Visual Source: Newseum
NY Times:
Gov. Rick Perry, in 2002 with George W. Bush, is disliked by the Bush clan, and has worked to differentiate himself from the former president and his oft-maligned legacy.
We see that too often to ignore, but the question remains what difference will it make?
Charles Blow:
The country needs the president to rise to this crisis in word, spirit and deed. We need him to reach out of his nature and into the nation’s need. We are on the precipice. There’s growing concern that we may slip into a second, more painful recession. There is little optimism that the housing crisis will loosen its grip on the economy anytime soon. The unspeakable truth is that we may well be on the leading edge of a prolonged period of national stagnation, if not decline.
A robotic Sustainer-in-Chief with an eerie inhumanity will not satisfy. At this moment, we need less valley and more mountaintop.
Kurt Anderson:
We have a tendency to elect presidents who seem like the antitheses of their immediate predecessors — randy young Kennedy the un-Eisenhower, earnest truth-telling Carter the un-Nixon, charismatic Reagan the un-Carter, randy young Clinton the un-H.W. Bush, cool and cerebral Obama the un-W.
So Rick Perry fits right into that winning contrapuntal pattern. He’s the very opposite of careful and sober and understated, in his first days as an official candidate suggesting President Obama maybe doesn’t love America (“Go ask him”) and that loose monetary policy is “treasonous.” (“Look, I’m just passionate about the issue,” he explained later about his anti-Federal Reserve outburst, before switching midsentence to first-person plural, “and we stand by what we said.”)
Yet the most troubling thing about Perry (and Michele Bachmann and so many more), what’s new and strange and epidemic in mainstream politics, is the degree to which people inhabit their own Manichaean make-believe worlds. They totally believe their vivid fictions.
Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. Perry is even entitled to his opinion that states such as Texas might want to secede, as he threatened at a Tea Party rally two years ago. But he’s not entitled to his own facts.
They are joined by a chunk of voters, without whom their candidacies would not exist.
Isn't it weird we compare Obama to perfection and the GOP candidates to schizophrenics? That is one wide political spectrum. Anyone trying to build a big tent had best have a lot of canvas on hand, because I don't think those folks like to stand next to each other.
Joel Achenbach and Juliet Eilperin:
Four years ago in New Hampshire, campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain said to voters, “I do agree with the majority of scientific opinion, that climate change is taking place and it’s a result of human activity, which generates greenhouse gases.” He made global warming a key element of every New Hampshire stump speech.
This week in New Hampshire, the governor of Texas and newest presidential contender, Rick Perry, said scientists have manipulated data to support their “unproven” theory of human-influenced global warming. He said increasing numbers of scientists have disavowed the theory altogether.
This is not simply a case of two very different politicians saying two very different things. The political discussion about global warming has lurched dramatically in four years — even as the scientific consensus has changed little. McCain’s 2007 description remains the scientific consensus: Human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels, is pumping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and warming the planet.
But that scientific conclusion has become a lively point of debate in the GOP presidential campaign.
I don't like to call GOP primary voters willfully ignorant, but in this case I am willing to make an exception.
Greg Ip:
When John McCain was running for the Republican presidential nomination nearly 12 years ago, he declared that Alan Greenspan was so critical to the economy that, if the then-Federal Reserve chairman died, he’d put sunglasses on the body, prop him up and hope no one noticed.
It’s safe to say that GOP opinions of the Fed have slipped a bit since.
When John McCain was campaigning against William McKinley in 1896, he railed against the gold standard, but now... oh, sorry, that was William Jennings Bryan, not McCain. Never mind.
Chicago Sun-Times:
If Rahm Emanuel had known being mayor of Chicago was this much fun, he likes to joke that he would have “primaried” his political mentor four years ago.
“As I told Rich Daley, ‘You didn’t tell me the truth. You said it was gonna be a good job. It’s not a good job. It’s a great job.’ I tease him about that all the time,” Emanuel told the Chicago Sun-Times in an interview on his first 100 days in office.
“I’m having a blast. . . . [Wife] Amy and the kids [say], ‘Dad seems happy.’ If you want to see change and see what you’re doing impact people, this is one of the most dynamic and exciting opportunities of a lifetime. . . . It sure beats walking around with the world on your shoulders” as White House chief of staff.
For those who missed it, CT has a
governor-union deal. Republicans
hate it. Editorial writers
love it.