What do you mean, he didn't want to run?

Just before Christmas, a report came out in the Boston Globe that got limited comment, mostly in the form of jokes. But, in the shuffle of the holidays, the contention by Tagg Romney that his father didn't really want to run for president, and didn't really want to win the election, got mostly buried.

Tagg was quoted as saying that his father "wanted to be president less than anyone I've met in my life", and that "he would have been ecstatic to step aside." Tagg also said that he and his mother, Mitt's wife, Ann, had to talk Mitt into running for the 2012 Republican nomination after losing the nomination in 2008 to John McCain.

On one level, this interpretation makes a lot of sense, especially after comments from pundits at certain points in the campaign, when it seemed to many people as if Mitt Romney was actively trying to lose the election. On the other hand, it seems like a convenient excuse for a poorly executed campaign that was littered with gaffes and missteps that seemed tone-deaf at the very least.

But, leaving that excuse-laden smell of, "Oh, he didn't really want to win", aside and assuming that this is true, that Mitt really didn't want to be president, there is a serious question to be asked:

Why, then, did he run?

It seems sort of counterintuitive that someone would take on the exhausting and expensive proposition of running for president just because one's spouse and child wants them to do it. Would you do that? Especially if, as Tagg describes his father, you are essentially a private person, made uncomfortable by the very idea of revealing your personal life to the world, would you do that? Would you spend your own money to do it? Would you feel comfortable going out and asking other people to sink their money into a campaign that you didn't really want to win? I don't think I could do that. I don't think an honest person could do that.

There are a couple of possibilities here. It's possible that Mitt, maybe with some persuasion from his family, decided that God wanted him to be president and, per the conventional attitude in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, one does not turn down a calling, because it is ultimately from God. On the other hand, Mitt could have decided that being president is the ultimate status symbol. Clearly, wealth and status are things that mean a lot to Mitt Romney, so this is a possibility.

As far as I'm concerned, neither one of these reasons are very good reasons to run for an office as important as the presidency, if one doesn't really want to hold that office.

I'm on record, here on this blog, I think, as beleiving that Mitt didn't want to be president so much as he wanted to be able to say he was president. We made a lot of fun of George W. Bush, when he was president, for his continual statements that being president was hard work, considering the fact that he never looked like he was working very hard at all. But the truth is, if you're doing it right, being the President of the United States is hard work. You don't want someone in the office who isn't willing to put in the hard work necessary to run a large and powerful nation. I'm not convinced that, had he won, Mitt would have been willing to put in that work, especially in light of his son's contention that he didn't really want to be president in the first place.

In my opinion, going ahead and running for the office of president under these conditions is an insult to the American people.

Running because "God wants me to be president" isn't any better a reason, I don't think, even if the person running believes it to be true. It might even be a worse reason if the candidate believes that. This is not a theocracy; it is, depending on your political philosophy, a democracy or a republic (or a little of both). I don't want someone running the country who believes that his decisions are endorsed by his God. That attitude could lead to abuses all too easily.

Having said all this, however, I don't believe for a minute that Mitt Romney didn't want to run and didn't want to win. He might not have been interested of doing the hard work a president must do, but he wanted the status of the office, and he wanted to win very, very badly. If he hadn't wanted to win, he wouldn't have gone through that whole charade on election night of having his people raise the possibility of challenging the election results in one or more key states.

The whole question of whether or not Mitt wanted to run does bring up one chilling question, though. What if he had won? Would he have gone the Sarah Palin route and done what she did with the governorship of Alaska? When the charm had worn off of being president, when he realized that he would have had to work at the job, would he have just quit? And where would that have left the country, if he had done that?

I'll tell you where it would have left us. With Paul Ryan as president.

And that is a truly frightening prospect.

More US voters say, "I don't go to church, and I vote"

NBC News online published an interesting piece today regarding voting and religion, in which they report that a growing number of US voters are calling themselves religiously unaffiliated. According to the report, 12 percent of the electorate this year (and in 2008) said they are not affiliated with any religious group, while 17 percent of voters in 2012 said they never attend church.

What is really interesting about these statistics is that 44 percent more of these religiously unaffiliated voters cast their ballots for Barack Obama than voted for Mitt Romney in the November presidential election. This is true even though 20 percent of these voters call themselves political conservatives and 40 percent self-identify as moderate. However, 66 percent of these voters say they believe that religious organizations are too involved in politics and 70 percent of them think churches are "too concerned with money and power".

So, maybe the high proportion of religiously unaffiliated voters who cast their ballots for Mr. Obama makes sense, especially considering that many of these voters are socially liberal despite half of them reporting that they think the federal government should be smaller and provide fewer public services. They don't, it seems, want the religious conservatives that the Republican Party courts to be in a position to set public social policies.

Maybe the Republicans should sit up and take note of these findings. Does the Republican leadership really think they are going to attract non-religious voters as long as they continue to cater to the religious right? Since the election, there has been much, and very public, discussion about how the Republican Party can attract more African-American voters and Hispanic voters, both very large and important voting blocs, because they know that they cannot expect to win elections if they ignore or alienate those constituencies. Why would they continue to think they can ignore or alienate a constituency, religiously unaffiliated voters, that has grown to roughly the same numbers as either of those groups?

Yet, I suspect that the Republican leadership will continue to ignore these non-religious voters in favor of their religiously conservative base. It will be interesting to see where that gets them in the next presidential election.

Romney is just digging his hole deeper...

In a phone call to some of his campaign donors on Wednesday, Mitt Romney managed to dig his hole even deeper than it already was and has, in the process, started to turn even those who supported him in the election against him quite vocally.

Making excuses for his loss, Mitt first and foremost said that he thinks Obama won the election last week because he gave stuff to minorities and women. Essentially, this is his "47 percent" argument all over again. It doesn't work any better now than it did then.

But that isn't his only excuse. He also blames too many debates during the primaries, which "opened us up to gaffes and to material that could be used against us in general." He wants his party to cut short its primary process to avoid this.

My reaction to this? Mitt, if you hadn't made those "gaffes" in the first place and hadn't said things that were stupid and changed your positions on issues on a distressingly regular basis, maybe the Democrats wouldn't have had so much to use against you. Just sayin'.

Mitt also criticized the networks that hosted his debates with President Obama, saying those networks, including CNN and NBC, were just showcasing "liberals beating the heck out of us." If that was what was going on, Mitt didn't seem to be hesitating to give them plenty of ammunition to beat him with.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Republican Governors' Association in Las Vegas (what? they figure that after how the election turned out for them, their luck has to get better, and soon?) Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour both rejected Mitt's assessment.

Jindal also said that the Republicans need to "make serious changes" and called for his party to "modernize". Of course, this does not mean that Jindal, or any Republicans on the right have had a change of heart about their core values, and it could well be that Jindal especially is mostly about positioning himself for a run at the White House in four years.

However, he did also distance himself from campaign remarks made by losing senatorial candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock regarding rape, comments which many found shocking and lost both men their races. He called those comments about "legitimate rape" (from Akin) and that if a woman gets pregnant from a rape "that's what God intended" (from Mourdock) "offensive and inexcusable."

No matter his agenda, Jindal is the first anti-choice officeholder, as far as I can recall, to repudiate these remarks, and he should be given credit for that. Jindal went on to say, "I'm pro-life. I try to follow the teachings of my faith and church [Jindal is a Roman Catholic], but I don't think we have any business trying to demonize those we disagree with. I think we can be respectful."

If I've never agreed with anything else Jindal has ever said (and as far as I know, I haven't), I completely agree that demonizing "the other side", on any issue, is the wrong way to go about public discourse.

For both sides, because I'm realistic enough to know that the left often doesn't hesitate to demonize, too. It's just as wrong when they do it. I'll call all sides for doing and saying stupid things. But demonizing anyone in an argument is not a productive way to win your oppposition over.

It remains to be seen exactly how seriously Jindal means his remarks, and if any others in the Republican right will follow his lead and repudiate the "I'm right and you're evil and God hates you" approach so much of the far right seems so fond of. But at least he, and at least for the moment, isn't following lockstep the "we didn't say anything wrong" line that Akin and Mourdock asserted in the wake of their comments.

Not that the GOP is really playing nice, even in the wake of their defeats last week, hurling very ugly charges over the recent attack in Libya. But that's another discussion for another post. Right now, I just want to believe that somewhere, some Republican politicians are becoming a little more reasonable. I really don't understand why they can't be...most of the Republicans I know in real life are really very reasonable people.

Really.

A small story gets me thinking about the big picture...

Earlier this evening, I was listening to NPR as I was on the way home from the grocery store. They were, of course, talking about Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath. Because of the devastation, and the problems that is causing in getting around in parts of New York and New Jersey, a reporter had taken to her bicycle to look around and see how people are coping in areas with a great deal of damage and, in many cases, no power.

She happened on a Chinese restaurant that had figured out how to keep cooking and stay open despite the power being off. Talking to someone who was on their way out of the restaurant with the food they had purchased, the reporter asked how the prices were; were they higher, lower, or the same as they had been before the storm. The response was that they were the same as always.

When I heard that, I burst into tears, right there in front of God and everybody.

That reaction puzzled me at first. It was nice that the restaurant owners weren't trying to price gouge, but it was nothing to cry about. Thinking about it as I made my way home, however, I finally realized why I had started crying.

Mitt Romney has been caught on tape, repeatedly, talking about how it's immoral for the federal government to spend money on things like disaster relief, and how he would defund FEMA, the agency that is charged with helping out in time of natural and man-made disaster. If he is elected president, he has said, he would put disaster response and relief on the states or, ideally, he has said, privatize it. And that's a big problem.

Why is that a problem?, you might be asking right now.

It is a problem because privatized disaster relief on a scale needed in the wake of events like Sandy would necessarily fall into the hands of big companies. And big business is out to make big profits, first and foremost. And so they would charge for their help. Not only would they almost certainly overcharge for their help - unlike that Chinese restaurant in the NPR story - they would almost certainly only help those who could afford the help. And in the process, those big companies would probably put that Chinese restaurant out of business to eliminate the competition, however small. Which fits right into the Romney philosophy of "if your poor, you're on your own". Not to mention one of his main specialties as a businessman, that is, taking apart smaller and underperforming companies and selling off the remains for a profit. But that is another problem, for another blog post.

This is not the way it should be. In a disaster as big as Hurricane Sandy, it is really only the federal government that is big enough to coordinate the recovery efforts and to make sure that recovery does not take years...or decades. And to make sure that the recovery reaches everyone, and does not further enrich the already wealthy on the misfortune of others.

As I commented elsewhere in the past couple of days, I really wonder when people are going to realize that "looking out for number one, and everyone else is on their own" is not a sustainable life plan in the long term. We're all in this together, and that includes the government. If we follow Mitt Romney's philosophy of politics, and probably his philosophy of life, it's going to be every individual for him or herself, and God, or whichever deity you believe in, help us all.

That is why I was crying on the way home from the grocery store this evening. That is not the America I was brought up in, and if it turns into that, any more than it has already become that, heaven help us all.

As a postscript, the Romney campaign released a statement earlier today (Wednesday) saying that if he is elected president, Mitt will support and fully fund FEMA. If he thinks people won't notice that he is changing his story...again...just because he thinks that the position he stated earlier is sure to be unpopular in states where he needs votes, he is, I hope, sadly mistaken.

How many days left until the election?...

...because things are just getting stupider out there.

Former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu said on CNN Thursday that he believes that former Secretary of State and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired General Colin Powell has again endorsed President Barack Obama for a reason other than those Powell stated in an interview on CBS television earlier in the day.

The reasons Powell gave for his endorsement included his concern that Mitt Romney is a "moving target" on foreign policy issues and that he does not want to see Obamacare "thrown off the table." Powell also said that he supports Obama because the president got us out of one war, is in the process of getting us out of another, and hasn't gotten the country into any new wars, and that Mr. Obama's record on terrorism is "very, very good."

Powell's endorsement of Mr. Obama came even though Powell is a registered Republican.

And what was Sununu's take on the endorsement? He said that the real reason that Powell endorsed the Democratic Party's candidate for President is that they are both African Americans.

Now, this declaration from Sununu should not be surprising, considering earlier remarks from the former governor about Mr. Obama, including his comments that the President is "lazy" and that Mr. Obama needs to "learn how to be an American."

Of course, Sununu later moderated his comments about Powell's endorsement of Mr. Obama, allowing that he thinks that Powell endorsed the President because Powell supports Mr. Obama's policies. Neither the walk-back, nor the fact that it wasn't much of a walk-back and certainly not any kind of an apology for his earlier remarks, should be much of a surprise, given the Romney campaign and it's supporters' record of saying something outrageous and then pulling back without ever really disavowing what was said in the first place. It is a long record, much too long to reprise in full here.

The problem I have with all of this is that if someone from the Democratic Party got up on CNN and said that a prominent member of the Mormon church had endorsed Mitt Romney's candidacy for president only because they are both Mormon, the Republicans would be out for blood, claiming religious bigotry and who knows what else. There would be outrage and angry accusations, at the very least.

How did Mr. Obama react to Sununu's remarks? He said in a radio interview today (Friday) that he would let Powell's statement stand on its own and that Sununu's remarks didn't "make much sense". Cool, calm, and collected. I doubt that we could have seen such equanimity from Romney, had the situation been reversed.

I wonder what grades Mitt made in geography class...

Apparently, Mitt Romney slept through his geography classes in high school and college.

In last night's debate with President Obama, Mr. Romney said that Syria is Iran's route to the sea. Did the fact that there is a big chunk of Iraq or Turkey between Iran and Syria, depending on how far north or south you are on Iran's western border, completely escape Mitt? Has he not noticed that Iran has about 1,500 miles of coastline along the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman that gives that nation a clear water path to the Arabian Sea and then to the Indian Ocean?

Basically, this means that Iran doesn't need a land route to the sea through another country. Not even to get to the Mediterranean Sea to menace Israel, if that's what Mitt had on his mind. Because, you know, there's always the Suez Canal. Why use a land route to get to the Med when you can, oh, sail there?

Maybe it's just me, but this whole thing has given me a mental image of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad schlepping a warship across Iran and Syria to the Mediterranean Sea. Funny, but not very practical.

Of course, Romney's crack team of campaigners have ridden to their candidate's rescue (something they seem to do a lot), insisting that what Mitt really meant was that Syria is of strategic importance to Iran. Which is probably the case.

But, you know, if that's what Mitt meant, then that's what Mitt should have said. Because what he did say, that Syria is Iran's route to the sea, just makes him sound ignorant of the basic facts of geography, at the very least.

Now, me? I want a president who shows at least some evidence of knowing his geography.

Autumn is here...and a short review of the history of September 22

It's the first day of autumn. Or, if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, the first day of spring.

So, of course, there are reports of snow in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin. According to Weather.com, this snow, which is enough to stick in some places, is about a month earlier than its usual first appearance, based on long-term averages. On the other hand, it's sill in the 80s and 90s in the southern tier of states, and the predicted high in Phoenix, Arizona for today was 107 degrees Fahrenheit, with 101 degrees predicted a bit farther south, in Tuscon.

Here in my neck of the woods, it was predicted to hit 99 F today, but I don't think it managed to get quite that hot. I wouldn't know. I was only out briefly during the day, well before the hottest part of the day.

Anyway, with it being the autumnal equinox and all, I thought it would be a good day to see what happened on this day in history. So, I wandered over to Wikipedia (which isn't that bad a place, as long as you aren't using it as a source for academic papers, you fact-check what you find there, and you realize that their philosophy is that anything that has been published is an authoritative source) to see what they had to say about what has happened on September 22 through history.

First of all, I found, it is the 266th day of the year; it would have been the 265th day, but this year was a leap year. There are 100 days left in the year. Just what I needed to be reminded of - that Christmas is right around the corner.

There is quite a list of events that happened on this day. A few stood out. On this day in 1692, the last hangings for witchcraft in what is now the United States took place, which serves as a good reminder that religious extremism isn't anything new. But, it does beg the question of why, all these years later, so many people still go to extremes in their religion.

Those are not the only historically notable hangings that happened a September 22: in 1776, on this day, Nathan Hale was hanged as a spy during the American Revolution. General George Washington had asked for volunteers to go behind enemy lines to try to find out where the British were planning on landing in their invasion of Manhattan Island. Hale was the only volunteer. He was captured by the British and hanged at the age of 21. Hale is now the official State Hero of Connecticut, his home state.

There are also other religious events that happened on September 22. In 1823 (or 1822, depending on the source), Joseph Smith said he found the Golden Plates that he claimed to have used to translate the Book of Mormon. There are a few versions of the story, but the general account is that it was on September 22 in one of those two years that he first found the plates, guided by a vision from an angel who said his name was Moroni. Although Smith did not get the plates when he first found them - he said that the angel prevented him from doing so - several years later, in 1827, also on September 22, he was allowed to take the plates and commence his work with them. After he was finished with the translations, so the story goes, the plates were taken from him. So, you know, no physical evidence of them exists. Additionally, there are also several versions of the story of how he translated them to get the Book of Mormon. Honestly, trying to pin down what really happened in Mormon history is like trying to...well, like trying to pin down what position Mitt Romney really holds on an issue.

Maybe we should ask Mitt about the plates. He's Mormon, after all. He served a mission for his church. He might like to get his mind off his campaign for president, seeing how it hasn't been going that well for him lately.

Not related to either hangings or religion, so far as I know, this is the day in 1888 that the first issue of National Geographic Magazine was published. National Geographic has come in for its share of criticism from time to time in the years since that first issue, and not just for its role as young boys' go-to publication for seeing photos of topless women before Playboy got its start. Personally, though, I like National Geographic. It has fed my inner archaeology and anthropology geek since I was very young.

On September 22 in 1896, Queen Victoria surpassed her grandfather, George III (who, of course, was the monarch that the American colonists rebelled against), as the longest reigning monarch in British history. George III reigned for 59 years and 96 days, while Victoria eventually reigned for 63 years and 7 months and remains the longest reigning British monarch and the longest reigning female monarch in history. Queen Elizabeth II is gaining on her, though; Elizabeth has been on the throne for 60 years and a bit over 7 months as of this writing.

Speaking of queens, as we have been - September 22 is the birthday of Henry VIII's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Oh, they weren't married for long - just a bit over 7 months - before Henry had the marriage annulled, and she was never officially crowned as Queen Consort. Which makes sense, as it is difficult to be a consort when the marriage was never consummated. But, by virtue of being married to Henry, she was the Queen in practical terms for that time. And in many ways, Anne was the luckiest of Henry's wives. She never had to sleep with him, which had proved dangerous for his earlier queens. He divorced Catherine of Aragon because she couldn't give him a son. He had Anne Boleyn beheaded, supposedly for high treason, although it had a lot to do that she bore him only a daughter and then miscarried a disputed number of times, including the miscarriage of a son. His third wife, Jane Seymour, died of complications of childbirth less than two weeks after giving birth to Henry's son, Edward. Once Henry decided that Anne of Cleves wasn't really a suitable wife for him, he asked her for the annulment, which she wisely consented to. He gave her a substantial settlement, invited her to court often, and was referred to afterward as "the King's beloved sister". Anne outlived Henry's two latter wives, Catherine Howard, who was beheaded for not having disclosed her previous sexual history to the king in a timely manner, which Parliament arranged to have called treason, and Catherine Parr, who survived Henry.

So, all in all, a fairly interesting day in history. At least for us history geeks.

In which Mitt Romney appeals to (religious) authority...

What is it with Mitt Romney?

According to a story on CNN's website, Romney was asked during a radio interview in Alabama recently whether he believes that "America is the new 'Promised Land'," which the interviewer characterized as something taught in the Book of Mormon. The interviewer asked for a yes or no answer.

But Mitt, being both Mormon and politician, couldn't - or wouldn't - commit. His answer was, according to the CNN story,"You're gonna have to go to the church and ask what they think about that." He continued by saying, "There's no question about the fact that Israel is the 'Promised Land.' That's what the Bible tells us. And my guess is that they're the lands of promise to other people."

Sigh.

Mitt, Mitt, Mitt. The interviewer didn't ask you what the LDS church teaches about the location of the Promised Land. He also didn't ask you what the Bible says about the question (which could actually be two different things). He asked what you believe about it. It doesn't speak well of your independence from your ecclesiastical leaders that you have to depend on them to answer a simple question about what you, as an individual, believe about a question touching on spiritual beliefs.

I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that Mitt wouldn't commit. Mormon theology is slippery that way, and oftentimes even the highest authorities in the church won't give a straight answer about the church's beliefs to those who are not LDS themselves. Still, I worry about someone who won't answer a simple question about their beliefs. If you're ashamed of what you believe, maybe you should rethink your belief system. And if you're afraid to say what you believe because it will lose you votes, well, that's just lying for personal gain. It makes people like me wonder what else you might be waffling on in order to win elections. How can I be sure anything you say is what you really think?

Well, I don't trust Mitt anyway. He's a politician. And, as a former Mormon, I'm very familiar with the way that the LDS church, and its members, often have one set of answers for the faithful and another for the members of the church. They call that "milk before meat", and as far as I'm concerned all that means is that they will like about what the church really teaches in order to snag converts. This is not something I'm guessing at; I know this to be a fact because it happened to me when I converted to the LDS church when I was a teenager. But that's another post for another time.

Right now, the issue is Mitt and his reluctance to state his beliefs, deferring to the institutional church when the question clearly asked what he believes, not what his church believes. What his appeal to the authority of the church reminds me of more than anything is how LDS parents will take their toddlers, children who can barely speak a complete sentence, up to the stand on Fast Sunday - usually the first Sunday of the month, when LDS faithful abstain from two meals and give their sacrament meeting over to the congregation to bear their testimonies - and then whisper in the child's ear, for the child to repeat, "I know the church is true..." It is an exercise in ventriloquism. And it isn't attractive when the ventriloquist's dummy is any adult, much less one who aspires to the Presidency.