Not only is Barack Obama enjoying a post-convention bounce, not only has he outstripped Mitt Romney in fund-raising for the first time in four months, he actually got a physical lift while visiting a pizza parlor in Florida.
No word on where the Secret Service was during this, but I suspect the president’s detail spent the next hour breathing through paper bags, trying to calm down…
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One of those political visual tests:
Could you see someone doing this to Romney?
Who would be more likely to have this done to them?
Bush or Kerry?
Bush or Gore?
Clinton or Dole?
Clinton or H W Bush?
Reagan or Mondale?
I think its a like-ability test, and I have a hard time seeing someone doing this to Romney, Kerry, Gore, Mondale, etc.
I agree, Andrew. A good ol’ boy could pick up W, or Clinton. But not H. W. And I have trouble picturing it with Reagan, too.
I think the most comical scene, the one I’d want to see on video, would be somebody trying to pick up Kerry. The poor fella’s arms would be likely to freeze, crack and fall off. Kerry is the most snooty, aloof politician I’ve ever met in my life.
Kerry is the most snooty, aloof politician I’ve ever met in my life.
-Brad
Even more than John Edwards?
Kerry may not have been bubbled over with personality but he’s a regular Ronald McDonald compared to Mitt Romney. That lack of likeablility may be the deciding factor in both 2004 and 2012.
As for Obama, he comes across as both likeable and smart. He maybe tried too hard to get along with Republicans in his first term and that cost him a bit. Thankfully he’s grown a spine and decided to throw caution to the wind with his immigration decree. I’d like to see more of that in a second term.
Why do we care if our leaders are huggable? I want someone who is intelligent, thoughtful and effective. Although my preferred candidate is apparently huggable, of all the dings against Romney, that has to be the least important!
Today is the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It’s important to remind everyone just how incompetent the Bush Administration was in the run-up to that event. While I don’t believe Mitt Romney would be nearly the Buffoon that George W. Bush was it is important that we carefully choose a president not just for his likeability but for his intelligence and focus. Barack Obama is clearly the better qualified man to serve as commander in chief to lead us forward.
Here is a link to a NY Times article (with an excerpt discussing the famous Aug 6, 2001 presidential daily briefing report) that once again proves how important a focused leader is to the security of the USA and how disasterous the wrong choice can be:
The Deafness Before the Storm
By Kurt Eichenwald
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html?_r=1
On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief — and only that daily brief — in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda’s history, not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument had some validity.
That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.
Bill Clinton was huggable and look what that got us.
Bud, Edwards was much more personable than Kerry, although only to people who might do something for him, such as the editorial board.
Speaking of which, when Kerry came to seek our endorsement his manner suggested we were asking HIM for a favor, and he thought us impertinent for doing so…
Bill Clinton was huggable and we ended up with almost a decade of prosperity and a huge surplus. I’ll take that!
The thing about Bill was, he didn’t wait around for you to hug him, he was going to hug you first. And you didn’t have to be a babe, either.
@Kathryn
Clinton was President when the internet bubble occured. He owes pretty much all his economic success to that irrational period.
Mitt Romney may not be hugable but he’s also not much of soldier. Fact is he is a chickenhawk of the highest order. Is this the kind of guy we want as commander in chief? Where are the Swiftboaters when we have a real story of cowardice to make a movie about. From Counterpunch.com:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/07/how-mitt-dodged-the-draft/
The Flight of the Young Chicken Hawk
How Mitt Dodged the Draft
by H. BRUCE FRANKLIN
Although the Selective Service Exam radically reduced the chances of college men, especially those with the test-taking skills of most Stanford students, to be conscripted into the Vietnam War, it was no guarantee of long-lasting deferment. There were other, surer, escapes from the Vietnam nightmare. One of the very best was the ministry. In 1966, young men flooded into divinity schools, embarking on careers to be ministers, priests, and rabbis. The Mormons had an even better deal than most religions, because The Church of Latter-Day Saints required each and every one of its young men to become, for at least two years, a “minister of religion.” Thus all Mormon young men could claim deferments as ministers. When the inequity of this arrangement became too blatant, the Selective Service entered into an agreement with the LDS that required the church to specify just one “minister” for each geographical district. Since there were relatively few Mormons in Michigan, and Governor George Romney had considerable influence in the church, Mitt quickly received an official appointment as a Mormon “minister of religion,” consecrated by a draft deferment from the Selective Service. So instead of returning to Stanford, Mitt went off to become a Mormon missionary in France, where he would spend the next two and a half years—while Vietnam became a slaughterhouse for the Vietnamese and many Americans drafted to slaughter them.
That’s one of the most outrageously unfair assertions I’ve seen in many, many a day. Who on Earth is this Bruce Franklin?
He makes it sound as though Mitt became a Mormon to evade the draft. How utterly absurd. He GREW UP Mormon. In fact, he’s FIFTH GENERATION Mormon.
Surely, surely, surely you were being ironic in passing this on, Bud…
Brad you missed the point of the article. Mitt may very well have been a faithful Mormon but seriously how can you deny his timing for doing his Mormon missionary work? He clearly was dodging the draft. And he was extremely hawkish in his war views during the 1960s. I find that disgusting, fair and relevant to this campaign.
I don’t. I believe that’s grossly unfair.
And I get really sick of the attitude that holds that if you did not serve — for whatever reason — you are not ALLOWED, politically, to hold any opinion on war other than an antiwar one.
Whenever I hear “chickenhawk,” I hear something akin to a mob trying to abridge someone’s free-speech rights by shouting insults to keep him from being heard.
Let’s do some math work here to see if it’s possible that Mitt just ran out of time to serve his country because his missionary time limited his window of opportunity. He was born in 1947 so his first eligibility for the draft would have occurred the year he turned 19, 1966. That year he was wrapping up his first year at Stanford. It’s likely he could have used college deferments for 3 or more years to delay eligibility for the draft. However, he chose to do his missionary work instead. Whether his motovation to do so was to avoid the draft it’s an undeniable fact that that is exactly what the result would be. Why did he choose that particular time to do his missionary work? Given his strident support for the Vietnam war couldn’t he have deferred that service a couple of years and enlisted in the army to support a cause that he believed was right? Of course he could have but instead choose the life of Riley trying to prosylitise the “downtrodden” folks living in the French Riviera.
Fast forward 2-1/2 years. It’s now late 1968, early 69. Check your history books Vietnam is at it’s peak and Mitt Romney is done with his “dangerous” missionary work in France. With nearly 600,000 men serving their country in the jungles of Vietnam there was still time for Mitt Romney to serve his country in a war that he continues to support. So off to the recruiting station, right? Nope. That’s apparently not one of Mitt Romney’s priorities. Instead it’s off to the elitist Harvard Business School. By this time the future standard bearer for the GOP POTUS slot is married which, as we know from Dick Cheney’s deferment list, is a suitable draft deferment. Sure Mitt could do the honorable thing and enlist and take the place of some poor ghetto kid who had no beef with the Viet Cong but Mitt wasn’t an honorable man in 1969. And by all accounts he’s still not an honorable man. He’s nothing but another in a long line of elitist GOP chickenhawks who are more than willing to send others into the field of battle but somehow found a way to cheat the system.
Who would you more likely have a beer with?
Obama or Romney?
I don’t see myself having a beer with Romney.
And I get really sick of the attitude that holds that if you did not serve — for whatever reason — you are not ALLOWED, politically, to hold any opinion on war other than an antiwar one.
-Brad
Good thing I don’t have that attitude. But that’s not the point. Even a chickenhawk can have an opinion. But the issue to me as a voter is that I find it a character flaw for someone who is so strident in supporting a war but uses every conceivable avenue to escape serving in that war. Had Romney been a draft card burner I would have much more respect for him. That is a relevant issue.
As a Mormon Romney doesn’t drink alcohol so beer is out. I’m sure Mitt could suggest a good French non-alcoholic wine though.
I heard that the fella standing in the background near the door is the chief secret service guy on duty. He reportedly said as long as the guy didn’t walk off with the president, it was alright…or something to that effect.
As a politician, Mitt needs to drink beer.