There has always been a measured slickness in how Barack Obama’s political operation has handled race, the third rail in politics. They have taken the guards off the rail and made an old obstacle an instrument of fashion. And they have done so with an instinct for the genuine and legitimate guilt surrounding race in American life. As political maneuver, it is a thing of grace in some ways.
At least until the thing turns shameless and expedient. Bill Clinton got the first dose of the treatment, when he protested that Obama’s credentials as an anti-war stalwart were “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.” That comment was then shape-shifted from a hard political jab at Obama’s rhetorical dodges on the Iraq War to an insinuation that the notion that Obama could win the presidency was wishful fantasy. No dispassionate observer who saw the video and heard Clinton in full cry would have arrived at the seamier interpretation, but with the nudging of Axelrod and Co., and with a little help from South Carolina’s congressman Jim Clyburn, the idea that Clinton meant much worse took hold.
The punch that Clinton absorbed was uncocked repeatedly. Sometimes on defense — when the Jeremiah Wright tapes surfaced, for example, the reasonable question of what drew Obama to a church with a history of incendiary rhetoric was cleverly converted to a teaching moment about an older generation’s fixation with race. When questions about the link between Obama and his old neighbor and fundraiser William Ayers started to burn, the line of inquiry was brushed off as an indirect method of raising fears about black radicalism, and it soon faded.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Obama’s Hidden-Hand Politics
At long last, thanks to the folks at ESPN, WSOP.com, Caesar’s, Veetle.com, and our extraordinary Webmaster, Justin Burnette, we are now proud to share with you video from The RP’s impossible journey to the final table of the 2012 World Series of Poker, $1000-buy-in no limit Texas hold ’em event. (Click here to read his full account.)
Specifically, the video below shows the final twenty minutes of The RP’s four day, 40 hour marathon in which he finished in 8th place out of the original 4,260 entries.
The folks at ESPN obviously knew The RP’s best side, so most of the video of the final table is shot from behind our erstwhile blogger, who sits in front center of the screen, back to camera, in a white shirt with blue sleeves and a tan No Labels hat — which unfortunately, had no label on its back. So we miss his poker face — and the naive surprise in his eyes for having the extraordinary luck to be where he was.
But, we do get to see some entertaining hands in these 20 minutes: The RP surviving two all-ins in which he was the big underdog; an opponent with a much larger stack getting eliminated, thereby earning The RP an additional $14,000; and the final hand in which The RP gracefully exits the stage.
Our prolific contributing RP, former Congressman Artur Davis, who recently switched from a Democrat to a Republican, was announced last week as a featured speaker at the upcoming Republican National Convention. Here is David Fahrentold’s profile from The Washington Post:
This is Artur Davis’s job now, the work that he hopes will resurrect his political career. Wear a suit. Speak to strangers. Explain that what had been some of the most important causes of his life — a political party and a president — turned out to be mistakes.
“How many of us believed, four years ago, that Barack Obama was not just a politician?” Davis, a former four-term congressman, asked Mitt Romney supporters in Arlington County’s Ballston neighborhood on Wednesday. The Romney people said nothing, but Davis kept on: This was his story, not theirs.
“We may not have the power to stop it,” Davis said of President Obama’s campaign. “But the American people have the power to punish it.”
Four years ago, Davis was onstage at the Democratic convention: a fast-rising congressman from Alabama, so close to Obama that he provided the official “second” for Obama’s nomination.
On Thursday, the Republican Party said he would be a “headliner” at its convention in Tampa, where he will be one of Obama’s most prominent African American critics.
It’s tempting to wonder how candidate Barack Obama would have performed in 2008 if he had campaigned on President Barack Obama’s agenda in the first seven months of 2012. Imagine if the Illinois Senator had gone on record favoring a rewrite of federal regulations to mandate Catholic institutions to cover contraceptives in their insurance plans; if he had endorsed same-sex marriage; if he had pledged to dismantle the work requirement at the centerpiece of welfare reform; and if he claimed the executive authority to alter federal immigration laws on his own without waiting for congressional approval.
The likely result is that the base of his party would have been thrilled at such a thoroughgoing progressive vision, but that Obama would have hardened his image as a Kerry/Dukakis like cultural liberal with a tin ear for Middle America. The McCain campaign certainly would have had ammunition fresher than the obscure William Ayers to cast Obama as an ideological risk and, perhaps, a path to divert conservative independents and blue collar Hillary Clinton voters from the crevasses in the economy.
In the real universe, and not this parallel one of progressive fantasies, Obama campaigned as someone quite different from the liberal warrior Republicans would have relished running against. To the extent Obama ventured into cultural politics at all, it was with the measured nuance of a Clintonian moderate: tolerant of civil unions, but opposed to gay marriage on religious grounds; respectful of the public divide on reproductive rights, and virtual silence on an immigration proposal that had dominated congressional debate just two summers earlier. Obama even described the welfare reform that he had opposed as a rookie legislator as an unmitigated success and its work requirement as a “centerpiece of any social policy.”
Contributing RP, former Missouri State Representative Jason Grill, and Republican Annie Presley of the Bryan Cave Law Firm take on the Missouri U.S. Senate race between incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill and GOP challenger Todd Akin:
By Artur Davis, on Mon Aug 13, 2012 at 11:30 AM ET
I will offer the obligatory caveat: I know Paul Ryan from serving with him on two congressional committees for all eight years I served in the House. It is not fair to call him a friend, at least not in the way human beings who aren’t politicians use that term, but I liked him a great deal. I liked the little things– when he engaged you in conversation, you had his attention and his eyes didn’t drift in search of a more powerful member, or a potential donor– and I admired the more consequential things, like his genuine smarts and the fact that when he spoke on the floor or in hearings, you heard the product of an active mind that didn’t need ghostwriting or lobbyist drafted talking points.
Frankly, I don’t know the politics of the pick. The Obama campaign is way too thrilled at this announcement for me to attribute it just to gamesmanship or wishfulness: they know that the Ryan budget plan has not polled well, that its realignment of Medicare unsettles seniors, and that to some independents (and Newt Gingrich) it looks more like ideological engineering than a response to our current bout of economic stagnation. A campaign that just wrapped a woman’s death around Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, facts be damned, will not shrink from painting Ryan as a cold-blooded, Ayn Rand inspired radical who puts theory over people.
My hope, as someone who wants this ticket to win, is that Paul Ryan, an imminently decent and pleasant man, will look to Americans nothing like the caricature that Democrats are about to paint. The campaigner who has won easily in a district Barack Obama carried has the raw ability to make a case that his budget really is a blueprint for a shared prosperity. I also think he can and will point out that an entitlement structure built for a population that rarely lived past seventy has to be refitted for a future where octogenarians are the fastest rising age demographic; that universal, one size fits all Medicare coverage has always been more a political bribe to sustain support than some solemn moral commitment; that government overpromising its capacities is itself immoral; and that the first casualties of an entitlement train-wreck would be the poor and the vulnerable, and that they above all need the current compact to be amended so its best parts can survive.
My other hopes are that Paul Ryan’s reformer instincts aren’t just built around budgets. Conservatism needs to adopt education reform as a cause, not as a wedge against the selfishness of teachers unions, but as the most effective instrument to reduce inequality. Conservatism needs not just to repeal Obamacare but to replace it with a market based correction to the inadequacies of the status quo. The political right has to reclaim legal immigration as a point of pride and to distance itself from overheated claims about “us” losing “our” culture: that means much less talk about “self-deportation” crusades against illegals, much more confidence in assimilation, much more focus on an immigration regime that privileges individual responsibility and families.
The guy I admired from across the aisle and sometimes chatted with gets all of the above. I also think that Ryan knows that his party’s (and now my party’s) future rests on conservatism growing and adapting to a changed economic world in a way that liberalism never has.
So, without minimizing the risk in claiming a space that Democrats have effectively attacked for years, I felt inspired seeing Paul Ryan rise from obscurity to the epicenter of politics in the last 24 hours. If this ends well, a campaign that has been accused of running a prevent defense without being ahead may have just made a downpayment on its party’s future.
By Michael Steele, on Mon Aug 13, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
Mitt Romney’s vice presidential selection was on its face a very good one—solid, strong and perhaps riskier than it needed to be. Less a “bold choice” (sorry Bill Kristol) and certainly not a “maverick pick” the choice of Paul Ryan was, at least for Mitt Romney, appropriate. For months, Romney and his campaign were beset by pundits, Establishment types and wannabe prognosticators divining who he would or should pick. From safe to out-of-the-box, names were all over the place; an no name wasn’t good enough to suggest (Kim Kardashian. Really?). But in the end Mitt knew what he wanted—he wanted it all! And in Paul Ryan he gets a little Rob Portman and Bobby Jindal (policy wonk), Tim Pawlenty (GOP grassroots, Sam’s Club Republicanism) and even Marco Rubio (Tea Party appeal).
Just as significant is that Romney, by choosing Ryan, has clearly decided to reset the narrative in his race with President Obama. And here’s where the wheels can come off pretty quick. For the past 4 months or so, the Romney campaign has argued, pushed and even distorted the facts to make the point that this election is a referendum on the Obama years. Sure Obama was dealt a bad set of cards, the argument goes, but leadership—especially presidential leadership is about what you do with the cards you are dealt. For Romney, the president just didn’t know how to play his hand. But in selecting Paul Ryan, Mitt has given the president a new set of cards.
Starting now, this race is no longer a referendum on Obama but rather a choice between Obama (“Status Quo Liberalism”) and Romney (“Reform Conservatism”). It appears the Romney-Ryan campaign is ready to make this argument and the Obama-Biden campaign can’t wait for it. In addition to jobs and the economy Romney now wants a broader debate about big ideas and even bigger policies, hence the Ryan selection, and is counting on Paul Ryan’s smarts and bookish charms to dissect Obama and Biden. But Paul Ryan and his budget have also given the president an opportunity to make the race not just about Bain Capital and Romney’s tax returns (you really didn’t expect them to give those up, did you?) but also about a return to “trickle-down economics” and “ending [fill in the blank] as we know it,” claims Republicans at least up to now have not been able to respond to effectively.
And in an ironic political twist, both campaigns are happy with this pick (at least for the moment). Republicans (especially conservatives) are excited to know a budget hawk would be a heartbeat away from the oval office; and Democrats are smiling like Cheshire cats because a budget hawk is a heartbeat away from Mitt Romney.
But all of this excitement about Paul Ryan being picked reminds me of the Jeff Goldblum quote from the Lost World: Jurassic Park in responding to how excited everyone was to be at Jurassic Park: “That’s how it always starts. Then later there’s running and screaming.”
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Aug 13, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET
1. Maybe, just maybe, the presidential debate will turn substantive: The past few weeks have seen some of the most disgusting and despicable campaign charges in recent memory — from the Obama Super PAC implying that Romney killed a man’s wife to Romney’s completely mendacious claim that Obama is eliminating the work requirement from Bill Clinton’s welfare reform. The choice of Paul Ryan places his economic policy vision on the front stage, and allows the country to witness a thorough, meaningful debate on whether FDR’s Welfare State should survive this Age of Austerity. It will also put in clear focus one of the critical themes of modern America — growing income inequality — and I hope will force the Obama campaign to develop concrete plans to deal with it.
2. Mitt Romney’s campaign could be the next victim of the “Aspen Curse”: As an Obama supporter, it is comforting to know that the “Aspen Curse” — which victimized me and so many of my friends — could turn on Mitt Romney. As I detailed in this piece a few months ago, I was the member of the Inaugural Class of the Aspen Institute’s Rodel Fellows program, that brought together young political leaders from across the country for bipartisan dialogue. Unfortunately, every one of us that sought major statewide office over the next several years lost — from contributing RP Michael Steele to New Jersey’s Tom Kean to Missouri’s Robin Carnahan to most recently Nebraska’s Jon Bruning. Paul Ryan, and seven other young incumbent Congressman, were originally named to our class; but due to their busy schedules and strict Congressional ethics rules, Aspen dropped Congressmen from the program. Still, the Aspen Curse victimized sorta-Rodel-Fellows Florida’s Kendrick Meek when he ran for the U.S. Senate and contributing RP Artur Davis when he ran for Alabama’s Governor. So maybe too Paul Ryan will meet the same fate.
3. It demonstrates that the Romney campaign is in trouble. As nearly every insta-analyst of the pick has agreed, Paul Ryan was the riskiest pick among the VP finalists, which included former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, and my spring prediction, Ohio Senator Rob Portman. Romney and his campaign have been playing it safe since the beginning of the primary season, avoiding controversy whenever possible. The Ryan pick indicates that they felt they needed to shake up the dynamic that has Obama up 7-9 points in national polls, despite their looming cash advantage.
4. It is great news for Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. The tiny, extraordinary school, which hosted the 2000 Vice-Presidential debate, will get its second chance to be in the world’s spotlight this fall. Having a debate between two bright, spirited men, with deeply contrasting visions of the country’s economic future, will lift the debate in significance and historical weight. It will be another great moment for small town Kentucky.
5. It is great news for my daughter, Emily. Of course, I personally view this as #1. As Emily heads next week to freshman orientation at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, her outstanding choice of higher education will rise in national attention as the alma mater of the GOP Vice Presidential nominee. Moreover, I’m thrilled that the presidential campaign will become a central part of campus dialogue, making Emily’s first experience in the voting booth — casting her ballot for Barack Obama — all the more special.
6. (UPDATED) Of the four men on the two major presidential tickets, the only Protestant is the..uh..”Muslim”
There has always been a measured slickness in how Barack Obama’s political operation has handled race, the third rail in politics. They have taken the guards off the rail and made an old obstacle an instrument of fashion. And they have done so with an instinct for the genuine and legitimate guilt surrounding race in American life. As political maneuver, it is a thing of grace in some ways.
The punch that Clinton absorbed was uncocked repeatedly. Sometimes on defense — when the Jeremiah Wright tapes surfaced, for example, the reasonable question of what drew Obama to a church with a history of incendiary rhetoric was cleverly converted to a teaching moment about an older generation’s fixation with race. When questions about the link between Obama and his old neighbor and fundraiser William Ayers started to burn, the line of inquiry was brushed off as an indirect method of raising fears about black radicalism, and it soon faded. 
