A Different Take on Presidential Debate #2

A lot has already been said about the presidential debate last night on Long Island (home of some of the most delicious cookies I’ve ever eaten, from Waldbaum’s).  I’ve seen a lot of what other pundits have said, and I have a few that don’t seem to have been expressed yet, so I wanted to get them out there.

I actually thought Romney did extremely well, and for a reason that didn’t seem to be discussed too much in the post-debate analysis.  I thought Romney came across as an adult — he had a plan, he answered the questions forthrightly, and didn’t really pander.  For example, when asked about immigration, he didn’t flinch from saying he did not think illegal immigrants should be able to jump ahead of the many people waiting to immigrate to the US.  He explained his policies — how he’d lower tax rates and eliminate loopholes to make those changes revenue-neutral,  He came across well when talking about how he had brought the spirit of gender equality into his own Cabinet in Massachusetts.

Obama, by contrast, came across to me as a high school debater.  He repeatedly whined to the moderator that Romney was not following the rules (for example, when Romney used part of his time on a subsequent question to correct statements Obama made about his answer to a previous question).  He repeatedly complained when he didn’t get to have the last word (though he got it much more frequently than did Romney), and he looked petulant when Romney was talking.  When Candy Crowley made her (tremendously inappropriate and inaccurate) statement about what Obama said about Libya, he called out, “Say that louder!” (as the supposedly “undecided” audience cheered Crowley’s seeming putdown of Romney).  And when Romney started to go off on the Libya response, and asked Obama if he’d said what he’d said, Obama replied with a smarmy, immature “please proceed.”  It all came across as a grade school debater — working the refs, trying to get an A.  Trying to get that perfect 10 on the famous “Obamamometer.”

Obama seemed like he took a high school approach to the debate.  For him it was just a game — how many rhetorical points can I score against Romney?  Can I “win” the debate?  That’s why he felt free to fib — on Libya, on the number of drilling permits his administration has issued, that he supports coal — because it was all about looking like he was in command, not about being accurate or truthful.  Sure, he got a few points in on Romney’s Bain work, and that Romney has investments in China, but does an independent voter really care about that?  Does an unemployed worker really care the makeup of Mitt Romney’s personal portfolio, if Mitt’s got a plan to get him back to work?

Same with Libya — although this will really come back to haunt him.  After Candy Crowley’s seeming putdown of Romney, when she claimed Obama did call the murder of the US Ambassador to Libya a terrorist attack in his September 12 speech in the Rose Garden, in addition to egging Crowley on, Obama challenged Romney to “Get the transcript!”  (Obama thinks he is so clever and smart, throwing around lawyerly words like “transcript.”)  That was the move of a high school debater — a smarmy “Get the transcript!”  Problem is, people did get the transcript, and while he used the words “act of terror” once in that speech, nowhere in that speech did Obama say unequivocally the Benghazi assault was a terrorist  attack.  And for weeks after the attack, Obama refused to call it a terrorist attack and yammered on and on (at the UN, on Univision, on The View, on Letterman) and his UN Ambassador told five Sunday news shows it was a spontaneous protest.  Only someone trying to score points in a debate and unworried about the consequences afterward would invite people to check the transcript.  I.e., a high school debater just trying to win on rhetorical points.

(Incidentally, remember the 16 words in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address?  About the Yellowcake from Niger?  The Left made a bigger stink about that this Administration’s lies.  I guess if you are going to say untrue things, make sure you are a Democrat.)

Bottom line:  I think Romney came across as the adult in the room.  Obama came across as a petulant, immature, lawyerly-cheap-shot-taking high schooler.  If you ask me, I don’t think independents saw anything that would make them turn back to Obama.

Presidential Debate #1: The Preening Peacock Got His Plumage Plucked

What a night for Mitt Romney.  And what a disaster for Barack Obama.  Last night’s debate wasn’t even close.  If it had been a boxing match they would have called it in the first 20 minutes and awarded Romney a TKO.  But it was a debate, so Romney got a whole ‘nother hour to lay waste to pretty much everything Obama did (or didn’t do) in the last four years and lay waste to everything he said last night.

And before the liberals start their carping and whining, let’s get one thing out of the way right now: the debate format and moderator Jim Lehrer had nothing to do with Obama’s disastrous performance.  I actually thought it was the best format for a debate I’d ever seen.  The two candidates were able to discuss each other’s ideas, making points and counterpoints.  Romney was able to rebut the president’s inaccurate attacks on him (more on that below) and both men were able to respond to each other’s arguments.  That’s a real debate.  None of this cheesy Oprah-style town halls, or two-minute responses where you can’t say anything substantive.  This was free-wheeling, both men got to make their points and explain them, and both men could respond to the other.  It’s a format that prevents lies from becoming truth, by allowing participants to correct the record instantly.  I can understand why the Obama people would have a problem with that — their entire campaign is based on the fiction that Romney wants to raise taxes on the middle class — but this was an informative debate that allowed voters to see where the two candidates stand, in their own words.  Isn’t that the point of a debate?

Here are what I thought were the biggest moments of the night:

(1)  Romney’s early insistence that his plan WILL NOT cut taxes on the wealthy and raise them on the middle class.  Obama’s whole campaign has been based on this canard.  Probably because he saw Occupy Wall Street and thought, “that sounds good.”  Romney wants to lower tax rates for everyone, but cut out loopholes and deductions to make up for the lowered rates.  A flatter, fairer code.  And Romney repeated this, four or five times — I am not planning to raise taxes on the middle class.  He didn’t call Obama a liar, but he didn’t have to.  By repeatedly correcting him, he made his point.

(2)  Romney’s response to Obama’s claim about giving tax advantages to companies that offshore jobs — “Mr. President, I’ve been in business 25 years.  I have no idea what you are talking about.”  So much packed into those few words.  First, and most obviously, that what Obama is saying isn’t true.  (And it isn’t.)  Second, that he actually knows business.  And third, that Obama doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

(3)  Bowles-Simpson.  The President basically capitulated by saying “we’re putting Bowles-Simpson up to Congress now.”  His favorite move — fob it off on Congress.  See, e.g., the stimulus and Obamacare.  Of course, he’s NOT putting Bowles-Simpson up to Congress now, and seeing as the Bowles-Simpson plan is two years old, it begs the question of why he didn’t do that two years ago.  His inadvertent embrace of Bowles-Simpson — he says he’s trying to do it now, when he’s not  — shows that he knows that he needs to look like he’s doing something on the deficits and the debt.

(4) At the very end, Jim Lehrer said something he might not have done a great job moderating the debate, and Obama said something like, “you did a great job, it’s a terrific debate.”  That was Obama trying to reassert himself as the President and an authority.  By giving a compliment to Lehrer as the President, he was attempting to revive his stature on the stage.  “I’m the president and I have the power to say you did a good job and it means something.”  To me, that little comment was the sign that he knew he got his clock cleaned.

(5)  The body language.  A lot of people last night commented how Obama looked down at his notes or at Lehrer, but not Romney; looked nervous and hesitating; and looked like he wanted to be somewhere else.  Contrast that with how he looked on The View — seated straight up, hands folded in his lap, the picture of confidence, answering questions like a professor with a group of adoring fans.  Obama looked at his situation on The View and thought (1) I know more here than everyone else, (2) I will not be challenged on what I say, (3) I am the authority here, and (4) these folks love me.  So he entered his pontificating mode, with hand gestures and just a hint of condescension.  In the debate, he sized up the situation and realized, (1) Romney knows more facts and figures than I do; (2) I am being challenged; and (3) I know some of the things I am saying are not true and I hope he doesn’t call me on it.   Hence, the nervous demeanor, appearing as though he wanted to be somewhere else.

Last night may have been the first time in his life that Obama has not been sucked up to, admired, told how wonderful everything he says and does is, etc.  For the first time, again perhaps in his life, someone was saying, “no sir, you are wrong, what you are saying is not true.”  For the first time in his life, he has had to defend his record and not merely talk about himself or what he represents.  And in this first such challenge, he failed miserably.

Turn Ryan Loose! A Radical Solution to Getting the Romney Message Across

After a week in which the media moved heaven and earth to cover for Obama’s failures in the Middle East, and the utter, embarrassing story of the Administration that all of what happened in the Middle East was the result of a video that no one saw, it’s time for the Romney-Ryan team to shake things up.  (As an aside, how many of those people in the protests even have Internet access?  Half of them did not appear to even have all their teeth.)

What I cannot understand is this:  where is Paul Ryan?  This is a guy that Obama truly fears.  Obama knows Ryan’s got his number, and Obama knows that Ryan knows the details of key issues of this campaign — debt, deficits, health care reform — way better than he does.  (Frankly, deep down, I think Obama knows Ryan’s a sharp guy and that his Ivy League degrees won’t save him from being exposed by Ryan’s piercing, but plain-spoken intellect.)  If Ryan was the candidate, Obama would be quaking in his boots.  The debates would be full of the ummms and uhhhs Obama is famous for whenever he goes without his teleprompter.  Remember when Ryan schooled Obama at the House Republican retreat and the Health Care Summit?  We need more of that.  Now.

I saw a suggestion that they Romney campaign start doing some teaching-style ads, with charts and a face-to-face discussion by the candidate of the issues.  Ryan did a few of these where he talked about health care reform and debt/deficits, with an old-fashioned wooden pointer and a chart.  He’s fantastic.  Clear, concise, and right to the point on key issues.  He talks to votes directly, like adults.  Here’s the problem, here’s the solution.  No Letterman, no walls of $350 gold champagne bottles.  Just a candidate talking straight to the voters.

I think voters are starving for that.  They want to hear how the problems will be solved.  They are pretty sure Obama’s solutions haven’t and won’t work.  But they don’t know what Romney’s solutions are.  If it were me, I’d take most of the advertising budget and do these 30 second teaching sessions with Ryan and Romney and a blackboard or a chart.  Forget Obama.  He’s not worth wasting time arguing with.  He makes things up, misrepresents the GOP positions, and demagogues shamelessly.  He doesn’t have a plan, and no one is pressing him for it in the media.  All he knows how to do is go around, talk to DJs and late night talk show hosts, revel in his own celebrity and his wonderfulness.  No time for, say, Netanyahu and the IRanian nuclear threat.

How best to deal with Obama’s dirty, issue-free, shiny-object campaign?  IGNORE IT.  AND IGNORE OBAMA.  Don’t engage with him.  Talk over him.  Talk over the media.  Be presidential.  Take out ads that just talk about the issue and the solution.  One on deficits.  One on true health care reform (premium support).  One on the Middle East.  One on energy policy (esp. domestic coal and oil).  One on trade.  One on the effect of public sector unions on the public fisc.  Maybe have as guests popular swing state governors — Bob McDonnell in VA, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, and Chris Christie in New Jersey.

There was a cartoon segment on Bugs Bunny, I think, that featured a big dog lumbering down the street, and an annoying little dog bouncing all around him, yapping and ankle-biting.    Romney has to be the big dog — mature, issue-oriented, focused on problems.  If he does that, it will only accentuate the substance-free, yapping, little-dog nature of the Obama campaign.  Go big, Mitt.  Turn Paul Ryan loose.

Calumnies in the Middle East, Obama’s Inexplicable Middle East Policy

I had planned to post some thoughts about last week’s Democratic convention and the state of the presidential race this morning, but events relating to the Middle East have got me steaming mad, and so I’ll get to those thoughts soon.  But for now, the Middle East.

Yesterday, 9/11/2012 — the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by radical Muslim jihadists that killed 3,000 Americans — Egyptian Muslim radicals stormed the US embassy in Cairo, lowered the US flag, tore it, and then burned it.  Meanwhile, Muslim radicals in Libya killed the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans in the US Consulate in Benghazi.  The pretext — I use that word deliberately — was a film that depicted the Prophet Muhammad in an unflattering light.

The film that triggered the Cairo riot apparently was released in July, but somehow, amazingly, the protests were launched on 9/11.  What a coincidence.  There are already reports this was planned to a degree using social media.

Meanwhile, back in the US, word leaked that Obama snubbed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s request for a meeting on Iran when Netanyahu visits the UN in late September.  Apparently Obama had “scheduling difficulties.”  He apparently has no scheduling difficulties for the new Islamist Egyptian Prime Minister, Mohamed Morsi, who will be visiting the US later this year.  Unbelievable!  The prime minister of our closest ally in the region, a country with which the US has deep historic, moral, and economic ties, cannot get a meeting with President Obama, but the President of a country that just ransacked our embassy and burned our flag on 9/11, in the name of Islam, and replaced it with an al-Qaeda banner, gets an audience with the president.  This is utterly outrageous, and demands a forceful response.

Think about it: radical Muslims are unhappy about a movie that they say is offensive to their religious sensibilities.  So what do they do?  They go and destroy one of the most important symbols to all Americans, the American flag, on one of the most somber and patriotic days on the American calendar, and replace it with an al-Qaeda banner.  On 9/11.  I’m utterly infuriated.  A “proportional” response (as the world community likes to demand of Israel after Israelis have been murdered in cold blood by terrorists) would be to find some symbol important to them and destroy it, in public fashion.  Or maybe storm the Egyptian embassy and put up an American flag.

But of course, that won’t happen.  We are a law-abiding people, and we don’t riot, destroy, and kill over expressions of speech.  No hysterical ululating, no property destruction, no shooting guns into the air, nothing like that.  Just a steely resolve to do right in the world and bring perpetrators of crimes to justice.

But this must be met with a response.  The President should immediately cancel his meeting with Morsi.  I get that we want to keep Egypt at least sort-of in our orbit, but at this rate, we are losing it anyway — it may arguably already be lost — and perhaps a demonstration of our backbone rather than our generosity and largesse may be more effective.  Of course, we know that if we step aside with our aid others, like China and Russia, will try to step in and fill the vacuum.  So I understand the tightrope the US is walking.  But really, this is a two-way street.  Yes, Egypt is strategically important, but allowing Egypt to take advantage of us like this means they really aren’t an ally.  At some point, enough has to be enough.

Instead, I worry the president will go ahead with his meeting with Morsi.  This president is convinced he can sweet-talk world leaders and convince them of his case.  All his life, he’s been able to just open his mouth and have people fall at his feet.  Media, Ivy League schools, you name it.  But these world actors are hard men.  They care not for platitudes, liberal multiculturalism shibboleths, and the rest.  They care about power — who has it, who exercises it, and how they exercise it.  Mealy-mouthed liberal “why can’t we all just get along” bromides say one thing to these folks: weakness.

Frankly, I think all of this means that we need to double down on our efforts to undermine the nerve center of the jihad — Iran.  The fall of the Iranian government would be a huge blow to radical Islam.  Hamas, Hezbollah, and Assad would lose their patron.  Egypt’s Islamist revolution would lose its other pole and would need to again look to the US for support.  That would be a seismic game changer, and for the better.  Appearing to act in concert with Israel, rather than in opposition to Israel, would help.  which is why Obama’s snub is so depressing.  It also poses tremendous risk.  If the Israelis become desperate, and convinced the US will do nothing to stop Iran, they may act themselves.  In that case, the US would likely be brought in anyway, and in a manner not of its choosing.

But as a supporter of Israel, I am simply stunned that Obama would snub an Israeli prime minister on so crucial an issue as Iran.  He doesn’t like Netanyahu personally?  Too bad.  Remember, Obama is the apotheosis of “smart power,” its ultimate practitioner, the world’s smartest and greatest diplomat.  Surely he can swallow his pride and deal with perhaps the gravest issue facing the world today: the Iranian nuclear program.  Giving speeches apologizing for your country’s supposed sins to an audience that is predisposed not to like you is easy.  Dealing with real problems is hard.  Time to deal with the real problems, Mr. President.

Job Well Done, Mitt

Last night’s RNC convention finale hit just the right notes.  Mitt Romney’s speech was, I think, just what he needed to do.  The first part, where he discussed his family, made him come across as the devoted family man he is.  The second part was what I think of as the “Bain clean-up.”  After weeks of ignorant demagoguery from the Obama campaign about what Bain did, having Romney get up on stage and actually describe what he did and how it helped create thousands of jobs for Americans made Obama look small and unaccomplished from his attacks on Romney.  Romney made it so that Obama appeared to be punishing success through his attacks on Bain, and after four years of 8 percent unemployment his attacks on Romney’s undeniable business success rang hollow.  Romney successfully, I think, made Obama out to be making war on success.  The final portion of the speech was strong — further indictment of the Obama economy and introducing his five-point plan for the economy.

I was particularly struck by his point that he decided not to go back to Michigan and enter the auto industry, as he surely could have with his father a former president of AMC.  Rather, he chose to strike out on his own, to test and challenge himself, and see what he could do.  This was someone who could have eaten from a silver spoon but instead charted his own path.  It reminded me a little of the pioneers who went west to seek their fortunes.  Obama will try to make Romney out to be a plutocrat, the Monopoly guy, but Romney got there on his own, and Obama will look the smaller for attacking his self-made success.

I actually thought the video of Romney’s life drove this point home even further.  I was particularly struck by the local TV footage of Romney and his wife walking through the first Staples store, and his excited talk about how this could be the beginning of something great.  Seeing Romney walk around that new store, almost like a proud parent, was (for me, anyway) rather moving.  I was also struck by the Staples employee who talked about how Romney was hands-on as a major investor, and he treated the employees like family.  Obama likes to say “we’re all in it together” (at the same time he calls Republicans flat Earthers, Social Darwinists, and, in Romney’s case, a felon and a murderer), but in helping to create Staples, Romney really did view his employees as part of a team, and he and his employees would rise and fall as one.  When one thinks about Obama, when has he ever done something like that?  Has anyone heard from one of his former students, saying how Obama inspired them to do X, or Y, or Z?  Does anyone have a story about how Obama took a group of people to success the way Mitt Romney did his employees and partners?

The lead-in to Romney’s speech, with person after person telling us about Mitt Romney’s acts of kindness and empathy, Olympic athletes talking about how Romney saved the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games, really hit home.  The story of the boy with a terminal illness that Romney befriended, visited in the hospital, and helped him write his will and gave his eulogy.  And how can you not want to stand up and cheer “U-S-A!” when you see Mike Eruzione up on the podium?

It is striking how many such stories of Romney’s kindness there are.  How he bought Christmas presents for two high schoolers from his church who had been paralyzed in a car accident, and offered to pay their college tuition.  How he helped organize a team to rescue a neighbor’s belongings in a house fire.  How he shut his company down for days so everyone could search for the missing daughter of a colleague (even having Duane Reade drug stores, owned by Bain, pass out missing person flyers at their cash registers).  How he personally built and maintained a park in honor of a deceased child.

Can you see Harry Reid doing that?  Harry Reid, who lives at the Washington Ritz-Carlton despite having been a public servant all his life?  Nancy Pelosi?  Barack Obama?  Bueller?  Bueller?

That is what is so remarkable about today’s liberals.  When confronted with a man like Mitt Romney — who, whatever your politics, is a man of extraordinary, uncommon decency and charity — they demonize him and try to destroy him if he threatens their grip on power.  Even though he is providing for the less fortunate in a way liberals expect the government to.  Yet they can’t seem to abide this man if he doesn’t share their political opinions.  There’s more than a whiff of a totalitarian impulse in all of this.

Liberals care mainly about intentions — if you “care” and if you speechify in politics about how the government should care for others, you can be absolved of almost any sin (see Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Al Sharpton).  But if you are a conservative Republican who is generous to a fault and lives an indisputably upstanding life, you will be demonized just because your beliefs differ from the Democrats.  Pretty sad pass the Democrats have come to.

For the Love of All That is Good, Stop Calling Them “Investments”!

The Democrats routinely refer to how we need to “invest” more in education, infrastructure, etc.  That’s their big idea: to get America’s economy going again, we need to make the necessary “investments” in education, infrastructure, etc.

This is typical lawyerly double-speak.  We can’t call it spending, so let’s call it “investments”!  That way, we can convince Americans we are actually business-savvy while we’re just spending like crazy (on favored public sector unionized workers, no less).  Calling spending “investments” sounds like it came from Focus Group Central.  We sound like we know what we’re doing, even though we hate business (“the 1 percent”) and want to take over the economy (see, e.g., health care).

I’d like to have tried that with my parents when I was a kid.  Can we “invest” in that cotton candy?  Can I “invest” in that baseball ticket?  Can I “invest” in the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier?

Here’s the thing about the Democrats’ so-called “investments”:  you can’t sell them.  Worse, you won’t get a dividend if they do well.  You know what I do if I have a lousy stock, fund, or investment?  I sell it.  You know what the Democrats do with lousy investments?  They say we haven’t invested enough, and we need to invest more!  Oh, and the other difference:  the Democrats want to make investments with my money, and they get whatever benefits accrue.  If Obama, Reid, Schumer or Pelosi want to let me invest their money and keep the profits, I’d be happy to.  I’ll find me the riskiest investment, with the highest possible reward, and I’ll invest.  Presto, Solyndra!

The whole thing is offensive.  Do the Democrats really think I am so stupid to not know the difference between a real investment and their euphemism for more budget-busting, blowout spending?

Obama Campaign’s Inspiration: Occupy Wall Street

Was watching Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard on the Fox Special Report panel last night making a point he has made for months — that Obama in 2009 and 2010 said you don’t raise taxes in a slow economy, and now the centerpiece of his campaign is to do just that, because he wants the “wealthy” to “pay a little bit more,” what he believes is their “fair share.”  It’s an excellent point, and it got me to thinking, where did “tax fairness” and raising taxes on those who can supposedly afford to “pay a little bit more” come from?

And then it occurred to me: this is nothing more than the dressed-up version of Occupy Wall Street.  That’s right — we have a looming debt crisis, an out-of-control deficit that has topped $1 trillion four years in a row for the first time in American history, and the President, Axelrod, Plouffe and the rest of the gang are getting their inspiration for the President’s entire re-election campaign from a bunch of rag-a-muffin, spoiled, unemployed kids who are suddenly discovering that their $200,000 degree in 13th century Turkish flute music isn’t terribly useful in the real world.  Not to mention the vandals, arsonists, sex offenders, and the many who apparently were not toilet-trained.  The President and his folks looked at these hygiene-challenged, wanna-be 60’s radicals, and said “Yes!  That’s it!  These guys have exactly the right idea.”

This is what passes for seriousness in governing?  Remember, we could confiscate the fortune of the 200 richest people in America and pay for about 6 months to a year of Obama’s deficits.  No wonder Wall Street donations to Obama have, shall we say, lessened over the past six months.  Obama is finally realizing that you can Occupy Wall Street, or ask for donations from it, but not both.

If I’m Romney, I get a few choice images and video clips from the various and sundry “Occupy” movements and put them in an ad, and remind them that this is where the President’s bright idea to tax the “wealthy” comes from.  Not to mention Nancy Pelosi saying how great she thinks the Occupy movement it.  Hang that baby around the Democrats’ neck.

Obama’s Press Briefing: Home of the Whoppers

I was once told by a litigator I worked with that you knew you were ready to go to trial when you “start to believe your own bulls***.”  Looks to me like Obama is ready for the trial of the century, a.k.a the 2012 election.  Yesterday, he deigned to meet the political press (as opposed to those hard-hitting reporters from People, Entertainment Tonight, and morning drive-time radio shows).

Where to begin with his press conference?  It is unbelievable his level of disconnect between his answers to questions and, you know, reality.

Comment 1:  “if you watch me on the campaign trail, here’s what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how we put Americans back to work.”

Really?  Will seeing Mitt Romney’s tax returns put people back to work, Because, Mr. President, you sure do talk about those tax returns a lot.  How about your daily references to Seamus the dog?  (At least three in the last week.)  I’m sure that will get companies hiring again.

Oh, and by the way, Mr. President, you know who is not asking for the tax returns?  The IRS.  You know why?  Because they received them and received the tax payment owed them.  If I’m Mitt Romney, I answer thusly:  “I have filed my tax returns every year.  I pay what I owe under the tax laws of the U.S.  And the IRS has never said or thought otherwise.”  Period, full stop.  That should be sufficient.

Comment 2:  “For example, nobody accused Mr. Romney of being a felon.”

Ummm, not true.  Obama’s deputy campaign manager said Romney’s SEC filings showed he was either (1) a felon or (2) a liar to the American people.  Of course, neither was true, but to even suggest Mitt Romney might be a felon shows (1) Obama’s team missed the day they taught securities law in law school (he must have been writing that long and novel constitutional law article for the Harvard Law Review, oh wait, never mind) and (2) they’ll say and do anything to change the subject.

Comment 3:  “Now, if you look at the overall trajectory of our campaign and the ads that I’ve approved and are produced by my campaign, you’ll see that we point out sharp differences between the candidates, but we don’t go out of bounds.”

Are you serious?  Accusing Mitt Romney essentially of murder?  He would denounce the Priorities USA ad with the steelworker insinuating that Mitt Romney caused his wife’s death.  That’s what the ad says.  You know it, I know it, and the President surely knows it.  If he won’t denounce this ad, he is a hypocrite.  Pure and simple.

Comment 4:  “I think that is what the American people would rightly expect — is a sense that, particularly when we’re going to be having a huge debate about how we reform our tax code and how we pay for the government that we need, I think people want to know that everybody has been playing by the same rules, including people who are seeking the highest office in the land.”

This from a guy who won’t even release his college transcripts.  If transparency is so important, why not just release your college transcripts?  I mean, who cares if you got a C in freshman history?  I surely don’t.  In any event, Obama’s unwillingness to denounce the scurrilous Priorities USA ad means that he’s forfeited the right to demand any personal information from Romney.  Romney surely knows the unscrupulous Obama campaign will  find something to misconstrue and use against him.  So he should ignore the tax return calls and talk about the economy — and why Obama’s calls for the tax returns are just a distraction.

Comment 5:  “Now, if you look at the overall trajectory of our campaign and the ads that I’ve approved and are produced by my campaign, you’ll see that we point out sharp differences between the candidates, but we don’t go out of bounds.”

Yes, because of course last year’s ads showing Paul Ryan pushing a granny of a cliff are so, you know, in-bounds.  Never mind how he completely distorted Romney’s record at Bain.  Last year a memo leaked that said the Obama campaign’s plan was to “kill Romney” in ads.  In bounds, indeed.

Remember When Obama’s Managing of His Campaign Was Proof of His Managerial Acumen? Two Words: Joe Biden

Or as Biden might say, “three words: Joe Biden.”  Remember back in 2008 when the Obamians would respond to any argument that Obama had never run anything in his life by saying, “look how well he is running his presidential campaign?”  Okay, what was the biggest decision he had to make during that campaign.  Perhaps the choice of the man who would be a heartbeat away from the Presidency?  And who does he pick?  The perenially ridiculous, periodically offensive Joe Biden!  The man who wanted to divide Iraq in three among the Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds.  (He actually unified Iraqis on that point: they all thought it was a bad idea.)  The man who opposed Desert Storm?  This guy is supposedly a foreign policy sage, but if I’m Paul Ryan and someone asks me what my foreign policy is, I’d say “I find out what Joe Biden suggests we do and then do the opposite.”

Obama owns Biden.  Can’t dump him and admit he’s a joke, because that would admit error, and of course the Smartest President in History can’t do that.  But really, at what point does the fact that Biden really is a heartbeat away from the Presidency pose a real issue?

Irony Alert: Obama Helped Create The Paul Ryan Phenomenon

As I was thinking about the utter panic that seems to have struck the Obama campaign since Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan to be his VP nominee, it suddenly struck me:  other than Ryan himself, no one did more to help boost Ryan’s national profile and street cred among conservatives than President Obama himself.  Twice Obama engaged Ryan in debate, and twice Ryan took him to school.  The first time was at the House Republican Conference in Baltimore in 2009, and the second time was at the Health Care Summit at Blair House in 2010.  Both times Ryan delivered devastating critiques of the President’s policy, and the President could only look on, unable to respond to Ryan’s critiques.

The irony is that it was Obama himself, by creating these opportunities for for Ryan to engage him, who boosted Ryan’s profile.  More ironically, the two forums were an effort by the man dubbed the “Smartest President in History” to show how bipartisan he was, how smart he was, and how he could debate issues with the Republicans and win.  The last time Obama directly spoke to Ryan, he made sure it was in a setting where Ryan couldn’t immediately respond – the infamous speech at George Washington University where Obama, using classic left-wing faculty lounge language, accused the Republicans of being Social Darwinists.

Of course, this is not the reason why Ryan rose to prominence — he is extremely smart, a good communicator, likeable, and willing to speak to the American people like adults and grapple with the country’s real problems.  But the irony is that in an effort to show off how smart, academic, and reasonable he is, by holding these summits and forums where he thought he could be the star of the show, President Obama unwittingly gave a forum to Paul Ryan to show off smart, academic, and clear-spoken Ryan actually is.  Talk about being hoist by your own petard.  One can’t help but get the sense that Obama is really scared of Ryan, and knows that in a head-to-head debate, he’d be exposed as having a poorer command of the facts than Ryan.