Bobo went to South Carolina. Bobo went to rallies. Bobo is now the “South Carolina Diarist.” He was on a visit to South Carolina just days before the primary, getting a feel for what people on the scene are thinking about the candidates. He didn’t specify, but it surely sounds like he had most of his interactions at the Applebee’s salad bar. Mr. Cohen says “Don’t Do It, Bibi,” and that temptation rises for Israel to make a terrible mistake. In “Keep It Simple” Mr. Nocera says an influential critic says banking regulations are too complex, and she offers some solutions. Mr. Bruni, in “Embracing the Pretzel,” says as Jon Huntsman exits the presidential race, he reverts back to familiar partisan hypocrisy. Here’s Bobo, who’s in Sumter, SC:
When I started covering presidential primaries, the best part was getting to know the candidates. We journalists would ride around in vans and buses with them and get an intimate look at what it’s like to endure this soul-destroying process. But the ubiquity of Web cams and tweets has ended that off-the-record culture. As the technology gets more open, the lines of political communications become more closed.
Now the best part is meeting the people who come to the rallies. It’s best to get to the events an hour early and treat the waiting crowd like a cocktail party. First, you ask people about the local economy. Then you ask them about their lives (about which they are always interesting). Then you ask them about what they think of the issues and candidates (they generally repeat the banalities they have heard one of us pundits utter on TV the day before).
This past weekend in South Carolina I met, among many others, a soldier leaving for Afghanistan who quoted the Book of Revelation from his iPhone, a Vietnam veteran who movingly described the death of his first wife, a textile factory middle manager whose job got sent to El Salvador and a pawnshop manager who supports Ron Paul and said he has clients who buy a new gun every time the government does something they don’t like.
I came here wondering how voters would react to the charge that Mitt Romney was a corporate vulture when he ran the private equity firm Bain Capital. I asked dozens of people. They were all familiar with the attacks, thanks to the TV ads. Almost everybody thought the charges were ridiculous, even supporters of Newt Gingrich.
A realtor looked at me dismissively: Sometimes deals work, he said, sometimes they don’t. You have to be efficient to survive. That’s the way capitalism works. Romney’s opponents probably would have been smarter to hit him for being a flip-flopper, not a businessman.
I was also struck, as in New Hampshire and Iowa, by the mood of this year’s rallies. Republican audiences this year want a restoration. America once had strong values, they believe, but we have gone astray. We’ve got to go back and rediscover what we had. Heads nod enthusiastically every time a candidate touches this theme.
I agree with the sentiment, but it makes for an incredibly backward-looking campaign. I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.
The other pleasure of covering campaigns is getting to play American Idol judge, evaluating the political performances.
Mitt Romney is never going to be confused for Pericles on the stump. Every sigh and utterance is prescripted, so watching his rallies is like watching the 19,000th performance of the road show of “Cats.” And he has terrible reaction responses. When somebody else is talking and he means to show agreement, he mugs like someone from a bad silent movie. His wife, Ann, is much warmer and more natural on stage.
But Romney’s awkwardness seems to endear him to audiences, because he’s trying so hard. He spends an enormous amount of time after the speeches shaking hands, taking pictures and holding babies. Beads of sweat form on his forehead as he throws himself graciously into the crowds. He also has a nice startle response. When something unexpected happens, his face lights up and you get a burst of happy humanity out of him.
Newt Gingrich’s presentations are forceful. He has a genius for pithy formulations and a consistent theme: The solutions to everything are obvious if only the idiots would get out of my way.
Ron Paul’s supporters are so grateful. The world was once confusing, but then they read “End the Fed” and the scales fell from their eyes. Paul himself is fascinating because as some smart person observed (I’ve forgotten who), he thinks serially, not causally. The income tax happened and the Patriot Act happened and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, bailed out the banks and job growth stinks. Paul doesn’t bother with logical links. He just strings events together and assumes causation.
I brought my 12-year-old son on this latest trip. My rule is that if a candidate can’t relate well to a 12-year-old, they’ll never win a general election. He approached all the candidates, and they were all wonderful except Gingrich. But that wasn’t Gingrich’s fault. My son, whose heroes include John Boehner and Tupac Shakur, picked an argument about gay marriage. Gingrich engaged, but after 10 seconds signaled security to brush my kid away.
Rick Perry ran a poor campaign but seems like the guy you’d most want to have a beer with. He took the time to tell my son how important it is to study hard and prepare for whatever you do.
Dad really appreciated that one.
And then he opted for the ranch dressing… I particularly loved the slap at people who parrot banalities. Bobo, you asshole, YOU (and your fellow Sunday morning bobbleheads) are to blame for that. I dropped a comment down the well at the Times. Here’s Mr. Cohen, writing from Paris:
A U.S. ambassador in Europe was recently asked by an Israeli ambassador what could be done to improve the lousy relations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama. He replied: “Every once in a while, say thank you.”
The American ambassador added a couple of other thoughts. “Maybe, once in a while, ask the president if there’s anything you can do for him. And above all stay out of our election-year politics.”
This sharp riposte reflects Obama’s fury at several things: the way Netanyahu has gone over his head to a Republican-dominated Congress where he is a darling; Netanyahu’s ingratitude for solid U.S. support, including the veto of an anti-settlements resolution at the United Nations last year and opposition to the unilateral Palestinian pursuit of statehood; the delaying tactics of Netanyahu reflecting his conviction Obama is likely a one-term president; and Netanyahu’s refusal to pause a second time in settlement building for the sake of peace negotiations.
I would add a further piece of advice to Netanyahu if he cares about his dysfunctional relationship with Obama — and he should because Israelis know the United States matters and might be disinclined to re-elect a man who has poisoned relations with Washington. That advice is: Do not attack Iran this spring or summer.
Netanyahu is tempted to bomb Iran in the next several months to set back its opaque nuclear program and — despite a call from Obama last Thursday and messages from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta — has declined to reassure the United States that he will not. Several factors, Iranian and American, incline Netanyahu to move soon.
The first is the Israeli judgment that Iran is close to “irreversibility” in its pursuit of the various elements — from uranium enrichment to trigger mechanisms — needed for a nuclear warhead. The start of enrichment at the Fordow underground facility near Qum intensified these concerns, as has Iran’s bellicose tone in response to threatened oil sanctions.
Then there is the American political calculus. An Israeli strike a few months before the U.S. election in November would stymie Obama. He would be in no position to express anger given the clout of the pro-Israel lobby, the important Jewish vote in Florida and the fulsome support any Israeli bombing would get from the Republican contender — probably Mitt Romney.
By contrast, a re-elected Obama would, as a second-term president, have room to mark his displeasure if Israel was to go it alone. Because awareness is growing that Obama could indeed win, these considerations carry weight in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu has always portrayed himself as the man standing between Iran and a bomb. A hawk, he has a taste for the dramatic. Israel, in such issues, has already gone it alone once, when it bombed a Syrian nuclear facility in 2007. At this stage, the U.S. and Israeli triggers appear distinct — with Panetta saying “our red line to Iran is, do not develop a nuclear weapon” whereas the Israelis see irreversible nuclear capability as unacceptable even if a weapon is not being made. In that discrepancy lurks danger.
Don’t go there, Mr. Netanyahu. It would be a terrible mistake. Choosing between the United States and Iran is a no-brainer. One is a great power and essential friend. The other is a blustering, combustible society that’s been tinkering with a nuclear program for decades and whose closest regional ally, Syria, is on the brink.
Israel’s dream is that the United States will do the bombing for or in conjunction with it — one reason for the Israeli refusal to clarify its intentions. But, short of an outrageous Iranian provocation such as blocking the Strait of Hormuz, that’s not going to happen before November.
In an election year, with U.S. intelligence convinced Iran is not yet building a bomb, Obama will not send oil prices soaring and the Muslim world into another bout of anti-American rage. A lot of his presidency has been precisely about extraction from war and easing of Islamic hostility.
Netanyahu did say this past weekend that “for the first time” he saw some “wobble” in Iran as a result of sanctions. But he also called for “a clear statement” that the U.S. would “act militarily” if sanctions fail. Meanwhile, in a good-cop-bad-cop routine, his vice prime minister was grumbling that U.S. sanctions had been disappointing.
Here’s the bottom line: an Israeli attack unites Iran in fury, locks in the Islamic Republic for a generation, cements the Syrian regime, radicalizes the Arab world at a moment of delicate transition, ignites Hezbollah on the Lebanese border, boosts Hamas, endangers U.S. troops in the region, sparks terrorism, propels oil skyward, triggers a possible regional war, offers a lifeline to Iran just as Europe is about to stop buying its oil, adds a Persian to the Arab vendetta against Israel, and may at best set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions a couple of years.
Sound promising?
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, will visit Israel soon. Netanyahu should listen, take his finger off the Iranian trigger — and realize Israel’s fate hinges more on Ramallah than Tehran.
Now here’s Mr. Nocera:
What if Jamie Dimon is right?
What if the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase is not just blowing smoke when he complains that the country — and, indeed, the world — has imposed so many new rules on the banking industry, some of them overlapping, others seeming to contradict each other, yet others whose sole purpose seems to be to weigh down the industry, that they threaten to do as much harm as good? Last summer, you’ll recall, Dimon confronted Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, at a conference and asked him: “Has anyone bothered to study the cumulative effect of these things?” Just last week, during JPMorgan’s earnings call with analysts, Dimon complained that Europe’s “regulatory policy, government policy, central bank policy — it’s not coordinated. It’s making the situation worse, not better.”
Like most nonbankers, I’ve tended to roll my eyes at Dimon’s continuous lamentations. Surely, given all the harm the banks did to the country, regulations aimed at preventing a repeat of the financial crisis struck me as being worth whatever cost they imposed on the industry. And, yes, I admit to a little schadenfreude as well. (To be fair to Dimon, he is not completely opposed to all the new regulations. He just comes across that way when he’s in rant mode.)
What has caught me up short recently is the emergence of a new critic of the banking regulations that have been pouring forth from Washington and Europe. Her name is Karen Petrou, and she is the managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics, a consulting firm that, among other things, analyzes bank regulations for clients.
Unlike many in the banking industry, Petrou is not ideologically opposed to regulation. For instance, she was a critic of the lack of regulation that allowed so many sleazy subprime mortgage originators to emerge from the precrisis ooze. Yet, now, she’s worried about something different: that the hundreds of new mandates required by the Dodd-Frank law are creating a new kind of risk. She calls it “complexity risk.” As she put it in a speech she delivered last week in New York: “If we don’t understand the cross-cutting effects and inherent contradictions in all of the stringent standards now being written into final form, we risk doing real damage to the sound, stable and — yes — profitable financial industry regulators say they support and the economies sorely need.”
In a paper she wrote in November, Petrou laid out a number of examples of new regulatory proposals that were either mind-bogglingly complex or contradictory — or both. For instance, she told me recently, bank board directors will have 184 more things they will have to acknowledge responsibility for under the latest systemic standards. “I think boards have to be responsible for what happens at their institutions,” she said, “but requiring them to be on the front lines of forward-looking cash flow is ridiculous.”
She also points to a contradiction in the way the Too Big to Fail institutions are being dealt with. On the one hand, Dodd-Frank is very clear that if a big bank becomes insolvent, there can be no taxpayer bailout. It must be wound down, just like any other bank. Yet, at the same time, she says, the federal and international regulators are adding a host of special Too Big to Fail capital requirements and rules. “They are acting as if these institutions are still too big to fail. The two thrusts are incompatible.”
Why does complexity risk matter? One reason is that the more complex the rules are, the greater the likelihood that smart bankers will find ways to game them. Another is that contradictory regulations, however well meaning, simply don’t make the system safer. But the most important reason is that complexity risk is having an effect on business — and that’s not helping the still-fragile economy.
Petrou says that in her own practice she has seen deals fall through — especially in the mortgage industry — because nobody can figure out how the new rules will be applied. Given how badly the country needs a revived housing industry, this is nothing short of tragic.
In her paper, Petrou offers a series of solutions, revolving around simpler regulations, a reliance on market discipline and transparency. She also calls for the regulators themselves to be held accountable, something that is nowhere to be found in Dodd-Frank, despite their obvious shortcomings in the years leading to the financial crisis.
However you feel about banks — and I know that many people harbor enormous, justifiable anger at what they did — our economy can’t function without them. And they needed to be regulated. But three years ago, overly complex securities were one of the root causes of the crisis. So why, then, do we have faith that overly complex regulations will prevent the next crisis? Sad but true: they won’t.
Now here’s Mr. Bruni:
At debates his opponents sported ties with colors from the flag: blue or, better yet, blistering Republican red.
He wore pink.
Onstage and on the stump, they bashed Europe and threatened a trade war with China.
He burst spontaneously into Mandarin.
For a while Jon Huntsman was the brother from another Republican planet, one where climate change is likely and evolution inarguable. Where it isn’t girlie Limbaugh bait to sit, as he did, for a Vogue profile illustrated with Annie Leibovitz photographs. Where you don’t have to malign the Democratic president as the devil incarnate — pitchfork, cloven hooves and all.
How alien and refreshing he was.
And how depressingly he snapped back into line on Monday, exiting the presidential race by surrendering to the earth’s gravity and reverting to its familiar partisan cant.
In his withdrawal speech in Myrtle Beach, S.C., he declared that the need to get rid of President Obama made this “the most important election of our lifetime.” Not so long ago he worked for and praised that selfsame president.
He said that the remaining candidate “best equipped to defeat Barack Obama” was Mitt Romney — and endorsed him. Just last week, Romney was so “detached from the problems that Americans are facing,” according to Huntsman, that he was “completely unelectable.”
He remarked on the country’s need for “bold and principled leadership.” Note the “principled” part. And remember, as Huntsman tries to make you forget, that videos on his Web site and his YouTube channel variously labeled Romney a “pretzel candidate,” an expert at the “backflip” and, most florid of all, “a perfectly lubricated weather vane.” That’s one slippery inconstancy metaphor.
On Monday those videos were suddenly gone, as Michael D. Shear noted on The Times’s political blog. And Huntsman’s defeat was complete, not merely because he lost but because conventional politics — with all its compromises, hypocrisy and obeisance — won.
Of course former rivals morph into allies all the time. John McCain now makes goo-goo eyes at Romney. Hillary Clinton endures permanent jet lag for Obama.
But Huntsman’s endorsement of Romney came much more quickly than it had to and in spite of a distaste for each other that’s particularly intense.
Although both grew up wildly privileged, Romney sees Huntsman as someone who leaned too hard on his father, never forging his own private-sector success. And Huntsman’s endorsement of McCain over him during the last Republican primary felt like a deliberate slap.
Huntsman by many accounts seethed when Romney snagged, and benefited mightily from, a job that he was passed over for: the stewardship of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. He squirmed as Romney tacked this way and that in politics. In Huntsman’s eyes he’s a rudderless operator.
And in recent weeks Huntsman finally said as much, though he had begun his campaign with a pledge to take the high road and though, on Monday, he implored the remaining Republican candidates to cease “an onslaught of negative and personal attacks not worthy of the American people.”
With Romney, Huntsman had succumbed to the unworthy, getting negative and personal and excising all context in order to slam the front-runner for saying, “I like being able to fire people.” The high road dipped into the mud.
From the start, he couldn’t find any traction. He arrived late to a patch of moderate turf already cordoned off by another Mormon scion with very good hair, a very blonde wife and a very large brood of absurdly attractive children. To watch footage and see photographs of the Huntsman girls and then the Romney boys was to enter some cyber-political version of “The Brady Bunch.” The two clans together tipped into wholesomeness overload.
Huntsman initially ran to Romney’s left, though he possessed the more consistently conservative record. Even when he pivoted and embraced that, he couldn’t summon the gloom and invective that the anyone-but-Mitt crowd craved. He didn’t have the spleen for it.
A sort of cool, bland reason oozed from him, and until the last two weeks a certain political expediency seemed beyond him. Then again his personality and past never got worked over by the Romney operation the way, say, Rick Perry’s and Newt Gingrich’s did. He who never surges never need be squashed.
Huntsman is unlikely to land on the 2012 ticket. Does he have 2016 in mind?
By getting out before a miserable showing in the South Carolina primary and the exodus of an additional candidate or two, he guaranteed himself more news coverage and a greater air of importance than he might have received afterward.
And by hopping without pause on the Romney bandwagon, he hastened his journey back from party outlier to dutiful soldier. Reflecting Monday on his campaign experience, he said, “I have seen the very best of America.” His voice wasn’t persuasive.
His mood matched his tie. Both were blue.
