Dowd: Can anybody love the white guys?

We hope Maureen Dowd got home from the office OK after her scathing attack on white guys in her latest column. More specifically Republican white guys.  Having written earlier about them myself as a peculiar breed of Rambos in a less than complimentary way,   we were happy to find Dowd in an especially hissy state when she wrote:

"The Mayans were right, as it turns out , when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world:  the GOP universe of arrogant, uptight , entitled, bossy,  retrogressive white guys."

I would have added "pugnacious" and "dyspeptic'', but under deadline pressure you can't think of everything.

Dowd was writing about the consequences of Mitt Romney's  disastrously produced presidential campaign that ran aground long before Election Day. (By the fateful day, it is always too late to do anything about it!)  Along the way, Mitt & Co. seemed to go out of the way to satisfy the predominant Caucasion brand of the party  while the GOP stagehands like Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted were enlisted to shrink the Obama turnout by minorities.

While all of this was going on, did no one in the GOP camp notice that Obama was surging ahead with  the same campaign organization that had earned him his  earlier triumph.  Within a year or so, his organizers were setting up shop in Ohio to replicate the first campaign.  So confident of winning was Team Romney that  it didn't come close to catching up with Obama's  textbook  ground organization when Mitt's operatives arrived in the Buckeye State a couple of years later.

(And didn't they make fun of Obama's community organizing work in Chicago?)

Aside to Maureen Dowd:  Save your breath.  White guys, unlike more socially adjusted white males, never listen to anybody anyway.

It's not Bain, but it may have investment potential

Do you think that if Mitt Romney loses in November, he will have more time to pursue a flighty business investment that is already on his mind these days:  roll-down airplane windows.    Ever since his wife's plane was forced to land when smoke filled the cabin, Mitt has been wondering aloud why the passengers couldn't have sought fresh air by opening the plane's windows when the smoke was first detected.

As he explained his concern for Ann's safety to the Los Angeles Times, "You can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft." So when there's a fire in the plane, "There's no place to go, exactly."

Exactly.   The problem, of course, is that a burst of oxygen at a plane's cruising level would, among other  things,  feed a fire.  Still,  Mitt says he doesn't know why the windows don't open.  "It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous."

As one who prefers to be known more as an astute, can-do  businessman than as a potential leader of the free world, Mitt has doubtless given thought to a new growth industry of manufacturing convenient open-and-close  windows, which will be investigated further on his next trip to China.  Meantime, somebody should tell  him that for the time being he will have make do with those drop-down gizmos called oxygen masks.

Today's political news: The view from the rear

What a week, huh? The thundering herd was on the move - backward.  The photo will give you a strong sense of it.  We scooped up a few bits of evidence to close out the week.  Here I go  again:

Romney foreign policy advisor  Richard Wiilliamson  was quoted in the Washington Post as saying the  Middle East would be a kinder, gentler place if Mitt were president.   "There's a pretty compelling story that if you had a President Romney, you'd be in a different situation,"  he said, explaining that  Muslims would have liked him much more than Obama.  I'm not sure what to make of that so I'll move on.

Paul Ryan, who has referred to Mitt as his running mate,  says that when Obama talks about  pulling together to improve  America, he's dishonest.  Why?   Yep, the president's  pro-choice position that "panders to the most extreme elements of his party."

Ryan, an absolutist who insists there should be no exceptions for abortion, said, "We're all in this together - it has a nice ring. For everyone who loves this country  it is not only true, but obvious. Yet how hollow it  sounds coming from a politician who has never once lifted a hand to defend the most helpless and innocent of all human beings, the child waiting to be born."

Plunderbund noted that Ohio Board of Education president Debe Terhar,   a Tea Party activist, has been named the co-chair of the Educators for Romney coalition, whatever that is.    Terhar was appointed to the board by Gov. Kasich, ostensibly to  bring enthusiasm and fervor to the state's education interests.  If this works out,  she'll doubtless be named as the football coach at one of the state universities.  But first she'll have to finish the laundry

 It could change, but as we write, those  efforts to remove Obama from the Kansas  ballot may have fizzled.  A Kansas man who petitioned the state to to deny him a spot on the ballot has withdrawn his petition within a few days before the Kansas Objections Board was to act on it.  The petitioner is a devout birther and had a friend in Secretary of State Kris Kobach,  likewise a birther who  was prepared to honor the request on grounds that Obama hadn't proved that he  was an American.
By the way, Kobach is  on the  Romney immigration advisory team. (It never ends with Mitt!)

What was that memorable line from the Wizard of Oz?  "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.")

Good.

In campaign mode: Pursuing the American Dream

With my computer down for a couple of days, I had plenty of time to think about Mitt Romney's businessman's approach in calling for  the "American Dream". It's the safe term that so often rises to a candidate's lips  when chauvinistic wholesomeness is necessary in the heat of a campaign.  In lands I've visited overseas, I can't say I've ever heard anybody else attach their country to a dream.  The Italian Dream?  The German Dream?  The Irish Dream?  Well, if you press them on the topic, the Irish do dream of Guinness flowing from their home faucets someday. In Italy, they will tell you about anchovies.  And a German's happiest moment is a well prepared schnitzel.

As I sat through larger-than-life moments of the convention, the American Dream became something we could all realize if we put our mind to it - or had a rich father. After all, it was a  spectacle of sworn honest discourse, soaring promises  and, of course, an empty chair.  Based on Clint  Eastwood's creaky comments, including a raunchy reference to President Obama, shouldn't  someone have rushed onstage to offer him a rocking chair instead?   (Mitt, the "we built it guy",  is said to have tumbled with laughter.  Didn't anybody first check to see whether the chair was built in China?)

Back to the American Dream.  The profile of the delegates was that they were white, male, and older.
I fully qualify.  So my dreaming took me back to my teenage days, when I wanted to be a professional baseball player. Then, a pianist for a small jazz group.  Then, as a journalism student, a successor to Edward R. Murrow.  Then a best-selling author. Finally, my own villa in Umbria.   Mitt:  I regretfully have to tell  you:  Except maybe for the villa,  I tried.  I really did.  And none of the dreams came true.

Maybe  I should have aspired to being a politician like you, standing before a big friendly audience, confidently  into yourself with that  Mona Lisa smile,  and insisting that the American Dream does include everybody  if you work at it - and have a very rich father.

My father's only dream for me was that I hang out in a small garage in a coal-miners town and run his business.  Since I was foolish enough to prefer reading Hemingway and Faulkner and engaging in other dead-end personal diversions instead of poring over General Motors parts catalogs,  I had to move on.  Folks, I'm not complaining about a lost family business opportunity, but a low-paying newspaper job in another state was  the least painful  way to get around my father's dream.

By the way, now that you mention it so often,  Mitt: What is the American Dream?  

Did Wilde have Willard in mind?

MITT ROMNEY'S mannered style of slipping out of his biographical noose apparently will be with us until Election Day.  Whether it be his braided for-and-against positions on health care, abortion, taxes and various other twists dating back to his days at Bain Capital and as Massachusetts governor, Mitt insists that we join him in denial of his critics as well as the actual accounts of his rise to be the face of Republican politics.  But we prefer what  Oscar Wilde once wrote about folks like Romney:  

"No man is rich enough to buy back his past."

Not in Wilde's day.  Not now.

In Santorum visit, the thrill is gone

The old house across Market Street from the Tangier Restaurant was still sprouting one of  those 1950s rooftop TV antennas.  A few paces away a low-slung building was separated from the world by closed venetian blinds.  Its lettered message above the door  told of the availability of pinballs, pool tables, juke boxes and other once-wildly-popular diversions, although it wasn't immediately clear that the place was still open for business.  To one side facing the street rose a large sign promoting the 65th annual Italian-American Festival, July 13-July 15,  This was Aug. 15.

The Tangier marquee bore a welcome by "Romney-Ryan, Oh., for Senator R. Santorum.'"  But like the scene across the street,  there was an equally strong sense of yesterday  as the small crowd awaited the arrival of their honored guest in a room just off the lobby.    It was on Feb. 19 that Santorum, the darling of the Buckeye Tea Party, drew 1,350 well-wishers to the Summit County  Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner.  His supporters shunned Mitt Romney by anticipating a big Santorum sweep in Ohio.  As Bryan C. Williams, a veteran factotum in the local GOP and Tea Party admirer, put it, the event would "kind of cement his front-runner status in Ohio."  Besides, Ohio Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine had astonished many of his party's brethren by abandoning Romney's ship to endorse the former Pennsylvania senator.

But as anyone who has aspired to political greatness knows, you must first win the front-runner election, which didn't come close to happening, even as Santorum barked that Mitt was the "worst Republican" his party could nominate.

He didn't repeat that harsh assessment at the Tangier muted pep session.  He was even less demonstrative as he peered out at a standing audience of no more than 75 (!) listeners that included at  least a dozen dutiful local candidates who are never more than a phone call away from one of these events, reporters and Obama's own monitors.   Explaining that county GOP chairman Alex Arshinkoff would not be available (he was ailing), Williams worked to keep the program moving by introducing each local  with the party's trademark musical bump by a small  outfit that managed Stars and Stripes Forever with a guitar, electronic piano and drums, if you can imagine that.

Santorum revived his speeches from the primary season to a courteous group,  many wearing
Romney lapel stickers.   But he was less than connective as he assailed Obama as a lawbreaker, a warrior on religion  (got that, Catholics?) , and a divisive character who was in the game simply to collect votes.  "You have a right," he said, in his insistence on pulpiteering, "to live your faith out."  But his biggest applause line was his promise that the  Romney-Ryan campaign would go after the media. It's a standby promise, but it usually works with the right crowd.
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On the whole he did seem less energized than the time he stood up  before the Lincoln Day dinner crowd.   But he had so many more listeners in February and considered himself the frontrunner.  Today he will merely be the supernumerary on the Romney-Ryan Comeback America Team.

Losers tend to draw much smaller crowds. And, likewise,  that Italian-American festival is history.




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A friendly advisory on Mitt's doughnutgate

AS MITT ROMNEY continues his assault on President Obama for being out-of-touch with the economy, it seems only fair to point out that Mitt  is out of touch with doughnuts.  To the glee of the national  media desperately in need of levity in a weighty world, the Republican candidate came through big-time by failing to identify the beloved pastry  in a campaign photo-op during a sit-down with a few folks.  He might just as well have referred to a hotdog bun  as a Twinkie.

Embarrassing?  Who knows what embarrasses Mitt these days? He says so many things that merit it.  Still,  let me help him out of his problem with doughnutgate.

Mitt, Sir, what you see below is a doughnut: