This morning's Palm Beach Post reprinted a column today written by Albert R. Hunt who is the Washington Editor for Bloomberg News. Here is the link: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/...
Mr. Hunt opens with this:
There may be only one impediment to President Obama maintaining his small lead over the next week: arrogance.
Let us ignore the first intimation that this will not be an even handed editorial by ignoring the words "his small lead"; we can surmise that Mr Hunt is a true Villager, desperate to maintain the meme that Mr. Romney should have no problem defeating the incumbent, or that the polling is skewed.
He goes on to write that while President Obama had genuine respect for Senator McCain, no such respect for Mr. Romney exists... and therein lies the risk in the first debate. If President Obama shows a lack of respect for Mr. Romney, it means he is arrogant and it will be a great danger to his re-election.
Hunt goes on to discuss facets of the JFK/Nixon, Carter/Reagan and Gore/Bush debates. He specifically states that because of Mr. Gore's "audible sighs and disdainful exasperation toward his rival" he began to lose support in the polls and eventually the election.
Well, maybe so and maybe not. I personally think that Mr. Gore's loss had a lot more to do with his pedantic speaking style, his refusal to acknowledge President Clinton during his campaign and his basic lack of humor.
Mr. Hunt continues:
Yet, most good politicians also possess a healthy, if begrudging, political respect for an opponent.
Clearly, Mr. Romney has shown a healthy respect for President Obama with statements like these:
"I think the challenge that I'll have in the debate is that the president tends to, how shall I say it, to say things that aren't true," Romney said in an interview that aired Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Naw.
Maybe his Libya statement is grudgingly respectful:
"I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It's disgraceful that the Obama Administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks."
Nope, not that one either.
So, I find Mr. Hunt's lack of evenhandedness a little offputting. President Obama is expected to avoid any criticism of Mr. Romney, lest he be deemed "arrogant" (read uppity n----r) but it is fine for Mr. Romney to spend his entire campaign telling lies about the President and even going so far as to issue a statement before the official US response criticising the sitting Commander-in-Chief. No mention is made of Mr. Romney's arrogance when criticizing the 47% that will "never take responsibility for their lives" or Mrs. Romney's arrogance when telling us that "we have given you people all you need to know" about the Romney tax returns.
Oh, and let's not forget my personal favorite, when speaking at a fundraiser in Palm Beach:
"It's our turn."
And the dog whistles continue.