Obama vs. Romney III: The Honeymooners

Rachel Maddow made the point on MSNBC that contrary to what Romney had said, Syria is not Iran’s "route to the sea." Her comment was followed by graphic illustrations which showed that both Iran and Syria had coasts. Al Sharpton, on the same MSNBC show, offered the fight metaphor in his scoring of the debate, saying that at every moment Obama was about to deliver a knockout punch (one example was the president’s counter that sure America had a smaller navy than in l917 and we also don’t have bayonets and horses), Romney clinched. Of course the breaking news story was Romney’s turn around on Afghanistan.  “Romnesia” is the diagnosis President Obama has offered for his rival’s condition. Now Romney agrees with Obama that US troops should come out of Afghanistan by the end of 2012. “People can accept changing your mind,” Sharpton said, “but not at the cost of my behind.” If Obama vs. Romney II was a dramatic comeback for the president, the third and final debate was characterized by a growing feeling of almost effortless humor--not only in the commentary, but particularly in the antics of the challenger. In comedy the clown has a straight man. On The Honeymooners, you had the stolid Norton and the outrageous Ralph. Romney tried to be the straight man, not challenging, but agreeing, trying to calm down his adversary, but he turned out to be the clown. One can’t help wondering if Romney hadn’t gotten taken away by buffoonery of the Al Smith dinner. SNL's campaign send up where interviews with a series of voters reveal an electorate that neither knows who is president, who is running or how long they are running for may have also set the tone. Debates can somehow bring out moments of brilliance in one or another candidate, but this final debate, centering on issues of foreign policy, was notable for its intermittent, though comical effusions of ignorance on the part of the Republican candidate for president.

The Middle Class

Sinclair Lewis

Both President Obama and Mitt Romney insistently use the term “middle class.”  But what is the middle class? Is a lawyer or doctor who may earn six figures a member of the middle class? Back in the 50’s, 60’s and even 70’s professionals earned more money than the so called middle class, made up of teachers, skilled laborers like plumbers, government employees, electricians, carpenters and owners of small businesses. But by the 80’s the gap between the professional class and the upper class had begun to widen. Salaries of heads of industry dramatically increased as did the sums earned by successful Wall Street professionals (hedge fund managers and partners in major investment banking firms like Goldman Sachs). So when the candidates today refer to the middle class, they are actually referencing a demographic that contains a large swath of American society. A fireman and a brain surgeon are in theory both members of the middle class. Back in the 60’s, middle class was considered a pejorative term. Middle class and bourgeois were used interchangeably and as baby boomers, who were once protestors, will remember no one wanted to be a member of the bourgeoisie. The last thing the flower children of the 60’s yearned for was the shingled house with its white picket fence—the house that those who were foreclosed in the sub prime frenzy only dream of getting back today. After Main Street, Sinclair Lewis wrote Babbitt, a satire of middle class ideals and “Babbitt" became a word. The Free Dictionary defines Babbitt as “A narrow-minded, self-satisfied person with an unthinking attachment to middle-class values and materialism” or to quote Nicholas Berdyaev the Russian philosopher and author of The Bourgeois Mind, “But even when the triumph of mediocrity was complete a few deep thinkers denounced it with uncompromising power...Carlyle, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Leon Bloy, Dostoievsky, Leontiv, all foresaw the victory of the bourgeois spirit over a truly great culture on the ruins of which it would establish its own hideous kingdom...With prophetic force and fire these men denounced the spiritual sources and moral foundations of middle-classdom and repelled by its ugliness thirsting for a nobler culture, a different life looked back upon Greece or the middle-ages, the Renaissance or Byzantium.” 

Lives of Our Leaders: Obama vs. Romney #1

It wasn’t the Thrilla in Manila or the The Rumble in the Jungle. The first debate was primarily defensive like one of those 12 round fights in which cautious styles create a kind of depersonalization. The problem with the debate was homogenization. The hurtle  for Obamacare as a political fact is that it was introduced and worked in the state where Romney was governor, though it was plain that health care is an issue about which the president is impassioned and one which he can outpoint the challenger. If health care is Obama’s forte, then the 700,000 jobs that would be lost due to tax increases became Romney’s mantra. Why was the president spending two years working on heath care, when the country was dogged by unemployment? Still, if Romney was strong on the economy he was still haunted by his non-existent loopholes and the fact that his criticisms of Dodd-Frank were not backed up with specific proposals about the open wound of banking deregulation. In a prize fight, the challenger has to be more than the equal of the title holder. He has to take the belt away and that comes from not merely ducking and slipping, not merely avoiding the champion’s power. He has to take control of the ring. He has to stop his opponent at his own game. You box a fighter and fight a boxer. In the first bout Romney might be given some extra points for style, but Obama and Romney both kept their distance and boxed the first debate. Hopefully in Obama/Romney #2, they’ll come out fighting.