Presidential Campaign

All the coverage of candidate Romney’s put-down of the 47 percent of Americans who are non-taxpaying deadbeats who won’t vote for him because he’s a mover and a shaker, not a moocher, fails to point out that Mitt is the classic affirmative-action prototype. He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple, as the saying goes.

Mitt is a product of private schools who made a fortune in private equities. He graduated from elite schools with no debt, and inherited a million dollars from his super-successful CEO and politician father. He evolved from the upper class.

There will be a word invented to describe Mitt Romney's attitude that is somewhere beyond arrogance and elitism. After Romney insulted his British hosts at the Olympics he proceeded to imply that Palestinians are less prosperous than Israelis, and Mexicans are less prosperous than Americans, because of what Romney implied are matters of cultural superiority of some and cultural inferiority of others. Now we learn through a leaked video that Romney believes that 47 percent of Americans, people Romney says he does not care about, fall into his bag of cultural inferiors.

Of course, many American seniors and Hispanics, as well as liberals and blacks, are among Romney's chosen losers. Look at exactly what Mitt Romney said in the leaked video:

Keep in mind that in the midst of all this violence and uncertainty in the Middle East, a virulently anti-American fundamentalist Islamist regime in Tehran is brazenly marching toward a nuclear weapons capability.
 
President Obama has said that all options are on the table to prevent this eventuality, but does anyone really believe that? The Iranians certainly don’t — otherwise they would have scaled back their efforts rather than defiantly ramping them up. America is watching and waiting while subterranean centrifuges in Iran are spinning.  

As a former head women’s tennis coach at Georgetown University, I know what it’s like to inherit a weak team. It’s great — nowhere to go but up! Pressure is off … at least for the first season.

Team Obama is closing in on the end of the first term, fourth season, and the U.S. economy is still weak. GDP only just recovered to its pre-recession peak, and unemployment is still over 8 percent. Our national debt keeps growing. And the administration is not showing the kind of leadership Congress needs to stop kicking the fiscal can further down the road.

This has been a bad week for Mitt Romney.
 
First, he gave a terrible interview on “Meet the Press” where he couldn’t name a single loophole he would cut to make up the $5 trillion he pledged in tax cuts for the wealthy. He then stated his support for ending pre-existing conditions for health coverage — except, not really, not for those not already insured; not, it turns out, for over 80 million Americans. Not a good start to the week.

I feel the pain of Republican partisans and their media friends who adore pieces attacking the evil liberal media, which of course is the last refuge of conservatives and Republicans who believe they are losing. The liberal media refuses to report Democrats who don't support the president! Bad news for the GOP: The real story is the Democrat who DOES support the president, Bill Clinton, as I wrote in my last two columns, “Bill Clinton to Treasury” and “Bill Clinton's big message.”

Notice the upward movement of Obama in recent polls from Gallup, NBC-Wall Street Journal and others. Nobody remembers what Mitt Romney said at his convention, but everybody remembers what Clinton said at the Democratic convention, which gave Obama a mega-bounce that has lasted for more than a week.

Here’s why — politics aside — Mitt Romney’s remarks about current goings-on in Egypt and Libya were reckless and irresponsible.

There is no way to preclude some sick, violent person from going into a school or workplace or government office with a gun and a psycho grudge and wreaking havoc. We grieve for the victims, refuse to control deadly firearms, and look back wondering what we might have done. But looking back never prepares us for the next Oklahoma City or Virginia Tech or Benghazi, Libya.

Mitt Romney's ham-handed, small-minded, partisan, ignorant and offensive comments about the killing of American diplomats in Libya are only the latest example of a candidate who lacks the character to command, the clarity to command, the courage to command and the competence to command our men and women who risk their lives for America every day on the front lines of danger. Romney's performance, and it was a performance and a very bad performance at that, was a disgrace unworthy of his party and our country.

Make no mistake, this race will be tight. Two months is an eternity in politics, especially this year. But my belief is that Mitt Romney is doing everything in his power to disqualify himself from the presidency.
 
He managed to survive the past year and a half of seriously mediocre primary challengers by overwhelming them with money and negative firepower. At practically every turn, the debates, the interviews, the campaign appearances, he came up short. He won, but he won ugly, and failed to convince voters that he was a particularly strong general-election candidate.

This would be a great day for Mitt Romney to stop playing partisan politics on matters he has no experience in, and knows nothing about. There is a tragedy this morning for American diplomats in the Middle East. In a situation that is inflamed and unstable, the ill-chosen words of the inexperienced and amateurish Romney, who is already opining on the television news about real-time tragedy in the Middle East, could cause real harm to American diplomats, American troops and American security.