Two smart candidates, they felt smart

The New Neo Posted on by

Another thing I noticed about that Fox News poll was question #11:

Which candidate do you think is smarter?

Barack Obama 42%
Mitt Romney 33%
(Both are) 6%

Putting aside the question of just how smart Barack Obama is, this shows me that a lot of people aren’t really familiar with Romney. Because he’s really smart. And his smartness includes the dimensions on which Obama is usually considered smart by his admirers (again, the point isn’t whether you agree with them): articulateness and academic credentials.

Romney is very well-spoken, and he seems to perform just as well without a teleprompter. What’s more, even though we don’t know Obama’s grades but only his degrees, Romney’s got the same top degree, only more so. Romney is a graduate of Harvard Law who earned a simultaneous MBA from Harvard Business School, a tricky and difficult feat that not many accomplish or even attempt.

Unlike with Obama, we even know quite a bit about Romney’s grades. Take a look:

Romney graduated in 1971 [from Brigham Young] with a 3.97 grade-point average. Because he ranked at the top of his class in the College of Humanities, he was chosen to speak on graduation day…Mitt decided to attend Harvard Business School, but his father thought he should obtain a law degree, so he enrolled in a joint program at Harvard Law School. In 1975, he graduated from Harvard Law cum laude and from Harvard Business School, where he was named a Baker Scholar and was in the top 5 percent of his class.

Back in December of 2011, the NY Times spotlighted Romney’s years at Harvard Business School:

Mr. Romney recruited a murderers’ row of some of the most distinguished students in the class. “He and I said, hey, let’s handpick some superstars,” said Howard Serkin, a classmate…

Mr. Romney served as a kind of team captain, the other members said, pushing and motivating the others.

“He wanted to make straight A’s,” Mr. Serkin said. “He wanted our study group to be No. 1.” Sometimes Mr. Romney arrived early to run his numbers a few extra times. And if his partners were not prepared, “he was not afraid of saying: ”˜You’re letting us down. We want to be the best,’ ” Mr. Serkin added…

Mr. Romney was in his element. His class performances were outstanding; his peers described him as precise, convincing and charismatic. He won the high grades he craved…If Mr. Romney melded with the school intellectually, he kept some distance from it socially. He was married and a parent. In the liberal precincts of Cambridge, he and his wife, Ann Romney ”” pictured wearing matching sweaters at a fall 1973 business school clambake, with their two sons on their laps ”” seemed like they were from “out on the prairies,” Mr. Brownstein said.

The future governor abstained from things many other students were doing: drinking coffee or alcohol, swearing, smoking…

I especially note this, in contrast to Obama:

Today, Mr. Romney does not speak much about his business school degree. But he remains quite attached to the star study group he put together all those years ago, faithfully attending dinners the men hold every five years…[H]e does not miss a chance to return to that setting. Mr. Romney even showed up the year he was put in charge of cleaning up the troubled 2002 Olympic games, stopping by for an hour before flying to Athens for a meeting of the International Olympic Committee…

The men gathered most recently in 2009, after Mr. Romney’s unsuccessful presidential bid. His old friends asked him about the experience, and he pointed out how much simpler decisions are in business than in politics. “You end up taking into consideration things that wouldn’t be important in a business decision,” Ronald J. Naples remembers him saying.

Not an unsmart man. Not at all.

[ADDENDUM: By the way, here’s that photo that appeared in the NY Times.

Almost hippies! Except for Ann’s collar and earrings. Otherwise, she’s got a bit of a Patty Hearst vibe going. And those matching fisherman knit sweaters are a little much. But that particular fashion was protean: it worked for preppies and it worked for the hip, depending on how neat or how raggedy the sweater was.]

Romney leads Obama in Fox poll

The New Neo Posted on by

You might say, “So what?”

And I’d be inclined to agree with you. Polls, especially this far ahead of the game, are not all that meaningful.

But I’m still drawn to talking about them, because they can indicate trends. And they’re all we’ve got to measure public opinion, other than anecdotal evidence culled from our own small circle of personal observations.

So on that score I’ll note that the Fox News poll (already invalidated, in the eyes of Obamaphiles, by its source) from 4/9-11 has Romney leading Obama by two points—which is within the margin of error—among registered voters. It’s got a few more interesting findings, including the fact that the voters think Romney would be better on the economy.

But there’s a huge flaw in the poll that leapt out at me when I looked at the numbers: it doesn’t give the breakdown of Republicans and Democrats. What it does is ask the respondents whether they were more likely to vote (or had already voted) in the Democratic or Republican primaries. This year, voting in the Democratic primaries is pretty much a meaningless act, and not many people are bothering. The Republican primaries, on the other hand, have been hard-fought, and have been drawing many Independents and Democrats as well. Of those interviewed, 41% said they were more likely to vote in the Republican primaries and 35% the Democratic, but that certainly doesn’t mean that was the proportion of Republicans to Democrats in the poll. But without knowing the actual proportions, the poll is even more meaningless than most polls.

Sigh.

The president of NOW forgets the first rule of holes

The New Neo Posted on by

Which is “when you’re in one, stop digging.”

But no:

Actually, it’s only Hilary Rosen and Terry O’Neill who have the experience and imagination to understand. I’m certain of it. They just don’t have the experience and imagination to change the subject at this point.

I think there are a couple of things going on here. One is that people on the left tend to move in a bubble where their views seem quite mainstream and uncontroversial. For example, to say “Ann Romney never worked a day in her life” would be the sort of thing that would tend to get sage nods of agreement all around if you said it in most liberal circles. And “everybody knows” that the Romneys are out-of-touch rich people who look like the cast of “Mad Men,” just as “everybody knows” that stay-at-home moms are wealthy (which doesn’t appear to be true; see this). So why not say it? It would appear to be a winner.

Not so much, it turns out—as the more-savvy Michelle and Barack Obama, as well as David Axelrod, seem to know, since they all quickly distanced themselves from Rosen’s remarks.

Another thing both Rosen and O’Neill did not seem to be aware of is that attacking Ann Romney in any way can only serve to help the Romney campaign. When I saw the Romneys in person back in January, it didn’t take but a moment to note that Ann Romney is probably the biggest asset of the Romney campaign. She’s a natural, a person I would think it almost impossible for anyone to dislike (although they’ll try, they’ll try). Smart, relaxed, confident, attractive, articulate, funny, warm…well, I could go on and on, but you get the idea. And now that the spotlight has been shone on her by her would-be detractors, she gets to shine a lot more than she had so far.

The war on women, by women

The New Neo Posted on by

This was rather predictable: Democratic “strategist” and DNC adviser Hilary Rosen was being interviewed by Anderson Cooper about the so-called “war on women,” and said the following about Ann Romney, “Guess what, [Romney’s] wife has actually never worked a day in her life.”

A predictable firestorm erupted, with not only Ann Romney, but even Michelle Obama and David Axelrod getting into the act to counter Rosen and to say that women’s choices—whether to work or stay at home—should be respected. Rosen, on the other hand, predictably doubled down; it sure doesn’t appear that any apologies will be forthcoming from her, to say the least.

The whole thing is merely one more salvo in the ancient battle between stay-at-home mothers and working ones and vice versa, a fight that’s been going on as long as I can remember and that has no chance of ending any time soon, if ever. Rosen also tried to give it a predictable (gee, I’m using that word a lot here, aren’t I?) class war spin, which has been part of the attack on Romney from the start from both his Democratic and Republican opponents.

I refuse to get pulled into the working/home battle, although I will say that I think Rosen’s comments were not only offensive but stupid “strategy” as well. My opinion on working mothers vs. stay-at-home ones? I think some of the impetus for the fight comes from envy and/or guilt, on both sides. I think that women are not all that gentle with each other, to say the least. And I think most people try to do their best to bring up their children in a world where money must be made and children must be raised. Sometimes that involves a decision to stay home, sometimes to work, and sometimes to alternate the two or do each part-time. As long as nobody abuses or neglects the kids, I’m with the program.

[ADDENDUM: I’m in complete agreement with this by Ann Althouse:

This is creating so much interest in Ann Romney now, shining a sudden bright light on her, and she is so ready. She’s a great persona, better than Mitt at talking to people and generating warmth.

Read the whole thing.

It’s not a good idea to attack Ann Romney; she’s a formidable opponent.]

[ADDENDUM II: Well, I guess the pressure was on, because Rosen did offer an apology—although not an especially good one:

“I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended,” Rosen said in a statement. “Let’s declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance.”

The war isn’t phony, as I pointed out. It has a rather lengthy lineage. And if Rosen didn’t want to engage in it, why fire a shot?

I also always take note of apologies that don’t say anything about the act itself, but locate the focus of the problem in the perceiver, who is offended. This sort of apology is very common, and hardly limited to the left. “I’m sorry if you were offended”–you stupid over-reacting fragile flower, you.]

Worried about the deficit?

The New Neo Posted on by

If so, you can help Uncle Sam out.

I was doing my taxes, going over everything with a fine-toothed comb (and then some), when this stopped me in my tracks:

How Do You Make a Gift to Reduce Debt Held By the Public? If you wish to do so, make a check payable to “Bureau of the Public Debt.” You can send it to: Bureau of the Public Debt, Department G, P.O. Box 2188, Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188. Or you can enclose the check with you income tax return when you file. Do not add your gift to any tax you may owe…

TIP: You may be able to deduct this gift on your 2012 tax return.

I wonder how many of those they get a year. I tend to think of the whole 1040 as a gift to reduce the public debt, but I doubt any of it goes to that purpose at this point, although you could say it goes to keep the public debt from getting even larger than it’s already growing.

And somehow I don’t think that tax time is the right moment to touch on people’s spirit of government largesse.

Zimmerman case and second-degree murder

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the odd things about the latest announcement in the Zimmerman case is that the charge was second-degree murder. That’s much heftier than was expected, but it could have been done in order to temporarily placate those crying for Zimmerman’s blood. It doesn’t mean the charge will hold. Even the NY Times says:

Under second-degree murder, the jury must find that a death was caused by a criminal act “demonstrating a depraved mind without regard for human life,” said Eric Abrahamsen, a criminal defense lawyer in Tallahassee, reading from the state’s standard jury instructions. The maximum sentence for second-degree murder is life in prison; the minimum penalty under these charges is 25 years.

Dan Markel, a law professor at Florida State University, said he was “very surprised” by the severity of the charges “in light of the evidence that seems to have been brought to the attention of the public so far.” Many legal experts had predicted that Mr. Zimmerman would be charged with manslaughter.

The charge of second-degree murder also means that Mr. Zimmerman will not be entitled to be released on bail before his trial. Instead, his lawyer will be able to ask for what Florida calls an Arthur hearing, which can take place weeks after the arrest, to determine whether he should be allowed to post bond.

Jeff Weiner, a former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers who practices in Miami, said an Arthur hearing “is not a mini-trial, but it’s a very good preview of the evidence that the state has at this point.”

Mr. Weiner suggested that the prosecutor might have “overcharged” to retain the option, should she feel a murder conviction is slipping away, of asking the judge to instruct the jury to consider lesser offenses, like manslaughter. It is also possible, he said, that she might be trying to coax Mr. Zimmerman to the negotiating table to plead guilty to such a lesser charge. But, he added, it is impossible to say whether it is overly tough, since evidence has not yet been produced.

The case will almost certainly include a pretrial hearing to determine whether the state’s Stand Your Ground law, which grants broad protections to people who claim to have killed in self-defense, applies; if the judge finds that Mr. Zimmerman acted appropriately, the case will end there. If the judge decides that the protections of the law do not apply, the case will go forward.

George Zimmerman…

The New Neo Posted on by

…has been arrested and charged with 2nd degree murder.

You may have noticed that so far I have refrained from drawing any conclusions about Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence, because we just don’t know enough about the facts of the case. We still don’t. What we do know is that a prosecutor has considered the case against Zimmerman strong enough to arrest and charge him. And that this is going to continue to be a very divisive situation for a long time to come.

Special prosecutor Angela Corey announced the charges but would not discuss how she arrived at them or disclose other details of her investigation, saying: “That’s why we try cases in a courtroom.”

Second-degree murder is typically brought in cases when there is a fight or other confrontation that results in death but involves no premeditation to kill. It carries a mandatory minimum of 25 years behind bars when a gun is used…

Corey said the decision to bring charges was based on the facts and the law, declaring: “We do not prosecute by public pressure or by petition.”…

Corey repeatedly declined to answer questions about details in the case.

“So much information got released on this case that never should have been released. We have to protect this prosecution and this investigation for Trayvon, for George Zimmerman,” she said.

The following, however, is a ridiculous conclusion to come to, and typical of the sort of inflammatory comments that have been standard in this case right from the start:

“That indicates they have evidence (Zimmerman) was chasing Trayvon because he was black,” said Florida defense attorney Richard Hornsby.

Zimmerman could easily have been charged with second-degree murder without the issue of race coming into it at all. We just don’t know on what evidence the charges are based, and Corey is absolutely correct in trying to keep it that way at this point.

Right brain left brain, right and left

The New Neo Posted on by

There was a lot of discussion in this thread yesterday about liberals being right-brained and conservatives left-brained, and/or liberals “feeling” and conservatives “thinking.” I think that’s an oversimplification.

Sorry, but I know lots of very logical and rational liberals, very intelligent, with lots of practical experience in the real world. I think some of them keep their liberal politics separate from their conservative lives, and don’t see the two as clashing (that was true of me when I was a liberal). Still others are against conservatism because they see it as irrational rather than rational, an attempt to control people’s lives for religious reasons, or composed of people not believing in science in general (or in evolution, but instead that man was created by the deity 10,000 years ago). Also bigots.

And listen, let’s be frank: there are strains like that in conservatism. I see it all over the place in the blogsophere. Of course there’s plenty of bigotry on the left, too, and a different sort of anti-scientific thinking (that vaccinations cause autism, for example, or that the government purposely gave black people AIDS, or that the WTC could not have collapsed from the fire on 9/11). Over time, I happen to have observed more rational thinking in general on the right than on left, but not always by any means. And I happen to think that the right’s positions on the nature of man are much more on target, and that the right is more dedicated to individual liberty. But not everyone on the right conforms to that ideal.

Also, “left brain rationality, right brain feelings” is an enormous misunderstanding. People’s brains are organized differently and with more complexity. Lefties, for example (and now I’m referring to handedness, not politics!), can have speech centers in either side of the brain or both. Wiki may be only Wiki, but it’s correct on this score:

Broad generalizations are often made in popular psychology about one side or the other having characteristic labels such as “logical” or “creative”. These labels need to be treated carefully; although a lateral dominance is measurable, these characteristics are in fact existent in both sides, and experimental evidence provides little support for correlating the structural differences between the sides with functional differences…

While functions are lateralized, these are only a tendency. The trend across many individuals may also vary significantly as to how any specific function is implemented.

I don’t believe that politics is inherited, as I wrote in that thread yesterday. And I don’t subscribe to the idea that the difference between liberals and conservatives lies in brain lateralization, either. However, there may be some sort of trend for liberals to value feelings more highly, and to use them more when making decisions, and for conservatives to value rationality and use it more in making decisions. But even that difference is probably quite small.

There is some evidence for that here. If you look at the chart, based on the Myers-Briggs personality test, you’ll see that people categorized as “feeling” (the “F” dimension) seem to be more likely to be Democrats, and those characterized as “thinking” in their style (the “T” dimension) are more likely to be Republicans. But there are tons of exceptions and a great deal of overlap.

The personality

The New Neo Posted on by

I agree with this:

Romney’s personality is appropriate to the task [of running in 2012] because it’s so smooth and calming. It defies the stereotypes of button-pressing, Bible-thumping, government-hating conservatives, even as Romney exploits those issues in his rhetoric. That’s Mitt’s genius: even as he moves further to the right, moderate voters still believe he is one of them.

And that last sentence is the key to Romney’s problem with conservatives: even as he moves further to the right, conservative voters still believe he’s not one of them.

Is being gay a choice?

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: There was some mention yesterday in the comments section about the question of whether being gay is a choice or not, which made me think it might be a good idea to clarify some of my thoughts on the matter.]

What do we really know about gay people and society at this point? Here is my own idiosyncratic summary:

(1) Being gay is neither is wholly biological nor wholly environmental, but most likely some roughly equal mix of the two.

(2) The predilection to be gay is not wholly a choice, although the act most definitely is. However, the only viable alternative for many or most gay people people is lifelong celibacy, an exceedingly difficult road.

Then there are bisexuals, people who report attractions to both sexes to a greater or lesser extent. For example, I’ve personally known two men who identify as mostly gay but who each were strongly attracted—and in fact in love with—a woman, whom they later married. In the first case the wife didn’t know of her husband’s bisexuality, and in the second she did.

In the first case, there was a divorce after a few years, when the husband decided he was so much more attracted to men than to his wife that the marriage could not work out over time. They were quite young and had no children, and she went on to marry someone else and have children by him.

In the second case, the marriage lasted very happily for many many decades and several children, till death did them part. During the marriage, the man was completely faithful to his wife and never strayed, with man or woman. But after her death he formed a stable, long-lasting relationship with a man.

I offer these examples not to say they are typical of the gay population (they are not), but to offer them as instances where the choice to live life as a heterosexual seemed possible, and in at least one instance of the two that choice seemed to work very nicely. But the possibility was predicted on the fact that, for this man, there was a woman to whom he was highly enough attracted to live a life with her. That is not the situation with the huge number of people who are predominantly gay rather than bisexual.

Attraction is a funny thing, whether for gays, bisexuals, or heterosexuals. We can’t will ourselves to be sexually attracted to and to love someone, no matter how nice that person may be, or how wonderful a spouse they might make, even if they love us and want us. And although we could will ourselves to live in a loveless, attractionless marriage, it’s hard to see whom that particular choice would benefit.

But when we are attracted, we also have a choice on how to act. For heterosexuals, the choice is whether to marry this person or that person, or whether to marry at all. For bisexuals, it’s more complicated because the choices are more vast, but—as with the men I described above—a bisexual person can choose to live a heterosexual life and be faithful. For a gay person, the choice is to express the sexual part of his/her being or to be celibate for life.

Why should a gay person choose celibacy? I can see no reason except if that person subscribes deeply to a religion that believes that gay behavior is a sin to be avoided at all costs. Celibacy’s a hard life, though, one that usually only a Catholic priest takes on for religious reasons. But these people are not priests, they are just ordinary people trying to live their lives. I would never ask anyone to make that choice, even if they are religious; it is between them, their conscience, and God.

[ADDENDUM: I’d like to emphasize the link above to this article, which contains a brief summary of research on the nature/nurture question. The following seems especially interesting to me [MZ twins are identical, DZ are fraternal, and the twins and brothers who were recruited for the study had at least one member of the pair who was gay]:

J. Michael Bailey and Richard Pillard also studied the gayness between MZ twins, DZ twins, and non-related adopted brothers. They examined how many of the sample population examined were gay and how many were straight. They found that 52% of MZ twins were both self-identified homosexuals, 22% of DZ twins were so, and only 5% of non-related adopted brothers were so. This evidence, repeated and found to be true a second time, showed to the biological camp that the more closely genetically linked a pair is, the more likely they both are to exhibit gay or straight tendencies. Later experimenters found similar evidence in females.

Other twin studies using somewhat different methodology seem to have replicated the basic finding, so it seems they’re on to something. It would be much better if we had a study that used twins reared apart, but it would be nearly impossible nowadays to get a big enough sample of such people.]

Santorum’s out

The New Neo Posted on by

Rick Santorum is dropping out of the race for the Republican nomination.

The polls in Pennsylvania must have been brutal.

So the last viable non-Romney standing has been defeated—and that leaves Romney, standing. (Ron Paul remains standing as well, but he was never really the non-Romney alternative, he was always a phenomenon unto himself. And Newt Gingrich is kind of lying down.)

I think Romney has shown us a couple of things about his personality. One is that he’s not afraid of a fight, or even fighting dirty if need be. Another is that he’s very organized. A third is that he isn’t easily rattled or disheartened. All those things will come in handy for the main event.