Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

VP Debate Live Blogging

Posted: October 11, 2012 in 2012 Elections, Joe Biden, Politics
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I’ll be live blogging and tweeting the VP debate tonight. Watch this space…

8:50 – Martha Raddatz introduced, takes the podium…
8:52 – Raddatz just referred to Paul Ryan as “Congressman Ryan” from the stage. Did she just violate the terms of the debate?
8:54 – @TheFix: What were the odds on Martha Raddatz mentioning Chamillionaire? 1 trillion to 1? #vpdebate
8:58 – For your amusement, follow Onion Politics on Twitter tonight, who will be tweeting in character as Joe Biden as only they can.

9:02 – Biden and Ryan take the stage Let the games begin…
9:03 – Raddatz opens with a question about Libya, noting today is the one month anniversary of the attack. Was this a massive intelligence failure, Vice President Biden? “It was a tragedy.”
9:05 – Biden pivots response to mention ending war in Iraq, getting Osama bin Laden
Biden channels John McCain’s “gates of hell” comment from 2007 GOP primaries
9:06 – Ryan points out that the US ambassador in France has marines guarding him. Shouldn’t US ambassador in Benghazi have had a marine detachment guarding him?
“What we are watching on our TV screens is the unraveling of the Obama foreign policy.”
9:09 – Biden: “With all due respect that’s a bunch of malarkey.” (Why?) “With all due respect, not a single thing he said was true.”

9:11 – Biden on administration’s initial story about protest: Intelligence community told us that… they learned more facts and changed their assessment.
9:12 – Raddatz to Ryan: Should US apologize for burning Korans, urinating on corpses. Ryan – Yes. For urinating on corpses. Not for US values.
9:14 – Good/tough question from Raddatz for both candidates: How effective would a military strike on Iran be?
9:16 – Biden on administration handling of Iran: “These are the most crippling sanctions in the history of sanctions.”
9:18 – Ryan hits Obama for going on The View while in New York City but not meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu.
9:19 – 20 minutes in, purely from an optics perspective, Biden looks like he’s having more fun with the debate than Obama.

9:23 – Raddatz pivots to the economy.
9:24 – Biden hits Romney for “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” op-ed and 47 percent comments.
9:26 – Ryan asks Romney about the unemployment rate in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
9:28 – Ryan telling story of Mark Nixon, family in MA helped by Romneys after two of his children paralyzed in a car accident.
Ryan zings Romney for gaffes… Biden laughs, responding “But I always mean what I say.”
9:31 – @mollyesque: Biden: “Stop talking about how you care about people. Show me something. Show me a policy.”
9:32 – Biden hits Ryan for requesting stimulus money for the state of Wisconsin…

9:34 – Raddatz pivots to Medicare
9:37 – Biden mentions Sarah Palin and death panels in rebuttal to Paul Ryan’s opening response. Fact check: Palin’s death panel comment came in 2009, AFTER the Obama administration was in office.
9:38 – Ryan: “They got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.”
9:40 – Some pretty contentious back and forth going on, as Ryan and Biden speaking over and interrupting each other.

9:45 – Raddatz moves on… next question is on taxes. Who will pay more or less in taxes?
9:47 – Looks like the “Mr. Ryan” agreement went out the window. Raddatz and Biden have been referring to him as “Congressman” throughout the debate
9:51 – @TheFix: Dem analysis of debate so far: “Biden rules, Ryan sucks”. GOP analysis of debate so far: “Ryan rules, Biden sucks”. #vpdebate
9:53 – Ryan ALMOST steps in it with a John Kennedy reference… “Now you’re Jack Kennedy?”
9:54 – @DeathStarPR: A little less conversation, a little more lightsaber duel to the death. #VPDebate #Debates

9:55 – Raddatz pivots to defense spending.

9:57 – Raddatz pivots to Afghanistan. Why not leave now? What more can we accomplish?
10:02 – Ryan: “Problems are growing abroad, but jobs aren’t growing here at home.”
10:07 – Are they arguing about Afghan weather and geography?

10:08 – Raddatz pivots to Syria… Why no military action in Syria?
10:10 – @ZekeJMiller: Biden hits Romney for not saying what he’d do in Syria
10:11 – @joshrogin: Biden contradicts State Department on Benghazi security http://t.co/o8jri6OZ
10:12 – Watching the clock… Biden has spoken a full 3 minutes more than Ryan.
10:13 – Ryan: We should not have called Bashar Assad a reformer. We should not have waited for Russia to give us the green light at the UN.

10:14 – Raddatz asks Biden and Ryan – both Catholics – what role religion plays in their views on abortion.
10:15 – Ryan: “I don’t see how a person can separate their public life from their private life.”
“The policy of a Romney administration will be to oppose abortion except in cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother.”
10:17 – Biden: “My religion defines who I am. I’ve been a practicing Catholic my whole life.”
Biden says he accepts church teachings that life begins at conception personally, but won’t impose it on others.

10:21 – Candidates pivot to Supreme Court

10:22 – Raddatz closing question: What would you say to American hero about this campaign? Ever embarrassed about the tone?
10:23 – Biden hits super PACs/Citizens United, calling them an “abomination”
10:24 – Ryan: You had a president run on hope and change 4 years ago who now campaigns on attack, blame and defame.

10:29 – Closing statements… Biden goes first.
10:32 – That’s a wrap. Now onto the Spin Room and post-debate coverage!

Circular Firing Squad

Posted: September 28, 2012 in 2012 Elections, Mitt Romney, Politics
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40 39 days out from the election and the knives are already out for Mitt Romney within his own party, even his own campaign. There are also people in the Republican party and base in full-blown CYA mode as to how Romney wound up being their nominee.

Politico:

“Lousy candidate; highly qualified to be president,” said a top Romney official. “The candidate suit fits him unnaturally. He is naturally an executive.”
…
“He’s a great leader, but he’s not a great politician,” said a top member of Romney’s organization. “As much as we complain about politicians, we like a good politician. He doesn’t have the hand-on-the-shoulder thing. He’s not quick-witted. He’s an analytical, data-driven businessperson.”
…
“You have to know the room, and he doesn’t know the room,” said a top Republican in D.C. who has donated to Romney and wants him to win. “He’s missing the normal-guy gene.”

Real Clear Politics:

Like it or not, the money and opinion elites on the center-right own Romney’s failure from the perspective of the base—they need him to win. And the reality is that if Romney loses, it will have little if anything to do with Paul Ryan’s big ideas, tactical choices, or elite misgivings—and far more to do with the simple fact that Romney is still disliked by most voters.

Red State:

The staggering irony is that those of us who did not want Romney are now the ones defending him to the hilt while the elitist jerks are distancing themselves from Romney as quickly as possible — both upset at what their media friends tell them is to come and upset that Mitt Romney might not actually listen to their sweet whispers as much as they originally presumed.

The American Conservative:

Activists would love to treat Romney’s candidacy as something that party elites foisted on them, but those elites were generally unenthusiastic about Romney this time as well. Romney prevailed this time in no small part because movement conservatives in 2008 helped make him a viable contender for the nomination. Many activists allowed themselves to be taken in four years ago, and now they’re stuck with the candidate they helped create. Romney’s candidacy this year is a monument to the conservative movement’s short-sightedness and lack of imagination, and naturally they want to deny their part in this.

Unleash the Running Mate!

Posted: September 24, 2012 in 2008 Elections, 2012 Elections, Mitt Romney, Politics
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“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.”
– Julius Caesar; Act 3, Scene 1

From today’s New York Times (emphasis mine):

Through the halls of Congress and well beyond, a whisper campaign is bursting into the open: Rather than burden him with the usual constraints on a ticket’s No. 2 not to upstage or get ahead of the presidential nominee, let Ryan be Ryan and take a detailed, policy-heavy fight to President Obama and the Democrats.

Also see this writeup in the Washington Post; September 21, 2012 (again, emphasis mine):

“I was enthused when Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan because I thought that was a signal that this guy was getting serious, he was getting bold,” Walker said. “I just haven’t seen that kind of passion I know that Paul has transferred over to our nominee.” The governor suggested that “pushback from some of the folks in the national campaign” was restraining the Wisconsin congressman from making detailed policy arguments.

That rang a few bells… Sure enough, after doing some digging on Google, I found these (all emphasis in the block quotes mine):

CNN; September 29, 2008:

The New York Times conservative columnist Bill Kristol argued in his column on Monday that McCain must “liberate his running mate from the former Bush aides brought in to handle her — aides who seem to have succeeded in importing to the Palin campaign the trademark defensive crouch of the Bush White House.
“McCain picked Sarah Palin in part because she’s a talented politician and communicator. He needs to free her to use her political talents and to communicate in her own voice,” Kristol wrote.

Washington Times; September 30, 2008:

At critical moments before and during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, his admirers would urge that he be allowed to be himself – rather than the far less authentic and appealing facsimile served up by his handlers.

“Let Reagan be Reagan,” they would urge, confident the man would fare well if left to his own talents and judgment. Time and time again that proved to be the case as his common-man qualities, native intelligence and utter decency allowed him to connect with and secure the support of the American people.

This lesson is worth recalling now, on the eve of a possibly make-or-break vice presidential debate between Republican Sarah Palin and her Democratic rival, Sen. Joseph Biden. The outcome – and the fate of the Republican ticket – may turn on whether her handlers “Let Palin be Palin.”

Wall Street Journal; September 29, 2008:

“It’s time to let Palin be Palin — and let it all hang out,” said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist.

The Weekly Standard; September 8, 2008:

Let Palin Be Palin
Why the left is scared to death of McCain’s running mate.

Mitt Romney on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”; September 29, 2008:

“Holding Sarah Palin to just three interviews and microscopically focusing on each interview I think has been a mistake. I think they’d be a lot wiser to let Sarah Palin be Sarah Palin. Let her talk to the media, let her talk to people.”

To be fair, I did a similar search for news articles, columns, and pundits who were saying “Let Edwards be Edwards” during the 2004 campaign, and didn’t find any.

I’m not comparing Paul Ryan to Sarah Palin on a direct one-on-one basis. Rather, I’m pointing out that the underlying dynamics in both campaigns – a running mate who is more popular with the base than the nominee of a campaign that is not going well – are uncanny. If this continues, it will not be a good sign for the Romney campaign during the final six weeks before Election Day.

Foreign Policy Rears Its Unpredictable Head

Posted: September 21, 2012 in 2012 Elections, Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Mitt Romney, Politics
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I forgot to link to my latest submission to Huffington Post the other day… Here it is.

Ann Romney Conjures Axl Rose

Posted: September 21, 2012 in 2012 Elections, Mitt Romney, Music
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Ann Romney addresses her husband’s Republican critics during an interview with Radio Iowa:

“Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring,” she said. “This is hard and, you know, it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now and it’s an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt’s qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.”

Axl Rose, circa 1991:

Democrats Horsing Around

Posted: July 18, 2012 in 2012 Elections, Mitt Romney, Politics
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By now, most people are familiar with the story of Seamus, Mitt Romney’s Irish Setter. But now the Democratic National Committee is using Rafalca, his Ann Romney’s Olympics-bound showhorse in a web ad hitting him on the tax returns controversy:

The ad somewhat reminds me of the famous John Kerry windsurfing ad created by the George W. Bush re-election campaign during the 2004 race.

On a related note:

“This election is starting to look enough like 2004 that Karl Rove should be demanding royalties from the Obama campaign, and others may conclude that no presidential campaign should ever again be based in Boston.”
– Charlie Cook, National Journal, July 16, 2012

Update: You knew this was coming… Somebody created a parody @RafalcaRomney Twitter account.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

Posted: July 18, 2012 in 2012 Elections, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Politics
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Looks like the Bain and tax returns attacks finally got under Mitt Romney’s skin. Buzzfeed reports:

In speeches from Des Moines to Dallas, Romney has always been careful to hedge his tough digs at Obama with a civil nod toward the president’s moral character: “He’s a nice guy,” the Republican has often said. “He just has no idea how the private economy works.” But Tuesday’s speech included no such hedge — and one campaign adviser said there’s a reason for that.

“[Romney] has said Obama’s a nice fellow, he’s just in over his head,” the adviser said. “But I think the governor himself believes this latest round of attacks that have impugned his integrity and accused him of being a felon go so far beyond that pale that he’s really disappointed. He believes it’s time to vet the president. He really hasn’t been vetted; McCain didn’t do it.”

Indeed, facing what the candidate and his aides believe to be a series of surprisingly ruthless, unfounded, and unfair attacks from the Obama campaign on Romney’s finances and business record, the Republican’s campaign is now prepared to go eye for an eye in an intense, no-holds-barred act of political reprisal, said two Romney advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity. In the next chapter of Boston’s pushback — which began last week when they began labeling Obama a “liar” — very little will be off-limits, from the president’s youthful drug habit, to his ties to disgraced Chicago politicians.

“I mean, this is a guy who admitted to cocaine use, had a sweetheart deal with his house in Chicago, and was associated and worked with Rod Blagojevich to get Valerie Jarrett appointed to the Senate,” the adviser said. “The bottom line is there’ll be counterattacks.”

The reference to Obama’s past drug use seems to suggest that former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu wasn’t going off-script after all when he dinged the president for spending “his early years in Hawaii smoking something” during a Tuesday morning Fox News appearance.

Politicizing Batman

Posted: July 17, 2012 in Movies, Politics
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Everybody’s excited about the final chapter in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and Rush Limbaugh sees a liberal Hollywood/Democratic Party conspiracy:

Speaking on his syndicated radio show on Tuesday, the right-wing host brought up the upcoming Batman film The Dark Knight Rises (or as he called it, The Dark Knight Lights Up), in particular focusing on its main villain, the Tom Hardy-portrayed hulking madman Bane. With Mitt Romney’s time at the investment fund (and the questionable time at which he retired from it) filling non-entertainment news headlines, Limbaugh tied the two together, casting some tough accusations at director Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros.

“Do you think it is accidental that the name of the really vicious firebreathing, four-eyed whatever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane?” Limbaugh asked his listeners.

Limbaugh did note that the film, the sequel to the 2008 hit The Dark Knight, has been in the works for a long time, with a summer 2012 release date long part of the plan.

“So this evil villain in the new Batman movie is named Bane. And there’s discussion out there as to whether or not this was purposeful and whether or not it will influence voters. It’s going to have a lot of people,” he continued. “The audience is going to be huge. A lot of people are going to see the movie. And it’s a lot of braindead people, entertainment, the pop culture crowd, and they’re going to hear Bane in the movie and they’re going to associate Bain.

“And the thought is that when they’re going to start paying attention to the campaign later in the year,” Limbaugh asserted, “and Obama and the Democrats keep talking about Bain, not Bain Capitol but Romney and Bain, that these people will start thinking back to the Batman movies – ‘Oh yeah, I know who that is!'”

Four years ago, conservatives were singing a very different tune about The Dark Knight:

There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society — in which people sometimes make the wrong choices — and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

“The Dark Knight,” then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year’s “300,” “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.
– Andrew Klavan, The Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2008.

But Batman goes into another country and with a C-130 snatches a guy out, and then throws him back here into Gotham. So there’s rendition. At one point the Morgan Freeman character says to Batman, wait a minute, hang on, you’re eavesdropping on everyone in Gotham? And Batman says, yes, to stop this terrorist. Morgan Freeman says, I can’t be a part of it. And yet Morgan Freeman does become a part of it, and they find the Joker. One of the ways they find the Joker is through eavesdropping. I mean the parallels here of what’s going on is to me stunning.
– Glenn Beck, CNN, August 6, 2008

Hey, guys… ever stop to consider that maybe the Batman movies are just meant to be entertainment? Or that maybe voters – right and left – are intelligent enough to make their own decisions at the polls and not base them on the name of the villain in a superhero movie?

Update: Politicizing Batman isn’t limited to Republicans. Check out this quote from a Democratic operative (h/t Andrew Sullivan):

“It has been observed that movies can reflect the national mood. Whether it is spelled Bain and being put out by the Obama campaign or Bane and being out by Hollywood, the narratives are similar: a highly intelligent villain with offshore interests and a past both are seeking to cover up who had a powerful father and is set on pillaging society.”
– Chris Lehane, Washington Examiner, July 16, 2012

Update II: This was bound to happen inevitably… Somebody photoshopped Mitt Romney’s face on Bane’s body.

Mitt Romney’s Bad Week Continues

Posted: July 17, 2012 in 2012 Elections, Mitt Romney, Politics
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After last week’s twofold controversy over his tenure at Bain Capital and his tax returns, Mitt Romney is facing two difficult choices: deal with the existing bad optics of the situation, or create a new set of optics which could be even more difficult to deal with.

If Romney keeps refusing to release his tax returns – which looks especially bad for him considering the precedent set by his own father during the 1968 campaign – the Obama campaign can keep the story alive. If he does release them, he will look weak for having caved to pressure from the Obama campaign, especially considering that Team Romney has demanded retractions/corrections for stories from the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, and an apology from the Obama campaign for Stephanie Cutter’s comments about Romney possibly committing a felony. Romney’s demands for all three were turned down.

Setting aside the questions about outsourcing, offshoring, and when he left Bain on paper and/or in practice, the question everybody is asking is why would Romney continue to withhold his tax returns? James Fallows and John Cassidy offer some possible explanations, which can be broken down into three theories:

  • The returns could reveal what a Fallows reader describes as “a shocking level” of tax avoidance.
  • The existence of more offshore bank accounts, which could give the Obama campaign more ammunition.
  • What Cassidy calls “politically explosive investments,” which could anger or energize the right and/or the left. Some possible examples would be if Romney directly benefited from Bain investments like some that have already been reported, such as companies that specialized in outsourcing jobs, or Stericycle, the biological waste company that specializes in disposing of aborted fetuses.
  • Questions of how Romney accumulated potentially as much as $100 million in his Individual Retirement Account (IRA).

On top of that, the Obama campaign recently hit Romney with what is probably one of the most memorable and powerful attack ads from the last decade, if not longer. Unfortunately in politics, imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery. The Romney campaign responded with its own ad which set a series of headlines to Obama’s performance of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” The ad can’t be linked to or embedded because it was taken down from YouTube following a copyright claim by BMG.

The sustained attacks on Romney’s business record are clearly having an effect on the overall dynamics of the race and the national discourse. Searches for Bain Capital have increased on Google. Particularly worrisome from the Romney campaign’s perspective is the fact that of five out of the top ten locations where these searches are traced to come from key swing states (Ranked in numerical order: Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina. If you consider Arizona a swing state up for grabs this year, then six out of the top ten locations are swing states.) References to Bain Capital have also increased on Twitter. In other words, people are paying attention.

Romney has also been on the receiving end of rough criticism and second-guessing in the press. Check out this column by National Journal’s Charlie Cook, and this one by Business Week’s Josh Green, reviving Newsweek’s infamous “wimp factor” story from the 1988 campaign and turning it on Romney.

On the other hand, it is worth keeping in mind that Romney’s refusal to release the tax returns could be more damaging than whatever might be in the documents themselves. Remember John Kerry’s repeated refusal to release his Standard Form 180 in response to demands from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth back in 2004? By the time he actually got around to doing that a year after the race, the records essentially confirmed/upheld the historical facts of Kerry’s military service and didn’t have any damning or damaging revelations. Ultimately, the tax issue is a problem of Romney’s own making, no matter how many questionable excuses (John and Teresa Heinz Kerry) he offers to justify his position of nondisclosure.

There is no easy solution for this, regardless of what Romney ultimately decides. The basic question he has to answer on whether or not to release more tax returns is if he prefers the devil he knows or the one he doesn’t.

Update: Unrelated to the tax returns issue, but still worth noting… The New York Times reports that Mitt Romney’s name and/or signature has come up in 142 documents during the period between 1999 and 2002, raising questions over when/if he left he had severed ties with or ceded control of Bain Capital during this period while he was running the Olympics in Salt Lake City.

The Swiftboating of Mitt Romney

Posted: July 15, 2012 in 2012 Elections, Barack Obama, Investigative, Media, Mitt Romney, Politics
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The Obama campaign released this simple but brutal ad yesterday: A series of headlines from recent weeks about Romney’s tenure at Bain, outsourcing jobs, and use of offshore tax havens, set to audio of Romney’s off-key performance of “America the Beautiful” at a campaign event in Florida last January. TPM’s David Kurtz compares this ad to the Lyndon Johnson campaign’s now legendary “Daisy” ad from the 1964 election.

The Atlantic’s James Fallows appeared on NPR yesterday to discuss the ad, and during the course of that conversation, the comparison was made between what Obama is doing to Romney now to what the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Republican operatives did to John Kerry’s military record in Vietnam during the 2004 Election. An excerpt from that conversation:

FALLOWS: It has. And I think it’s worth focusing on why this is such a potential problem for the Romney campaign. The entire reason behind his campaign through the last year in the Republican primaries and now in the next four months in the general election is that America has business problems. He is a businessman, therefore, he’s the right person for the job.

And what the Obama campaign is doing on the basis of this Bain imbroglio is something similar to what George W. Bush was doing to John Kerry back in 2004 in the episode known as swiftboating. And by that, I mean making something that a candidate has assumed to be his strength, which, in John Kerry’s case was his military background, into a weakness.

RAZ: And so if the Obama campaign can make Mitt Romney’s business background not the presumed basis of his campaign, but instead a source of controversy, a source of potential weakness for him, that really does make problems in the campaign for the Romney team.

So if the Obama campaign is swiftboating, as you say, Mitt Romney – I mean, one of the criticisms of John Kerry was that he didn’t respond to this back in 2004, and Romney is only started to respond to it.

FALLOWS: Exactly. And I should make clear, in saying swiftboating, I’m not asserting that these are false accusations. I’m just saying they have this jujitsu effect. And it’s actually surprising the Romney team is not better prepared for them than it is. Number one, because they’ve had the last eight years since the John Kerry episode. Number two, over the last year, this is what Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and others were using as their angle of attack on Mitt Romney’s business background too.

Fallows’s analogy of the Bain attack being political jiujitsu by turning a candidate’s strength into a potential liability is correct. However, there are a few other reasons why the swiftboating analogy is not accurate here that are worth pointing out (Full disclosure/background: I reviewed hundreds of pages of military records for Kerry and others while working at CNN during the course of the Swift Boat controversy as it was playing out in 2004.)

  • After having reviewed multiple incident reports and service records obtained independently through Freedom of Information Act requests, documents filed contemporaneously at the time backed Kerry’s version of the events, every single time. In other words, the underlying basis for challenging Kerry’s service record was entirely false. In Romney’s case, independent reporting of multiple news organizations, as well as Bain Capital’s SEC filings and his 2002 testimony before the Ballot Law Commission in Massachusetts are the basis for questioning his version of events.
  • The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were an independent 527 group. This ad – and the entire strategy of attacking Romney’s record at Bain – was a direct hit organized by the Obama campaign.
  • Romney was attacked for his Bain record during the 2012 Republican primaries. He could have put a lot of these issues to rest if he had put the information out there months ago. Kerry’s military service was never challenged during the Democratic primaries, and did not become an issue until the Swift Boat group started running ads shortly after Kerry accepted his party’s nomination.
  • His continued refusal to release tax returns beyond 2010 is also compounding the problem. Also consider that when Romney was being vetted to be John McCain’s possible running mate back in 2008, he gave the McCain campaign 23 years’ worth of tax returns. Even though his tax returns and the end of his tenure at Bain are two completely separate issues, the Obama campaign has effectively joined them together at the hip. In this respect, Romney’s response is similar to Kerry’s refusal to release his full personnel and medical file (Standard Form 180) back in 2004.

The Obama campaign has effectively turned Romney’s record in the private sector – in his words, one of the main reasons why he should be elected president – into a liability. However, after looking at everything the Swift Boat campaign did to John Kerry, the analogy should end there. Romney’s current problem is almost entirely of his own making – the conflicting answers he’s given in the past and last week, as well as the SEC documents and his own refusal to release more tax returns.

Update: Business Insider compares Romney’s handling of the Bain questioning to Bill Clinton’s infamous and widely mocked “the meaning of the word ‘is'” during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Update II: Fallows has written a blog post elaborating on his swiftboating comments during the NPR interview. The whole thing is worth a read.

Update III: Another Kerry 2004/Romney 2012 comparison that has nothing to do with swiftboating –  both candidates used the same slogan, “Believe in America.”

 

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