What Exactly Did Mitt Romney Win?

He did it: Mitt Romney won the debate.  Ask anyone.

Mitt Romney looked presidential.

And apparently the man who actually is the president didn’t ‘look like’ a president, whatever that means.

I’ll get to who I think won the substantive debate another time, but I’m very clear on who lost and it wasn’t either of the men on stage last night.  It was the pundits and pollsters and people who ‘decided’ the win/loss based on beauty pageant criteria.

In case I wasn’t clear, WE are the losers.

I continue to wonder what people who simply listened to the debate on the radio, or the blind, think of who ‘won’ or ‘lost’.  I know television is a visual medium, but don’t you think it’s bit ridiculous that John F. Kennedy was declared the winner against Richard Nixon because of make-up and its lack?  Or do we really comfort ourselves that the national judgment against Nixon that fateful night was somehow clairvoyant about the man Nixon was or would become?  Really?  Or did we just get lucky?

Here’s the reality check: you can’t tell much about a man by how he looks (or a woman, for that matter).  And that’s the truth.  Ask any woman who has been raped by someone she knows.  Or the parents of a child abused by someone they entrusted with their dearest treasure.

Our visual ‘truth’, ‘goodness’, and ‘character’ detectors are notoriously faulty.

I had an initial reaction last night about the debate winner and loser based on content.  As I said in yesterday’s blog, I flowed the debate.  That meant that I spent much of my time head down, listening and taking notes about what I heard and almost no time at all, save during the opening and closing remarks, to watching the two men.  Their visual impact on me was quite limited.  Thus my own ‘take’ about what was happening was very different than other folks in the room.  The things they had noted I did not see.  My not seeing was actually intentional: I wanted to minimize, as best I could, my own biases and preconceptions and come to a conclusion based on the content of the debate.  Of course it’s impossible to totally free one’s self of the baggage brought to any experience, but there are tricks to detaching even from ourselves: avoiding the visuals is one of them.

As Gwen Ifill noted after the debate, the punditry had asked for a policy wonk debate (one where the debaters actually addressed the issues rather than engaging in political tap dancing), but once they got one, they judged the two men according to the rules of tap dancing. (I paraphrase freely, of course).

Like I said, I’m on my way to flow the contents of the debate to come to my own conclusions about who carried the day.  I’ll let you know my results.

In the meantime, can we all just take a breath and ponder what each man actually had to say and what it means for the governance of our country and stop thinking about who ‘looked’ the part?  Please?

Tonight's "Debate"

I put the word debate in quotes intentionally.  Whatever the exchange tonight between Mrs. Obama and Romney, it is not a debate.  As a collegiate debater in my youth, please take my word on this.

And the passing from the stage in the 1980's of the League of Women Voters was a true loss, for the League, as they pointed out in their decision not to sponsor the debates any longer, looked out not for the candidates, but for the electorate.

That said, I have prepared myself a flow chart to score, in debater fashion, which speaker carries each point.  So it was with interest that I checked out CNN this morning with its article on 5 Things to Watch for in Tonight's Debate.

Alas, I am again disappointed. #1 on CNN’s things to watch for?  “Who’s presidential”.

Sigh.

The most important thing for me to know tonight, apparently, is not how they would actually address the things about which government actually has some sway, but whether they ‘look’ and I ‘feel’ that they ‘look’ presidential.

I’m guessing (it’s a pretty safe bet) both men will wear conservative suits and ties, with nice hair cuts and shined shoes.  Beyond that, what exactly does a president ‘look’ like?  Other than being male and generally tall for their generation, there seems to be no precise definition.

Some were thin, some fat, some classically handsome, some not so much.

To be fair, the author went on to note that to ‘look’ presidential is to have a certain ‘tone’ – what he calls ‘composure and stature’, or acting like they belong to the job.

Yet I remain puzzled.  Mr. Obama, by definition acts presidential, as he is already the president.  He may not ‘act’ like what folks want him to, but when he acts, he is being presidential for the simple fact that he is (the president).

For some, acting presidential means being ‘strong’ enough to pound your opponent to the ground.  Others seek someone more in the image of the dignified statesman.  Still others are looking for that indefinable ‘something’ that says ‘President’ to them.

But this is all star gazing.

If we want someone who seems presidential, then we should have elected Michael Douglas from American President, or Jeff Daniels (playing Washington), or maybe best of all, Henry Fonda as Abraham Lincoln.  Not having ever seen Mr. Lincoln in real time, I am guessing Mr. Fonda looked a better Lincoln than Lincoln ever did.

I don’t need stature in a president.  What I require as a voter is competence.

I don’t look for composure – both these men have already passed the test of time on the campaign trail – I look for solid ideas and plans for how to accomplish those ideas.

I don’t mind if they’re human; in fact, I prefer it.  Thus I do not especially care that Mitt Romney looked a bit silly trying to bet Rick Perry money during one of the debates.  Nor do I care that Obama told Hilary Clinton that she’s ‘likeable enough’.

What I do care about is their vision; their philosophy; their worldview.

I care about whether they care – not about me so much as the poor, those who need and require their care.

I care about whether they have the personal integrity and courage (and it takes courage to resist the exercise of power) not to bomb our enemies.

So here are my two most important questions for tonight:

Mr. Romney, if you wish to eliminate or substantially change the approach of progressive taxation, as your talking points suggest, upon what basis do you claim that this shift actually results in an increase in prosperity for everyone?  And as a subset of that question, if you have to sacrifice one of your taxation goals in order to achieve a balance to the budget, which goal is the most expendable from your point of view?

Mr. Obama, given that as president, you are required to work with Congress, how do you propose to enact your economic programs (or any of your programs, for that matter) in the face of organized, concerted congressional opposition?  It is not enough to merely blame Congress.  What do you plan to do about it?

I look forward to your answers, gentlemen.

Do I Want a President Who Is Wise?

Do I want a president who is wise?  Or do I want a president who agrees with me?  Do I conflate agreement with wisdom?  Chances are I do.  But I don’t want to.

For here are the qualities that I really seek in a president – or any other leader, for that matter:

1. I want my president to be smarter than I am.  Smart as in wise and well-read and open to all options and able to assimilate a lot of information in a fairly short amount of time and able to think long-term consequences as well as short-term gains.  I want my president to see farther than I can.

2. I want my president to have spiritual depth.  I do not seek a president who will be my spiritual leader.  The structure of our governance does not allow for a ‘pastor-in-chief’ (a phrase I first heard used by a conservative whose name I cannot recall about George W. Bush, but which has since been used to refer to Obama, Romney and Santorum on different occasions).  Those running for the office of president are not qualified to act as spiritual leaders – their expertise lies in the realm of the temporal.  That is not to say that they lack spiritual depth of their own; it is to say that personal spiritual depth is a very different thing than leading others in spiritual ways.

3. I want a president who understands the concept of collective sacrifice and can explain it to us as a nation in a way we can hear, understand, and heed.  We live in challenging and difficult times.  But we might do well to recall history in order to recall that every generation has lived in challenging and difficult times in one form or another.  I want my leader to tell me the hard things to hear, to not shy away from what the opinion polls might negatively react to, to challenge us to give more, do more, be more, to recall that we did not get where we are by wishing.

4. I want a president who respects the office and the oath as much when it comes to enemies as to friends.  I want my president to respect my freedom of speech more, not less, when we disagree.  I vow to do the same and give him* a fair hearing.

5. When deciding the best interests of the nation, I want my president to remember that honor and integrity are as much a part of the best interests of the nation as are physical and economic security and act accordingly.

6. If my president must be beholden (and I would prefer he were not) to anyone, I would prefer he see himself as beholden to me for my one vote, however I exercise it, as to any of the myriad of corporations and special-interest groups who will donate millions to his election efforts.

7. I want my president to be a good student of history, starting with our own: not our mythology, but our history – the good and the bad of it.

8. I want my president to put away the cheerleader pom-poms, discard the talk of exceptionalism, and get down to the business of governance.  It’s hard work.  It requires dedication, effort, attention, and truth-telling.  Telling us what we want to hear is a waste of our time.

9. When it comes to problem-solving, I want my president to begin with identifying the problem and the causes.  Seldom, if ever, is one person, let alone one party, solely responsible for the ills of a nation.  Thus, for example, when it comes to curing our economic ills, I’d like my president to remind me of my own part in all of this as citizen Beth: Wall Street, government deregulation (accomplished by both parties working together), corporate savagery, all have their place.  But so too does individual greed, the idea of buying above our means, of entitlement not to life’s necessities, but to its luxuries.  In other words, I would very much like to be treated as a grown-up and reminded that my behavior must change too if we are to come out of our economic woes as a nation.

10. I don’t want to see my president all that often, as I would prefer him to be busy about the business of the nation.

11. I want my president to be the best him he can be.  I do not require my president to shake my hand or have a beer or even want to have a beer with me.  He need not look like me, act like me, or even think like me.  I am not the best yardstick for a good president.  If he is to be a great or even a good president, he must be true to himself.

12. I want my president to hire people to work for him who passionately disagree with him.  Being surrounded by sycophants is an invitation to believe in the truth of one’s own publicity, which is a sure beginning of foolishness.  Hearing from people who think differently is crucial to seeing the world more broadly, to learning new ideas, to working around problems in ways perhaps he never before even imagined.

So, fellow citizens, I don’t know what you’re looking for in a president.  But I do know this: for far, far too long, we have settled for far, far too little from our leaders.  We have demanded they be just like us, and to borrow from the kids, we aren’t all that.

For my own part, I will not celebrate ignorance.  I will not rejoice in the language of moral rectitude that has no backbone.  I will not be jollied by platitudes and slogans.  I will not believe the attack ads.

I will listen.  And I will read and learn.  I will explore.  I will pray.  I will decide.  And then and only then will I cast my vote.

And at the end of the day, whoever wins, I hope they retire to have that proverbial beer not with me, but with their friends, for surely they will have earned at least that much respect and well-wishing from me.



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*I believe fervently in inclusive language.  I use ‘he’ and ‘him’ herein because the only viable candidates in this particular election are male.

Booing the Golden Rule -- Really?

Some time ago during one of the many presidential debates, candidate Ron Paul suggested that the foreign policy of the United States would do well to follow the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  The response of a significant portion of the audience in the hall, most of them, I would hazard to guess, Christians, was to boo.

It is shocking to hear the Golden Rule booed in any context.

My own belief that the crisis of our time and place is not a lack of faith in Jesus, but rather a lack of belief that Jesus is ‘up to the job’ – I think, without meaning to, we have somehow rewritten our understanding of just who Jesus is and what Jesus does and can do.  And so we believe we have to act in the ways we do, because Jesus just isn’t up to the job.

An example: on the eve of the Iraq war, I coincidentally happened to attend a church meeting as a student observer.  The minister asked his Session to reflect on what Jesus would do when it came to the decision whether to go to war or not.

The folks had many and varied answers; they were all thinking seriously on it; they were all taking their faith and their understanding of God and God’s word into account, including one gentleman who just couldn’t contain himself; the words literally burst from him: If you’re asking me if Jesus would ride into Baghdad on top of a tank, well, of course he wouldn’t.  But Jesus would be wrong!  

The silence that followed his outburst was, as you might imagine, stunned.  I don’t know how he and his church family dealt with that in the days, weeks, months and years after I left.  But his statement has never left me.

What was going on in his heart, I cannot know.  But I can tell you what I thought then and what I think now: I think the man is a genuine follower of Jesus Christ, but that somehow, over time, he has stopped believing that Jesus really is the Savior, the Messiah, the Rescuer.  Somehow, he has come to believe that Jesus just doesn’t understand what we face; that somehow, Jesus isn’t up to the job.

I don’t know what else to call that except a crisis of faith.  So it’s my own guess that too many in the debate hall the night Ron Paul invoked the Golden Rule may suffer the same problem: believing that Jesus is a nice enough guy, that Jesus is a good model to follow for our kids; but when it comes to the world of grown-ups, when it comes to the serious ‘business’ of the work of nations, Jesus is just too darned naive to be considered, let alone believed or followed.

If I am right; if this is so, more’s the pity.

Iowa Schmiowa

My friend Stu died on Wednesday.  It is only Friday and already, it seems so very, very long ago.  Life continues apace on planet earth . . . people shop at the store and silly as well as serious discussions carry on even among us, those who mourn.

And the news keeps spinning out.

Last night, or was it this morning?  I think it was this morning . . . there was the usual US Presidential race coverage on television, only now, it was about New Hampshire instead of Iowa.  Did Iowa already happen?  I ask the fellow mourner sitting beside me on the couch.  I don’t know and I don’t care, she replied.

I thought about that for a moment.  Me neither, was my equable answer.  And it was true.  I really don’t care whether the Republican candidates have already been to Iowa or not.  I really don’t care who won and who’s claiming they won, even though they didn’t.

When did ‘news’ become a nation’s soap opera?  When did it become that you could simply fill in the blanks to never-ending and never-changing narrative?  When did our news become about the unimportant, the trivial?  And when did the really important things get pushed away to make room for the drivel we dub ‘news’?

I wasn’t looking that day.

I should have liked to have a vote in our collective decision to be held captive to the irrelevant by the irresponsible.

I wasn’t looking that day.

I’m sure Iowa is a lovely place to live and meaning no disrespect, I have to say . . .

Iowa, Schmiowa . . .