You Take The Meeting

 The Online Mob was out for Hakeem Jeffries yesterday, when a story came out that he met with Jared Kushner. Jeffries statement was:

In a statement, Mr. Jeffries did not acknowledge the meeting, but suggested that the only way Democrats would cut deals with the administration would be if Republicans were willing to come their way on cost-of-living issues, his party’s top priority.

“Throughout this Congress, Republicans have adopted a my-way-or-the-highway approach to governing that has failed the American people,” he said.

He added: “In every conversation that we have with the Trump administration, we will continue to make it explicitly clear that the affordability crisis is not a hoax, and nothing short of transformational policy change is acceptable. We are fighting for an affordable America. The question is whether Republicans will join us.”

The anger was that Jeffries met with Kushner at all, because...well, I was never really given a compelling reason why. There was one weird argument that Kushner wasn't really part of the administration, which is a prima facie absurdity. Kushner is Trump's Son in Law, married to the only kid he really cares about. Kushner runs around as a shadow Secretary of State. He may not have an official government title, but as someone noted, DOGE wasn't "real" either and they've still killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Maybe it was just meeting with Kushner, because Jeffries should be "fighting" more. So, I posted the picture of Trump meeting with Mayor Mamdani - not to dunk on Mamdani, but because you take the meeting.

This was met with real anger and name calling from accounts that I've had positive interactions with previously. I was called a "dumbfuck" and the like, because I really don't think this is a big deal. 

What's more, as I thought about for more than one hot second, this is a really bad story...for Jared Kushner. This is a member of Trump's inner circle looking for the lifeboats. Kushner is a little weasel, but he isn't a complete moron, and understands that Jeffries will be the next Speaker. He wasn't meeting with Mike Johnson to stop it; he's trying to get ahead of the coming Blue Wave.

There has been a lot of doomer-casting about the coming midterms. "Trump will cancel the elections." 
"Johnson won't certify the election." That sort of stuff. And after January 6th, nothing should be considered off the table. Still, the Republicans in the room seem to accept that Jeffries will be the next Speaker. That's pretty remarkable.

The seething anger against Trump, though, was transmogrified online to be directed at Jeffries. 

The anger is the problem. I hate Donald Trump more than I've hated anything in my life. However, if I were being asked what to DO about Donald Trump, I would take my anger and my hatred and put it in a box. You cannot make your best decisions when you are enraged. You cannot strategize if all you feel is hate. You have to separate the two.

Of course, the algorithm rewards anger, it rewards hate, it rewards impulse. The Very Online people are being mad just to be mad, because that is what the internet is for. 

Politicians meet with people they disagree with or don't like all the time. Mamdani doesn't agree with Trump, but he met with him. People tried to be upset that it was a meeting two months before the midterms, but again, that just shows that Trump's inner circle knows they are about to take a beating. 

I can take my anger and hatred out of that box without losing the ability to put it back in when needed. Maybe that's what allows me not to be mad at Jeffries, since Jeffries isn't the enemy. Unless enemies is what keeps your blood flowing, in which case, assemble the circular firing squad. 

UPDATE: At the end of this piece on the Canadian trade war, Josh Marshall notes the same dynamic when discussing the issue with Canadians. It's simply impossible to have a reasoned discussion with an enraged person.

I Guess I'm A Grumpy Old Man

 Kids these days...

Yglesias takes a look at the illiberalism of today's youth. I think I mentioned having a conversation with my son about Hamas that was truly disturbing. Josh Marshall noted that a lot of kids get their "news" from Tik Tok and that could explain some of the stark opinions the under 40 crowd have about this conflict.

However, there's some fertile ground there, with Ruy Teixeira takes on how "identity politics" has led to some poisonous ideas: 

Over the last number of years, huge swathes of the American left have become infected with an ideology that judges actions or arguments not by their content but rather by the identity of those involved in said actions or arguments. Those identities in turn are defined by an intersectional web of oppressed and oppressors, of the powerful and powerless, of the dominant and marginalized. With this approach, one judges an action not by whether it’s effective or an argument by whether it’s true but rather by whether the people involved in the action or argument are in the oppressed/powerless/marginalized bucket or not. If they are, the actions or arguments should be supported; if not, they should be opposed.

I've certainly seen some of this on my end of academia. I think there's some important truths in intersectionality, in terms of being empathetic to other people's perspectives borne of lived experience. Teixeira went on to attack Ibram Kendi's anti-racist work. I greatly enjoyed Stamped from the Beginning, but his subsequent work on ideas for policy have been...impractical and I think counterproductive. He goes on to attack the idea of equity, which is that we need equal outcomes as opposed to equal opportunity. 

I do think that equal opportunity is both preferred, but hard to achieve. How can we determine how structures are thwarting our idea of equality? It's tough, and I think elements of CRT and Kendi's work are helpful. What they are not is absolute truth. What's more, I don't agree with equity (equality of outcomes) as a principle. Few Americans do, I would wager. Equity has been tried and...it's track record is not great.

Yglesias does push back on the particularly vitriolic Teixeira piece. He returns, of course, to his NIMBY hobby horse, but as a way of illustrating how "equity" is usually just bullshit, too. He notes that, for instance, closed schools hurt poorer (and therefore minority) communities, but leftists tended not to care. In part that was to support teachers, which I think Yglesias totally ignores, but it was also a reaction to Trump not taking Covid seriously. 

A better example is how the Climate Left continual fucks up actual ways to improve the climate situation, most notably by shuttering nuclear power plants. Efforts that the Climate Left would want to put in place to combat putting carbon in the atmosphere would disproportionally effect poorer communities, which skew towards people of color. Hell, the very reason Biden isn't leading in the polls is because people wish things cost as much as they did four years ago. Never mind that people are earning more and buying more and consumer confidence is high, they don't like that things cost more, and now the Climate Left wants to jack up the price of energy? Where's the equity there?

The problem with much of this Leftist identity politics is that you start to see obvious conflicts between agendas. Inter-factional warfare is and always has been the standard of behavior amongst the Left in any polity, but now that they have a bit more power than they typically have, we are seeing how dysfunctional it can be to make policy decisions based on academic ideas like equity. Whose equity? When?

Back to Hamas, the idea that October 7th was "justified" because Jews are, what, White is historically bonkers. Every country is born in blood. Israel is no exception, but it is a recognized state and an actual democracy with civil rights and liberties. Hamas is a terrorist organization linked to Iran and Russia. How in the hell can anyone who has a "Hate has no home here" sign in their yard support Hamas? Because they have decided that Israel are "oppressors" and Hamas is therefore justified in committing atrocities based on that "fact."

The reality of Israel's occupation is way more complicated than that. The occupation is wrong and should end, but that should not lead to Hamas running Gaza. We saw what ISIS did when they took over places, and Hamas would be pretty similar. To pretzel oneself into supporting Hamas because Israel is wealthier and more powerful than Palestinian communities is to reach for the single assumption that the occupation is the entire and sole reason Palestinians are poor. Hamas and even the Palestinian Authority are not good at governing. And Israel is also wealthier and powerful than Jordan, Lebanon, Syria...you name it. Why? Because goddamnit, liberal democracy works.

Some of this is cyclical. However, the stakes going into the 2024 election are so catastrophically high that we have narcissistic ideologues like Cornell West running spoiler campaigns and grifts off the outrage of young people who have been trained to expect equity rather than equality from a world that it never, ever going to accommodate them.

I'm reminded, in the end, of the excesses of Campus Leftism in the 1960s that helped spawn a backlash that led to Nixon and Reagan. While both of those men were horrible presidents, their threat to American Democracy was slight. Trump's threat is real and imminent.

Jubilee

 Biden's debt relief plan for student loans is getting the usual screeching from the GQP, which means it's probably going to be popular. There are a few idiots on Twitter saying it's too targeted or not enough, but he forgives a ton of loans for people who typically don't attend Middlebury or NYU. That will absolutely be felt by people who went to Appalachian State or a two year college for an associates degree.

There are other structural issues about student debt - especially interest - that are really good. The problem with student debt is that it was exempted from normal bankruptcy proceeding in a law written by...Joe Biden. So the debt keeps accumulating via interest and becomes unsustainable. This EO caps that interest and annual payments. That's huge.

The larger problem of college costs will likely require legislation and the GQP has declared war on education in general, so that's out absent holding the House and expanding the Senate. It's still a nice step and it will benefit African Americans and Hispanics more than any other group.

The GOP messaging right now kind of reeks of desperation. They careen from inflation to IRS agents to the border to now weird ideas about how taxing and spending work. Inflation is coming down, but if they could focus on the IRS seizing your income to pay for someone's art history degree...I mean, maybe it could work. The electorate has made a dumber decisions for worse reasons in the past.

It just feels like the adults have left the room with the Republican Party. They are all Trumpist grievances and poorly spelled Tweets, without the message discipline of a Karl Rove.

Meanwhile, Democrats have "Roe, Roe, Your Vote" to focus on GQP extremism. That combines the general threat to democracy and democratic rights that Trumpism represents with a simple message.

Gerrymandering (and the lack thereof in NY State) could make holding the House impossible, but the doom and gloom is lifting. Also, the specter of the Supreme Court invalidating Biden's debt jubilee would further motivate voters under 40.

Turns out the old Irish pol is good at politics.

Presumption Of Guilt

Yglesias on how the Clinton Rules have rendered basic ideas of justice moot, as long as the target is named Clinton.

If History Be Our Guide...

I'm guessing there is zero or close to zero new information in those new emails found on the shared computer of Huma Abedin and walking human sewer Anthony Weiner.

The FBI was investigating Weiner.  They found emails to Clinton.  They have to investigate.  At this point, they could be looking at emails that they already have seen from Clinton's end.

For 20+ years, we've been living through this same dismal, fucking cycle: Horrifying Headlines; Conditional Caveat; Walking Back the Allegation; Inevitable Deescalation.  Remind me again what was so awful about the Clinton Foundation?  Remind again what was so terrible about Whitewater?

As Ezra Klein notes this gives both sides what they want.  It allows Republicans to think that they might actually win and it allows Democrats to freak out and run around sure that they are going to lose.  That latter is so freaking depressing it hurts my brain.

The real issue is unlikely to be whether Clinton wins the White House.  My guess is that most voters have made up their minds about this race by now.  The issue, as Martin Longman points out, is that this arrests the possibility of a wave election that sweeps Democrats to control of the House.  Such a result is not only preferable from a partisan point of view, but having Democrats control all three branches of government for even two years would allow for some actual governing to occur.  Republicans are simply unwilling or unable to accomplish basic tasks of legislating, so a few years of having a functioning Congress would be awesome.

This feels like a procedural nothing-burger that could wreck American politics even more.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall points out that Comey managed to make an untenable and impossible position and make it worse.

Someone Finally Took My Advice

Back with the Clinton Foundation nontroversy sprung up, I argued that the Clinton Campaign get out in front of this story and make a compelling case for why the Clinton Foundation was a global force for good.  Finally, we have a comprehensive take on that.

The press coverage of the Foundation is simply taking the status quo - wealthy and powerful people hang out with wealthy and powerful people - and turning it into something that has a whiff of scandal about it.  Absolutely no wrong doing has ever come up, that I am aware of.  Instead, we have the "Clinton Rules" in place, where there is a presumption of sleaziness, because Clintons.

The conclusion makes this critical point:

There is little to no evidence that anyone received meaningful favors from the Clintons in exchange for donating to the foundation. There is definitely no evidence that Hillary Clinton altered her policies as secretary of state in reaction to donations. There’s no evidence that the Clintons or their foundation engaged in some of the more egregious activities of Trump’s foundation, like donating to a state attorney general to deter her from an investigation into Trump’s activities, or giving to a nonprofit to fund a lawsuit against another state AG who did opt to investigate, or even paying off the legal bills of his for-profit businesses.

But there is considerable evidence that the Clinton Foundation has saved millions of lives. And there’s evidence that Bill Clinton’s work with the group would make him more useful as first spouse. Presidents rely heavily on special envoys tasked with making deals to resolve prisoner disputes, facilitate peace processes, and the like. Clinton’s time with the foundation exhibited the exact set of skills necessary for a role like that. His presence could greatly expand the diplomatic bandwidth of his wife’s administration.

The fact that Hillary Clinton’s association with a group, and a husband, with that track record has become a liability rather than an asset is a deep indictment of how skewed the press’s priorities in covering this election have become.

Sick And Tired Of The Damned Emails

The IG report had a harsh tone, but it really didn't break any new ground.  Clinton shouldn't have had a private server, but that wasn't unusual.  There is no evidence that the servers were hacked, but they could've been.  Clinton screwed up, she has apologized.  Unless the FBI report uncovers anything, this is a case of institutional poor judgment, not criminality.

One of the wonders of the Obama administration has been its scandal-free nature.  That hasn't stopped Republicans from trying, from birth certificates to Solyandra to Benghazi.  But they have ultimately fallen flat in their attempts to gin up a scandal where none exists.

The Clintons have always been problematic in how they respond to these ginned up scandals.  They tend to be defensive and reactive.  They don't get ahead of these stories, and the accumulated weight of them have an effect.

Hillary Clinton is routinely perceived as corrupt.  Killary, she is called, because of fucking Benghazi.  That perception is based on things that go back to the original nothingburgers that were Whitewater, Travelgate and Vince Foster.  Benghazi and the email nontroversies are similar efforts to create enough smoke that people assume there is fire.

If she is going to win convincingly and govern effectively, she is going to have to change how she manages these scurrilous attacks.  Bunkering down won't cut it.

I'm Not One To Defend Jeb!, But...

This really is stupid.

If anything this is not an example of him being...Trumpish.  This is Andover and Yale peeking through the pork rinds.

The Perpetual Outrage Culture

Vox has a piece that notices that Jon Stewart's most frequent guests were overwhelmingly white men.

In an even-handed analysis, they wonder if this is a reflection of racism and sexism on the Daily Show or America in general.  It seems pretty clear that it's a reflection of America in general.  Of the 20 most frequent guests, only two were female: Maggie Gyllenhaal and Sarah Vowell.  I'm not sure why Gyllenhaal was a frequent guest, but Vowell is a political humorist. Most of the frequent guests were politicians (Bob Dole, John McCain, Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee) or political commentators and journalists (Fareed Zakaria, Tom Browkaw, Bill O'Reilly, Reza Aslan, and Brian Williams).  And of course, you had actors doing pre-film publicity (Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Paul Rudd and Ben Affleck).

So, yeah, there are a lot of white guys doing politics and film and that shows up in TDS' guest list.

But the outrage culture we live in will no doubt see this as somehow Stewart's fault.  Even though Stewart was probably most responsible for making Malala Youseff a household name and Samantha Bee was - along with Stephen Colbert - the best TDS correspondent in its history.

One of the hallmarks of Outrage Culture - on the Left and the Right - is that it tends towards cannibalism.  Activists with an ax to grind tend to grind it on those nearest them.  And that makes a certain amount of sense.  #blacklivesmatter are going to get a more sympathetic hearing from Bernie Sanders and Marty O'Malley even if those two guys pooched their response at Netroots Nation.  Anti-immigration Tea Partiers know that Hillary Clinton isn't going to listen to them.

But it's still frustrating to see the sort of Circular Firing Squads that Outrage Culture creates.

And Donald Trump is the logical endpoint.  Right wing outrage culture really blossomed 6 years ago during Obamacare Summer in 2009.  The left wing equivalent is a few years behind, but catching up rapidly.  And Trump is the candidate of the Right Wing Spleen.  He is its inarticulate articulation.

I worry about the Balkinization of the Left because that is what led to the rise of Reagan.  When working class whites turned on poor blacks in the '70s, that was the end of the New Deal Coalition.  The collapse of the Reagan Coalition - theocratic conservatives, Wall Street and Southerners - is an ongoing phenomenon and Obama realizes that he has an opportunity to reframe the terms of America's political debate.

But not if his coalition begins to tear each other apart.

SMH

On my Facebook feed appeared a post from some academic who has a degree of connection to someone I know.  She wrote the following:

Instead of getting all huffy with North Korea, I think we should thank them for having such a non-violent response to a movie that was, to say the least, in execrably poor taste, politically offensive and racist.

The writer is a professor at the New School, and pretty much becomes a caricature of the ivory-tower, liberal professor (although I'd describe her as Leftist, rather than liberal).  And let's leave aside the ridiculousness of her assertion that North Korea's response was non-violent.  They specifically threatened violence.

But I really worry that we are increasingly losing our ability to be offended without going off the deep end.  This is not a problem confined to the Left.  The freakout from the Right over protests by athletes against extra-judicial police killings is very similar.  So is the "War on Christmas".

We have become perpetually outraged and can't abide by anything that might whiff of offense.

That's pathetic.  We need to be strong enough to abide things that are offensive to us.  Otherwise we become infatuated with our own outrage.

Go Vikings!

http://deadspin.com/5941348/they-wont-magically-turn-you-into-a-lustful-cockmonster-chris-kluwe-explains-gay-marriage-to-the-politician-who-is-offended-by-an-nfl-player-supporting-it

Chris Kluwe is my new favorite punter...

That was awesome.

Metamorphomitt

How do you defend yourself?

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/8/16/84736/9062

Booman makes a point that could be important come November.  Romney has taken political lying to a remarkable level.  It started with his selective editing of Obama's remarks, where Obama was quoting the McCain campaign in 2008 to describe his position in 2012.  It was so remarkably dishonest, that even the DC press corps called him on it.

Now, all campaigns spin the truth.  For instance, when the GOP calls Ryan's plan for Medicare an effort to "save Medicare" that's spin.  Medicare will not run out of money, it will just cease to be Medicare.  That's spin.  The Soptic ad is entirely factual, but it makes a case by insinuation.  That's spin.

But Romney has been remarkable in the overall consistency of his inconsistency.  There was the remarkable moment in the GOP debates where he made crap up about his own name.  Alone it means nothing, but within the context of saying things like "Obama is going to end the work requirement in welfare" or "Obama is going to cut $717 B from Medicare benefits" we see a pattern.

Basically, the tactic is as old as Goebbels' observation about the "Big Lie" (and no, I'm not calling Romney a Nazi).  If you keep lying, people get tired of calling you on it.

This is at the heart of Romney's "unhinged" attack on Obama for Biden-being-Biden.  In order to lie as much as the Romney campaign is, you have to work the refs, ie the press.  You have to caterwaul about how mean a meany mean old Obama is.

First, it shows the limitations on the new trend in "Fact checking" at newspapers.  Kessler in particular has been atrocious.  The pathological need for "balance" by saying both sides do it means that Romney can lie constantly and it's all the same because the Soptic ad implies that Romney "is the leading cause of wife-cancer."  Romney won't release his tax returns because they are obviously politically damaging, but Harry Reid is a liar for saying someone told him something.

Second, it leads to the sort of disgust with politics that will drive down voter turnout.  The more people vote, the better it likely is for Obama.  It's at the heart of the voter ID/poll taxes and voter roll purges that GOP operatives around the country are engaging in.  As Jon Chait has noted, this election might be the GOP's last chance to reverse the changes Obama has made (ACA, Dodd-Frank, various regulations) and capitalize on what is looking like the eventual recovery that will come regardless.  Demographically, they are screwed.  But win one more election and see if you can't rig the game to ride out the demographic trends.

I guess we'll see.  But the press has its limits.  Dana Milbank notes that what makes this season different is that, indeed, "both sides do it".  The Democrats are not going to lay down and get swiftboated.  He rightly points out that was what done to John Kerry was just as ugly - if not more ugly - than what is being done today.  Sarah Palin accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists."  What has made this election different has been both the complete POLICY mendacity of Romney - he's lying about factual things rather than just spinning them - and his whining about being hit back.

I think Romney looks weak as hell when he's whining.  His unfavorables are through the roof.  Obama's are still decent.  Romney simply cannot budge the personal unfavorable numbers at his convention.  But in Charlotte, we will see the old Obama, whom people still like.  Therefore, Romney's only hope is to tear down Obama's personal numbers.

Of course, the Ryan pick means that even if he DOES destroy Obama's favorability numbers, he still has to defend Ryan's extreme agenda.

But he'll probably just lie about that.  No, check that, he's already started.

UPDATE: Here's a good example of how well they are fouling the waters:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/08/romney-ryan-descend-into-medicare-gibberish.html

Mitt Romney is running the first Dadaist presidential campaign.

Holy Distractions, Batman

There are two BIG stories this week apparently.

Potential breakthrough in negotiations with Iran?  No.

The Facebook IPO SNAFU?  Hell, no.

Orange Julius (Boehner) saying he'll create another debt crisis?  Nope.

No, the two big stories are that Cory Booker undercut Obama's assault on Romney's time at Bain Capital and now Larry Flynt did something gross.

The Booker thing shows that despite his tremendous personal story and magnetism, Booker is still a pol who looks out for himself first.  As mayor of notorious hellhole Newark, he has to keep Wall Street happy, as he has enlisted them in certain efforts to make his notorious hellhole slightly less brimstoney.  I'm sure Booker IS troubled by Obama attacking the lessons that R-Money learned at Bain.  And he should probably keep it to his damned self when he acts as a surrogate for Obama.

While this is a messaging problem, it hardly rises to the level of a problem, the way that - for instance - Romney speaking to Latino businessmen at the Chamber of Commerce and not mentioning anything to do with Latino interests does.  Outreach!

As for the Larry Flynt thing, the right wing wurlitzer is asking us to believe that Hustler's degrading photoshop of a female conservative columnist is exactly the same as what Rush Limbaugh said about Sandra Fluke.

The problem with this analogy is that Larry Flynt is a creepy cretinous lecher who no politician (outside of a drunken John Edwards) would be caught within a mile of.  Limbaugh has been the de facto voice of the GOP for years.  Limbaugh was made an honorary member of Congress by the GOP.  When he speaks, GOP leaders fall in line.

As Booman put it, liberals defense of Flynt extends entirely to the fact that he has a right to publish his filthy magazine and people have a right to buy it or not.  They extend the same rights to the publisher of the Turner Diaries, too.

Politics inevitably seizes on little moments and small acts.  So much of a politician's life is scripted and controlled that these tiny glimpses of real humanity are what matter.  It's why Mitt's dog on the roof and his wife's battle with MS are important in figuring out who the guy really is.  My read is that Mitt cares a great deal about the people close to him, but doesn't really give a damn about people in general.  Maybe that's wrong, but that's the sense I get from him.

Meanwhile, you have this:

A young boy wanted to know if the President of the United States hair felt like his.  And for the first time in 220 years, it did.  And the President asked him to touch it.

Does this matter when it comes to figuring out which man will do a better job getting the economy going?  No.  But little things like this do matter in assessing which person you trust with the job.

This nonsense noise about Booker and Flynt and whatever else will come down the pike... not so much.

That's The Phrase We Were Looking For

We began outraged at the investigation, and deeply troubled by Stand Your Ground.  Now we're off on these meta-outrages.  I never thought the point was to "Make Zimmerman Pay."


That phrase is from Ta-Nehisi Coates.


Meta-outrages.  That's the best phrase I've heard about our public discourse.  There was stuff to be legitimately outraged about - Zimmerman not even being arrested in Trayvon Martin's death, GOP and Catholic prelates efforts to deny contraception coverage to millions of women, the consistent obstruction of the GOP - but then we get sidetracked into these meta-outrages.  Al Sharpton is annoying, Hilary Rosen is history's biggest monster, Obama said something obvious about the Supreme Court.


It kind of goes to what I was saying about the Secret Service "scandal".  We should be concerned first and foremost what our elected figures do for the common weal.  That should be the main focus of the political media.  What will happen if the Ryan budget passes?  What would happen if the Court strikes down ACA?  What will happen if Iran gets the bomb?  


Instead, we get fed a diet of meta-outrage.  And, yes, both sides do it.  But it seems that either the Right does it more, or their meta-outrages get picked up and amplified more.  I guess that might depend on how you see the Rush Limbaugh slut shaming of Sandra Fluke, but the Democrats tend to get upset about policy issues, whereas the GOP gets their dander up about whether someone was mean to the stay at home moms of multi-millionaires.


Alexander Hamilton was not - I think it is safe to say - a faithful husband.  He loved his wife, but the deep seated insecurities that drove him also drove him to other women.  When caught paying hush money to the husband of Maria Reynolds - his paramour - his accusers suggested he used public funds to pay off Mr. Reynolds.  Hamilton boldly admitted the affair but vigorously and methodically shot down the insinuations of misuse of public funds.  


It contributed to the end of his political career, but I wonder what would have happened if Aaron Burr had not shot Hamilton and he had lived to general an American Army in 1812.  He might have risen to the Presidency after that.  (If he was half the general he thought he was.)


And maybe we could talk more rationally about public virtue and private morality.  Maybe we could understand that it is how a public figure behaves to the commonweal that matters, not his personal affairs, except in so far as they shed light on his public life.


But maybe the reason we care about why Mitt strapped his dog to the roof of his car is that Romney is not going to give us ANY clue about what he intends to do once he's president, so we have to go with the Seamus story.


I don't know.  I'm rambling.