Cognitive dissonance…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is a bitch.

In general, rather than resolve cognitive dissonance by changing one of the dissonant ideas (“Obama is a genius” plus “Obama looked like a stammering fool” means “Maybe Obama’s not such a genius after all”—or even worse, “Maybe Romney’s smarter than Obama), a person will try to rationalize the dissonance away.

Thus, the list of excuses for Obama’s poor performance grows apace:

1. He’s Just Too Interested In Finding Common Ground and Rising Above Petty Disputes To Lower Himself To Being An Effective Debater…

2. Obama’s Empathetic Nature and Fellow-Feeling For All Humanity Restrains Him From Humiliating a Lesser Life-Form, Such As Mitt Romney…

3. Obama Was “Too Professorial” To Explain Complex Thoughts To A Lay Audience…

4. Obama Cares Too Much About “Substance” To Debate It…

5. Obama’s “Too Authentic” To Do His Homework For A Debate…

6. Obama’s Too “Cerebral” To “Engage the Issues” in Debate…

7. Obama Is “Too Contemplative” To Debate, Which Might Make Him Too Cool For School…

8. Obama Finds Debates “Absurd” and Beneath His Dignity And So Must Strain to Simply Keep His Wits About Him…

9. Obama is Too High-Minded To Handle Romney’s Lies…

10. Obama Is At His Best When He Is Entirely Unchallenged And Simply Making Unrebutted Assertions To An Adoring Crowd.

Read the whole thing.

Who does Obama answer to?

The New Neo Posted on by

Elizabeth Scalia (The Anchoress) gets it almost right, IMHO:

I think the Obama administration ”” the whole boiling of them, and Mrs. Pelosi, Mr. Reid and their posses and pals ”” have become so confident that a victory in this election means they will never again have to answer to anyone about anything, that in their heads, they’re already there.

I said she gets it almost right. So what are my reservations? Winning this election will only solidify the process, but I think they already reached the point she describes quite some time ago.

In 2008 I tried to explain to a lot of friends just what I found so disturbing about Obama and about the press coverage of Obama. Most either didn’t seem to get what I meant, or they just didn’t see it my way. I’m not sure how they see it now, but from the vibes I’m getting I am almost certain that most of them will be voting for Obama again. They glean all their information from sources such as NPR and CNN and the Boston Globe and the NY Times and trust them implicitly, at the same time seeing me as slightly dotty for reading outside that narrow band of opinion and thinking those alternatives have any credence.

It’s tiresome to keep railing on the MSM and its bias, although that bias is a key part of the problem we face. So I’ll shut up now and we can listen to former Democratic pollster Pat Cadell do it:

Elizabeth Scalia adds:

Win in November and that’s the game. Between the compliant, incurious and obsequious press, a cadre of fully-established-and-in-place White House Czars, continual “flick of the wrist, law of the land” Executive Orders, a noodle-spined congress, a senate controlled by a man who feels no compunction about stopping any-and-all-legislation not completely to his liking, and a couple more Supreme Court Justices?

“Hey, transmit to Vladimir (and Chavez, and Ahmadinejad and who-all else) that if they can just wait until after the election ”” then I can do as I damn please. I’ve got the precedents. I’ve got the tools, I’ve got the talent; I’ve got the drones, foreign and domestic.

And I’ll never have to answer to the press, the congress or the American people, again.”

Basically, all they have to do is grit their teeth, hold on and ”” with the help of their mainstream pals ”” plow through any pesky, irritating Benghazi resistance. If they emerge victorious in November? The world is their oyster, with an R in every month.

And by the way, if that happens, there will be plenty of blame to go around, but the major culprit will not be Obama ”” it will be a mainstream media that has been completely, happily, determinedly derelict in its duty to the public trust for at least the past decade, but certainly since Obama emerged as a serious candidate in 2007. A republic cannot withstand the loss of an unencumbered press, and our press wasn’t even pressured into its encumbrances; it took them on willfully, carried Obama into the White House on its shoulders and then bowed out of the Oval chamber, ass-first and with besotted trembling.

Ironic, isn’t it? Freedom of the press is one of the liberties for which Americans have fought and died, and yet the free press freely entered into this arrangement, of its own free will—in order to get “access,” a place at the very best cocktail parties, and to further their self-appointed mission of “telling a conflicted people a higher truth.”

The new unemployment figures

The New Neo Posted on by

This month’s figure is 7.8%.

James Pethokoukis offers his usual analysis, and summarizes thusly: “Only in an era of depressingly diminished expectations could the September jobs report be called a good one. It really isn’t. Not at all.”

Obama says exactly what you’d expect him to be saying: “We are moving forward again.”

And meanwhile, there’s a secondary brouhaha about remarks by former GE CEO Jack Welch that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is cooking the books to favor Obama.

But I don’t think they even need to cook the books. Statistics such as the unemployment rate are often misleading even when done properly. Personally (although I don’t doubt Obama would do it if he could, and if he felt it necessary), I’m with Keith Hall, former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who had this to say:

There ’s nothing wrong with the numbers. The only issue is the interpretation of the numbers. The numbers are what they are.

The article goes on:

The unemployment rate estimate is derived from a survey of households, which came up with an estimate that 863,000 jobs were added for the month.

But the separate establishment survey from which the official payrolls number is derived reported a more modest seasonally adjusted gain of 114,000 jobs in September. That was below the consensus forecast of 118,000, though the previous two months were revised higher.

Mr. Hall said the inconsistent reports reflect the different samples used in the two surveys, one focused on households the other on businesses. The establishment survey has a huge sample size of 141,000 business and agencies covering 486,000 worksites, whereas the household survey covers just 60,000 homes.

“The household survey is much smaller. When you look at something like labor force and employment levels, the uncertainty of those numbers is much larger,” said Mr. Hall. “Within two months, the household survey could show the unemployment rate eking back up.”

I know that politics is about spin these days. But I really don’t know why anyone would pay a whole lot of attention to an unemployment rate that goes slightly up or slightly down one month before an election and think it means very much. What’s far more important is that the president has had four years in office, and the economy has been bad the whole time. All you have to do is imagine how the media would spin these figures if Bush (or for that matter, Romney, or any other Republican) were in office and you know there’s no need to cook the books.

[ADDENDUM: Paul Mirengoff of Powerline points out a good illustration of what Keith Hall was talking about, concerning the household survey numbers vs. the business survey [emphasis mine]:

So how did the Department of Labor come up with an unemployment rate that indicates significant improvement in the jobs picture? It found the alleged improvement through its survey of households. As Hassett explains, the Labor Department’s jobs report is always based on two surveys, one of households and one of establishments.

Professional economists and the press usually emphasize the establishment survey because it is considered less volatile. This month, that survey continues to show the usual weakness in the job market. But the household survey purports to show massive improvement.

Hassett says that during the Bush presidency, the MSM discounted the household survey whenever it revealed good news, claiming that the numbers are suspect. I find the latest household survey numbers ”” coming just before the climax of this election and contradicting more reliable data ”” to be suspect, indeed.

Again, it’s the spin that differs. By offering several numbers from which to pick and choose, the BLS gives the MSM the opportunity to tell the public which one is the more important, based on whether they want to help or hurt the administration.

And boy, am I ever getting tired of putting so many posts in that “press” category. But the topic comes up again and again and again.]

Obama: just too nice a guy

The New Neo Posted on by

The spin from the Obama camp as reported by Politico is that Obama’s just too nice a guy for politics, too focused on the truth and too interested in getting it out to the American people. Some excerpts, some of which are unintentionally funny:

Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said on a conference call with reporters that Obama would reassess his approach in future debates with Romney ”” confrontations for which the president is “very, very eager,” Axelrod said…

Asked why Obama did not bring up several of the central themes in his brief against Romney, Axelrod answered: …“His interest was in honoring the American people with honest answers to serious questions.”

Obama has never been the nation’s most forceful debater, and he makes no secret of his disdain for the theatrical side of politics. If his conduct on the debate stage with Romney seemed oddly passive, it was in some ways just another manifestation of the president’s restrained approach to communicating with the electorate, whom he seems to believe ”” in the face of all existing evidence ”” are not swayed by electoral artifice…

This is somebody who, at his core, wants to have smart, rational conversations that result in people using common sense. He’s not a fire-breathing divider,” said Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, the vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee…

An early Obama endorser in the 2008 cycle, Rybalk recalled that all through that race “people were saying he should go for the jugular more with Hillary [Clinton] or with [John] McCain.”

“He’s not a person who necessarily loves or lives in the world of radical attack politics,” Rybak said.

And here’s my personal favorite:

“Gov. Romney may dance around his positions. But if you want to be president, you owe the American people the truth,” Obama said.

I said a lot of those quotes were unintentionally funny. But here’s something that’s intentionally funny (hat tip: Ace) from The Onion: “Mitt Adopts New ‘Ronnie Ferocious’ Persona for Debates”:

…Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney appeared tonight at the University of Denver’s Magness Arena as Ronnie Ferocious, the aggressive, no-rules punk-rock persona he has reportedly adopted for his three debates against President Barack Obama.

Wearing a sleeveless cutoff suit jacket, tight leather pants, and a blue tie knotted around his head of spiky, red-white-and-blue-streaked hair, Romney swaggered on stage, took his position beside Obama, and ordered debate moderator Jim Lehrer to “f**king do this already.”

“You know what? I’ll ask the first question,” the former Massachusetts governor said before putting out his cigarette on his forearm and flicking the butt at Lehrer.

And perhaps the strangest thing about the Onion piece is that, as best I can tell, it appears to have been written before the debate.

Two kinds of shock

The New Neo Posted on by

It occurs to me that last night’s debate was a shock to both left and right.

The left was shocked because they had really believed Obama’s hype, and he fell so far below their expectations—although perhaps it would be more accurate to say he failed so abysmally to live up to their beliefs.

The right was shocked because they really believed the negative media spin about Romney and he rose so far above their expectations—although perhaps it would be more accurate to say he succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

And maybe that says even more about the difference between left and right than it does about the difference between Obama and Romney.

The Luntz focus group

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been watching those Luntz focus groups of independents and undecideds for years, and they tend to drive me nuts.

They seem to “focus” on things I find trivial or irrelevant. Their perceptions usually differ tremendously from mine. I don’t ever think I’ve been undecided about a presidential election in my lifetime, certainly not anywhere near close to Election Day. The only thing I’ve ever wavered on at times is who to vote for in the primaries. And even that has usually been a relatively easy task. So I don’t really understand “undecideds.”

That’s why last night’s Luntz focus group astounded me. They seemed thoughtful and articulate. Is that just because they agreed with me, for once? Or was it because there was something about Romney’s performance that spoke to them in particular, something that answered a question they’d been asking without even realizing it? Something, perhaps about leadership?

The Emperor’s New Clothes

The New Neo Posted on by

Joe Klein—yes, that Joe Klein—had this to say in Time’s Swampland about last night’s debate:

Well, I’m with all the other talking heads: Mitt Romney won this debate. Barack Obama lost it. I mean, he got his butt kicked. It was, in fact, one of the most inept performances I’ve ever seen by a sitting President. Romney”“credit where it’s due”“was calm, clear, convincing (even when he was totally full of it) and nearly human. The real mystery was Obama. Where on earth was he?…

Did the President send out his body double tonight? Because if that was the actual Barack Obama out there, I’m not sure he can communicate well enough to be an effective President in a time of trouble, to say nothing of winning a second term.

Remember the Hans Christian Anderson fable “The Emperor’s New Clothes”? We’ve sometimes jokingly compared Obama to the naked emperor in the story. But who ever really thought it would come true that so many of Obama’s erstwhile admirers would be afflicted with such sudden and deep doubts about his competence? And all because of a single debate?

Yeah, it may not last; a couple of weeks is almost an eternity in politics, and cockiness is never a good idea. But I’m heartily enjoying today for the sheer pleasure of remarks like Joe Klein’s, and the dawning of hope.

And I went back and reread the Emperor story, which I hadn’t seen in so many years that I was a mere child when I last looked at it. But it’s even more apropos than I thought. Have a read; it’s not long.

Obama and that Katrina vote

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Ken” points out something I hadn’t been aware of before: Obama was one of a small minority in the Senate who voted against the bill that waived the Stafford Act in order to make assistance funds available to the New Orleans Katrina victims without their having to match them with a 10% contribution.

That’s the same Stafford Act he lied about in his 2007 Hampton speech, the waiver that had actually occurred several weeks before he made the speech, the waiver that he voted against.

See this for a list of those who voted for and against. You’ll note that Obama’s “nay” vote was one of only 14 cast against the act, almost all of them liberal Democrats. No doubt he would say he knew the act would pass and so he felt okay voting against it in order to protest the Iraq war funds that were also part of the bill. But there’s something profoundly distasteful and almost grotesque about him voting against the waiver, knowing the bill had passed despite his vote, and then lying to the audience to make them angry that the waiver hadn’t happened.