Elias Isquith

Once Wolf Blitzer had, remarkably, found a way to further insult the intelligence of his audience — asking the candidates why their wives would be the best First Lady* — I figured it was just about time for me to stop watching the debate and do any number of other things with my evening. Besides, I’d already seen the first hour or so (however long it was; it’s hard to keep track of time when you’re drinking, which, this being a GOP debate, I was) and witnessed Mitt Romney most definitively put an end to Newtmentum.

The whole debate went pretty terribly for Newt, but either this or the moment when he awkwardly tried to his attack-the-moderator shtick, to diminished returns, was the low point.

The amateur political scientist in me rebels at the idea of putting as much stock into the debates as I am, but I think it’s undeniable that Gingrich has lived (and died) almost entirely off of his debate performances. His appeal was a supposed ability to humiliate and silence President Obama during a series of “Lincoln-Douglas-styled” debates (eye-roll); and that ability was founded upon twin planks. One, he could defend himself against imagined but no doubt scurrilous attacks from the President (whom the South Carolina audience saw in Juan Cole Williams ); and two, he’d be able to take it to Obama forcefully and unapologetically.

Well, in this back-and-forth with Mitt, he failed in both tasks. Not only did he wilt in the face of Mitt’s unctuous onslaught (probably to some degree out of surprise, but also because he’s a textbook bully), but he failed miserably in counter-attacking Romney, opting to take a high road that he had no right to claim on grounds temperamental or electoral (he was far from a prohibitive favorite in the Sunshine State). Topping it all off is the fact that as far as I could see, Newt almost never made eye contact with Romney — not when he was attacking him, nor when he himself was being attacked. We’re social creatures and as that cliché says, 90% of our communication is non-verbal. Voters are judging candidates as much (probably more) by what they look like as what they say.

So, yes, Newt did terribly and I think it’s fair to say — finally — that his candidacy is effectively over. He’ll notch a respectable number in Flordia, I imagine, and he’ll run some more cutthroat attack ads; he won’t go quietly into that good night. But he’s finished.

The flip-side of the narrative has become one about Romney somehow exploding out of his consistent pattern of mediocrity in these debates and flashing signs of a newborn and hard-won talent that could give the President real problems come fall. I’m not sold. I thought Romney did indeed come off as more of a human being than he usually does, but that’s because he was legitimately desperate. For the first time, he didn’t have that unbecoming air of smugness, that condescending, paternalistic smile. He was, for the first time, acting as if he believed he could lose. And it looked good on him.

But I think what’s mostly got people excited here is the thrill of the new. Romney had been so unwaveringly disciplined, such an automaton, that any slight divergence from his chosen path was bound to be well-received, especially by a press corps and commentariat that has long since become worn-out with these debates and with what has been in many ways a rather dull primary in general. A useful example, I think, is to remember those handful of moments every year during which the President supposedly flashes some anger and reveals some fire. People then, too, get all worked up, as if Obama had announced himself the next Jesse Jackson. It never happens.

Remember: these are extremely successful people; the likelihood that they’ll stop doing that which they believe has gotten them this far? Not high.

Another thing I’d keep in mind when analysis Romney’s performance is the fact that, interspersed

throughout his otherwise likable performance were still those clanging moments of intense inauthenticity and outright lying. His claim to not have seen his own ad — an ad from his campaign, not Super PAC, so it included the “I approve this message” boilerplate — was not only absurd and insulting, but it was a stupid move that he’s already tried (and failed) to pull off before! He had a similar slip into old habits in an exchange with Gingrich during which he tried to claim that, because his investments in Goldman, Sachs are part of a blind trust, he should not be held accountable:

Romney answered the charge this way: “First of all, my investments are not made by me. My investments for the last ten years have been in a blind trust, managed by a trustee. Secondly, the investments that they made, we learned about this, as we made our financial disclosure, had been in mutual funds and bonds. I don’t own stock in either. There are bonds that the investor has held through mutual funds.”

Now the problem — which, if you’re a follower of Romney, you can probably already guess — is that someone with a lot of credibility vis-à-vis high-end investment says that Romney’s wrong on this one. His name? Mitt Romney:

Mitt Romney defends his investments in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere on the grounds he can’t control money in a “blind trust.” But in 1994 Romney was attacking his opponent, Senator Ted Kennedy, over his blind trust’s investments, calling the move “an age-old ruse.”

*This, by the way, was a totally subtle and not at all sexist way for Blitzer to allow the Not Gingriches the opportunity to brag about their longstanding relationships, as if the solidity of one’s marriage is just another consumer activity, like investing in Goldman, Sachs, that an aspiring candidate must defend before the masses.

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Noting that, for the first time in a generation, inequality will be a major theme of a US Presidential election, Michael Cohen writes how the result in November may establish a new conventional wisdom about electoral politics in America:

With recent polls suggesting that Obama has used the inequality discussion to reclaim the mantle of protector of the middle class, the most immediate outcome of this shift is that he will wage his re-election battle on far friendlier political turf.

But the more important question is whether the sudden willingness of Democrats to tackle the issue of income inequality has the potential to live on far past the next election. For decades, Republicans have successfully portrayed the bogeyman of big government as the enemy of America’s middle class. The emerging focus on America’s glaring economic disparity – and its direct and deleterious impact on the middle class – suggests that Democrats are willing to use their own bogeyman of Wall Street greed in response.

Indeed, it’s quite likely that the election will be a struggle between these two conflicting views. If Democrats are successful in such an endeavour, it has the potential to make 2012 more than just another election, but one that could shift the very narrative of American politics.

I’m feeling too lazy to rut around in my archives for the proof, but back when Obama first started inching his way towards embracing a milquetoast version of the 99% rhetoric — when he was more or less at his popularity’s nadir; when it looked quite likely that he’d stand as the Most Reasonable One-Term President in the Room — I worried that his haphazard glomming-onto Occupy, and subsequent electoral loss, would further cement among media élite the article of faith that Class is monster that cannot be named in US politics. He’d lose for wasting so much precious time reaching out to Tea Party types in 2011 and rhetorically bear-hugging austerity (and also because of various things outside of his control); but the media would end up saying he lost because he turned to the Left.

I’ve no doubt that, if he loses, this is going to happen. Hell, he hasn’t lost yet — he’s looking increasingly decent shape, in fact — and some are already spinning that yarn. But the flip-side, which was always there but didn’t seem very likely to mean much circa August 2011, is that if Obama wins, the same dynamic comes to play but in reverse. Suddenly it’s a stroke of pure genius that caused Plouffe & co. to realize that America was no longer a center-right country, that class politics were back with a vengeance, yadda-yadda-yadda. (I should note that I don’t think in this scenario that the two versions of this spin-job are proposed with equal force — i.e., I doubt that there wouldn’t still be a bunch saying how dangerous for a candidate class politics are, even if Obama wins in a route; it’s what they get paid for.)

What’s worth mentioning, though, is that it’s almost certain that, in either scenario, the narrative is at most only partially true. If you’re left-of-center, it’s a nice story that Obama’s poll numbers are on the rise because of his rhetorical focus on iniquity. But most political scientists — and that part of you that can at least try to see things outside the prism of Meaning — are likely to tell you a different tale: the economy is, as of late, progressing from atrocious to merely bad. And with things looking tentatively on the up-and-up — and with a profound distaste for the GOP still prevalent — Americans are starting to think that maybe the President ain’t so bad after all.

Not quite as gripping as a pronouncement on the very ideological essence of the American voter, true. But facts, however prosaic, can be stubborn things.

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As E.D. notes, this is good to see:

Kain is skeptical, however, that we’ll see other politicians follow Christie’s lead on this one and embrace a more rational policy towards non-violent drug offenders:

It’s certainly a welcome brand of conservative politics. But will it really appeal to other conservative politicians? In states where the drug war is far more popular than in New Jersey, I doubt this line of reasoning is going to resonate. Furthermore, most politicians aren’t Christie and can’t pull off the tough and sincere thing the way Christie can.

I’m congenitally not one optimism, but I actually think there’s more reason to think that the height of — to put it in terms a Christie voters might like — the Big Government War On Drugs is already or will be soon behind us. The main reason being that, as others have noted within the context of debating Ron Paul’s relative merits, when it comes to incarceration, the War On Drugs is primarily an effort of the States. And as everyone is painfully aware, the Great Recession has been an absolute disaster for most States’ budgets. So that’s why we’re seeing an uptick in Governors — often conservatives ones — proposing initiatives vis-à-vis drug-related arrests that only recently would’ve been political poison.

Take Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, for example:

The Georgia House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to create a commission that will recommend reforms to Georgia’s prison system aimed at curbing costs without sacrificing public safety.

The bill, which passed 169-1 and now moves to the Senate, came less than a week after lawmakers gave final passage to Deal’s plan to address a looming budget shortfall in the HOPE Scholarship program.Georgia has the nation’s fourth-highest incarceration rate, forcing the state to spend more than $1 billion a year on prisons.

“[Deal’s bill] and the reforms that it will ultimately create will allow Georgia to stop wasting money on expensive short-term prison services for drug addicts and the mentally ill,” Rep. Jay Neal, R-Lafayette, the bill’s chief sponsor and one of the governor’s House floor leaders, told his legislative colleagues.“

Instead, it will allow the state to provide treatment that helps the individual, relieves our overburdened justice system and saves the state money.”

Or similar initiatives in Missouri, Alabama, and Oregon (or in more nascent forms elsewhere).

And as this Truthout article points out, this is something with genuine bi-partisan cooperation:

The push to reform the prison system has brought unlikely allies together. Earlier this year, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People joined forces with Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich who is part of a new prison reform initiative called Right on Crime.

In September, Inimai Chettiar, policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union wrote about speaking alongside members of Right on Crime and the faith-based Prison Fellowship at the American Bar Association’s initiative to “Save States Money, Reform Criminal Justice and Keep the Public Safe.”

“Never before have so many legislators, governors and advocates from all sides of the aisle come together with a single unifying theme on criminal justice: we need to end our addiction to incarceration,” she writes.

This isn’t to say, of course, that the battle is won and the War On Drugs as we know it is over. But there’s definitely cause for optimism. After all, politicians are almost always following the people — and if a savvy pol like Christie is moving out in front of this issue, it’s likely that we’ll find that most people have long since changed their mind about what constitutes acceptable treatment for non-violent offenders.

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