about helping "the
people." Obama is truly a genuine fake, Chicago-crunch politician, so lacking
in backbone he gets whipped by the insipid Senate and the shrill House.
Considering his '08 mandate, Obama shows he's the most genuinely fake, backroom
Washington deal-maker since Carter. In short, here's a fake reformer, systemic
or otherwise, a fake challenger to crazed military spending (or gun sales) and
fake populist, defective on economic matters. What's genuine about Obama is how
seamlessly he's morphed into garden-variety politician, scared to death of any
risk jeopardizing re-election. That one of the weakest GOP nominees in years, a
mismatch for today's Republican party, is running neck and neck implies that
genuine fakery just isn't selling as it did in '04.
Drum roll . . . the
ultimate fake fake
And now the fabulous fake
fake of our time -- the secretive, weird, protean shape-shifter whose only
identifiable political constants over 20 years are his last name and loyalty to
the LDS. With more oblique sides than a diamond ring, without signature policy
on any major issue, without clear incentive why he merits high office -- and
performance blunders in league with Palin, Romney takes the cake as political
fake. Of course, as presumptive, bloviating pretender, he's not yet even a real
nominee. We're breaking new ground here, pockmarked by huge blunders during an England
trip intended to establish his overseas and diplomatic bona fides. Irony,
anyone?
Mitt's effortless
transformation from a 20-year moderate to extremist bespeaks no ordinary
fakery. One feels W. and Obama have some overlap between personal and political
beliefs, now and again. Not Romney, not in public, and his smug presumption
that vulture capitalism makes him presidential signals an especially noxious
fraud, capped off by having so little to lose (not HIS fortune). We've never
had a genuinely super-rich industrialist for good reason: the skill-set between
finance and politics is opposite, especially at the top. Autocratic control
lets a strong CEO have his/her way, say hire or fire at will as long as money
flows in along with market share.
What does Romney the fake
fake bring to the White House table where nuanced people-management reigns
supreme? With less elected experience
than any other recent top nominee, he disowns awful "mistakes" in his
sole public office. Consider what he doesn't know about diplomacy, foreign
affairs, the Pentagon, or about Washington, history, or the Constitution. Other
than Herbert Hoover, what business tycoon succeeded in winning a campaign, let
alone gaining White House success? The number of failed business wizards,
athletes, actors and astronauts who tried politics is legion. Romney's beyond a
disaster
waiting to happen, he's
halfway home.
Finally, that Romney displays
the tinniest of tin-ears, coming across as a bullying, cold fish with a weird
non-sense of humor, makes him appear dumber than he probably is. But it's his
rare package of phony "qualities," personal and political, that gain gold in
the Olympic Fraud competition. With
the wrong skills and the wrong instincts -- plus, no Karl Rove -- no wonder Romney
staggers into a shrill party's convention for which he's hardly the perfect fit.
As more scandals pour out over the months, on Bain, Massachusetts, Mormonism, the
Olympics, and unknowns yet to surface (please, no more pet abuse), I ponder: what
can this guy deliver that wins over cranky centrists in a dozen key states --
other than that Obama stinks? That
may work if jobs wither but where's Mitt's legitimacy after winning.
Educated at Rutgers College (BA) and UC Berkeley (Ph.D, English) Becker
left university teaching (Northwestern, U. Chicago) for business,
founding and heading SOTA Industries, high end audio company from '80 to
'92. From '92-02 he did marketing (more...)
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