The DNC calls this video Mitt Dancing Around The Issues Volume I:
Yes, it’s a bit amusing, but I think that as an ad it’s just a little too cute and a little too inside baseball. Do most swing (and likely low-information) voters know that Romney has only released one year’s worth of tax returns so far? 1 Do they know that Anne Romney trains dressage horses?`
- Actually, it seems that even that one year may be incomplete.[↩]
I tend to agree. Most voters aren’t going to “get it.”
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She owns (partially) the horse, but doesn’t train it, I’m pretty sure. (My wife, a huge equine enthusiast, would care about the distinction. I saw the horse at the last trials for the Olympics, and it and its rider were pretty good, but I’ll be shocked if they win a medal.)
I think the one dancing around the issues is the one who refuses to talk about actual issues because he knows his record on them is bland at best and creates silly ads about dancing horses to keep people from thinking about him. It’d be nice if the candidates could actually speak about the utterly pointless war in Afganistan, the role of the Federal Government, what the position of the U.S. should be in regards to the various so-called Arab-Springs and Iran. ACTUAL things that affect ACTUAL people. All the stuff in this ad is just silly distraction aimed at people who couldn’t even name the current VP.
In a sense, I think Romney’s correct in standing firm not to release. He knows, as I do, that all it would lead to is fine-toothed-combing of his tax returns, leading to more idiotic mind-wasting ads like this one.
There are people in the Obama Administration and Congress who are admitted tax cheats and we seem to have given them a pass. We all know that wealthy people utilize various parts of the tax code to lessen their taxes – legally, but sometimes with an appearance of it-shouldn’t-be-legal. Why can’t we just accept as given, the truth that Romney’s returns will like show nothing illegal but a lot of things that make people who don’t have his kind of wealth to go “hmmmmmmmm.” Then we can move on to an ACTUAL campaign on ACTUAL issues that might actually be important to people who DO think about issues and the U.S. Government’s role in the world.
1. Why on earth should I take the honesty of a Presidential candidate so for granted that I don’t even bother to verify it? Especially for a candidate who seems to lie so much so often?
2. Why isn’t the extent to which a candidate is willing to make investments that may contradict his stated policies relevant? Similarly, if a candidate has, even legally, managed to structure his taxes to, say, pay almost no tax on a huge revenue stream, why isn’t that relevant too?
3. As for Obama, much as I dislike some of his policies, after four years they are not exactly obscure. Romney refuses to disclose his budget ideas, his health care plan (if any other than repeal), and so on. It is much more evident what you would get from Obama than Romney.
You’re not wrong. But BOTH candidates obfuscate as much as possible about themselves. That’s the political environment that we’ve (figuratively) created when we hound every candidate for every office to release everything we can think of, or accuse him of hiding something.
I think it’s wrong generally that Romney has put his foot down, but on the other hand, I completely understand it. the demand’s only real purpose is to look for gotcha’s. (there is no conceivable relevence to a 10 year old tax return FROM ANYBODY, except to look for “secrets.”) I don’t blame Romney, I blame the way we’ve allowed Presidential campaigns to get so out of hand and off track – largely through the inherent boredom of the 24 reporters at hour news outlets who also don’t want to do actual work.
Why assume Romney is hiding something interesting? He seems like he’s actually quite boring, even moreso than Obama. Yes he’s rich, but so is Obama and after this job he will likely be Romney-rich as well. Yes, he probably did make investments he’s not exactly proud of in a vacuum, but so what? So has everyone. Even the DNC chair has invested money overseas for tax purposes. So has Pelosi. SO WHAT!? (So have you and I, when it comes right down to it)
Let’s all agree that the people willing to put themselves and their families through the mud to run for a national office, by definition, have huge egos and imperfect lives. BOTH of them have skeletons in their closets. But I seriously doubt either Romney or Obama has ever committed anything more loathsome than a questionable moral lapse. These are two really boring guys.
I don’t think you can really say with a straight face that you have no idea what Romney’s policies are going to be, or how he feels on X, Y and Z. You could guess and probably be right. Same with Obama. But to be sure, and to be more useful, maybe it would be BETTER to actually have dialog and debate between them on that level and worry about THOSE policies, rather than whether Romney might have invested $100,000 in an offshore horse farm that dumped manure illegally. yaaaawn.
Seriously, there are important points, and then there are campaign points. Romney’s tax returns, Obama’s unreleased records, are only campaign points, dwelled upon by small minds that get caught up in that distraction.
Meanwhile, a completely pointless war continues in Afganistan that serves the sole purpose (from our point of view) at this point of killing American troops, one-by-one, with no actual end in sight, and no actual goal, carried on from a previous administration that cared no more about it – that we can’t just pull out of for solely political reasons – yet we are supposed to be all fired up about whether Romney actually worked at Bane during some particular period. MILLIONS HAVE LOST THEIR JOBS OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS, not just the relatively small number of people people who may or may not have been “fired by Romney!” Puh-leese. Let’s focus a little more, OK.
Besides, fundamentally, can you really say (again with a straight face) that you’d ever vote for Romney, no matter what you found out? Obama’s failings are no real secret at this point. Do you really think they are large enough for YOU to vote Republican? No. So again, this is just postering that serves no purpose.
Let’s get some actual Presidential debates going and have them talk issues. Unfortunately, even that has become a joke with both sides just demanding whatever rules will make it least possible to actually debate.
With respect, I think if the best you can some up with is that *gasp* politicians lie and hide things, then you haven’t been paying attention.
And fundamentally, can ANYTHING Romney has conceivably done – imagine the worst – compare with continuing to send American troops off to fight in a foreign land with no purpose other than to serve as grist for the mill and not doing everything possible to simply stop it?
No, he didn’t start it. And whatever the possible nobility of its original goals, they have been long lost under the weight of the bloody bodies racked up under two administrations – heading to three. Obama could stop this today, but he won’t because it would be embarrassing to him politically (and used against him in a gotcha ad by other political butchers). I don’t know what Romney will do (probably the same as Obama). But I do know that whether or not Romney underpaid his taxes, or Obama got a C- in Constitutional Law hardly bears enough importance to be uttered while we have young men and women dying pointlessly for a country that doesn’t want them there, for the “benefit” of an American populace that just doesn’t even care or remember there IS a war.
Romney hasn’t had troops to command yet. But he certainly sounds amazingly cavalier about using them if elected.
Romney supported the Iraq war then and now, and isn’t much on board for withdrawing from Iraq. He seems to support attacking Iran. Romney is happy to pal around with John Bolton. (Even as a relative youth Romney was an active protestor against those opposing the Vietnam war.)
So the choice is between a bellicose president and a more bellicose opponent. Not very much to debate, perhaps?
PS. Regarding the post above, where you write,
I for one am very surprised to learn that I have money invested overseas for tax purposes. Please do let me know where I can get my hands on it.
I am supposing that you have a retirement account or accounts of some sort (one would hope). It is almost impossible NOT to have one that involves international finance AND is structured for tax advantage. That’s all I meant and perhaps it does not fit your definition – fair enough.
I for one am sick of this kabuki War on Terror. It sickens me that Obama has not fully ceased combat operations in Iraq and Afganistan and pulled every last American out. While I have no hope that Romney will be any better in this regard, the fact that neither is willing to either fully commit or STOP makes this a non-issue on a candiidate level for me. One is as bad as the other. I particularly find Obama’s position offensive because I think it far more likely that his personal convictions and previous promises have been subsumed by political strategy. He (I think), as an ELECTED President seeking re-election is far less inclined to do the political self-abuse of stopping the farce in Afganistan since it might well cost him his office. Romney, at least, has a consistent position and you know he isn’t just postering for votes. Obama – I’m not so sure.
It’s not that I am against using troops where necessary, but I am against using them to no purpose other than willing their slow deaths to put up a good show. I don’t consider support expressed at one point to be bad, but I do consider continued support under the absurd rubric in place now to be downright criminal treatment of our young. It bothers me equally that our lame Congress can’t seem to gird up enough fortitude to actually do anything other than statement votes for the Sunday shows.
Congress, in my view, is where the battle is this November. It will decide almost everything that is important, OR it will simply leave us another lame Congress that does nothing useful for another few years.
It sickens me that W started combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that he did so based on fabrications.
I don’t think it matters at this point why or how the war was started. We can all agree to disagree on that point anyway.
What IS sickening is that whatever debatable purpose it once may have had has been gone for YEARS at this point. There is nothing we can do in Afghanistan to change anything at this point, assuming we even have the right to presume to do so.
Is anyone even clear as to whether anyone in charge over there wants us there? Is anyone even clear as to whether anyone actually IS in charge over there? Nobody in our Administration can even articulate what we are doing at this point. This doesn’t even RISE to the level of being another Vietnam.
Unfortunately, the media doesn’t care, so we never hear about what’s going on, nobody ever seriously questions what the Administration is doing and the only one making any public statements at all about it are the wackos from the Westboro Church. What the hell happened to all the war protestors once Obama got elected?
(For the record, I am a former Marine officer, a hawk on defense, and was in support of our efforts for about the first two months. But this is no war, this is just killing.)