It’s a Times Select article, but Dowd has a quote from David Geffen in her column today that I think is spot on, with perhaps the esteemed producer of Dream Girls’ assertion that whoever is the nominee from the Republican Party will win or his assertion that the Clintons are evil. I think, though, that he’s captured the sentiment of the zeitgeist.
Whoever is the nominee is going to win, so the stakes are very high. Not since the Vietnam War has there been this level of disappointment in the behavior of America throughout the world, and I don’t think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is — and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton? — can bring the country together. Obama is inspirational, and he’s not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family. Americans are dying every day in Iraq. And I’m tired of hearing James Carville on television.
For what it’s worth, Obama and Hillary are having a real fight over Geffen. Fineman’s got a good take.
In the other party, and continuing my reliance on the uber-liberal Newsweek, this portrayal of Mitt left a bad, bad taste in my mouth. Read it here.
A good example of what I’m talking about:
Romney’s campaign aides like to stress that he is a “turnaround” artist. They are referring to Romney’s great success at salvaging failing companies as a venture capitalist in the 1980s and ’90s and his near-miraculous rescue of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City from scandal and debt. The label carries the promise that Romney could reverse the fortunes of the GOP and the nation after the Bush years. But Romney’s turnaround on the burning social issues of gay rights, stem-cell research and abortion has raised questions about the candidate’s sincerity—a dangerous doubt at a time when voters seem to crave authenticity. In Massachusetts, as an unsuccessful Senate candidate in 1994 and in his winning race to become governor in 2002, Romney cast himself as liberal-to-moderate on social issues. But as Romney aims for the conservative Republican votes he will need to secure the presidential nomination, he has emerged as staunchly pro-life and anti-gay marriage. Was he, his critics ask, pretending then? Or is he pretending now?
Is Romney our new Kerry? I think he might be. Read this exchange from the Newsweek article. It feels like Kerry’s “Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian” moment to me: disingenuous and opportunistic.
As a candidate, he can appear slightly overproduced, a little too smooth for the hurly-burly of the hustings. Lately, Romney has been courting the evangelical vote, key to winning Republican primaries. He knows that some evangelicals regard his religion, Mormonism, as heresy (according to the National Journal, more than a quarter of self-identified evangelicals tell pollsters that they won’t vote for a Mormon). So last week, at a lackluster rally in the Bible belt of South Carolina where maybe 300 people half-filled an auditorium, Romney was trying, a bit unctuously, to show his down-home piety. As the crowd trickled out, Romney, his voice still at full decibel from his stump speech, grabbed the hand of state Rep. Bob Leach, a Baptist. “This man,” proclaimed Romney, “his prayers bring down the power of the Lord!”
Since when does a senior partner at a turnaround firm (Bain, for chrissakes) and the governor of Massachussettes, no less, proclaim anything. I don’t think he does, unless he’s faking. I’m not saying Romney’s not religious, but he’s not an evangelical Christian, either.
Even Better Thoughts