Own it

I feel like I am having a harder time being coherent lately. Writing about politics at the time of a major election means there is a lot more signal noise than I usually have. I just wrote kind of an apology for that which ended up in my journal instead, and of course, writing it out was what I needed. If there is a part of me that thinks that I should have waited until after the election to treat politics at all, and that is really looking forward to getting back to music and comics, well, I’ll be okay.

The noise is a factor, but really a lot of the problem is organizational, because all of my thoughts bleed into each other. The mindset is related to the media is related to the corporate influence is related to the economy is related to regulations is related to GOP policies is related to the mindset, and on it goes. However, in my case the point of writing is to stop the tilt-a-whirl from tilting and whirling, and get some order out of it. I am sorry for being organizationally weaker now, and I do think it will get better.

Fortunately, I do not expect to actually influence anyone politically, so that takes off a lot of the pressure, and it frees me to tell Republicans what they are doing wrong, thus technically helping them to do better, if there were any chance of them taking my advice. I do not expect this to be an issue.

So, perhaps a good starting point is with Romney specifically and the topic of ownership. I have covered already how he does not seem to have a strong core of any kind, which seems to bother me more than most people. Maybe they assume that he must have a core, but there’s no evidence for that, and that’s really dangerous.

He also does not do much to refute this, because he could come out boldly, and instead he softpedals. I was disappointed with the 47% apology, because it said nothing. I don’t think that satisfied anyone on the right or left. For the people who disagreed with it, just saying it was wrong, after initially saying that it was correct, but just inelegantly stated, was going to be completely inaccurate. For the people who agreed with the initial comment, then it just seems like pandering. (I must give big props to both Stephen Colbert and John Hodgman for making the elegant statements.)

Honestly, it’s amazing how much the media is letting Romney get away with, but with a stronger person, it’s unnecessary. There are two ways that he could have gone, and either would have been fine.

He could have apologized, said that he realized later that he was conflating different numbers and assigning too much meaning to them, and that he realizes that there are many hard-working people who struggle, and have not had great earning opportunities, and that his priority is to change that by healing the economy. (It would be a lie, because his policies will harm the economy a lot, but he lies all the time—he might as well learn to use it to his advantage.)

Going the other route, he could rail against the welfare state, and say that too many voters have been lulled into a false sense of complacency, and this is damaging to America, and there may be people whom he will never win over, and that he will not apologize for hating the destructive influence of the welfare state. There are people who would eat this up, and who cares about facts anyway? As it is, he made no one happy.

So let’s look at the tax issue, on which the media really should be pressing more. I know he said he wouldn’t answer, and that he is getting worse about answering questions all the time, but it was never my understanding that the press is supposed to cater to the politicians.

Forget that, though, let’s look at what we have. We have one tax return where some deductions were skipped to meet an arbitrary rate, and then a summary that doesn’t really say a lot. It may be true that he didn’t file for 10 years. I do believe someone told Harry Reid that Romney had not paid for ten years, and I do support Reid not revealing his source, but the source could be wrong.

What I am almost positive of is that Romney used the 2009 Swiss Bank Acount Amnesty, and that could have raised his overall average with the penalty, and maybe the reason the summary went back 20 years instead of 12 years was that there was higher tax-paying back then.

There are various mind-bogglers here. One is that he said that paying more taxes than he needed to would make him unfit to be president, and then by skipping those deductions he did. Also, it really seems like the thing that he should have thought about earlier. You didn’t think anyone would want to see years of back taxes when you were running for President? Actually, that’s another reason that I suspect the Swiss Bank Account Amnesty. There are candidates who have gotten away with not releasing very many years back, but I think Romney desperately needed to skip that year, which was not that long ago.

However, take ownership. If he had just released them, there would have been an initial flare-up, and it would have run its course. No one would care anymore. (Not that people seem to care that much now.)

Be belligerent about it. Say you think the government taxes too much, you have taken steps to avoid it, and now you will be just as protective of the taxpayers money. People will buy that. I would respect it more, though I still wouldn’t vote for him.

Or be apologetic. Say you have acted selfishly in the past, but you had a turning point when you helped out with the Olympics, you became more committed to public service, which is why you ran for governor, and why you ran for president, and part of that process was reconciling your financial past. Own that! Politics will put up with a bunch of hypocrasy.

Either of those Mitt’s is a Mitt that people would vote for—not just the staunch conservatives, who are voting for him anyway—but wavering conservatives and some independents and some disappointed liberals too.

Yes, I am very grateful for Romney’s incompetence, but there is still a lot that is annoying about it.