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Who won that first Obama-Romney debate?

When it comes to debates, format is everything. Sometimes it’s too tight. Sometimes it’s too loose.

Wednesday’s was just right—for Mitt Romney. But it was wrong for President Obama, who never seemed to find the oratorical magic to take over.  

Indeed, it was Romney who seemed to be comfortable and in control of this “wonk-fest,” perhaps due to all the debates the Republicans did in the primary season.

Now as for the facts?

In some ways, the facts don’t matter in debates. Reality check all you want, only a bald face lie is a negative. Debates are  made for an etch-a-sketch guy like Romney. They’re not made for the deliberate orator like Obama.  Debates really are all about style and confidence and how a candidate thinks on his feet.  It’s the whole persuasive package, not a matter of accuracy.  So the key question to ask is who looked energized and engaged in his answers? Who looked presidential? Who looked like he wanted to be the next president? Who listened as well as they spoke so they could pounce, deflect, retort appropriately.

In that sense, I think Obama looked like he mailed it in.  He acted like a politician with a lead. He didn’t go for some of the things that he personally needed to ask Romney directly.  If he is your surrogate, you want him to ask Romney about “that tape,” that 47 percent comment, the tax-return  issue, Bain capital. Where were questions on those issues?

Romney acted like a man back on his heels who had to do well. He’s not Thurston Howell III. He’s the underdog overdog. He needed a positive campaign experience and the first debate I think gave that to him.

Did it change undecided voters? I don’t think so. There was nothing that changed anything. Romney on Wednesday night is the same guy he was last week and the week before. Not a good candidate, not exactly the man to be president. So he had one good night at the first debate. Is that really enough to jump on the Mittwagon?

CNN’s flash poll of registered voters, 67 percent said Romney won. Only 25 percent said Obama won. If Romney wins the election , this debate will be a turning point. If he loses, then you’ll know that one debate victory is not enough.

Also see my pre-debate comments on the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog.

 

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More thoughts on the National Asian American Survey

I’m surprised there’s not been  much reported on the new National Asian American Survey released this past week. There’s some really interesting insight on the non-m0nolithic nature of the group.

You can find links to the survey and  read my take on the NAAS on  the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog.

Personally, I am fascinated that a poll finally can drill down and say what specific Asian American communities think, merely because they were asked in large enough sample sizes. But does anyone else care about being able to drill down to plus/minus 7 percent accuracy on how the Hmong feel?

 The value is clear because data still trumps ignorance. In lieu of the pricey and work-intensive  NAAS, all you have is anecdote, guessing and lobbyists trading favors with politicos in order to get things done. 

Then again, maybe we are putting too much value in the data. Could it be Asian Americans could be better off without anyone knowing specifics?

We’re 31 percent undecided, and the politicos still don’t seem to care.

The fact is there are still a relatively small number of Asian Americans in the electorate.

We aren’t quite where the Latinos and blacks are yet. Maybe in another generation.

We’re still a group that has to make things happen in coalition. And that’s what the NAAS does show.

The survey shows we’re independent and changeable. Filipinos have gone from primarily Democratic to now mostly Republican in 4 years. Vietnamese have migrated away from being the GOP’s favorite boat people, to  a more moderate, independent stance.

When Pew did a study on Asian Americans earlier this year, the headline seemed to be how Pew’s data was used to perpetuate and solidify the “Model Minority” idea,  that notion of the stereotypical Asian American success.

For me, the NAAS survey, explodes any sense of a poltical “Model Minority,” the one that presumes  we are all one big happy Asian American community and  political block.  We aren’t. The NAAS documents how the monolithic Asian America is a myth. Asian America  may slightly tilt toward Democrats for now. But witihin the group, the actions of Filipinos and Vietnamese suggest a more tactical sense of how to play politics.

 

blog, news, politics

Tale of two tapes: Secret video speaks the truth about Romney as candidate goes ethnic and talks of how it would be “helpful to be Latino.”

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Maybe Mitt Romney was scared that the campaign had gone all foreign policy-oriented  because of that anti-Arab internet video that he secretly was yearning for some other video to change the dynamics of the campaign.

But the video he had in mind was something like the polished one he did that aired this morning on  “Live with Kelly and Michael.”

At one point on this tape, Romney responded to a question about his ability, or lack thereof, of being empathetic with the American people.

On tape, Romney is like his hair. Perfect. He brings up being pastor of his church. And then he mentions his wife’s MS, implying how it shows his compassion.  Ann talked earlier about Mitt’s “good heart.”

That’s the Romney message. 

Instead Romney has to deal with  that “other tape,” the “47 percent” tape secretly recorded at a $50,000 a plate fundraiser in Boca Raton. It’s got the political class buzzing. And you should be buzzing about it too. 

It shows the real Romney as he dishes the high rollers some GOP red-meat.

Said Romney on THAT tape:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”

Did he just throw more than  half the American public under the food truck?

Later in California yesterday after Romney’s 47 percent comments were leaked, Romney appeared with hairs out-of-place, at a media opportunity where he tried to explain the remarks away saying he was just  “speaking off the cuff.”

Sort of like Clint Eastwood at the RNC?

Romney didn’t  apologize but clarified that he was showing the difference between those who want a “government centered society” vs. the  one he wants –“a free enterprise, free individual society, where people pursuing their dreams are able to employ one another, build enterprises, build the strongest economy in the world.”

The tape really is Romney.

Romney is the guy who says no to you at the bank.

He’s the guy who  gets his by living off others’ misery.

He’s the guy who makes conservatives yearn for a Bush. Any Bush. For cover.

What should be abundantly clear by now is that Romney’s perfect for a private corporation.

Just not for a United States that’s struggling to get back on its feet.

This is the man who wants to be the nation’s top public servant?

At one point in the secret tape, he attempts to show humor as he mentions his father being born to American parents in Mexico:

“Had he been born of Mexican parents I’d have a better chance of winning this, but he was not,” Romney said. 

Too bad. Then Democrats could be birthers too.

Romney finished off wistfully, saying “It would be helful to be Latino.”

Maybe. But then as the polls show, he would probably be voting for Obama.

blog, news, politics

Remembering the horror and the love of 9/11

I wrote this piece on 9/11/2011   in time for the tenth anniversary last year. 

Originally on the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog, I’m posting it again, because my sentiments haven’t changed.

But some things have changed. Funny, how Rick Perry was considered the GOP  front-runner last year.

This year, both political conventions (but especially the Democrats) tried to use the idea that “we’re all in this together,” to describe where we are  as a country.

That’s a nice thought, but  to say “we’re all in this together” seems so fake. There’s nothing better than taking a moment to remember  9/11 to remind us what that phrase means for real.

(FROM THE ORIGINAL POST)

I had dinner there a number of times. I’d seen the view. I just can’t imagine people leaping from the World Trade Center towers.

For me, that’s the lingering and most horrific image of 9/11.  A distressed person in silhouette, taking wing, dropping from the sky in free fall, praying for a soft landing. I’ve only seen it in photographs, moving and still. I can’t imagine looking up to witness it in person.

But doesn’t the image seem to describe where we all are, at least figuratively, ten years after?

I was in California, spared the close-up intimacy of the tragedy. But believe me, you didn’t have to be at Ground Zero, or know someone in the towers or in one of the planes, to be impacted.

We’ve all felt the slow burn of 9/11 the last ten years.

As a show of its true evil, the day’s dark cloud seems to hover over just about everything.

At Wednesday’s GOP debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, riding politics’ third rail to frontrunner status, called Social Security “a Ponzi scheme.”  But if we’re short there, it’s due to borrowing so heavily to finance an ill-advised and ongoing war that George W. Bush falsely justified with the tragedy of 9/11.

When President Obama calls for the American Jobs Act with his speech tonight and offers up a $300 billion dollar plan to stimulate the economy, Republicans will no doubt grouse and say they won’t pay a dime in the face of our historic national debt.  But again, we’re only in this mess because of the war spending after 9/11 that Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz conservatively estimates has cost more than $3.5 trillion.

Ten years later, 9/11’s impact is still with us.  Our economy is crawling; our democracy, with affronts to civil liberties, limps along. Our tolerance levels are low; our distrust of others high.

The tenth anniversary couldn’t come at a better time.

We need to feel the way we did on 9/11.

At the height of evil came the height of our humanity. There were no divisions, no labels. We were all connected.
  
We need to feel that way again.

Some New Yorkers say they noticed the change instantly that day. People you never spoke to, you reached out and saved their lives. Or you were merely considerate to the extreme, nice even. It was as if people were from another planet, or in a good behavior zone during a time of national mourning.

People started to care for people more genuinely. It was the good that comes out of the bad.

It was a kind of public love. People realized we were one.

But President Bush and other politicos saw the feeling that day as cause for the kind of patriotism that leads to jingoism. It brought on the overreaction to an exaggerated sense of threat. He overlooked the fact that the evil was an affront not just to our nation, but to all humanity. Bush took it personally and misread the world.

But then so did many others. 

The President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders points out that the FBI found a 17-fold increase in hate crimes against American Muslims immediately after 9/11.
  
Over the past ten years, the Department of Justice has investigated more than 800 incidents involving violence, threats, vandalism, and arson, obtaining 47 convictions.

That’s good. But this is the same DOJ that enforces the insidious Patriot Act and the surveillance and wiretap efforts under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This week, DOJ bragged about how since 9/11 it has created its first new division in 50 years (the National Security Division). That’s not the kind of job creation I was hoping for. Instead of protecting the innocent by raising the bar, the DOJ boasts how it has lowered the FISA “wall” between intelligence and law enforcement investigation. Raising the bar to protect the innocent is much preferred. But the government is stuck in the “us vs. them” perspective, the one that runs counter to the best aspects of the 9/11 feeling.

It may have been easier for Asian Americans to feel the kind of empathy I’m talking about. After the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, how could we not feel empathy for Muslim Americans, many from South or West Asia?

Perhaps it’s easier if you were like Stanley Praimnath. Featured in a 2002 Frontline documentary, Praimnath was caught in the towers but punched through a wall. His hand found Brian Clark, a man he’d never met. Clark grabbed Praimnath’s hand and pulled him to safety.

Just one of the stories of humanity triumphing over evil that day ten years ago.

It was such a strong feeling, and it was happening all over town.

Recapturing that feeling again may help us solve the lesser problems that threaten to fracture and doom us today. But it’s a surprise how quickly the feeling eludes us.

How else can we explain the inequality that has only grown worse in the last ten years?
  
There are 25 million unemployed. Economist Robert Reich calls it the worst decade for American workers in a century. Meanwhile, CEO pay is up 10 percent. Bonuses are up nearly 20 percent.

In California, where there are more foreclosures and upside down mortgages than anywhere else in the nation, the state remains the epitome of the housing crisis.

The financial pressures are high. You don’t need a terrorist to make you want to jump from the roof.

Forget the evil and the hate. There are lots of people today who could use the love of 9/11. The tenth anniversary gives us a chance to connect to that feeling again.