Liveblogging Romney

Mitt Headroom

7:38 p.m. PT: Got to love the playlist gags, though I'm surprised Ryan mentioned '70s artists AC-DC and Led Zeppelin instead of Gen. X artists.

7:40: The day's immigration theme continues. Will this and Rubio's speech help the GOP get right with Hispanics?

7:43: Feeling the middle class's pain: "You took two jobs at nine bucks an hour." Gas bill hitting $50 (but what exactly are you going to do about that, Mitt?). Good line: "I wish President Obama had succeeded, because I want America to succeed." Take that, Rush.

"I was born in the middle of the century in the middle of the country, a classic baby boomer." John F. Kennedy is first presidential reference, as usual in acceptance speeches regardless of party. Hey, I remember that night in July 1969: Neil Armstrong's "soles on our soul." A great way to work him into the speech.

7:46: George Romney's working class background. "My friends cared more about what sports teams we followed than what church we attended." A natural, easy delivery, verging on the mawkish; but that's okay. "Every day my dad gave my mom a rose," until the day he died, when there was no rose. Killer story. His voice is cracking -- as he segues quickly into a play for gender equality as he goes transparently to work on the gender gap.

7:50: Life wasn't easy as a trust fund scion. It's important to connect and personalize. His tribute to Ann is touching. But what are you going to do?

7:52: Republicans know that Obama can't tap into his faith story this way.

7:53: "If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn't you feel that way now, when he's President Obama?" This is Karl Rove's playbook: Treat Obama with respect; more in sorrow than in anger; acknowledging the excitement of his election. He's right about Obama's inexperience, though not that Obama really thinks that jobs come from government.

7:55: Oh, those hardscrabble Bain days! And then there was the $25 million IRA. Weird reference to not investing LDS money and risking hell. OMG: The Episcopalians' Church Pension Fund invested with Bain Capital, resulting in a lot of "happy retired priests," almost none of whom, Romney no doubt realizes, will vote for him. He's showing a certain puckishness.

8:00: "Except Jimmy Carter, and except this president": He's had his mind on 1980 for a long time.

8:02: "These [suffering Americans] aren't strangers. These are our brothers and sisters." Indeed. So if you're elected, we'll be watching the safety net shredding in the first Romney-Ryan budget.

8:04: Twelve million new jobs. Great! I'm listening. Energy independence by 2020? I've heard heard that before, beginning with Nixon. Skills training? Great -- but you segued immediately to school choice, which has nothing to do with retraining workers, which will cost money. Will Ryan spare any? Free trade? Okay, but then more jobs lost to cheap-labor countries. Investments disappearing? That's not currently a risk in a low-inflation environment; and the stock market has roared back under Obama. Reducing taxes and streamlining regulations. Replacing Obamacare to fuel economic growth? Disconnect. Why didn't you repeal Romneycare in Massachusetts to encourage job growth?

8:07: "Life," marriage, freedom of religion. Social issues get a 30-second sentence.

8:08: Ridiculing Obama's concern about climate change and global acceptance. "My promise is to help you and your family." I'll say this: He's got impeccable timing. He's smooth and confident, and his speech is perfectly modulated to address his problems (women and Hispanics) and exploit his advantages (poor economy).

8:10: Nixon wouldn't like two minutes on foreign policy. Grudging credit to Obama for killing bin Laden. Brief reference to an old enemy, Iran, and Romney's new enemy, our friendly rival Russia. Ritualistic Cuba-bashing to help in Florida; I was unaware that Obama had gone soft on the Castros. He's wrong that Obama threw Israel under the bus and wrong to continue to ignore the Palestinians.

8:12: Good peroration on "that united America, so strong that no nation would dare to test it." But "the constellation of rights that were endowed by our Creator?" No: We were endowed by our Creator with the rights. You don't endow rights.

8:14: Good, effective speech; probably the best he could have done.

Things That Were Said Back In Those Days

In response to questions from Paul Brandeis Raushenbush at the Huffington Post about the Bible's teachings on gender and sexual orientation, Sunday school teacher and former President Jimmy Carter gives us some of that old-time historical and cultural criticism:

I separated from the Southern Baptists when they adopted the discriminatory attitude towards women, because I believe what Paul taught in Galatians that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between men and women, slaves and masters, Jews and non-Jews -– everybody is created equally in the eyes of God.

There are some things that were said back in those days –- Paul also said that women should not be adorned, fix up their hair, put on cosmetics, and that every woman who goes in a place of worship should have her head covered. Paul also said that men should not cut their beards and advocated against people getting married, except if they couldn’t control their sexual urges. Those kinds of things applied to the customs of those days. Every worshipper has to decide if and when they want those particular passages to apply to them and their lives....

Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things -– he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.

I draw the line, maybe arbitrarily, in requiring by law that churches must marry people. I’m a Baptist, and I believe that each congregation is autonomous and can govern its own affairs. So if a local Baptist church wants to accept gay members on an equal basis, which my church does by the way, then that is fine. If a church decides not to, then government laws shouldn’t require them to.

Three Great Lincolns

On display at the Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, the "bubble top" limousine used by FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower and briefly by Kennedy

The car in which President Kennedy lost his life; also used by Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter

President Reagan was about to step into this car at the moment of the 1981 attempt on his life, when a bullet struck him after ricocheting off the armor plating on the side; previously used by Ford and Carter

Obama Isn't The New Carter

On his radio show today, Hugh Hewitt announced that President Obama had "said nothing" about the crisis in Egypt in his remarks today. Hewitt seemed somewhat startled when his guest, Charles Krauthammer, repeatedly praised the president for what he said and what he's doing:

[The U.S.] had two choices. Do we either say nothing, or even undermine [Egyptian president Hosni] Mubarak, as Jimmy Carter did in 1979 when he kicked the stool out from under the Shah, and then he’s done, or do we try a riskier course, which is we stay with Mubarak, which is what Obama did, but insist that he bring in democrats, bring in reformers, bring in the opposition, and essentially begin a transition out of the Mubarak era. It’s going to end anyway. He’s 82. He’s not going to run any reelection, he’s not going to win reelection, either. His son is not going to take over. So do you want a controlled transition to democracy? Or do you want an abdication, riots in the streets, chaos, out of which it’s more likely that the bad guys are going to win? So I think they chose the slightly more difficult course, staying with the guy who’s quite despised, but insisting that there’s a transition that is obvious to the Egyptians...

Too Good For Washington?

From reporting by Sheryl Gay Stolberg about President Obama's vacation habits, more evidence that Barack Obama isn't yet completely comfortable in the presidency:

Mr. Obama is not a politician who uses circumstances and relationships to cajole. He is not one to say, “Let’s have a couple of drinks and hash this out.” He does not confuse his work friends with his real friends. He jealously guards his time with his wife and daughters and the tight circle of intimates like Eric Whitaker and Martin Nesbitt from Chicago, who are with him [on vacation in Hawaii]. And he is perfectly content to leave his public persona at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and slip, however briefly, into private life.

Two issues here, it seems to me. Protecting time with his family and being intentional about vacations make obvious sense. But it's naive and even reckless to act as though political friendships aren't "real" or that policy and political solutions aren't sometimes, indeed often, encountered in the crucible of relationships. There seems to be some evidence here for his critics' contention that Obama still thinks he can persuade people to his point of view by sheer logic, by his impossible-to-resist rightness -- just like the last president who was too good for Washington, the one-term Jimmy Carter.

Carter The Conseservative

A Cato Institute (read libertarian) expert writes:

Conservatives condemn Carter's ineffectual foreign policy, but his successful stewardship of the Camp David Accords made him the best presidential friend Israel's ever had. At home, by serially deregulating airlines, trucking and railroads, the man from Plains broke special-interest strangleholds over transportation, helping usher in the dynamic, competitive economy of the '80s.

To tame soaring inflation, Carter appointed tight-money man Paul Volcker as Federal Reserve chairman, and, at great political risk, grit his teeth through the deepening recession.

"Because of Carter's fear of exacerbating inflation," [author Ivan] Eland adds, "he courageously refused to support an expensive proposal by Senator Edward Kennedy to provide federally funded national health insurance for all Americans."

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan

Bipartisan Embitterment

A former Ted Kennedy aide calls Jimmy Carter "embittered" for saying this in a "60 Minutes" interview that will be broadcast Sunday:

“The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed,” Mr. Carter told Leslie Stahl. “It was his fault. Ted Kennedy killed the bill.”

I'd be happy to take some of the heat off the former president by saying that it was also Kennedy's fault that we didn't have nearly universal health insurance coverage when Richard Nixon proposed it in 1971. Kennedy even admitted it.

Obama At His Best

Tim Rutten on the stakes in the Middle East for President Obama:

[He's] a president even more willing to put himself directly on the line for an agreement than Clinton was in Northern Ireland — a chief executive seemingly willing to risk his record for audacious hope.

On the other hand, while nothing but jobs and the economy may matter in 2012, healthcare and Middle East peace might be something on which to run.

Then again, probably not. In 1980, voters didn't care about President Carter's historic Camp David breakthrough, when Israel and Egypt made peace. They cared about inflation and jobs, and so they voted him out of office after one term. Obama knows that, which is why it's pretty close to astonishing that he chose to make dialogue between Israel and Palestinians a top priority within 48 hours of his inauguration and then renewed his commitment by driving the progress toward the new round of talks.

It's Obama at his best, and shrewdest. Middle East peace would further isolate Iran and be a boon for regional stability and democratization. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!

Nixon Props

In "West Wing" 2:17 -- an episode in which a silver-maned senator who looks a lot like former Sen. John Warner, an ex-Nixon advance man, conducts an epic filibuster -- Bartlett aides Josh, Toby, and Sam caucus in Josh's office. On the wall behind his head, you can see a photo of Presidents Reagan, Carter, Ford, and Nixon that was taken in the White House in 1981 before the three formers departed for Anwar Sadat's funeral.

U.S. Right Is Soft On Terrorists And Traitors

Forty-three conservative bloggers discern that Richard Nixon was worse than Alger Hiss, Ted Kennedy than John Wilkes Booth, and Woodrow Wilson than Timothy McVeigh. Lee Harvey Oswald doesn't even make the list. Worst person ever in U.S., they say: Jimmy Carter.

Banking On National Failure

Studying the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, E. J. Dionne has some advice for the GOP:

Memo to Republicans: Talk a right-wing game in your ideological magazines and at your tea parties if that makes you happy. But to win elections, your candidates had better look like middle-of-the-road problem-solvers.

Of course the right reads that as a call from the left to Republicans to win elections by becoming enablers of the prevailing big government project. Better, the true believers insist, to remain a righteous remnant. Better, as RN said about the Goldwaterites, to be right than President. Better, even, to promote the victory of Democrats over moderate Republicans. Wait in purity and in expectation that economic or foreign policy disaster will once again propel a true believer into power.

Wait, in other words, for Carter and Reagan to come back. Basically Sarah Palin's GOP is banking on bankruptcy.

Carrots And Sticks Naturally Go Together

The idea that the Obama administration's policy for keeping Iran from developing nuclear weapons could evolve into Cold War-style deterrence raises a range of interesting questions about our relationship with the Moscow of the analogy.

Why are we at odds with Iran? The main reasons are our lingering resentment over its seizure of U.S. hostages in 1979, its support of international terrorism and threats against our friend Israel, and the virulent anti-American stance and rhetoric of its theocratic regime and especially its presidential front man. The Carter administration broke off diplomatic relations with Iran in the spring of 1980, in the midst of the hostage crisis. In 2002, President Bush said it was part of an "axis of evil" that included Iraq and North Korea.

How could Iran hurt us? Iran doesn't represent a hundredth of the danger to the U.S. and our interests that the Soviet Union did, with its 50,000 nuclear weapons and support for anti-U.S. revolutionary movements around the world. Iran does support anti-Israel and -U.S. aggression and terrorism in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and its leaders have directly threatened the U.S. with suicide bombs. Still, it's hard to see how Iran represents a strategic threat of any kind, much less one of the dimensions posed by the Soviet Union (which whom our formal diplomatic relations were nonetheless uninterrupted throughout the Cold War).

Could detente with Iran follow deterrence? Perhaps the U.S.-Soviet example is again instructive. Beginning in 1969, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger envisioned a policy toward the Soviet Union that became known as detente. Moscow was providing substantial support to enemies of the U.S. in North Vietnam, Cuba, and elsewhere. Mr. Nixon believed he could use the inducement of better trade and cultural relations with the U.S. to persuade the Soviets to pull back in Vietnam and participate in strategic arms control agreements. The policy succeeded when it came to arms control, and possibly even in Vietnam when twinned with U.S. military muscle. There's evidence that after President Nixon ordered bombing raids against North Vietnam in May 1972, Moscow pressured Hanoi to make a deal to end the war. Tragically, the time line could never play itself out because of the weakening of Mr. Nixon's Presidency during Watergate.

Is there a package of inducements the U.S. could offer Tehran to persuade it to suspend its nuclear weapons program and cease its threats against us and Israel? That depends on whether Iran is engaged in a quasi-apocalyptic project against Israel and the West or, instead, would be willing to act rationally in pursuit of its security and economic interests. George Will argues that one reason Iran is intent on deploying nuclear weapons is that it fears a U.S. invasion such as the one we mounted against Iraq in 2003. Its fear is warranted. Would its intentions change if it had a reasonable expectation that the U.S. and Israel wouldn't attack? If we could make it worth Iran's while to remain a non-nuclear power, why in the world wouldn't we?

What is keeping the U.S. from reestablishing diplomatic relations with Iran? My guess is that it has mainly to do with politicians' emotions and political gamesmanship. Wouldn't President Obama look weak if he reached out to Iran more than he has already? Why should we reward the mullahs for their despicable behavior? Shouldn't they continue to be ostracized for threatening Israel? When it comes to our cold war with Iran, our policy would appear to be governed largely by our anger. Last I checked, relations between nations are supposed to be governed by cool, carefully calculated self-interest. If indeed we are coming to a place where we think that Iran can be deterred -- that is, that it would behave rationally when confronted with efforts to contain its ambitions -- then we should naturally be curious about how its leaders might react to more constructive stimulus.

Especially if our policy is based on waiting for the Iranian people, heirs of one of mankind's greatest civilizations, finally to get the government they deserve, it would be good to remember that there are those who believe that the Soviet Union began to die not when confronted by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s but when welcomed into the club by Richard Nixon. Fresh air and sunlight could be as toxic in the councils of the mullahs as it was for the Kremlin.

It Wasn't So, Joe

President Carter repents -- or, rather, redacts.

Let's Not Lower Our Voices Quite Yet

Offering no evidence, President Carter says Rep. Joe Wilson is a racist.

It Sure Beats A Fatwa

Osama bin Laden endorses President Carter's book about the Middle East.

Imagining An Arab Israel

Just back from a visit to the Middle East along with Desmund Tutu, Jimmy Carter says many Palestinians are taking the long view:

"A majority of the Palestinian leaders with whom we met are seriously considering acceptance of one state, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea," Carter wrote in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post.

"By renouncing the dream of an independent Palestine, they would become fellow citizens with their Jewish neighbors and then demand equal rights within a democracy," he explained. "In this non-violent civil rights struggle, their examples would be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela."

Carter noted that in doing so, Palestinian leaders were taking into consideration current demographic trends.

He said non-Jews were already a slight majority of total citizens in this area, "and within a few years Arabs will constitute a clear majority."

Carter says the two-state solution is still preferable. The full text of his Post op-ed is here.

Hat tip to Mike Cheever

Bipartisanly Nonnegotiable

Christine Russell on how Sen. Kennedy kept President Carter from enacting health care reform, too.

GOP: Banking On Disaster

A former Bush speechwriter, mapping the GOP's road to recovery, enunciates the difficult truth that the phoenix usually needs ashes to rise from, such as RN from LBJ's Vietnam failure and Ronald Reagan from Jimmy Carter's economy:

In the most recent instance, the blow dealt to congressional Republicans in 2006 was primarily an expression of public fatigue with the war in Iraq. By the time the 2008 elections came around, that feeling had subsided considerably, but even in its diminished state it paired with the financial crisis to create a toxic atmosphere for Republican candidates. Thus, any sensible strategy for a Republican resurgence will recognize a timeless, if frustrating, truth of party politics - sometimes you have to wait for the mountain to come to you.

Who's Boss?

A view from London of the gracious Lee Annenberg, who died last week. That's she, as chief of protocol, a post for which she was immensely well suited, with Presidents Carter, Nixon, and Ford on the way to Alexandria in 1981 for Anwar Sadat's funeral. I love the expression on RN's face.

A Few Things At A Time

In a "New Republic" article entitled "Barack's Too-Long Wish List," William Galston says that President Obama, by proffering an FDR-like flurry of projects and reforms, could end up being a Carter instead of a Reagan:

The core issue is the clarity and self-discipline needed to maintain control of the agenda. Consider the judgment that Erwin C. Hargrove, a respected scholar of the presidency, rendered after Reagan's first hundred days: "Reagan has demonstrated in a way that Jimmy Carter never did, that he understands how to be President. He knows that a President can deal with only a relatively small number of issues at a time." Hargrove might have added that the same is true of Congress, a fact every president must keep firmly in mind.