Unfortunate Turn

Notes of Concern…

                               …Jackson Blair

Unfortunate Turn

Four years ago Barack Obama presented to the American people an idealized way of looking at politics. He wanted to offer hope. His candidacy involved a lot of idealism. He did not bring with him a great deal of applicable previous life experience, but his oratory and dreams inspired many.

Richard Nixon once used the phrase “the lift of a driving dream.” Obama breathed hope into a great many people. He was elected President of the United States not because anyone thought his previous work experience suggested he would be a great president but because his high ideals and lofty rhetoric gave hope to so many.

Four years have passed.

Unemployment is up.

Housing is down.

Social welfare programs are overburdened.

International hotspots are seemingly out of control.

The list is endless.

But none of this bothers me as much as the change in his persona. He is running against a Mormon who does not drink, works as a missionary, serves his church, donates millions each year to charity, was a Republican Governor in the most Democratic state in the union, loves athletics, championed and supported his wife through her multiple sclerosis and her cancer, and raised five seemingly fine sons.

Yet the sitting President of the United States has intimated that Governor Romney is a felon, a bull-shitter, a liar, and somehow unsuited to the job.

These are pretty graphic comments for a man of high ideals, a man who supposedly is above political dirty tricks.

More than that, they are the charges of a desperate man, a man who thinks he might actually lose his presidency.

Whatever the reasons, pragmatic or just evidence of a side to this man we did not see four years ago, they are off-putting to me.

I have written before of demonization. I hate it. It is especially distasteful when we are talking about the presidency of our country.

Governor Romney has criticized the president’s programs and policies. He has been steadfast in his criticism of what he sees as a failed presidency. Having said that, I have not heard or read any personal criticisms of the president. Governor Romney talks about failed policies and programs and a disappointing leadership model.

President Obama may well be given a second term by the people of the United States.

However, the lofty image he brought to his first campaign is gone forever. Today he is simply another politician willing to do or say whatever is necessary to keep a hold on power.

I had the privilege of meeting or knowing or working with George H.W. Bush, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Harry Truman and many other people who lived and worked in the world of politics. It has not been my experience that unleashing personal attacks on one’s opponent has been key to winning the hearts and minds of the voters.

It is my hope that these frantic last minute attacks of a personal nature will backfire. That being said, I have been around politics long enough to know that they might just work.

Sadly, that says a lot about us, the voters.

No More Debate

Notes of Concern…

                               …Jackson Blair

No More Debate

The President, or a reasonable facsimile, showed up for the first debate. He probably wishes he had stayed at home.

The Governor showed up for the second debate, not realizing he was being double teamed by the President and Candy Crowley, and never seemed to be able to get his groove back after coming to the realization he was being ambushed.

After all the dust settled, there seemed to be two “takes” on the debates.

1.   The President took a big hit in his popularity and his poll lead as a direct result of his performance in the first debate.

2.   Although widely believed to have been bested by the President, the after-debate polls showed very little movement as a result of the perceived Romney loss.

So that made the third and final debate especially interesting to me. With a proven journalist of the first rank, and one who understands international subjects, I knew no one would get the best of Bob Schieffer nor would Schieffer permit any shenanigans.

I also knew that both the President and the Governor would recognize the importance of this last opportunity to address millions of viewers.

They would be at their individual best and they would come prepared.

It would fall to the President to try to bolster his falling level of support that was the result of the first debate, and hardly staunched by his excellent performance in the second debate.

It would fall to the Governor to try to hang on to the slim lead he enjoyed, according to Real Clear Politics prior to the debate, and to attempt to better that position.

Reasonable people can have very different perspectives on any subject and that is certainly true of assessing winners and losers in a political debate.  In addition, many things can occur nationally and internationally between the end of the third debate and the actual election.

Prognostications are dangerous.

So I will ignore the conventional wisdom and prognosticate.

The President had a good night but I seriously doubt he turned things around. He landed few punches but he failed to make Governor Romney look either unqualified or inept.

I doubt the President picked up any new support.

The Governor had a good night in that he did not torpedo his momentum. He looked presidential and his views were moderate.

I doubt that he lost support.

So if the present trend continues it may well come down to one state, the state of Ohio, to select the next President of the United States.

And as I write this column, the president enjoys a very small lead in Ohio, within the margin of error of all the polls. But the Governor has momentum in Ohio and has seen his position improve almost daily.

If I had to “call” the election today, after the third debate, I would predict the election of Mitt Romney by a larger margin than most think possible for him today.

The caveat?

If the president can stop the Romney momentum, or gain a new momentum of his own, then I think the election is really a “toss up” and the result will be quite close.

How about that for “fence sitting?”

Debate One

Notes of Concern…

                               …Jackson Blair

Debate One

The former Governor of Massachusetts seemed to be on the ropes leading up to the first of three debates he would have with President Obama. Governor Romney had failed to make the election about the Obama record while allowing the president to make the election about Romney’s wealth and supposed insensitivity.

Well, Debate One changed the dynamic.

The President looked bored.

The Governor looked vibrant.

Keeping in mind the president is almost a decade younger than the Governor; the significant difference in their appearance and enthusiasm was a surprise to me.

Listening to the “talking heads” after the debate I was surprised to hear liberals commending Romney on his debate performance. Even the vaunted James Carville felt Obama looked like he didn’t want to be there and that Governor Romney did very well.

One debate does not make a successful presidential campaign effort. But one debate may well have made this a real contest. The bottom line on this debate is that Mitt Romney’s campaign is alive again. You can be sure those who advise the president will be lighting a fire under him and getting him ready for Debate Two.

The president needs to take their advice. He needs to become engaged. When the debate on foreign affairs takes place Obama is going to again be on the defensive. He does not have a strong record in the foreign arena. And almost every day something new happens in the Middle East that makes the government look like they haven’t a clue about what to do.

On the other hand, Romney got a break in this first debate. The Obama he encounters in the next debate will be much better prepared. Romney’s numbers were tanking and it is certain that a lot of time, money and practice went into his performance.

The president can survive a bad debate and come back to fight again. I am not sure that Romney could have survived a bad debate. He needed a knockout punch.

And he got one.

What was a very dull campaign season has taken on a new sense of excitement as a result of this first debate. If the American people are attentive they should have many opportunities between now and November 6 to really learn what the differences between the candidates truly are and that, my friends, will be a major step in the right direction.

Less demonization.

More factual and detailed presentations.

Less political party boilerplate and knee jerk reactions.

More independent evaluation of the candidates’ actual performance and promise.

I think America was well served by Debate One.

And I think Debate One surprised America.

American Fatwas ?

Notes of Concern…

                               …Jackson Blair

American Fatwas?

Presidential campaigns have a way of bringing out the worst in people!

As we approach the finish line we take up sides, get really testy about the “other candidate” and begin to believe, and even circulate outrageously wonderful things about the guy we prefer.

As I have said in this column before, perfectly nice people join in the demonization of the “other” presidential candidate, his family, his history and his performance.

By November every four years truth seems to just disappear in our political landscape.

Such an unfriendly atmosphere could cause people to withhold their thoughts. It could easily shut down the open discourse important to reaching decisions about leadership. Certainly, it makes many wary of taking any sort of public position.

I expect it is one of the reasons that voting is such a private affair. We ask you to leave home, go to a central place, prove you are whom you say you are, and then go into a small enclosed space and privately mark a paper, one without your signature or any other identifying mark, to make your choice for president.

And yet our current democracy, through public statements, newspaper reports, television interviews, telephone polls, arguments with neighbors and friends probably renders much of that “secrecy” ineffective. By November I know how almost all my friends and acquaintances and colleagues plan to vote. Of course some of them may surprise in the confines of the voting booth just as they probably do in the confines of the confessional but the majority might as well walk around with their choice tattooed on their heads.

So it seems to me that the secrecy involved in elections is not nearly as important as the freedom we enjoy stating openly what we think. With the exception of losing a few friends every four years, we do not get imprisoned for our publicly stated thoughts. No matter how ridiculous our arguments they are still heard in America. Regardless of how outrageous the statement made by a “talking head” on television, a humorous but extreme prognosticator, or a half-truth spouting columnist, free speech is alive and well here at home.

You may remember the famous case of the author Salman Rushdie. He wrote a book, a novel that ended up offending Muslims. For this he received a Fatwa. It was a death sentence. He received it on a Valentine’s Day and it was renewed each Valentine’s Day for over a decade. He had to hide. He had to hire protection. He was a target every day. His family fell apart and he his wife left.

All of this over a novel.

Recently, in an interview, Rushdie had this to say:

we need to have the courage of our convictions… we need to understand that we are privileged to live in one of the relatively few countries in the world where we get to say what we think. Yes, that means that some of those utterances will be unlikable, even objectionable, even insulting, because not everybody thinks well, not everybody’s a nice person. But if you’re going to have the good fortune of living in this kind of society, then you have to cherish it and defend it, that’s just full stop.

Reading this reminds me that our four year experiment in demonization, while unattractive and unpleasant, is yet another suggestion that we can not only think, but say, what we believe. We can fight for the candidate we choose. And most importantly, none of us will experience a Fatwa or any other horrible consequence for our free speech.

God Bless America.