September 7, 2012
There’s something magical about mountain tops, particularly vast ones, like the fourteen-thousand-foot peaks in Colorado. I haven’t climbed many, but I’ve climbed a few—enough to recall terrors scrambling up rocks, faint delirium from the altitude, and exhilarations at the summit. It’s a cliché to describe the beauty, so let me just rely on Gary Snyder, translating an eighth-century Chinese poet.
Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there’s been no rain
The pine sings, but there’s no wind.
Who can leap the world’s ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?”
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September 6, 2012
There is really only one plausible scenario in which Republicans could enact some version of Paul Ryan’s radical, government-shrinking budget plan during the next two years. That would be if Mitt Romney wins the White House and Republicans eke out control of the Senate in November. (The Democrats now hold the Senate by a 53-47 margin.)
Otherwise, at least until the congressional elections of 2014, the country will have some form of divided government—partisan gridlock, as it is usually called. That is because Republicans almost certainly will hold control of the House of Representatives this year, according to professional election forecasters. Even if Obama is reëlected, then, he will have to govern, as he has since the Tea Party’s rise in 2010, in a constrained muddle of veto threats and negotiations, administrative rule writing, court battles, and political-appointment fights.
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September 5, 2012
“We were so young, and so in love, and so in debt,” Michelle Obama told the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night. She had been talking about how, when she first married Barack Obama, their combined student-loan payments were greater than that for their mortgage. It was meant to be funny, and it was—the audience laughed—a self-deprecating note in a strong speech in which the First Lady, in a pink-and-gold sleeveless dress, appeared both adoring and adored, charming and exhorting. But talk of debt and love ran through the speech: the connection between the two was its great theme, and pointed to the deepest contrast between Michelle Obama’s convention appearance and that of her counterpart on the Republican side, Ann Romney, and, in many ways, that between their two parties.
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September 4, 2012
It’s a peculiar position that Barack Obama now finds himself in: almost four years into his Presidency, he still needs to convince some voters that he believes in the country he leads, and in its promise. This is not a problem of his own making, but it is a problem for him nonetheless, and one he and his fellow Democrats ought to address as they convene in Charlotte, North Carolina.
This was never clearer than during last week’s Republican National Convention, when, listening to some of the speakers, you’d have thought that one of the defining issues of this campaign is whether the President of the United States ever, as a child, ran a simple lemonade stand.
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September 3, 2012
What should we take away from the Republican National Convention? In Comment this week, George Packer has some ideas, especially about Paul Ryan’s star turn:
Ryan’s speech included some memorably vivid and mocking lines, none better than “College graduates should not have to live out their twenties in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.” But the speech was written without benefit of shame or fact-checking. Ryan accused the President of ignoring the Simpson-Bowles commission’s advice on the debt, while failing to mention that his own opposition had already deep-sixed that advice. He accused the President of damaging America’s AAA credit rating, but neglected to say that he himself had led the Republican strategy of deliberately putting it in peril, in order to achieve the Party’s fiscal goals. He spent a good part of the speech vowing to protect Medicare, without ever describing his plan, which would basically turn it into a voucher system. Ryan even accused Obama of allowing an auto plant in his home town to be shut down, when the closing was announced during the Bush Presidency.
Is Ryan the next leader of the G.O.P.? Can Mitt Romney escape his own running mate’s shadow? Subscribers can read the full Comment; share your thoughts below.
Illustration by Tom Bachtell
August 31, 2012
There is a peculiar moment in the middle of “Paterno,” Joe Posnanski’s new biography of the disgraced coach. It comes in a chapter called “Sainthood,” during a recounting of the 1973 football season, in which Penn State went undefeated. The quarterback Tom Shuman, Posnanski recounts, “hit the books, made the Dean’s List, played pro football for a while, and became a national sales manager.” Shuman is just one example in a list that follows. “Fullback Bob Nagle became a systems engineer. Flanker Chuck Herd became a conference planner at Penn State and worked as a personal ministry Bible school teacher. Split end Gary Hayman became an attorney. Tight end Dan Natale owned a sporting goods store. Left tackle Phil LaPorta went into construction.”
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August 30, 2012
Barack Obama announced himself as a contender for high national office on Tuesday, July 27, 2004, when he delivered a soaring keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. He started off with self-deprecation: “Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely.”
On Tuesday night, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is often mentioned as a Republican contender for the Presidency in 2016, delivered a keynote address to the Republican National Convention in Tampa. His first sentence was: “This stage and this moment are very improbable for me.”
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August 29, 2012
Ann Romney told the Republican National Convention that she had come to talk about love—“from my heart, about our hearts.” She had been sent to make people love her husband, or to like him, or at least to “humanize” him. Love is useful that way; it is, as she said, a force that “unites us,” a passion, in some hands, that can turn into a broad embrace. And yet, she insisted more on modesty, restraint, and a certain measure of defiance. “This is important. I want you to hear what I am going to say. Mitt doesn’t like to talk about how he helps others, because he see it as a privilege, not as a political talking point.” What kind of political love affair is this?
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August 28, 2012
It’s understandable why Democrats want to use Todd Akin as a proxy for Republicans’ views about abortion. The Missouri congressman opposes the right of rape victims to obtain abortions because (a) these victims can unconsciously control whether they become pregnant and (b) only “legitimate” rapes count. Both concepts are imbecilic. More importantly, from the Democrats’ perspective, they’re unpopular.
Polls about abortion are notoriously confusing—a great deal depends on how you ask the questions—but an overwhelming number of Americans support a rape victim’s right to choose. According to a CNN/ORC poll this month, eighty-three per cent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal “when the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest.” At the same time, only thirty-five per cent of respondents believe that abortion should be legal “under any circumstances.” A far greater forty-seven per cent believe that it should be legal “only under certain circumstances.” (Paul Ryan, the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, believes abortion should be illegal even if the pregnant woman has been raped; Mitt Romney’s current position is that rape victims should be allowed to obtain abortions.)
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August 27, 2012
Will Mitt Romney have to fight through his own allies to get elected? In this week’s Comment, Philip Gourevitch considers what the reactions to Todd Akin’s comments about rape say about the state of the Grand Old Party and its Presidential nominee-in-waiting:
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