In response to Burr Deming's
Creating Jobs: The Talented Mr Romney

Adam Smith's invisible hand raises the tide. As to whether your own boat floats or is swamped by larger vessels is a combination of good luck, brains, and diligence. It's your boat and it's every boat for himself.

Mitt Romney did not screw over anyone, at least not on purpose. Just as he did not create any jobs on purpose. Destroying jobs, creating jobs, neither was Mitt Romney's aim. Jobs were not his job. Mitt's job was to create a profit, no matter who was hurt, no matter who happened to be helped along the way.

- Burr Deming, May 16, 2012

What is special about being a so-called job creator?

Republicans still sometimes elect people with little to no business experience even over others who do have it. It's clearly not an essential quality to the very people who trumpet it. In fact, most of the support for Romney has nothing to do with his business experience, but instead with getting rid of Obama. Otherwise, the likes of Perry and Santorum would never have had the lead over him.

More importantly, the label of "job creator" doesn't come with details: How were the jobs created? How long did it take? Who else deserves credit? Why were jobs created? How much money did they pay? How long did they last? Were jobs destroyed as well? Can the methods by which one created jobs be replicated today?

In any case, the only special knowledge a job creator brings to the table concerns his specific industry. Even then, a president can simply surround himself with people who are knowledgeable where he is ignorant. Romney would have to do the same.

The idea of a job creator--a sort of savior--hides a pretty important component of job creation: demand. Without it, there is no profit; without profit, there are no jobs. Therefore, insofar as I fuel demand, I am a job creator as well. It may not be my intent to create jobs with my purchases, but that is fine; it was not Romney's intent to create them either. Such benefits were incidental to his self-interested pursuit of profit.

I already miss the days when people simply said that they have business experience. Now we have to deal with the myth of the job creator, a wise, conservative hero who acts alone and without altruistic motives but expects our praise and admiration anyway.

But perhaps Romney deserves a round of applause for his work. What is the sound of one invisible hand clapping?

Ryan writes for his own site, where wisdom is intentional and applause is robust, two-handed, and deserved.

Please visit Secular Ethics.

The recent one day ad personally approved by President Obama (he says so himself at the end) seems modeled, in part, on a series of primary ads launched against Governor Romney by his Republican opponents. The ads in the primary season, and the Democratic ad, carried a similar message. Mitt Romney was a pillager, moving in on vulnerable companies and finishing them off, throwing thousands of workers out while he made tons of cash.

A typical Gingrich run carried a narrative augmented by worker voices but, unlike the Obama ad, had melodramatic music, a sneering narrator, and brief appearances by actors portraying menacing cigar smoking job destroyers. The Obama ad lets those workers carry the narrative. There is low key music to convey sadness, and brief shots of candidate Romney giving speeches about how joblessness just breaks his heart.

The ad by the Obama campaign is more subtle than the Republican ads of the primaries in the same sense that a chainsaw massacre would be more subtle than a thermonuclear attack. The moralism is left to the viewer. And it really doesn't take much prodding to feel for those who worked hard and lost everything.

The Romney folks have responded on a number of fronts: That Obama has done his own share of damage, that the economic recovery would have been more robust if a European style austerity had been imposed, that Obama just doesn't understand a free market.

That last is a bit of shorthand, permissible in political campaigns. A more accurate response, the long form, would not have been not as effective. Complete explanations seldom are. The economic message that Mitt Romney embraces is not complex. Most certainly the President understands it. The ad featuring workers just does not convey that understanding.

On the other hand, neither do Mitt Romney's. In his campaign for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, Governor Romney claimed to have created 10,000 jobs. He made the assertion to the point where friend and foe alike could recite it from memory. It wasn't hard, it was short, it was easy. 10,000 jobs. That's what Mitt had created. How many jobs had Kennedy created? Throw him out and elect a job creator.

At the core, the economic principle that is Romney's own is straight out of Adam Smith in the 1700s. All the graphs, all the intersecting lines as supply and demand get to an equipoise of balance, all the benefits, come from self-interest. People operate selfishly. They end up doing good, a great deal of good, so much good that all boats are raised in the resulting tide. But it is incidental to each person's motivation.

The number of jobs Mitt Romney has created tends to grow in explosive force with each new campaign season. Mitt Romney has not been in the business of business since the anti-Kennedy days. But those 10,000 jobs have become a claim of 100,000 jobs in the campaign for President. A ten fold increase with no effort, in fact without a glance.

The exact number is a myth, such results being hard to measure. The deeper truth is that is exactly the way the free market works, when it works. Jobs are created without effort because there is no effort to create jobs. They are a side effect of an effort of the Mitt Romneys of the business world to create bigger bank accounts with their names on them.

In the short term, sometimes people get hurt. Overall, in the aggregate, with many thousands of Mitt Romney's at play, more people get jobs than lose them. Most of the time. Recent times are an exception, we hope. The workers whose lives were harmed so profoundly were, in theory, earlier exceptions. Even in good times, there are winners and losers.

Adam Smith's invisible hand raises the tide. As to whether your own boat floats or is swamped by larger vessels is a combination of good luck, brains, and diligence. It's your boat and it's every boat for himself.

Mitt Romney did not screw over anyone, at least not on purpose. Just as he did not create any jobs on purpose. Destroying jobs, creating jobs, neither was Mitt Romney's aim. Jobs were not his job. Mitt's job was to create a profit, no matter who was hurt, no matter who happened to be helped along the way.

Mitt Romney did his job. It is the same job he will do as President. Aside from profits for his wealthy investors, his job was to not care.

He was very good at it.

It wasn't long ago that Ireland was proposed as a model for US economic recovery. Great Britain and Germany were considered good runners up. In fact, the Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel was the preacher to the European Union regarding the path to economic prosperity. Austerity was the linchpin, the essential ingredient to that recovery.

There is an appealing intuitive lesson involved, a sort of moral hazard avoided. Those who behave irresponsibly on the economic front must eventually pay for their spendthrift ways. Time to bite the bullet. Anything else is an affront to common sense.

Germany led the way, dictating to Greece and Italy the harsh medicine they would be forced to swallow. If they were to follow Ireland on the pathway to health, they would have to endure dramatic slashes. Republicans in the United States pointed to Europe as leading the path the US must follow to get out of recession.

Belt-tightening, austerity, bravery in the face of hardship, bite the bullet until your teeth crack. Then enjoy a well earned prosperity. The key word was "earned".

A couple of weeks ago, John Peet, an influential editor of The Economist, was asked about the economic future of Europe.

Well, I think Germany continues to be the absolutely key country in Europe. It's by far the biggest and it's also currently doing best. But the debate in Germany is not very sort of pro-growth at the moment. Some countries not in the eurozone, like Poland and Sweden are doing pretty well. And of the countries that were in trouble, I would say Ireland looks as if it's the best at the moment because Ireland has implemented very heavy austerity programs, but is now beginning to grow again. So there are some examples but when you look at countries like France, Spain, Italy, there's an awful long way to go.

Glowing references to Ireland are harder to find among US pundits these days. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman posted figures from Ireland's own Central Statistical Office, showing a shocking decline in Irish well being. (Note to our friend John Myste: the data is in chart form, so you may wish to discard it without looking.)

Xenophobic resentment toward Germany's Nazi past, resistance to cold-light-of-day economic reality, and just plain laziness were seen as major reasons for major upset elections in Greece. Hard won austerity measures necessary for economic health were in danger. Italy had already gone down.

French austerity measures as an approach to recovery were a major cause for the electoral defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy. And on Sunday, Angela Merkel, Chancellor and chief economic moralist of Europe got slapped around, as the parliamentary election in North Rhine-Westphalia got taken over by a united opposition. This part of central Germany has been politically divided since approximately the beginning of Creation. This week the Social Democrats and the Green Party together got a majority of votes cast.

It was a major embarrassment for Chancellor Merkel.

The big argument, the only real argument, at least on paper, that conservatives have presented for the anti-Keynesian measures has been investor confidence. If painful austerity measures were put into place, investors would see a seriousness of purpose. Severe grownup policies would signal an end to the self-destructive juvenile joyride. Investors would respond. Growth would come quickly.

Investor confidence turned out to be more measured than the austerity measures had been intended to produce. As more sober thinking takes over, it appears that investors had waited to see what actual numbers were produced. They didn't like the economic activity they saw. What mainstream economists derisively call "the confidence fairy" does not always produce automatic results. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" does not always translate to the opposite formula. Confidence does not always feed on a confidence that originates from a demonstration of severe resolve.

These are dicey times. The impending doom feared by the current economic masters of Europe may come true as the careful plans of mice and economists go off the charts (with more apologies to friend Myste).

Or, or, or. It may be that, just as the pleasant dreams of austerity promoters failed to materialize, so their fears might also slip away. The best outcome, the best newest hope, may be that somehow Europe will settle into textbook style Keynesian recovery. Deficits followed by recovery followed by a disciplined, but far less painful, austerity with surpluses all around.

That last part may be the harder sell. The elusiveness of austerity during good times is the best argument conservatives have. Oddly, it is never heard.

For now, the bold European experiment in harsh economic policy has given us its first tentative lesson. Starving the patient back to health has produced less health than hunger.

Interesting dialogue beginning after our publication of a chart by Kevin Drum discovered at Mother Jones. It shows job level decline as President Obama took office and subsequent reversal and growth as new jobs policies took hold.

Ryan, who writes for Secular Ethics, also graciously contributes to this site from time to time. He points to a cautionary trend, the decline of participation in the labor force. This is often raised by conservatives as evidence that things are so bad under the Obama Presidency that people have given up on finding work. Ryan's comment:

It is good that this trend has reversed, but labor force participation is another story. It has been falling since Obama took office. At that time, it was 65.8% (February of 2009); now it is 63.6% (April of 2012), which is the lowest since 1981.

Tim McGaha, who writes with a scientific bent at Tim's Thoughtful Spot, responds that labor participation is not a direct indicator of labor despair. In fact, it does not differentiate between diverse motivations:

Some of that may be due to a weaker employment picture, but some will also be due to the Baby Boom generation entering retirement. Without some way to untangle the confounding factors, I'm not sure that the participation rate is all that useful as a figure of merit.

As it happens, Tim might find some backing in research conducted by the Urban Institute and published by the Department of Labor, albeit with disclaimers. The decrease in labor participation is heavily impacted by an increase in older workers, more likely to retire, and by young adults who seek more education than ever before.

In fact, an increase in retirement was forecast by the Director of the Congressional Budget office as Obamacare was scheduled to take effect. The forecast of retirements was based on a sad fact, that many older workers continue working because they can't afford to lose their group insurance; and a happy future development, that they will be able to retire when health care becomes available. Conservatives put their own twist on that testimony, broadcasting that Obamacare would cost 800,000 jobs. That 800,000 figure was actually based on the CBO estimate of newly freed workers who could finally retire.

Ryan comments, reasonably enough, on the uncertainties of cause and effect.

Since I do not fault Obama for the decline in labor force participation, I cannot fairly credit him with restoring the total payroll employment to the level at the beginning of his term. For all I know, that number is improving despite his policies, not because of them.

He points, fairly, to the clear liberal bias of this site:

Now, Raymond did not claim that Obama's policies have had any effect at all on total payroll employment. He merely posted a graph. But this is a generally liberal blog, so it's reasonable to conclude that the intent was there.

Ryan's got us on intent. We try to present facts fairly, but he is correct about our preferences.

In fact, I am comfortable making us a little more vulnerable to that criticism. As long as I can remember, Republicans have supported policies with a definite tilt. The rationale, when I was a youth, was that we all would benefit by favoring the wealthy because people with lots of money create jobs. It was called trickle down economics by detractors, pro-growth by advocates. After all, who could be against growth?

In the late 1970s a bell shaped curve was introduced by Professor Arthur Laffer, who famously drew it on a napkin at a dinner of Republican notables. Supply side economics was born, and has metastasized from tax revenue theory into economic growth theology. The primary belief now is that we all would benefit by favoring the wealthy because they create jobs.

Democrats have stayed with dreary old Keynesianism. In and out of fashion, they have stuck like glue to the pages of Economics 101. In downturn, increase government spending, in good times, cut spending and balance budgets.

Facts can be stubborn. In this case, as Ryan wisely points out, the facts don't prove either case to a moral certainty. They do tend to support only one side. The fact is that in the half century plus one year since John Kennedy took office, Democrats have produced more than twice as many jobs each year they were in office than have Republicans when they have held office. It looks worse for Republicans if you include the Great Depression and the Roosevelt recovery. So let's just look at half a century instead of a hundred years.

From Bloomberg News:

Democrats hold the edge though they occupied the Oval Office for 23 years since Kennedy’s inauguration, compared with 28 for the Republicans. Through April, Democratic presidents accounted for an average of 150,000 additional private-sector paychecks per month over that period, more than double the 71,000 average for Republicans.

But you never know. Could be coincidence. And you can't judge these things too quickly. Trickle down economics or Supply Side theology might still work. Just give Republicans a few hundred more years to prove their case.

I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back.

 - - former Governor Mitt Romney, May 7, 2012

The downward spiral of the Republican Party is similar to previous lurches in American political history. In most cases, political parties that run too far from the political center get punished at the polls, go through a period of painful political introspection, and trudge back to the political center where their political recovery takes place.

Republicans have gone through it. Democrats have too. British Tories and Labourites have done their stints. Like Henry II paying penance for Beckett, they have undergone their lashings and, properly chastened, crept back to power.

Republicans have, since Ronald Reagan, avoided that process. Over the last quarter century, defeats have been larger, and successes smaller, as the tides of political fortune have come and gone. When economic winds grow to political hurricane force, the slow political tides become less apparent. But they are still there. And so we speculate here about the declining fortunes of the GOP. Races that should have been won decisively are taken narrowly. Races that should have been won narrowly are lost.

At the source is technology. The Republican base is insulated from political reality. The GOP emulates Shakespearean drama. Hamlet's Ophelia, incapable of her own distress, drowns without knowing she is drowning. And the Republican Party puts on stage makeup and follows suit. Purge follows purge as the party of Lincoln rushes toward the Old Confederacy.

One persistent question involves a sort of political symmetry. Are Democrats not subject to the same technology? Why would they be immune to the same political temptations?

We have speculated. No one answer is quite satisfying. Perhaps an accident of history, or a series of accidents, have delayed a similar pattern. The election of centrist Bill Clinton, terrorist attacks and a subsequent rallying around President Bush, the election of centrist Barack Obama, may have combined over time to push the inevitable down the road. Where Republicans go, Democrats will eventually follow, although on the other side of that wide, wide ideological road.

Newsweek columnist John Avlon acknowledges that the Republican Party has gone off the deep end with it's new bloodsport, RINO hunting. Long time arch-conservatives are attacked from the right for insufficient extremism.

But he detects a similar trend among Democrats. He finds two examples to prove his thesis, Pennsylvania Representatives Jason Altmire and Tim Holden, both Democrats who lost in primaries.

In the case of Altmire, a vote against health care reforms, which matching his constituent’s views, was nonetheless considered a hanging offense by his fellow party member. In the northeastern stretch of the state, the unions backed a trial lawyer with predictable sympathies, Matt Cartwright, over 20-year centrist incumbent Tim Holden. The decisive factor in ousting both Democrats was the financial and organizational strength of the unions, who have been as empowered as corporations by Citizens United—but with considerably less outrage on the left.

He points to the shrinking number of conservative blue-dog Democrats to hammer the point home.

Here's the problem. John Avlon is performing a bit of cherry picking. And the cherries he is picking are not the sort a discerning cherry picker would want. Neither Jason Altmire nor Tim Holden could be reasonably considered moderate. Yes, both opposed Obamacare, and did their best to block it. But that was not the only departure from Democratic orthodoxy of either representative. Both were also in open league with climate deniers.

Mr. Avalon mentions Jason Altmire's opposition to health care reform as "matching his constituent’s (sic) views..." A greater contributor to his defeat than any organized group of working people was the fact that he was re-districted out of office. He was not defeated by some insurgent. He ran against another Congressional Representative, Mark Critz.

Tim Holden was also largely the victim of redistricting. He did not run against another incumbent but he did find his district substantially changed. Large areas in 4 counties that he had represented since 2003 were suddenly gone, replaced with more urban, more liberal centers. His conservative stands were less popular with his very new constituents than with Mr. Avalon.

These are not perfect examples of a DINO hunt, but they are the best available to Mr. Avalon.

Indeed they are the only examples of Democratic opponents of Obamacare that lost their seats in a Democratic primary. Of 34 other Democrats who voted against health care reform, none lost renomination. None. Zero. These two were the very first. Instead, blue dog Democrats found their numbers reduced in the 2010 tea party surge.

To be fair, Mr. Avalon describes the party polarization as "asymmetrical." He devotes some journalistic effort to today's anticipated take down of conservative stalwart Senator Dick Lugar in the Indiana Republican primary. Senator Lugar is now considered insufficiently conservative. John Avalon describes the Republican RINO hunt as considerably advanced when compared with the more subdued hunting spree among Democrats for DINOs. "Democrats are amateurs compared to Republicans when it comes to taking down their own..."

Yeah.

We can learn something about a trend from this article. It touches only peripherally on politics. It is that modern journalism no longer draws conclusions from a dispassionate examination of facts. The search for truth has been supplanted. Balance is the new holy grail. Square facts can be always be pounded into round conclusions to reach that venerable standard.

President Kennedy remarked privately to aides on the structural unfairness of the Gallup Poll. Gallup would conduct polling over a three day period. The first day's results would tend toward Republicans, as conservatives were the easiest to reach. Gallup would continue polling, calling back working class Democrats until they came home, walking to the homes of those who didn't have telephones. Everyone, or nearly everyone, in a random sample was eventually reached.

At each poll, Gallup would publish the first day's results, the results that were disproportionately Republican. They would be accompanied with analysis about how this newest result reflected a new downturn. Later revisions would be published, but they were no longer news.

So each month, an artificially low polling number for President Kennedy would provoke minor headlines about a dip in popularity. A quiet revision would then update the number upward. The next month a new artificially low number would be compared with the previously higher revised number. And so it went. The public was forever being reported as growing disenchanted with the popular President.

I thought about John Kennedy's wry observation when the latest jobs report came out. April figures showed a smaller gain than was hoped, more than was feared. Unemployment dropped. A number of factors affected that.

It was the warmest April in recorded history. Never, ever, had there been an April that averaged a higher temperature in the United States. It is part of a trend. The warm winter was remarkable. A milder winter and a warmer spring means a higher level of economic activity. So there was a higher previous rate of economic activity to compare April with.

A growth in private activity was partially offset by a reduction in public sector jobs. Most of that happened at state and local levels. That is where firefighters, police officers, and teachers are employed. This reduction is Republican driven. Efforts to provide federal funds to help with these areas have been blocked by a conservative Congress. So, to some extent, Republican crowing over what GOP politicians call a failure of Obama policies is the equivalent to an appeal by a murderous child. Could Lyle and Erik Menendez have asked for mercy because they are orphans? Only if they had been Republicans.

But I find one aspect, albeit an more minor one, notable. So, what the heck! Let's note it. From Associated Press, as reported in countless publications:

The 115,000 jobs added in April were fewer than the 154,000 jobs added in March, a number the government revised up from its earlier estimate of 120,000.

In fact, the number of jobs added in February had also been revised upward after initial reporting. It is a trend in itself that extends back to the beginning of the recovery. The low, unrevised, March 120,000 figure had been compared to February after February had been revised upward. The initially lower February had been compared with higher revised figures from previous months.

It was just the opposite when there was no job growth and the numbers were heading in the opposite direction. When President Obama took office, the economy was shrinking at an annual rate of 3.8 percent. That's a lot of shrinkage. That's why the administration pushed an economic program designed to stimulate the economy. Employment, growth, and job creation estimates were based on that horrible decline. It was the amazing shrinking economy.

3.8 percent shrinkage. That's close to 4 percent. Wow. We weren't comparing one level of growth to another to see if the rate of growth had gone up or down. Throw all that out the window. The economy was shrinking at ... 3.8 percent.

But that was before the revisions set in. It turned out the economy hadn't been shrinking by 3.8 percent after all. The real figure was 8.9 percent.

So Obama takes office while the economy is actually shrinking at a whisker from 9 percent. 9 percent shrinking. 4 percent shrinkage to 9 percent is one HELL of a revision.

President Kennedy looked at bias in polling as a harmless annoyance. It was no more a matter of concern for him than the hunt for bin laden later become for Republicans. Popularity in polls reflects, it does not produce, popular opinion.

All this economic revisionism is less a factor in coming election than it might seem. Or so it strikes me. People vote on the basis of the well being they experience, either themselves or vicariously through those they know: neighbors, co-workers, relatives. Economic indicators do measure something that will affect the November election. But the numbers themselves will not change how votes will be cast. Under or over report them as you will.

The talented Mr. Romney promises an unemployment rate of four percent, a number that, as President, he will revise upward. He is nothing if not flexible, his views not bound by verifiable reality.

It is understandable that Mitt Romney reacts sharply to the credit given to President Obama for the killing of Osama bin Laden. I can recall well the analogous anger many of us felt at the political points scored by the Bush campaign machine after the 9/11 attacks. I like to think the anger was more justifiable back then, but there is room for disagreement. After the 9/11 attacks there was a strong show of unity. Al Gore's famous speech George W. Bush "is MY Commander in Chief!" was not unusual. It was all followed by attacks on Democrats as weak and unpatriotic.

A conservative acquaintance argued that a President Gore would not have had the ability to rally conservatives as President Bush had rallied liberals. I explained that his argument was based on an unjust assumption: that conservatives lacked the simple patriotism that liberals were showing in abundance. His only response was a blank uncomprehending stare. I had just said something in an unfamiliar language. It was quite beyond him.

Mitt Romney's response has been a twofer. A gratuitous slap at President Jimmy Carter and a diminution of Obama's accomplishment: It was an easy call on Obama's part. Any President would have made the same decision. "Even Jimmy Carter."

Jimmy Carter was, in fact, given a somewhat similar choice, and he did make a similar decision during the hostage crisis. The risk was great and, in his case, the results were not at all good.

Wouldn't it be something, though, if some hidden parallel universe allowed a glimpse of what a Republican administration would have done? Talking Points Memo manages the next best thing. They have tracked down an account published in 2007 that provides just such a glimpse. The New York Times discovered an incident from a couple of years earlier. The resemblance in circumstance is striking.

In 2005, it wasn't bin Laden. The number two al Qaeda figure, Ayman al-Zawahri, along with several top terrorist figures, had been located. A plan had been put together. It involved the capture of a stunning number of senior al Qaeda operatives. The CIA was begging for permission to go on in. The Bush administration thought about it and cancelled the whole thing. The main reason was that Pakistan might get ticked off.

It was one of several such instances. The CIA would track important bin Laden deputies. They would put together careful plans and logistical backup. The Bush administration would cancel everything. "There is a degree of frustration that is off the charts, because they are looking at targets on a daily basis and can’t move against them." To be fair, similar hesitations had been expressed by the Clinton administration, as well as President Bush before the 9/11 attacks. But the urgency after the destruction of thousands on US soil did not come close to the horror of what had been seen in New York and Washington as buildings tumbled down.

One instance, perhaps the earliest after the 9/11 attacks, came at the battle of Tora Bora in the following weeks. As CIA personnel and Afghan allies closed in, the Americans on the ground were on the phone, begging for American troops to land and finish off bin Laden. He was surrounded and cut off. They could hear his voice broadcast from nearby expressing resignation as he gave what he and others thought would be his final words. But US officials on the other side of the ocean said no. Too risky. And troops were engaged in readying the coming invasion of Iraq.

Campaign ads on behalf of President Obama show Mitt Romney attacking then candidate Obama for even talking about going after bin Laden in Pakistan without that county's permission. Words a few months later are also shown. "It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

Critics charge that the pro-Obama ad does not provide the context of Mitt Romney's 2007 remarks. They are correct. Paul Glastris, writing for the Washington Monthly, provides that context. And it doesn't help those critics.

The reason the Bush administration pretty much abandoned the lethal hunt for bin laden was not that it couldn't be done. It was a strategic decision. When President Bush talked of bin Laden as just one person, not important to the entire effort, he was not making excuses. The administration invaded Iraq because they were privately convinced that one man in a cave on the other side of the world could not have been responsible for so terrible an event. It had to have been a nation. Decades of cold war experience had made that central fact evident to them. The one candidate that had to have been the strategic mastermind could only have been Saddam Hussein.

The focus was on a hostile country, and not on a group of terrorists. Get the head and the rest will die. Variations on the theme survive today, urging a war with countries or even an entire religion. We were attacked by Islam. Millions of Muslims around the world collectively should be our new target.

Millions. Let's keep that scope in mind.

When President Obama shifted priorities he was criticized for ignoring the wider picture, those millions. But now that bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is crippled, albeit still alive, the cold-war experience has to be seen as misapplied. Terrorism, as it turns out, is sometimes the doing of terrorists.

Mitt Romney's context, released by his own campaign, played into that.

It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person. It is worth fashioning and executing an effective strategy to defeat global, violent Jihad and I have a plan for doing that.

His plan, the substitute for going after bin Laden and his group, was a bit vague. But the broad outline, the ambitious scope, was clear.

Global Jihad is not an effort that is being populated by a handful or even a football stadium full of people. It is—it involves millions of people and is going to require a far more comprehensive strategy than a targeted approach for bin laden or a few of his associates.

Mitt Romney took a stand against targeting. It is the difference between a rifle and a blockbuster bomb, a difference massively multiplied. Millions.

A change in administration can produce a dramatic change in results. A broad stroke effort in Iraq resulted in many more American deaths than the 9/11 attacks. Certainly the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties must not be discounted. A narrowly focused, laser-like, targeting of the group responsible for the 9/11 attack has gotten bin Laden dead, his group on the run.

Mitt's context would have made our wide scope even wider, the force more diffuse, the results a disaster.

Obama killed what Romney accurately called a football stadium full of terrorist leaders. We are much safer than we were.

Mitt Romney would mobilize American war capabilities against millions around the world. If he becomes President, we can only hope he will have changed his mind.

From the White House:

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening from Bagram Air Base. This outpost is more than 7,000 miles from home, but for over a decade it's been close to our hearts. Because here, in Afghanistan, more than half a million of our sons and daughters have sacrificed to protect our country.

Today, I signed a historic agreement between the United States and Afghanistan that defines a new kind of relationship between our countries -- a future in which Afghans are responsible for the security of their nation, and we build an equal partnership between two sovereign states; a future in which war ends, and a new chapter begins.

Tonight, I'd like to speak to you about this transition. But first, let us remember why we came here. It was here, in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden established a safe haven for his terrorist organization. It was here, in Afghanistan, where al Qaeda brought new recruits, trained them, and plotted acts of terror. It was here, from within these borders, that al Qaeda launched the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 innocent men, women and children.

- more -

Sometimes a President makes decisions that are inherently lonely. This was one of those occasions. The special team, preparing to helicopter into hostile territory, faced an uncertain situation. They were as prepared as they could be for any foreseeable contingency, but not every possibility could reasonably be foreseen.

It was a gutsy decision by the President.

Then the results came in. A helicopter had crashed, the careful plan turned into a disaster. Brave military personnel died. The Americans held hostage in Tehran remained in captivity. And, incidentally, Jimmy Carter became a one-term President.

It was jarring to hear Mitt Romney yesterday denigrating the decision to go after bin Laden. He regards it as a no-brainer. Any President would have done the same. "Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order." Then he laughed. Even Jimmy Carter.

Actually, Jimmy Carter did give that order, and the experience should tell us that it took something more than Mitt Romney is prepared to acknowledge. It took sober deliberation. In 1976 when it was known as a President's most glaring failure, and in 2011 when it became known as a remarkable success. It took a 3 AM form of courage.

In 2007, George Bush was criticized for letting bin Laden get away. At the Battle of Tora Bora, CIA operatives on the ground begged officials for air strikes and troops. They were told no. The reasoning was ostensibly a reluctance to risk American lives. It seems apparent in retrospect that the real reason was that troops had already been committed to preparation for invasion of Iraq.

President Bush, understandably I think, diminished the importance of bin Laden. His "dead or alive" bravado was reduced to a feeble "truly not that concerned" when it came to the architect of 9/11. The politics of the moment invited that lack of concern. Why give opponents a rhetorical opportunity by amplifying an American failure?

Mitt Romney, being Mitt Romney, play along for a few hours. In the grand scheme of things, in comparison to the larger fight against terrorism, one individual could not be considered all that important. "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person," he said.

In fairness, Mitt Romney retracted that formulation, that of bin Laden as one drop in a larger ocean of terrorism, just a few days later. "Of course we get Osama bin Laden and track him wherever he has to go, and make sure he pays for the outrage he exacted upon America." Can we move heaven and earth to do it? "We'll move everything to get him." Easy to be right when you play every angle.

Later that year, he moved back again. Candidate Barack Obama said that, if given firm evidence of terrorist targets in Pakistan he would move against them with or without permission from the Pakistani government. "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

Romney condemned Obama as irresponsible. "I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours... I don't think those kinds of comments help in this effort to draw more friends to our effort." It was not an outrageous position on Romney's part. It was, however, a position that was open to other views, other views that Mitt Romney had held earlier that year.

It's the same play-it-safe we have always seen from the former Governor. It seems fair to me, when confronted with so many instances of political whiplash, to target a candidate with the worst of his just-in-case positions. I think the It's-Not-Worth-It position is sufficient to at least counter his own anyone-would-have-done-the-same.

A year a ago, the elusive bin Laden became the late bin Laden. He moved from his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan to his new residence beneath the ocean.

Would Governor Romney have made a similar move, pushing for an aggressive search, then making a risky decision to proceed on less than ironclad evidence? We don't know. We can't know. It is an unanswerable question.

We will never know whether Mitt Romney would have had the moral courage of a Jimmy Carter.

From the Daily Beast:

The iconic writer scolds the superrich (including himself—and Mitt Romney) for not giving back, and warns of a Kingsian apocalyptic scenario if inequality is not addressed in America.

-More-

In response to Burr Deming's The Awesome Quality of Wealth

For the most part, I don't come across resentment of wealth. Not in public statements, not in private comments made by friends. Resentment of snobbery is another matter. The assumption that financial success is the measurable manifestation of moral superiority is irksome.

- Burr Deming, March 21, 2012

I resent those on the liberal side who are quick to cry racism, sexism, etc. But conservatives have a comparable cry: "liberals hate the wealthy!"

Their proof consists of:

1. Many liberals want to raise taxes on the wealthiest among us. Conservatives often regard this as a form of punishment. We all know that taxes have no other, more basic function.

2. Many liberals resent the massive raises, golden parachutes, and offshore accounts that some of the wealthy get or have, especially during a poor economy. Conservatives seem to consider this to be none of our business. We all know that how an individual or business chooses to spend its money has no impact on anyone else.

3. Many liberals resent the prevalence of money in politics, particularly in campaigning. Some conservatives do as well, but when they notice that liberals resent it, they seem to jump to the conclusion that liberals want to deny "free speech" to others. We all know that [redacted by Mr. Deming].

4. Most liberals support entitlements and the welfare state. Conservative conspiracy theorists, who seem more and more common and accepted, think that liberals or their leaders want to get and keep everyone on the public payroll so that no one is successful. We all know that this is the only reasonable conclusion.

5. Some liberals do simply resent just how much the wealthy have in comparison to others. It is difficult, if not impossible, for them to justify that the average CEO in the Fortune 500 is paid 380 times what the average worker makes. Conservatives say that liberals are just envious. We all know from pop psychology that what we resent must be something that we deeply desire.

I have a budding entrepreneurial spirit. I want to become wealthy through honest means and without the government's direct assistance. But that doesn't mean that I am obligated to stay silent about which group is the best to tax, how much others make even during bad times, what they do with their money, how money is used in politics, the need for robust regulations and a sufficient safety net, and wage gaps.

My opinions on these matters do not mean that I hate or envy the wealthy. I hate excess and abuse--just like my traditionally conservative parents, who are no more enamored with the free market and big business than they are with big government.

Ryan's most notable public success can be witnessed at his own site, where the application of reason to the goal of ethical living effectively rules out excess and abuse.

Please visit Secular Ethics.

I'm not entirely sure how it got around the internet that the cable company to which we subscribe is one of the two most hated companies in America. I assume somebody conducted a poll or held an online survey or had some sort of contest. But it could have been a made up figure, like FoxNews quoting Barack Obama as saying "Unlike some people, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth."

But my loved one and I have had discussions about why we stay with an undependable, increasingly expensive provider of internet service and cable television. She is afraid that a switch may lead us to a contract with a dubious competitor. I stand firm, however, putting my foot down and insisting that I see it her way.

Recently, we've both noticed that, while rates have leveled off, a few channels are being dropped. Turner Classic Movies is one. We kind of like old movies from time to time. At least I do. So it is a loss.

We've noticed a similar trend in the supermarket. Beverage sizes are decreasing a bit. Ice cream and other products are following for at least some brands. It's a way of increasing prices in a stealth sort of way. In the cable situation, it's a marketing ploy. The channels can be added again by switching to digital television at an increased rate.

Some budget proposals are that way as well.

From time to time, we hear media pundits talk about the concerns of Americans. The biggest concern is often said to be deficits. I'm sure deficits are the most pressing concern for many television and radio contributors and the Americans they live near and associate with. For the most part, I'm guessing, those Americans tend way toward the upper limits of the income scale. Most of the folks we see each day are afraid of losing jobs. Some are already unemployed and concerned about finding work.

That isn't to say that common popular concerns can't be wrong. Deficits are important, as I see it. At least that's what economists tell us. But the mainstream economists say the time for paying down deficits is after the economy has recovered.

The biggest contributor to the growing of the national debt is the continuation of the Bush tax cuts, the cuts that go disproportionately to the wealthiest Americans. If you add to that the cost of war, specifically the invasion of Iraq and the continued combat in Afghanistan, more than half of each year's deficit is accounted for. If that part of the deficit was eliminated most of the annual increase in the national debt would go away.

The economic downturn, with the losses in revenue, the TARP program that kept the recession from tipping into a selling-apples-on-street-corners-people-starving-in-alleys depression, and recovery programs to get the economy moving again, account for a much smaller part. Most of those have been temporary results, or temporary measures, not to be repeated after the economy recovers and people are working again.

Domestic programs are of some concern. Things like Veterans benefits, unemployment, building bridges, hiring police and teachers, breakfast programs for little kids, Head Start. That sort of thing. Actually, when you add all that up, it is a tiny fraction of the budget.

Social Security is a big future chunk, and it will run low on funds in another 20 or 25 years. But that can be handled just by applying the Social Security payroll tax to those not paying the same percentage now. The payroll tax is stopped after the first $106,800 of earnings. Right now, if you earn less than that, you pay 6.2%. If you earn more, the rate goes down. Raising the cap, so those earning more than $100,000 pay the same rate as those earning less, would solve the Social Security issue pretty much forever.

Health costs are the biggest growth area. Medicare, Medicaid, and ordinary hospital costs have been on their way to the moon.

For all the complaining about the costs of Obamacare, the deficit will actually go down as it takes hold. That's assuming it survives the Supreme Court. That's because if the ways health care costs are reduced while maintaining health care. In fact, health care cost increases have been declining, now below what they had been projected prior to Obamacare. And most of the program is not scheduled for another few years.

The Republican plan endorsed by Congress and the presumed Republican nominee takes another approach. If benefits are capped in one way or another by vouchers or by direct payments, the theory is that seniors will have an incentive to shop around for cheaper health care. It's called the "skin in the game" approach. The idea is that if heart surgery or other care is needed, the patient will have more incentive to shop around for less expensive care. Critics say the real "skin in the game" strategy will return us to the days when the elderly chose between eating and paying for life-saving medicines.

I subscribe to the critics' view of the Republican Repeal and Replace program on Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. To me it's a lot like the reducing cable deal.

Or it would be if Cable was a lot more expensive and Turner Classic Movies was the same as heart treatment.

Mitt Romney was visibly angry. Well, as visibly emotional as you are likely to ever see Mitt Romney. You would be emotional too, or at least as close as Mitt Romney found himself, if your father was attacked in a major address by the President of the United States. And Governor Romney reacted in an appearance on a FoxNews morning show:

I’m certainly not going to apologize for my dad and his success in life. He was born poor. He worked his way to become very successful despite the fact that he didn’t have a college degree, and one of the things he wanted to do was provide for me and for my brother and sisters. I’m not going to apologize for my dad’s success.

Romney went on to speculate about the desperation that had caused the personal attack on his dad.

I know the president likes to attack fellow Americans. He’s always looking for a scapegoat, particularly those that have been successful like my dad.

And it had been quite an attack. The President showed unusual brutality, speaking at a community college in Lorain, Ohio, in singling out Mitt Romney's father, George, saying this:

Somebody gave me an education. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Michelle wasn’t. But somebody gave us a chance, just like these folks up here are looking for a chance.

The press quickly picked up this blatant personal attack on Mitt Romney's father, George Romney.

President Obama didn't actually mention George Romney by name. Okay, he didn't even mention in general terms "a certain person whose initials are George Romney." Alright, he didn't mention George Romney, Mitt Romney, or any Romney at all.

He did talk a little about "Republicans running for President", right? And he did focus on policy, that these Republicans running for President would "shower the wealthiest Americans with even more tax cuts."

It was a similar anti-rich-people point that Elizabeth Warren had so effectively made in Massachusetts. She went beyond mere implication, stating flat out that the self-made very wealthy owed at least part of their success to others:

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

The social contract, according to Warren, is not simply to the benefit of those in need. It is to a future of achievement.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

President Obama was making a similar policy statement. Implying that successful Americans did not necessarily make it entirely on their own.

Ostensibly, he was referring to himself and his wife. Thus his "I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Michelle wasn’t. But somebody gave us a chance..." President Obama was not talking about roads and bridges and police protection, as Elizabeth Warren had. He was speaking much more personally. He was talking about education.

So everybody kind of knew, they could tell deep inside, that this was an attack on Mitt Romney's father. Because George Romney really did make it entirely on his own. He was just the sort of success that President Obama was implying didn't exist.

Mitt Romney was not about to take it lying down. "I’m certainly not going to apologize for my dad and his success in life. He was born poor. He worked his way to become very successful despite the fact that he didn’t have a college degree..."

Good for Mitt. Apologizing for his father is exactly what he should not do. He should, in fact, be proud of his dad. George Romney's mom and dad did not have government help to send young George off to school. But that didn't stop him from becoming the President of one of the largest, most successful auto companies in the world. It did not stop him from becoming governor of Michigan and a contender for President in the 1960s.

In fact, when George Romney was a kid, the Romney's were so poor, struggling to survive in El Paso, Texas, that if it hadn't been for government relief programs young George and his parents may not have survived at all. As an adult, George referred to those early times, the times of government help, when he said, "We were the first displaced persons of the 20th century."

George Romney grew up so poor that he could have given President Obama's speech in modified form. He could have talked very personally about those government survival programs.

Somebody helped us with enough to make it through. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. My parents weren't. But somebody gave us a chance to survive, just like so many folks who need a helping hand up, struggling to survive, are looking for a chance.

Of course, George Romney never gave that speech. We can safely speculate that, had he lived to the present day, he wouldn't give it now. For one thing, he was humble about his struggles. For another he would have been loyal to his son Mitt. He wouldn't have wanted to contrast his own background with that of his born-on-third-base offspring. He wouldn't have wanted to point out an inconvenient truth:

He would have had much more in common with up-from-poverty-got-help-going-to-college Barack Obama than he would have had with born-to-wealth Mitt Romney.