Presidential Campaign

Amid the Fast and Furious contempt vote, a G-20 flop that produced no progress on the massacre in Syria or the eurozone crisis, and yet another standstill in nuclear talks with Iran, it would have been easy to miss this quote in the Bloomberg story the Democrats went wild over: "Rick Scott doesn't seem to have any political skills at all. I'd give him a B for governing. I'd give him an A for strangeness."

That description was of the sitting governor of the ultimate battleground, Florida. And it is from the former chairman of the state party, who was also Scott's co-chairman of his campaign. It is included in the Bloomberg report about how Mitt Romney's campaign asked the Scott administration to downplay its statements about new economic growth in the state and instead to argue how much faster jobs would be created if Romney wins the White House. It's not only Scott. As the deteriorating economy has lifted Romney's prospects against President Obama this fall he finds GOP governors in other key states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Virginia talking about how much their state economies are improving and how many new jobs have been created under their leadership.

The odds that Mitt Romney runs with Marco Rubio for VP are mathematically zero. None. No way. No chance. Nada. Nyet. Rubio may well have a presidential or vice presidential future, but not in 2012. He is not ready. He is not qualified. He is not close. I have believed this from the beginning of the campaign, but after President Obama outmaneuvered Mitt Romney on immigration, Romney looked confused and befuddled and Rubio could not even be clear about whether he still supports his own plan. Not ready for prime time. Not close.

What is Mitt Romney hiding in his last decade of tax returns? Is he hiding tax avoidance because he paid a low and embarrassing rate? Is he hiding abuse of offshore shelters, such as accounts in Swiss banks and the Cayman Islands, which we know he has used at times? Is he hiding investments that voters might consider unsavory?

I do not know the answers to these questions. But I would speculate that the answer to one or more of them is yes.

In my column today I deplore the GOP war against jobs. Watching Mitt Romney in Ohio today, when he talked about American jobs, he was really advocating European austerity. Mitt Romney could be Nicolas Sarkozy, recently defeated in France, or David Cameron in Britain, or Angela Merkel in Germany. They advocate the austerity that is driving Europe into recession. Romney would do this here. Meanwhile, the global warming denial and birther wings of Republicans are acting like the National Front parties in Europe with a far right politics of anger and denial. When I heard Romney talk about Europe today, it all became clear.

Ernest Hemingway advised writers to write one true sentence, and the true sentence about the 2012 campaign is this: After one of the worst six-week periods in modern presidential campaign history, President Obama is even with to slightly ahead of Mitt Romney in most polls. Obama has had bad political news, weak economic news, and his campaign has not yet found it voice — but Obama is still even to slightly ahead. Ignore anyone who tells you that either candidate is going to win or lose.

I would argue that it is (slightly) bullish for Obama that despite so much bad news he is even to ahead, and (slightly) bearish for Romney that despite so much news that should be good for him he is even to behind. Read more...

What have women done to Senate Republicans, House Republicans and Mitt Romney that they oppose a woman receiving equal pay for an honest day's work? As I wrote in my column yesterday, I expect Democrats to wage a national crusade, from one corner of the nation to the other, for equal pay for honest work for women.

I applaud Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for bringing pay equity for women to the Senate floor. I applaud House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Democrats for continuing this important battle. But what have women done to the GOP to deserve the shabby treatment Republicans are giving to American women?

A new CNN poll on the popularity of former presidents shows Bill Clinton with a sky-high favorable rating (66 percent), Jimmy Carter with a favorable rating of 54 percent and George W. Bush with a favorable rating of only 43 percent and a negative rating of a whopping 54 percent. In my latest column, “Hillary for vice president,” I suggested if Obama puts Hillary on the ticket he would defeat Mitt Romney and elect more Democrats to the House and Senate. In a May Gallup poll Hillary Clinton's popularity was a stunning and powerful 66 percent, identical to Bill's numbers, which should be a stunning and powerful message to both the president and those who predict his demise.

Isn't it wonderful that President Carter runs ahead of the last Republican president by a margin of landslide proportion?

I hope Ron Paul will use his important House subcommittee chairmanship to look at financial issues from the Facebook IPO to the JPMorgan problems and their impact on the national economy. I am also curious what the Ron Paul supporters are doing. Are you championing Mitt Romney?

When Democrat Shirley Franklin was elected mayor of Atlanta it turned out to be in worse shape than she expected. Then these nice young men from Bain offered to help fix it. As I understand it, it is what Bain does: fix things that are broken. Bain’s Mitt Romney did a great job with the Winter Olympics in Utah in 2002, although I am sure the very controversial dragon dance honoring the White Buffalo as the harbinger of Aquarius sent most conservatives to the fainting couch. Maybe they didn’t notice. Here are three things Bain might also fix: the Democratic Party, the Republican Party and America.

When Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi secretly videoed his gay roommate “making out with a dude,” and his roommate committed suicide after learning of it, Ravi was prosecuted and convicted of 15 counts of invasion of privacy and bias intimidation. He was thrown out of his college and pilloried as the poster boy of hate crime. The judge sentenced him to 30 days in jail, fines and community service. Prosecutors said they would appeal the judge’s lenient sentence, but Ravi began serving his time “to get on with his life,” rather than waiting for his appeal to be decided. He told the judge he accepted responsibility for his “insensitive, immature, stupid and childish” behavior, admitted that his conduct was wrong and apologized to everyone involved.