The Lord of Self-Destruction

The Washington Examiner's Philip Klein was among the first to pinpoint the really goofy engineering behind Mitt Romney's unguided missile of a presidential campaign:

Romney consistently attempts to make up with tactics what he lacks in vision. Romney’s campaign isn’t driven by any core ideology or governing philosophy, but by responding to news cycles.

It's hardly news that Romney lacks a governing philosophy and it's actually a relief that he's absent a preconceived ideology. He is at heart the uncolorful technocrat, the unemotional empiricist, the rigid pragmatist, if you will, forever unburdened by intellectual constraints of personal ideals and lofty dreams. By themselves, in vacuum operation, these can be useful leadership qualities; they peel away layers of accumulated bias and dispense with onerous traditions.

The vacuum, however, is essential for consistently smooth operation, although the keen technocrat knows that such a vacuum is itself but a lofty, unachievable dream. And for the technocratic politician, the impossible vacuum can be a nightmare--if, that is, the pol treats inescapable, intervening tactics as a kind of unintegrated circuitry.

Behold Mitt Romney, a robotic but oddly uncalculating pol who seems to think that whatever he says today can suffer no embarrassing collision with whatever he said yesterday, and will leave no confused trail to whatever he may say tomorrow. Each moment of Romney's existence is entirely self-contained--he operates in an insensible insularity, whacking this mole and that, never seeming to anticipate the inevitable whacked-mole chain reaction.

To Romney, tactics mean only cold-blooded opportunism--the quick profit, the thrusted knife, the instant assassination, the ingenious betrayal, the singular offensive taken in wholesale isolation. If today's offensive conflicts with yesterday's? No problem. He just whacks that mole as he did the others. Incredibly, he never seems to think that others will notice that those molehills and mountainous contradictions are his own creations.

Thus in tactically "responding to news cycles" Romney spawns the substance of the next news cycle, which he then responds to, in another blitheringly idiotic way, to which he must tactically respond, and so on.  

President Obama doesn't really need to campaign. He can just keep handing Mitt Romney some moles.

Comments

[japa21]

On another blog I visit (no, your are not my only one)someone was wodnering why Mitt doesn't focus more on the economy, Obama's perceived weakness.

My response was that Obama hasn't really given him the opportunity. Romney has been oplaced in the position of playing defense, soemthing he is totally unused to.

During the primaries, his money advantage allowed him to simply wipe away the opposition. He could just go more negative than the others and not have to worry about defending against their attacks. The same has been true in his business experience. It is the singular approach of a bully.

I don't think either he or the Republicans really expected the Obama campaign to hit so hard, so often, so early. And based on prior Dem candidates, there was no reason for them to expect that.

What this has allowed Obama to do is talk about the economy on his terms. What you are seeing is a build up to a Dem convention that will not only hit Romney hard, but also the epublicans en masse hard on their obstructionism and actual sabotage of the economic recovery.

This will force all Republcians to play defense. Hopefully, a lot of Dem candidates take advantage of this.

[Robert Lipscomb]

But, Obama is campaigning and not just against Romney. He is campaining against trickle-down economics. He wisely avoids calling it by its other name, Reaganism. In oother words, he has peeled the happy face of the Gipper off trickle-down economics and replaced it with the face of the hapless Mitt Romney.

In doing so, Obama has converted this election from a referendum on the Obama economy to a referendum on trickle-down economics. This deft move also bypasses "Occupy Wall Street" while incorporating the concept of the 1% versus the 99%.

Could Obama and his team have found a better poster boy for trickle-down economics? Once Romney's tax returns are exposed to the light of day, will they not obliterate the justification for lowering the taxes of those trickling down?

Once obama and his campaign finish beating trickle-down economics to a bloody pulp, they will show everyone the price tag for trickle-down economics: the dismantling of Medicare.

Thisis no longer a campaign to get reelected. This is a campaign to the change the causus belli for governing.

[dricey]

Romney is running his campaign the way that Wall Street tycoons like him run their businesses: with no overarching vision other than maximizing short-term profits. These guys don't do vision, they don't do inspiration, they don't do ethics, they don't do compassion. They do money, lots of money, this quarter, and to Hell with any other consideration. This is about the bottom line, for Pete's sake.

[Peter G]

Romney claims he can't recall the incident where he participated in holding down a classmate and giving him a very much unwanted haircut. But I think he is going to remember the metaphorical equivalent this campaign is becoming. And I'm sure in his later years, as a breathing historical footnote, he will concur that it is better to give than receive.