Barack Obama, the eighth best president in American
history. The Great Conciliator
[Explanatory
note: The Institute of Election Analysis was severely impacted by hurricane
Sandy. Located at the New Jersey shore near
areas that were totally destroyed, it lost internet, telephone, and television
service for exactly three weeks. Hence, the delay in posting this analysis.]
Barack Obama was re-elected to a second term as
president. His electoral vote margin of 336 is 62.22%. According to
the Institute of Election Analysis ranking of Presidents according to the
average number of electoral votes received in all elections in which the person
received electoral votes (see Greatest Presidents
for explanation of methodology) combined with his performance four years ago,
Obama’s average is 65.03%, the eighth highest in history, just behind Woodrow
Wilson. Obama is the eighth best president in American history. The next
four years should be good ones.
Obama won on a lower turnout than in 2008. He
won with 63,561,902 votes (50.72%) to Romney’s 59,684,096 (47.63%) with
independents receiving another 2,067,271 (1.64%). Obama received more
than 50% of the vote. Nevertheless, Obama’s total is 6 million fewer than
he received four years ago, while Romney’s total is about the same as
McCain’s.
In 2010, when the voters gave the House of Representatives to the Republicans,
they were trying to force a coalition government to deal with the serious
employment and debt problems facing the nation. The Republicans,
specifically in the person of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky,
misinterpreted and misused the mandate to be a call to do everything possible
to defeat Barack Obama by denying him any accomplishments on which he could
seek re-election, no matter how much damage was done to the country in order to
accomplish that task. So, even though the bad economy was Obama’s biggest
handicap, voters did not hold him responsible for a crisis created by Bush and
exacerbated by a disloyal, excessively partisan, opposition.
Obama did have an impressive record in foreign policy. He ended America’s
involvement in the war in Iraq, was winding down the war in Afghanistan, and
eliminated Osama bin Laden. He passed health insurance reform, a goal
that had eluded the Democrats for sixty years, although this issue was
presented by the Republicans as a negative.
Obama’s one failing was the lackluster economy: high unemployment with
exploding debt. This is what prevented Obama from winning in a landslide.
Obama faced a
formidable phalanx of institutional opponents, specifically the Supreme Court
in its decision to permit super Political Action Committees to spend and raise
funds in political campaigns while permitting their contributors to remain
anonymous. This was to punish Obama for
opting out of, and basically destroying, the publicly financed campaign system
in 2008.
Religious people, in general, except for the blacks, were
against Obama. The Catholic Church was a staunch opponent, using a detail of
its anti-abortion stance to denigrate Obama’s Health Insurance Reform
program. The rabid Zionists, among both Jews
and Christians, hated Obama for standing up to Israel.
Obama won and he was probably unbeatable. But Romney lost, too.
Elections Have
Governmental Consequences
Why Romney Lost
The Republican candidates in the primaries that chose
Obama’s opponent agreed on one thing - everyone hated Obama. So, why was
Romney nominated? Romney was perceived as the candidate with business
experience who could solve the economic crisis.
That
Romney, a multi-millionaire businessman, was a weak candidate was obvious to
anyone who paid attention to the 2010 mid-term elections. Two years earlier,
other millionaire businesspeople: Carly Fiorina, the former president of Hewlett Packard; Meg
Whitman, the founder of e-Bay; Linda McMahon, the CEO of World Wrestling
Federation; and Tom Golisano, to name a few, all lost
their bids for public office. Political
history is littered with wealthy candidates who lost, although sometimes they
succeed. During times of economic
hardship, the wealthy are usually despised, not admired.
Frequently, people who want to pursue political office
conclude that they need to make money first.
Often the pursuit of wealth requires actions that are political
liabilities. More significantly, rich
people often decide that they are smarter than other people and therefore
should be the decision-makers for society.
In fact, most rich people are wealthy, not because they are smarter, but
because they care about money more than most people.
Romney proved this in his post-mortem after the election
when he attributed his loss to Obama “buying” support among the young and
others with government benefits. People
like Mitt, who have devoted their lives to the pursuit of wealth, have zero
understanding of people for whom money is a means to an end, not an end in
itself. Mitt would be surprised how few
people would really like to be in his shoes, although that is something beyond
his powers of comprehension.
Romney, however, lost the election in the four months between locking up the
nomination and the Republican convention. At a time when he should have
been laying out a detailed economic program for tackling the serious job and
debt problems, he took the easy road of just bashing Obama. This raised
money and prevented him from offending any of the right-wing Neanderthals who
have been the bane of the Republican Party since World War II, but it cost him
the election. It also prevented him from running on his own record.
He should have taken credit for being ahead of the curve on healthcare when he
was Governor of Massachusetts, instead of promising to repeal Obamacare. That would have disposed of the health
care issue early and allowed the candidates and the nation to concentrate of
hammering out an economic recovery program for whoever won the White House.
Obama said that all men spend their lives either seeking the approval of their
fathers or compensating for their defects. Romney did both.
Romney’s father, George, was Governor of Michigan and ran for president in
1968. He was famously in favor of the war in Vietnam, but then changed
his mind during the primaries. (Note: Mitt did not serve in the military
during Vietnam, but was a Mormon missionary in France.) When George, Mitt’s
father, was asked why he changed his position, he claimed that he had been
“brainwashed” by the briefings he had received on a tour of Vietnam.
George Romney’s campaign imploded after this episode.
So, Mitt Romney wanted to be president to win his late father’s admiration and
wanted to remedy his defects by winning the Republican nomination. Romney
spent his whole life planning how to win the Republican nomination. Romney made
the classic amateur error of thinking that in order to be president he had to
first win the Republican nomination, without understanding that winning the
nomination is just something that happens in the course of being elected
president.
Obama’s Birth Certificate Issue
Whether Obama was eligible to be president was an issue
that could not have been handled worse by Romney. Again, he took the easy way, climbing
partially on board the birther bandwagon and reaping
huge financial rewards as a result; but it cost him some of his credibility as
a serious candidate with thoughtful voters.
One of Obama’s geniuses is that he knows when not to
fight too hard in his own defense. The
allegation that he was ineligible to be president because he was born in Kenya
(a complete falsehood), or that he wasn’t eligible because his father was born
in Kenya (a blatant misrepresentation of the law), made Romney look ridiculous. Romney actually met with Donald Trump after
Trump trumpeted the allegations of ineligibility.
Obama
could have irrefutably quashed these allegations at any time: first, by
revealing, with State Department documentation, the his
mother obtained her first passport in 1966, when Obama was five. Also, Obama’s mother’s name was Stanley Ann
Dunham (Obama). A gynecologist at the
Honolulu Hospital was interviewed by the writer daughter of a friend from
Buffalo during the week after Barack was born.
She asked him if anything notable had happened that week, to which the
doctor replied, “Stanley had a baby.”
This quip made the rounds of the hospital staff that week. So, in a peculiar way, Obama’s birth was
widely noted in Hawaii, beyond the mere newspaper announcement.
So, at any
point, Obama could have definitively stopped the birther
movement. That he chose not to shows
that Obama understands the value of false accusations, especially ones that are
refutable but border on the ridiculous.
He understood that the birther movement made him look good and created a lot of sympathy
for him with non-partisan voters.
Romney, whose own father’s eligibility
to be president had been challenged in 1968 because he had been born in Mexico,
should have led the charge against the allegations that Obama was ineligible to
be president. Instead, while he said the
president was eligible, he was also conspicuous in courting the support of the birther movement’s financial contributions.
Romney Blows the Convention
Now that nominees are chosen by the electorate, the
political conventions are almost a relic of the past. The only real draw
for the general population is the question of who will be the Vice-Presidential
nominee. Keeping the choice secret at least gets people to pay attention
to the convention and gets them to tune in once or twice, watch a speech or
two, pay a little attention to the platform, focus in on the controversies and
listen to the speculation about the candidate’s choice for Number Two.
Romney, fearing a floor fight at the convention, capitulated early and chose Congressman Paul Ryan, a complete unknown outside the beltway and Tea Party, three weeks before the convention. Now, there was really no reason to watch the Republican convention and few did.
Romney’s Defective Strategy
Romney’s strategy was to focus on the economy, but without giving any specifics
about his program. In fact, he was nominated to help the country hammer
out a job creation and debt reduction strategy. Leaving out the details
was a fatal error. Even losing
candidates have a governmental function. Even without the details, it was the
bad economy that kept him competitive.
But here’s the dirty little secret about presidential
races, they are about foreign policy. Romney thought he was doing a great
job by preventing the discussion of anything but the economy. During the
third debate specifically, that was supposed to be about foreign policy, some
bimbo spin-meister from the Republican side said that
Romney “won” the debate because he succeeded in doing what he set out to do,
which was to turn the debate back to the economy and away from foreign policy.
However, it is easy to prove that presidential elections turn on foreign policy.
There is only one commander-in-chief. Romney was running on a war
platform, just like Bush II. He accused Obama of “throwing Israel under
the bus”, promised to send the seventh fleet into the Persian Gulf, called for regime change in Iran and for arresting Iranian
President Ahmadinejad. A vote for Romney was a vote
for war. And just like Bush II, he lost; except by a big enough margin that the election could not be stolen. And that’s another reason Romney lost. Why would the voters support a foreign policy
that they had already rejected, but was rammed down their throats with
catastrophic consequences? Republicans
face a serious structural problem; all its candidates have to pretend Bush
really won in 2000.
Romney needed to use the third debate on foreign policy to show the nation he
was not a nut job. However, with certifiably insane advisors like John
Bolton, maybe that was not possible. Anyway, claiming victory in the
debate because he avoided discussing foreign policy may have been a tactical
victory, but it was a strategic defeat. Voters are entitled to, and
demand to, know the foreign policy positions of the one person who can launch
nuclear war, possibly destroying life on earth, and send soldiers to their
deaths. Barry Goldwater’s statement to
allow generals in the field decide whether or not to use nuclear weapons doomed
his campaign.
Romney’s strategy was equally defective on domestic issues. He was like a
car salesman whose five point program for the economy was like the selling
points of a car. The only problem with his presentation was that there
was no sticker price. Romney was running a religious, not a political
campaign. Voters were asked to believe in Romney. Here are the five
principles on which he will base the economic recovery. How much it is
going to cost and who is going to pay, that’s a mystery.
With
Obama, on the other hand, the voters got sticker shock before the
election. As the campaign progressed, it became obvious to all but the
most self-deluded that in order to cut the deficit, taxes were going to
rise. Both Obama and Romney ran on
platforms that included raising taxes; the difference was that while Obama was
explicit about which taxes he would raise and by how much, Romney left voters
guessing about the cost and the impact on their own pocketbooks.
The Race Issue
The South used to be solidly Democratic, but beginning
with Eisenhower in 1952, with a big boost from Barry Goldwater’s opposition to Civil
Rights in 1964, and on to Richard Nixon’s southern strategy in 1968, the south
has gradually become solidly Republican, carrying the racist baggage that came
with it. The Republican refusal to cooperate with Obama for the past two
years in order to deny him a successful record on which to seek re-election was
a disgraceful misuse of public power. That,
combined with the deliberate voter identification policies to make voting
difficult for the poor and young, to make long lines at polling places, put
voters in a position of being asked to endorse undemocratic tactics in addition
to damaging the country for political purposes. This was a program
designed to appeal to people who hate blacks and basically do not believe in
democracy.
A lot of the
visceral hatred of Obama is simply because of his color. Because Obama is the first black president,
his issue positions that enraged some voters were respectable cover for their
prejudice. Romney never understood
this. Just as Obama could do just about
anything and still retain overwhelming favor among black voters, Romney could
have and should have backpedaled on many of the absurd positions he took during
the primaries because millions of voters were going to support him regardless
of his positions on issues. Romney was
never able to tack to the center. Maybe
he did not want to.
Hurricane Sandy - The Icing on the Cake and a Personal note
The last two weeks of the campaign, the most important in any
contest, were dominated, not by the presidential race but by Hurricane Sandy
that walloped the mid-Atlantic and New England states. Hurricane Sandy was
dangerous, not for its winds nor rains, but because of
its timing and strength. At 946 millibars, Sandy had the lowest barometric pressure on
record this far north. It was timed to
make landfall at high tide on a full moon.
For days in advance, the National Hurricane Center warned residents of
New Jersey and New York, especially those living in low lying areas, to take
precautions.
As the storm approached, Obama went on television and
said that he had spoken to the Governors and Mayors and promised all necessary
help. Romney’s response was “They’re in
our prayers.” Thanks, Mitt. The storm forced both candidates to rearrange
their schedules and even stop campaigning.
After the storm hit, and the extent of the devastation became evident,
Obama came to New Jersey to examine the damage first hand with Governor
Christie at his side. Romney never
bothered to show up.
For a candidate
who called it “immoral” to borrow money from China to pay for domestic
programs, the voters have a right to know if he considers it immoral to borrow
money from China to assist in the reconstruction of an area devastated by a
natural disaster. Romney made it clear,
under a Republican administration, people would be on
their own, no matter what the circumstances.
Had Romney won, it would have been another Bush sized
disaster. Not just a war with Iran, but
domestic collapse. Being president is not the same thing as being the CEO of a
company. A company can go bankrupt or go
out of business. Hopefully, the United
States will never suffer that fate.
It was a very bottom line position for Romney to call for
the abolition of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In theory, it sounds great to say, “Let the
states make the decisions, they are on the scene.” But after living through Hurricane Sandy, not
exactly at ground zero, but mid-way between Highlands, New Jersey, where there
was 8 feet of water on the Main Street which destroyed about half the buildings
in town, and Belford and Leonardo where there were buildings floating down the
street (and this was on Sandy Hook Bay, not even the ocean), I can tell you
that Romney’s position was not just wrong, it was absurd.
Two
days after the storm, I stood in line for three hours to buy five gallons of
gas for our emergency generator. The 8 ½
months pregnant woman who stood in line behind me, waited to buy 2 ½ gallons to
put in her truck so she could get to the hospital if she went into labor (and
when she got to the front of the line, there was an issue about whether she had
enough money.) If you had asked anyone
in that line what was the most important thing, they would have all said, get
us our power back.
But, in fact, the most important task was getting the New
York Stock Market, one of the major engines of the world economy, up and
running after its first two day weather related closure in more than a century.
Two days after the storm, my wife and I looked out our window
at New York Harbor and saw two, huge Navy vessels riding at anchor. We figured the government had picked up some
chatter about some terrorist group that was going to try and take advantage of
the weather induced chaos to strike a blow.
But as we slowly recovered, the ships remained. Finally, it occurred to us that some of the
coastal defense related electronic systems, radars and whatnot, (our house had
been seized by the federal government during World War II to turn into a lab
for the development of ship borne radar) had certainly become damaged by the
surge and the Navy vessels were on station providing emergency radar coverage
to the New York metropolitan area. After
a little more than two weeks, they left.
If New Jersey
and New York had been left to deal with the effects of Hurricane Sandy on their
own, they probably never would recover.
Anyone who has ever experienced a real natural disaster understands the
depth of the destruction and the impossibility of self-recovery. It is really like war. Everyone suffered. Some much, much, more than
others. But it was everyone. Your furnace doesn’t start? The oil company’s offices have been
flooded. They are in worse shape than
you. It is like the Russian matryoshka dolls, whereby trying to solve a problem just
reveals another problem, possibly worse than the one you’re trying to solve.
After Hurricane Sandy had passed, friends and
acquaintances from all over the country and the world contacted us to see if we
were ok. We were. Now everyone who does not live here thinks
the storm is over. For us, it is not the
end, it is only the beginning. Recovery really means reconstruction.
The Polls and the Media
So, Romney lost.
And he deserved to lose. He was
behind in the polls throughout the entire campaign, with the exception of a
brief bump after the convention and first debate. The Gallup poll was wrong, having Romney
ahead by six points in the last weeks, and by one on the night before the
election.
The exit polls of early voters showed Obama in the
lead. Absentee ballot applications are a
perfect predictor of turnout. If Obama
was ahead with the early voters, then there would have to be a Romney landslide
in the election day voters to win the state. The billions of dollars sloshing around the
media are compromising the integrity of the political analysis, and this has
potentially serious consequences for governance.
The voters did
a great job separating the wheat from the chaff. They had a great leader who won an important
victory. It was a watershed election in
American history for many reasons. It
was not so much Republican versus Democrat, but rather religion versus reason.