Garcia Media Life

Forget the threat of the end of the Mayan calendar later this year- American political and governmental dysfunction is a more realistic doomsday scenario.

This article in the Washington Post lays it all out. As soon as the withering, vicious, nasty and exhausting national campaigns end this November- our government will have to figure out how to deal with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on all Americans-middle class and rich alike. That’s also the time the temporary payroll tax cut expires.

Meantime, because of their inability to compromise on a deficit reduction package that was supposedly the solution to the debt ceiling fiasco of last year- a bunch of automatic budget cuts are scheduled to hit the Pentagon and the poor.

In a normal world where politicians put country ahead of party and ideology- the solutions would be easy. There would be compromise on the Bush tax cuts, extending them for middle class folks so as not to burden their finances in a still stubbornly recession-like economy. There would be consideration of allowing them to expire for the top earners. The increased revenue could then be used, in part, to help pay for the continuation of payroll tax relief that mostly middle income Americans have now come to depend on over the past couple of years and that add to the average consumer’s spending ability.

Normal politicians would then split the difference on cuts in Pentagon spending and entitlement programs. All in all, you would have actually engaged in a little budget discipline while still managing to keep some of the tax cut incentives necessary to incent spending and grow the economy.

But, of course, we do not have normal politicians in Washington right now. We have a system that is broken with massive ideological rifts preventing any semblance of compromise or rational governance.

And it’s too bad because there are positive signs out there for the American economy. Home builder sentiment is at its most positive point since the start of the recession. A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds 58% now optimistic about an economy recovery.

But the people who invest and spend on America look at governmental gridlock and see nothing but uncertainty ahead. Small businesses are going into their shells and slowing their pace of hiring. Defense contractors are freaking out and they’re slowing their hiring too. And God help you if you’re not one of the well-off in this society- because the concept of a safety net will be tattered beyond recognition as the government cuts Medicaid, food stamps, college loans- you name it.

If the President would like to get himself re-elected, you’d think he would address this tax and cut Armageddon that’s looming in November, because the very prospect of it could strangle our current anemic recovery and fatally injure his electoral chances. And if Republicans want to be taken seriously and not viewed as a party taken over by uncompromising ideological rigidity, you’d think they’d take seriously that their electoral success looks just as threatened as the President’s.

Some worry about Europe and whether countries like Greece and Italy will default. Some fear that date in December when the Mayan calendar supposedly ends. I laugh at those measly threats. Our biggest fear should be the American politician. If only they could offer leadership as well as they play politics.

Anyone who says the public has lost its sense of wonder about science and space and technology was proved wrong Tuesday.

People were perched on roof tops, stopped at bridges, gathered at parks and monuments- all eyes trained to the sky. School children screamed with delight as the big 747 lumbered at low altitude with the workhorse space shuttle, Discovery attached, pockmarked over 39 trips to space and now headed toward its final resting place. It was an oddly electric moment that came seemingly out of nowhere.

And here we are either paused or stalled or seemingly disinterested anymore in scientific and engineering achievement. The shuttle fly-over seemed sadly symbolic; not only the official end of the space shuttle program, but the death of the Big Idea.

Where are the leaders who think big thoughts? Where are the men and women who dare to dream, to change our world, to look at our planet, our solar system, our universe and see possibility and discovery?

It seems a narrow world these days- a world of accountants with green eye-shades who spend their days counting dollars and make their living killing dreams. It seems to be a world of timid leaders who think of the future in terms of weeks and months instead of decades and generations.

Next year will mark a half a century that we lost the President who sent us on a mission to the moon. Imagine a legacy founded on a dream that would extend that long into the future.

I was in 2nd grade at St. Rita’s elementary school when a nun with a scared and worried face rushed into our classroom. And we sat at our desks, praying the rosary, grown-ups and kids, hoping against hope that it couldn’t possibly be true that the young President had been shot and was now fighting for his life in a hospital in Dallas, Texas. I know the romance of JFK and Camelot has long been shattered but it wasn’t all just illusion. There were big dreams and big ideas that died along with that man.

I am reminded of those beautiful lyrics from Paul Simon, one of the poets of this aging generation of mine:

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come at the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune

It would be nice someday to sing the American tune again with a sense of joy and wonder instead of our current dirge of sobering sadness and never ending limitation. Never ending possibility is so much more inspiring for the human heart.

I don’t doubt a lot of the G.O.P. anger at the Democratic strategist’s comments that Ann Romney “has never worked a day in her life,” is totally genuine. But it would also be political malpractice if they didn’t take tactical advantage of the gift handed them by Hilary Rosen.

With the President enjoying an 18% advantage with women voters, Democrats were beside themselves today at Rosen’s clumsy words which she continued to double and triple and quadruple down on as night turned to morning. In an article on Huffington Post she further accused Mitt Romney of hiding behind his wife’s skirt. Within a couple of hours, that particular sentence had been magically scrubbed clean.

Apoplectic Democrats including the President, the Vice President, the First Lady, the Obama team’s campaign manager, his top advisors, and for all we know, Bo, the First Family’s dog, were falling all over themselves distancing themselves as far as possible from Rosen.

Republicans are now trying to paint her as a close advisor, an Obama intimate- the President’s brain. She is, in fact, the ultimate Washington insider. The PR firm she works for advises the Democratic National Committee and she gets invited to White House state dinners, but that’s about the extent of it. Certainly, whatever minor political influence she may have had is pretty much now dust in the wind.

The point Rosen was trying to make is that Mitt Romney’s efforts to close the gender gap by saying his wife is a key advisor on the economic plight facing the nation’s women provides a narrow view because Ann Romney has had distinct economic advantages through her life.

But as a breast cancer survivor, a victim of Multiple Sclerosis, and as a woman who raised five boys, Ann Romney is also an incredibly sympathetic figure who most political observers agree connects with voters way more effectively than her husband. So on top of that, Rosen’s perceived additional attack on “stay-at-home” moms, was possibly not the smartest move for a political “strategist.” One wonders, while she was at it, why Rosen didn’t go on and assault apple pie as well.

As the Ozzie Guillen of politics (the Miami Marlins Manager who set off a firestorm by telling Time magazine he loved Fidel Castro), Ms. Rosen is not very popular right now in Democratic circles. I think she’s been invited to her last White House dinner and if I were her, I would not be looking for an invitation to the Democratic convention either.

Is this a lasting issue? I think so. The Romney’s will shortly be giving an interview to ABC’s Dianne Sawyer. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to hear Mitt Romney make reference to the matter in his convention speech. Ann Romney has been made a heroine and her value to the campaign, in general, is now enormous.

As more than a few conservative bloggers have pointed out today, who would have thought it would be a Democratic “strategist” who would finally unite the Republican Party behind their presumed nominee?

Posts about NCAA bracketology have the most general appeal, of course, early in the college basketball tournament when everyone still has a shot at glory. At this point, most brackets have been destroyed beyond recognition and few are left who really care anymore.

As for myself, there was no office pool this year because the young lady who had been administering it in past years is on maternity leave, which left me entering brackets on websites going up against hundreds of thousands instead of, say, 20. Had we had our normal pool, I would be in position to take this thing for the 2nd time in three years.

I have three of the Final 4 and if Ohio State wins it all, there’s little doubt victory would have been mine. But, no….I entered ESPN’s bracket game and the good news is that according to the little meter at the top of my brackets page, I am in the 92.8% percentile of all entrants. Impressive, no? Except there are literally over 5 million entrants, so even though I’m currently in the top 7%, that also means I currently rank 465,033rd.

George Allen’s Brackets

But I’m doing a hell of a lot better than Republican Virginia senate candidate, George Allen. Politico.com reveals that his home-state pandering has resulted in the strangest brackets ever publicized. You can see them for yourself here right on his George Allen for Senate web site.

For a guy running for a Virginia U.S. Senate seat, it would be quite the conundrum, for example, to pick a second round match-up between Virginia and Norfolk State, both teams located squarely in the Old Dominion. So who does he have winning this intra-state contest? Why— Missouri. Huh?

Turns out his initial instincts were a first round pick of Missouri beating Norfolk State. I’m thinking one of his political aides noticed this and said, “Sir- you’re picking a home-state team to lose.” So you can see he’s scratched out Missouri and written in Norfolk State. And, I might add, it’s not gently scratched out, it’s harshly scratched out with heavy black marks- almost angry black marks as if to say, “Jeez, how could I have been so stupid?”

Except he forgot to adjust his third round pick accordingly and so that’s how he has Missouri winning the Virginia/Norfolk State game. He also did it with Davidson which he initially picked to lose to Louisville. Davidson is not in Virginia but it is in neighboring North Carolina. And so George Allen has Davidson upsetting Louisville—but in the third round, the winner of the Davidson/Long Beach State game is—Louisville!

Every politician panders- that is not exactly a state secret. But wouldn’t you think the pander should be a bit more subtle and not quite so overt? And what kind of campaign staff does Mr. Allen have that would allow such a thing to be published on his actual campaign web site?

Well, obviously not the sharpest staff in the tool box- because apparently they don’t read Politico.com either. The result being that even though this exercise in blatant pandering has the full light of the media spotlight on it—the picks, their heavily scratched out amendments, and the bizarre results- are still on the campaign web site for all to snicker at!

Hey, my NCAA picks may not have been perfect, but at least no one’s pointing their finger at them as an object of ridicule. For that, I have my own crack staff to thank- Bernstein, the cat and Suki, the dog. And this, my friends, is why I’m voting for Hank, the cat this November in the Virginia Senate race. You can buy his T-shirts here.

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In a span of just a couple of months, we have now seen video of American soldiers urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters, American troops mistakenly desecrating the Koran and causing riots and now a deeply disturbed U.S. Army Sergeant appears to have systematically murdered women and children in two rural southern Afghanistan villages.

This is not us. This is not America. This is not our military. We are not represented by these acts and we shouldn’t be defined by them. But they do speak to the horrors of war and how it breaks people and causes them to behave in ways that are completely antithetical to our values. We are the good guys- not….this.

When I have met and talked to members of our armed forces, I am always impressed by their civility and decency in big ways and small. It’s always the guys in their desert uniforms on the Metro at the Pentagon station who are the first to give up their seat to a pregnant woman or an elderly person. Those were U.S. Navy men and women who rescued Iranian sailors from Somali pirates a few weeks ago. How many acts of unpublicized kindness have been committed by our troops in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan? I would venture to say thousands.

Our fighting men and woman have rebuilt schools, distributed food to the hungry, and given hugs to children orphaned by war. And that’s when they’re not putting their own lives on the line as the target of a sniper or an IED placed on a roadway. But it is hard when confronted by the acts of broken people, hardened and twisted by tour after tour after tour of duty- to not feel a deep sense of sadness and shame over the kinds of events that have occurred in Afghanistan recently.

Polls show Americans are weary of war. Solid majorities now think Afghanistan is not worth the cost in blood and treasure. Certainly, history has taught the British, the then Soviet empire, and now us, that taming this country by military occupation is a fool’s errand at worst, and indescribably difficult at best.

How we extricate ourselves from this decade-long conflict is complicated. It was in Afghanistan that the Taliban gave shelter to Al Qaeda as the terrorist organization trained to wage war on civilized society. It’s the Taliban who have oppressed women in ways unimaginable to most of us.

It’s up to our leaders to figure this out because, surely, they are now seeing the current course seems to be completely counter-productive to our stated goals of building trust with the Afghan people so that we can train their military and their government to do what they must eventually do for themselves.

Loose talk about military action in other countries ought to be sobered by events of the kind we have seen lately in Afghanistan. There is nothing glamorous or magical about the military option. And maybe for the sake of our own brave men and women who’ve sacrificed so much over the past ten years- and for our own collective sanity and self-respect- maybe war ought to once again, become the last possible option- and no longer, instinctively, the first.

That’s the headline Matt Drudge and some guy named Keith Koffler would like all mainstream media to write this morning following last night’s Super Tuesday primaries.

A suddenly developing theme today among the establishment representatives of the conservative media is that there’s clearly bias if we don’t all report what a wonderful night Mitt Romney had.

Well, he didn’t. It was an o.k. night, a night that tells us what we’ve known all along- that the guy with the only professional political operation among the remaining field of candidates is probably going to end up getting the nomination. But, jeez, he’s doing it in such a painfully slow manner, it may yet be months before we are all finally able to declare the inevitable.

Drudge, hilariously, has a one-word headline under a picture of Mitt Romney holding an Olympic torch, standing with hand over his heart and the caption is FINALLY. Finally, what? Finally, Super Tuesday is over? Finally, all four remaining candidates move on to the next excruciating round of inconclusive primaries? Finally, the Drudge Report makes it inescapably clear that it is supporting the candidacy of Mitt Romney?

Drudge links to this fellow Koffler who outlines the conspiratorial thinking of the mainstream media in denying Romney his due for having vanquished all opposition last night. Except he didn’t. Rick Santorum took three states and nearly defeated Romney in Ohio having been outspent by the Romney Super Pac machine there by more than 10 to 1. The Romney people thought they were going to win their first truly contested southern state- Tennessee. They had internal polling showing Romney closing in fast. Santorum ended up winning by 9%. Romney finished 22% behind Newt Gingrich in Georgia. Exit surveys find Romney unable to make a dent in the evangelical or Tea Party vote, his negatives are sky-high, and poll after poll finds he is not connecting with blue-collar voters.

But Romney did take the lion’s share of the delegates available last night. His opponents are so well organized that except for Ron Paul, they couldn’t even manage to get themselves on the ballot in Virginia. And Rick Santorum’s operation is so amateur hour that even in counties he won big last night in Ohio, the campaign failed to field slates of delegates.

So here’s the real story and the accurate headline: Romney Stumbles Toward Finish Line. I didn’t copy it from the Washington Post or the New York Times or Politico.com. I used my very own brain which has been professionally observing American politics for over 35 years now as a news anchor, a reporter, a producer and a broadcast news executive.

And the mainstream media at large, whose headlines closely resemble the one I wrote in the paragraph above, are not involved in some massive anti-Romney conspiracy. If so many people are writing the same thing- sometimes- every now and again- it’s not because they’re reading over each others shoulders or attending a massive mainstream media conspiracy conference call every morning- it’s because we all pretty much saw the same thing unfold before our very own eyes.

There are free speech proponents who, regardless of the foulness of the speech involved, feel very, very queasy about economic boycotts intended to silence people.

But regardless of how one feels in the specific case of Rush Limbaugh’s remarks about Georgetown University student, Sarah Fluke last week, central to the issue of the efficacy of economic boycotts is the concept of money and the free market.

The Supreme Court has made it pretty clear that money is a vehicle for the expression of protected 1st amendment rights. In the matter of Citizens United, the high court upheld the rights of corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.

The underlying philosophical foundation would also support the concept of economic boycotts because they too involve the use of money as a means of political expression. Not the spending of it, but the strategic denial of it.

And it is, perhaps, ironic in the case of the Rush controversy, that presuming that many on the political right are extreme free market proponents, the use of the economic leverage of the boycott, really is use of the free market; manipulating it as an expression of free speech.

So whether you’re boycotting Bill Maher’s advertisers for an ill-advised and, some would argue, grotesque tweet about Tim Tebow a couple of months ago, or angry with Rush Limbaugh for his vitriolic rhetorical attack on a young female college student, looks to me like the law is- more than ever- firmly behind you if you decide to stop buying products from companies whose perceived values are incompatible with your own.

To the anti-boycott/free speech advocates- if there really is a marketplace for ideas in this country- a place where people pay through their purchases and their listening or viewing habits, to make it possible for some to shout their views from an electronic pulpit- no one is ever losing their right of expression.

The only thing affected by the power of money- is the size of the pulpit. How people choose to spend their time and money and show their attraction or revulsion to the product, determines whether that pulpit is amplified through a 50,000-watt radio or television tower, or relegated to 45 people reading the daily rants of a lonely website.

Either way, though, it’s still free expression. Nobody said you have the absolute right to get rich off of it.

Seems obvious, of course, but it’s all about the unknown. Things that seem logical on paper have a way of being ripped apart by unexpected events.

It seemed an absolute given, for example, that a President drowning in 9% unemployment figures would make an easy target. Entire political campaigns- like Mitt Romney’s- have been built on that assumption. Enter the “turnaround specialist” strategy. Touting his business and private sector credentials, Romney built a logical model for the foundation of a political strategy. Except what happens to this course if the economy starts recovering and unemployment starts dropping significantly?

In this case, many pundits are making the argument that an improving economy is one of the reasons Rich Santorum has surged. Widely seen as a candidate more focused on championing the conservative position on social issues from abortion and gay marriage to birth control and women’s role in the military, the theory goes that conservative voters will gravitate to politicians with strong social views absent alarm over the state of the economy.

Except what happens if all hell breaks loose in the world and, say, Israel decides to bomb Iran in a preemptive attempt to delay or kill off their nuclear capability? With the world on full alert in the case of such military action, Iran under attack and closing the Strait of Hormuz, and tensions escalating throughout the Middle East- it kind of makes birth control a bit of a back-seat issue, doesn’t it?

And what of the recently embraced assumptions that the American economy is on the mend and that with the President’s approval ratings on the rise, he is looking much more secure in his reelection efforts?

Looks good- except what happens if Italy, Spain and Greece go into default and world stock markets panic and the business climate suddenly becomes toxic out of fear and uncertainty? This would be the double-dip recession scenario.

But it doesn’t take cataclysmic events like war or the collapse of the European economy to change the political calculus. Today, for example, there are reports that retail sales were really sluggish in January. Maybe the jobless drop last month was just a positive blip in a still rocky road to recovery.

There’s concern that with gas prices already at $3.50 a gallon in the U.S., unusually high for this early in the year, that there could easily be $5 a gallon gas by election day. That’s a squeeze on consumers that could make for some pretty angry voters.

Taken to its extreme, the argument about the effects of unforeseen events on politics can get silly. What happens if a large meteorite strikes the Earth. What happens if a sudden burst of radiation from the Sun melts our electrical grid and modern society collapses. You could go on and on.

But here’s the thing: Our own Secretary of Defense says there’s a chance Israel really will launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, possibly as early as the spring. Moody’s really did downgrade the economies of Spain, Italy, and Portugal this week and warns the same may be in store for France and England. Gasoline prices really are already high- even without a Middle East war.

The problem with those who make political predictions for a living- the punditry class- is they can only base their assumptions on the present and guess a little on what else might happen.

But anybody who’s willing to venture a prediction about who will win the next election in November is full of it. Remember that if turns out, say Jeb Bush, is standing on the west front of the Capitol building taking the oath of office next January.

How’d that happen? We don’t know now. But we’ll know then after a zillion words will have been written about how reality is stranger than fiction and how weird it was that the incredibly implausible scenario came to pass.

Notice how every time Mitt Romney starts looking inevitable, something seems to happen that delays the coronation? Last night, it was Rick Santorum that happened. And what a strategic blunder by the Romney campaign.

None of these elections Tuesday were supposed to matter. No real delegates at stake, mostly beauty contests/caucuses. There was hardly any pre-election polling. Most of the media didn’t even bother to travel to Tuesday’s election states. The Romney folks didn’t even try, short of offering up some last minute criticisms about Santorum being a fan of ear marks, making him out to be some sort of secret free spender or something.

Note to Romney campaign team: if you’re not going to actively compete why even enter the race? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to say, “Well, what do you expect? He wasn’t on the ballot.”

The rest of the month is pretty sparse by way of primaries or caucuses. Rick Santorum now gets a few weeks of limelight and the Romney folks get a few weeks of doubt. Doubt created by coming in a distant 3rd in Minnesota, a state he had no problem with against John McCain four years ago. Doubt created by the prospect, having lost Iowa and Missouri, of a Republican Party that nominates a candidate with little appeal in the heartland. And he lost Colorado too- a huge, key swing state.

And Newt Gingrich is still around and likely to do pretty well in a lot of southern states. He’ll get his share of votes too on Super Tuesday next month. Let’s not forget Ron Paul who actually beat Romney last night in Minnesota.

On paper, Mitt Romney and his Super Pacs and organization look unbeatable. But how long will it take? How much more negative carpet bombing can the party endure as the candidates keep sniping at each other and continue to write Obama’s campaign ads for him?

The Romney strategy so far seems to be going nuclear on whoever else starts tip-toeing close to him. Five million bucks against Newt in Iowa. Nine million bucks against Newt in Florida. No doubt, the anti-Santorum attack ads are being produced as we speak.

Ninety percent of it so far has been negative advertising that does a good job eviscerating your opponent but also drives up your own negatives. And to avoid blunders, Romney has now stopped doing town hall meetings and, my guess is, very few media interviews in the days ahead; not exactly a formula for connecting with the voters.

Romney may well win a battle of attrition. Republicans will end up gathering around him, united in their virulent opposition to the Obama presidency. But he may also end up a wounded nominee going up against a well-funded incumbent with the backdrop of a suddenly improving economy- and that’s a daunting task.

History has shown us that it is not a wise thing to bet against America. It’s a pretty resilient country. And though millions are still without work, the housing crisis continues and Europe may yet be unable to contain its debt crisis, Friday’s unemployment report has significantly surpassed most economist’s expectations and offers more than a glimmer of hope that a recovery is actually taking hold.

The job gains were impressive and across all sectors of the American economy. There have now been five consecutive monthly drops in the national jobless rate and the 8.3% figure represents a three-year low in the unemployment number. Wall Street seems impressed and the Dow Jones is now flirting with the 13,000 mark.

The political implications are huge. It’s estimated that if the current monthly gains of over 200,000 new jobs continues until election day, the jobless rate in November may well come in at just under 8%. It’s a significant number. No incumbent President has ever been re-elected with a jobless rate over 8%.

For Republicans seeking the presidential nomination and centering their campaigns on a cratering American economy, there are still enough weak points and looming threats to the nation’s finances to make a case but there’s also a political danger. It is not an advantageous position to appear to be rooting for the continuing demise of the American economy. It is not a “morning in America” message and it threatens to make President Obama the optimist and Republicans the party of gloom-and-doom.

There is an obvious pivot that can be made to other issues and they are also important ones to be settled in a campaign. The debate over the size of government. The arguments of over-regulation versus government protection of consumers and the environment, for example. There’s the continuing danger of massive budget deficits.

But there’s a ritual that occurs on the morning of the first Friday of every month. The current leader of the Republican party, House Speaker John Boehner, releases a public statement on the latest jobless report. For five straight months now, he’s had to say, in essence, we’re glad things are looking up but the situation is still dire. How long that message continues to resonate if the string of positive economic news continues, could well end up determining who gets to live in the White House for the next four years.