Talk about tough acts to follow! But as Roger Simon says:
Has Mitt Romney been upstaged on his big night?
Well, sure, but so what?
Romney seems almost an afterthought, the guy behind the scenes who helped the whole thing come together. He’s pretty good at picking ’em, though (and I’m not talking about Clint Eastwood), isn’t he? And isn’t that a major part of a president’s task?
[ADDENDUM: Clint Eastwood is 82???]
…for malaria?
Perhaps; this sounds very promising.
Malaria is still an enormous scourge in Africa, killing millions—especially children—and debilitating many others:
According to the World malaria report 2011, there were about 216 million cases of malaria (with an uncertainty range of 149 million to 274 million) and an estimated 655 000 deaths in 2010 (with an uncertainty range of 537 000 to 907 000). Malaria mortality rates have fallen by more than 25% globally since 2000, and by 33% in the WHO African Region. Most deaths occur among children living in Africa where a child dies every minute from malaria.
I wrote about the issues involved, including the use and/or banning of DDT, back in February of 2009:
In 2006 WHO lifted its ban on the insecticide, and many believe the substance’s adverse environmental and health effects have been greatly exaggerated. For example, South Africa found that it was a very effective tool in the anti-malaria arsenal, with no seeming ill effects. And, as even this environmental group observes as it reluctantly agrees that wider use of DDT would be a good thing, “we believe that the benefits derived from eliminating malaria through the use of DDT far outweigh any dangers.”
If this single-dose cure pans out, the DDT controversy could become irrelevant. It’s a big “if,” though; so far there have only been animal trials.
[Hat tip: Instapundit.]
One of the many things that impressed me last night was the tear in Scott Walker’s eye while Ryan was speaking.
That teardrop resonated with the commentary on blogs that are usually so critical and cynical. Simply put, a lot of people on the right got all choked up.
As for me—I don’t much like speeches ordinarily, but this one certainly held my attention, and I was moved by it in a way I’m not usually, although not to tears.
What made it different? I could use a cheap word like “charisma,” but that really is just a shorthand for something inexplicable. I think Ryan’s appeal is greater than charisma. He’s something unique in political life right now, a person who seems sincere. Not just fake-sincere, but honestly sincere (as Conrad Birdie might say). And also passionate, and able to convey that intensity along cool smarts. Both hot and cold, in other words.
And of course good-looking doesn’t hurt. But good-looking wouldn’t matter much if the other factors weren’t there.
Last night Ryan wielded a stiletto, or perhaps a hammer, on Obama and the left. He did it with brains, a smile, and an earnest do-good quality that would melt the heart of any mother, grandparent, father (or girlfriend). As in that recent Onion parody (“Do you get chills just thinking about how strong my appeal actually is?”), the left recognizes all of this, and will set out to destroy him, immediately.
Silver was bad enough.
And brown is emerging.
How boring can we get?
One thing’s for sure—nobody gets a white car because it doesn’t show the dirt.
Paul Ryan must really have frightened the left, because they can’t just disagree with him, they must discredit him by saying liar, liar, pants on fire. Article after article has appeared purporting to check and expose his terrible lies.
Only trouble is, they’re misrepresenting (otherwise known as “lying”?) about his lies, including what Ryan actually said about the closing of the GM plant in Janesway. Ed Morrissey explains that Ryan clearly acknowledged in his speech that the plant was slated to close before Obama took office:
Ryan acknowledged that the plant had already been slated for shutdown in 2008. That was his point. People voted for him because they thought Obama represented hope to get the plant back in operation. In fact, that had been known since at least February 2008, when Obama came to Janesville to speak, and specifically addressed the plant closure in his remarks, delivered at the plant itself ”” and promised to keep it and other plants like it open “for the next hundred years.”
Read the whole thing. And also this.
It is clear that, for the most part, fact-checking by the media has become (or maybe it has long been?) an Orwellian proposition.
I don’t know whether this sort of attack works. Liberals are already firmly in Obama’s camp, and conservatives in Romney/Ryan’s, so it’s irrelevant to members of those groups. It’s those pesky Independents and moderates who cannot ever be predicted or understood—at least not by me—and they’re the ones who need to be reached.
My guess is that many of them are still not paying all that much attention, but what do I know? What does grab them politically is a puzzlement to me; how can anyone still be undecided?
8:11: I just turned on the TV, and John McCain is speaking. Remember him? He was the wrong man for the year 2008.
But one thing that occurs to me is that he still seems pretty healthy. Remember all the fuss about how old he was, and how he might not live to serve out his term? If he’s anything like his mother, he’s got at least 20 good years ahead of him (the lady’s 100 years old).
And by the way–Happy 76th Birthday, John! (Yes, it’s today.)
8:30: Now Pam Bondi and Sam Olens address the crowd, and they look and sound like they’re about to present an Academy Award at the Oscars.
10:27: I got busy with something else and missed the next few speakers (including Condi?). Now Paul Ryan steps up to the plate.
Slow start, but he’s really giving it to Obama now: “These past four years we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What’s missing is leadership in the White House.” And “The man assumed office almost four years ago ”“ isn’t it about time he assumed responsibility?” Ouch, that’s gotta hurt.
And this is a clear bid for the disaffected Obama youth vote:
College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.
I’ve said many times that I’m not really into speeches, but that one was stellar. Romney did well in picking Ryan. If I were Obama, I’d be feeling just a little bit shaky now—even if I were a narcissist.
Or maybe especially if I were a narcissist.
I turned to CNN, curious to see what they’d say about Ryan. Wolf Blitzer seems to be quite impressed. The CNN panel agreed (I missed some of their names); “a new Reagan,” “a jolt of optimistic adrenalin.” Even James Carville couldn’t find anything bad to say about Ryan. Hmmm.
Now I’m checking out MSNBC’s commentary, just because I’m a masochist (no, actually, it’s because I want to see what the attack on Ryan will be). Gee, the biggest criticism they have of Ryan is that he isn’t distancing himself enough from the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush administration? Ryan isn’t conservative enough for them??
Remember back in June when it was the 40th anniversary of the “napalm” girl photo that so shockingly depicted some of the civilian casualties in the Vietnam War? I wrote this piece in PJ for the occasion, in an attempt to set the record straight for the zillionth time.
But the NY Times, although no doubt familiar with the truth, stubbornly resists it, as Professor Joseph Campbell and Instapundit report. Campbell writes:
It has taken more than three months, but the New York Times today published a sort-of correction of its erroneous description about the napalm attack in Vietnam in June 1972 that preceded the famous photograph of children terrified and wounded by the bombing.” Plus this: “[T]he phrasing ”” ”˜while the planes that carried out the attack were “American planes” in the sense that they were made in the United States, they were flown by the South Vietnamese Air Force, not American forces’ ”” makes it sound like a bunch of teenagers borrowing daddy’s car.”
And Glenn Reynolds adds:
The narrative ”” Americans evil baby-killers! ”” must be preserved. The self-esteem of an entire generation of Boomer journalists requires it.
Reynolds as correct that a great deal of this is ego-driven; it’s hard to issue a correction no matter how wrong one turns out to have been. But a great deal of it is also ideology-driven. After all, since it is an axiom that the Americans are evil baby-killers, what difference does accuracy make in the pursuit of that Higher Truth?
Nothing whatsoever new here. As I wrote in my PJ piece:
As familiar as the photo has become, the story behind it is less so. For example, if the introductory paragraph of this essay had read: “She was the nine-year-old girl who was burned by napalm dropped by American forces in South Vietnam,” how many readers would have caught the error?
In fact, it was the South Vietnamese who were doing the bombing, but the idea that Kim was burned at the hands of Americans persists. That is only one of several common misconceptions about the attack, because the incident has been widely misrepresented and misunderstood through errors of omission and commission.
The Times’ error is one of commission. And its retraction is a joke, albeit an unfunny one.
There were a lot of good speakers last night. I didn’t watch them all, but Artur Davis and Mia Love especially impressed me—Davis because he’s a changer, and Love because she showed that a demographic which usually goes Democratic (young black female) has a place in the Republican Party if attracted to its philosophy and principles. Hope she wins and goes to Congress, even if media outlets like MSNBC pretended she does not exist. To them, she doesn’t.
But last night it really was the Ann Romney and Chris Christie show. They were the ones who aroused the most curiosity, and they both delivered.
I’d seen Ann Romney speak before, so I was already familiar with how good she is: very. I was further impressed, as she stepped up to the podium last night, with how incredibly attractive and young she looked. Whoever did her hair and makeup hit it out of the park.
As did Ann herself. She exhibits an impressive combination of ease, grace, warmth, intensity, and sincerity. Her delivery is wonderful, too: clear and strong, never strident or shrill. The message was fairly simple: I love this guy, he’s never let me down, and he won’t let you down either.
What’s more, she even managed to touch on a subject of interest to me: his good deeds as a private citizen. Yesterday I expressed the wish that this information be placed before the public, but that it wouldn’t be easy to do it right:
It definitely would have to be done through surrogates, though, and the touch would have to be very delicate.
And that’s a good description of what Ann Romney did when she said:
Mitt doesn’t like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point.
In one sentence she both mentioned it and de-politicized it as much as possible, while getting across the idea that it’s sincere rather than a strategic ploy. I hope others at the convention will go on to flesh out some of the details of what Mitt actually did; it’s pretty impressive.
Of course, none of this will ever earn any kudos from the left. I went to a few blogs of that persuasion last night just to see what commenters were saying, and sure enough it was the usual snipey nasty “she’s a privileged robot” stuff.
On to Christie, one of my favorite politicians (not an oxymoron). I thought his speech was stirring, although others criticized him for not being an attack dog throwing red meat to the Obama-detesting base. But that’s a feature, not a bug. After all, the goal is to appeal to independents and swing voters, and he did that in the very best way, by contrasting Republican principles and policies with Democratic ones, and doing it in the manner he’s master at: clear, concise, immediately understandable, powerful and yet conversational.
Cristie has what they used to call the common touch. Even his girth, so unusual for a politician today, conveys that impression, as does his accent, which speaks to me personally of home. Christie took the high road, and it was a stroke of genius for him to basically ignore Obama, which probably infuriated Obama even more than excoriating him would have.
Christie is a Republican of a certain type that’s rather rare: the urban, northeastern, tough-talking guy. The closest Republican I can think of to Christie is Giuliani, another Italian (Christie is only half) former prosecutor from the New York City area (Christie was born in Newark; close enough). And there’s another Italian-American politician from New York that he reminds me of, at least physically:
Christie is taller than La Guardia, it’s true—but then, who isn’t?
…are speaking tonight.
Kelly Ayotte.
Chris Christie.
Ann Romney.
And a neo-Republican, Artur Davis. Love those changers!
[ADDENDUM: And how could I overlook Scott Walker?]
True confessions: this is me.
You never know when you might need…:
On my last flight, my suitcase weighed exactly and precisely 50 pounds. Whew. And that doesn’t count the box of things I sent ahead of me.
And should he?
Take a look. I’ve thought about this question before, and it’s quite a paradox. Here’s a guy the opposition is eager to paint as a rapacious and cruel capitalist exploiter, but who has been among the most generous of men with his time and his money.
But he’s also been mighty reticent about bragging on this stuff, so how best to get the message across to the American people? Somehow it would be highly embarrassing to have other people talk about him that way in his presence, so it probably would be better to do some of it when he’s not around. It definitely would have to be done through surrogates, though, and the touch would have to be very delicate.
Apparently not Obama.
For all the furor about how Obama has the female vote, it turns out that women are hardly monolithic on that score, and that there’s a big divide between the married and the un.
First, let’s look at men and women in general:
Obama-Romney (among registered voters)
Men: 43-51
Women: 49-43
Big difference, right? Yes. But let’s break it down further (remember, the first figure is support for Obama):
Married men: 35-59
Unmarried men: 51-41Married women: 40-55
Unmarried women: 57-32
So although women definitely support Obama more often than men do, among married women Romney is the leader by a mile. Unmarried people—both men and women—prefer Obama, and married ones of both sexes do not.
Is it actually marriage that makes the difference, or something else? If you look at the poll you can see that there are other factors that might account for at least some of it. For example, Obama leads among younger people (more likely to be unmarried), and his advantage is super-strong among blacks (who have a lower marriage rate). And only people whose incomes are below 50K support Obama; those above are for Romney. Younger people are less likely to make that much money, and more likely to be unmarried as well.
You better believe that Obama and the Democrats are aware of those statistics, as well as these:
A new report from the Pew Research Center analyzing Census Bureau data found that only 51 percent of Americans 18 and over were married in 2010, compared with 72 percent in 1960. Among Hispanics and African-Americans, the decline is even more steep.
But want to hear a shocking statistic? Obama is doing worse among unmarried women than John Kerry did.