The Home Stretch

Finally, the day has arrived. This time tomorrow, we’ll know who the next American president will be – unless a recount is needed and they have to call in the Supreme Court to cast the deciding vote. It’s happened before.

Something I think non-Americans must marvel at is the sheer length of the US presidential election. Today marks the end of a grueling two years (almost) of campaigning, debating, speechifying, demonizing, and obfuscating (if not sometimes outright lying) by a whole host of political characters. And some were real characters. (Herman Cain, where are you today?) 

No doubt like many others, I feel exhausted just watching the election unfold over the past twenty months or so. I can’t imagine how exhausted Barack Obama and Mitt Romney must feel, here on the home stretch. I also honestly can’t imagine why they would want to put themselves through it all.

In the latest polls, Obama and Romney are running neck-and-neck (you can never overplay horse-race analogies when it comes to elections). They are both showing 49% support nationwide, though Obama seems to be ahead in the only state that really matters, Ohio.

This morning I watched as the first actual votes were counted on live TV in tiny Dixville Notch, New Hampshire – five votes each for Obama and Romney. For the overall results, I’ll have to wait until after the polls start closing at two A.M. Finnish time. I don’t expect to sleep a lot tonight.

To some it might seem that this election has been badly overhyped, portrayed as an epic battle to decide the very future of America. At least the campaigns are happy to put it into such stark terms. As a casual observer, I would have to say:  yes and no. Or maybe.

It’s certainly the bitterest election of my lifetime. That’s a judgment call, of course. The 60s were a particularly politically divisive time, to be sure. But I was a kid then, and there was no talk radio and Internet to give a national forum to every “low information” citizen with a grievance, perceived or real, to pick at endlessly like a festering scab.

Since I don’t live in the States, and especially not in a swing state like Ohio or Colorado, I’m spared the onslaught of TV ads and robocalls flung at the voting public from both sides. Still, I’m feeling election fatigue just from all the political postings that fill my Facebook and Twitter feeds. To be fair, I’ve brought this on myself by choosing to follow certain tireless and prolific political sites. And I’ve posted my own share of unwanted and provocative status updates from time to time.

I’ve noticed that the political postings of many of my Georgia Facebook friends, who seem unanimously to support Romney, have slacked off in recent weeks. Maybe like me, they’re getting tired of it all. Or maybe they’ve become discouraged, as Romney has struggled to pull ahead of Obama. That’s my own spin, of course.

Or maybe they realize that since Romney will win Georgia anyway, and there’s no chance their postings will ever sway those elusive undecided voters in Ohio (the only voters who really count anyway), it’s pointless to publicly declare their strong disdain for Democrat Barack Obama. In Republican Georgia, that’s preaching to a choir that has long packed up and gone home.

It’s hard to ignore how poisonous the atmosphere has become. For example, a phone call a while back with someone in the States ended abruptly when our chat drifted to the rather staid topic of, wait for it, the Federal Reserve. Add “monetary policy” to the two topics that are traditionally too sensitive to be brought up in polite conversation – religion and politics.

Still, the atmosphere is surely nothing like that during the election of 1860, which resulted in half the United States deserting the other half, with the ensuing deaths of some 750,000 Americans. The US is not anywhere near that level of polarization, though some addled-minded blowhard somewhere is surely expecting another round of secession if Obama is reelected. I sure hope he doesn’t have access to guns (of course he has), or his own radio talk show (some have that, too).

Even many apparently sane conservatives are predicting dire consequents for the country if Obama wins. Obviously, I don’t agree. Likewise, some liberals see dark days ahead if Romney pulls out a victory. That’s based, of course, on Romney actually keeping half the promises he’s been forced to make trying to convince the Tea Party Republicans that he’s not, gasp, a moderate. There is still a chance that if he wins, he’ll ditch all that nonsense and govern like a reasonable person after all.

That’s the argument being made by David Frum in his recent endorsement of Mitt Romney. Frum, the George W. Bush speechwriter who so famously coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” in the propaganda campaign leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, is now considered a rare moderate voice in an increasingly extremist Republican Party. My, how times have changed. 

One telling reason for Frum thinking Romney is the better choice is the fanaticism of his own party.

“The congressional Republicans have shown themselves a destructive and irrational force in American politics. But we won't reform the congressional GOP by re-electing President Obama. If anything, an Obama re-election will not only aggravate the extremism of the congressional GOP, but also empower them: an Obama re-election raises the odds in favor of big sixth-year sweep for the congressional GOP — and very possibly a seventh-year impeachment. A Romney election will at least discourage the congressional GOP from deliberately pushing the US into recession in 2013.” (Emphasis added.)

Wow. You could call this the “Mel Gibson ‘Lethal Weapon’” rationale, something like:  “I’m way, way crazier than you are, dude, so you’d better do whatever the hell I say, or we’re both going down together.”

Call me old fashion, but given a choice, I always go with the least crazy bunch of folks. I only hope today that the good people of Ohio do the same. 

The Humor of Mitt Romney

Among the many brouhahas, big and small, that have popped up in this election cycle in the US, the most recent is a comment that Mitt Romney made before an adoring crowd in a suburb of Detroit, his hometown.

After taking to the stage, Romney flaunted his homeboy bona fides by reminding the crowd of supporters that he and his wife were both born in hospitals nearby. Then, riffing off the cheers, he went on to say, “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know this is the place where we were born and raised.”

Well, isn’t that nice. Democrats pounced on Romney’s obvious attempt to distinguish himself from Barack Obama. They saw it as a sly nod to the Birthers, those conspiracy cultists who refuse to believe that Barack Obama was born in the USA, and hence isn't eligible to be president.

The Republican spin to Romney’s gaffe was that he was simply making a joke, a bit of humor that Democrats are too tight-assed to appreciate. 

If Romney was making a joke, it was a very inept joke. Then again, he’s not altogether known for his humor. And I think he suffers from poor impulse control when he’s making unscripted remarks. He should bear down whenever he feels a joke coming on. He should fight the urge really, really hard.

On the face of it, the remark was stupid anyway. Why bring up birth certificates to tout the fact that you grew up in the place where you grew up? I suspect that no one in Obama’s old neighborhood in Honolulu ever asked to see his birth certificate, either. Except maybe Donald Trump’s private investigators, if they ever existed at all.  

Even if Romney meant his birth certificate comment to be a joke, he should have realized it’s not a joke he can get away with.

Obama can do it (and I think he has done so), because he’s the one who’s been dogged by the ceaseless requests to produce proof of birth. In that case, the humor’s directed at himself. Romney making a birth certificate joke is like non-Mormon Obama saying, “Somehow, I’ve never been asked how many wives I actually have”.

By stressing that no one has ever doubted his citizenship, Romney does set himself apart from Obama, but not in a positive way. It draws attention to the kind of scrutiny and suspicion that Obama has been forced to endure over his legitimacy, but for which Romney – a white guy from a wealthy family – gets a free pass. It underlines his sense of entitlement.

To send the same message, he could have just as easily boasted to the crowd in Michigan: “I’ve never had trouble flagging down a taxi in the middle of the night.” or “I’ve never been stalked by a neighborhood watchman.”

Oh dear, I think I just played the race card there. No worries. It was only a joke. 

Man of War Romney

I’m struck by the kind of small coincidences (and by “small” I mean trivial) that you run across every once and a while. This past week, while two US states and the District of Columbia were holding Republican primaries on Tuesday, I was making slow progress reading Chapter Eight of “The Glorious Cause”, a classic tome on the American Revolution by Robert Middlekauff. (“Tome” is exactly the right word – you could stop a freight train with this massive book.) 

As voters in Wisconsin, Maryland and DC were giving Mitt Romney a clean sweep in the polls, essentially guaranteeing him the Republican nomination and proving that in the end the GOP would not be jumping down the rabbit hole dug for them by the Tea Party, I was reading about the events in Boston in May 1768.

At that time, almost 250 springs ago, the British subjects in North America were in an uproar over taxation (sound familiar?), in particular the recent attempts by Parliament to make them pay duties on some items they had to import from Britain, such as paper, paint, glass and, not least of all, tea. To help enforce these extremely unpopular measures, the Royal Navy sent to Massachusetts a 50-gun man-of-war, HMS Romney. Her presence in Boston Harbor was not appreciated, and soon after arriving, the Romney sparked further outrage by commandeering a ship belonging to the richest man in America.

John Hancock, best known to modern Americans because his name is synonymous with a person's signature, was an extremely wealthy businessman, not unlike future Bostonian Mitt Romney (the man, not the man-of-war). Hancock also may, or may not, have engaged in a practice used by many of his fellow merchants to avoid paying duties, namely smuggling. 

A month before the Romney (the ship) dropped anchor in Boston Harbor, one of John Hancock’s sloops arrived from across the Atlantic with a cargo of Madeira wine. Royal customs officials suspected that Hancock had slipped most of the cargo off the boat without declaring it and paying the required duty. With the arrival of the Romney, they now had the muscle to act on their suspicions. The officials ordered the man-of-war to seize Hancock’s sloop – which was fittingly named Liberty. A riot, as they say, ensued, with the tax officials beaten bloody, but escaping with their lives. One more step on the path to revolution. 

If you are a Tea Party supporter (circa 2012) who, after this week’s primaries, is feeling some resentment over your movement being hijacked by an establish Republican like Mitt Romney, you might see a cruel metaphor in the fact that, back in the original Tea Party era, a ship called Liberty was confiscated by one named Romney. Me, I just find it all an ironic coincidence.  

"The Lost of the Romney", depicting the ship's demise after running aground in 1804. 

Grits

It had to happen eventually.  Grits have now entered the discourse of American politics at the highest level. 

I’m not talking about “grit” as in 1969 Western classic “True Grit”, which won John Wayne his only Oscar (and which was remade by the Coen Brothers in 2010, a version I still haven’t seen).  “Grit”, as personified in both movies by lawman Rooster Cogburn, is the quality of being tough, determined, courageous, persistent.  Hard core, you could say. 

Finns, it would seem, know this quality well, since they have a word for it (sisu) that everyone who moves here encounters soon upon arrival.  You can’t overestimate the importance of sisu for Finns.  In the Finnish national psyche, the word sums up the essential character of Finns that has allowed them to survive, even thrive, in a harsh land.  Being so fundamental to the country, sisu has naturally been evoked often enough in political life here, similar to the way the concept of “exceptionalism” is constantly bandied about in American politics.  

Grits in the morning.  Photo: Sashafatcat

But what I’m talking about now, “grits” (always plural), is a food.  It’s porridge made from ground corn (maize, to the rest of the word) that is symbolic, in a trivial way, of my native Southern US.  Growing up in the South, grits are a part of life. 

When I was living in Athens, Georgia, working as a lab tech, I once met my boss for breakfast at a little downtown café that served a typical fare of eggs, bacon, and – as Southern tradition dictates – grits, whether you asked for them or not.  My boss, a botany professor and native of California, remarked about my sprinkling sugar on the heap of grits on my plate.  I joked that I eat grits “like a Yankee”, meaning that I adulterate them with something other than margarine or red-eye gravy.  I went on to explain that this is the only way I can eat grits.  My boss responded flatly, “I don’t even try.”

Actually, I don’t mind grits at all, and in fact I’m sure they’re healthy food.  It’s not that grits are bad; it’s just that they’re a bit bland by themselves.  Hence, my uncivilized abuse of this Southern delicacy. 

All of sudden, grits were in the news last week.  Republican candidates are currently vying for the hearts and minds of Southern voters, and they are doing this by showing how they are one with local folk using the time-honored tactic of eating what the local folk eat. 

I doubt Finish politicians face the same kind of gastronomic scrutiny and pressure to eat, in front of the cameras, such regional dishes as black sausage in Tampere or kalakukko (“fish rooster”) in Kuopio.  US candidates aren’t so lucky.  They routinely have to eat the most ridiculous food on offer at any number of county fairs across the land, including I’m sure the now-famous “fried butter on a stick”, first cooked up at the State Fair of Texas.  Candidates who are seen turning down such real-people food, risk being labeled elitists. 

Critics once ripped into Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry when – campaigning in the birthplace of the venerated Philly Cheese Steak sandwich – he had the gall to order his with Swiss cheese, instead of the de rigueur Cheese Whiz.  It showed, so claimed the purists, that Kerry didn’t have the common touch. 

To prove his own bona fides, everyman George Bush, Sr., used to make a big deal about his fondness for the Southern treat of pork rinds (crunchy fried pig skin, which actually isn’t that bad). 

With the primaries looming in Alabama and Mississippi today, grits are now on the menu – again whether you want them or not.  And you’d better want them.  Newt Gingrich, who is hoping his Dixie roots will win over voters and make his campaign slightly less embarrassing, summed it up thusly, according to the Wall Street Journal Blogs:  “If you don’t understand grits, there’s a pretty high likelihood you don’t understand the rest of the South either.” 

I think that’s a joke, whether he meant it that way or not.  But über-Yankee Mitt Romney, desperately trying to come across as down-home as possible, is taking no chances. Last week he bravely admitted that he has now tried for the very first time the South’s answer to oatmeal.  With cheese, as it turns out. 

Not to be outdone, Newt Gingrich trumpeted his grits credentials by reminding Alabama voters, "I just want you to know that as a Georgian, I understand grits.  I even understand cheese grits.” 

Good to know.  May the biggest grits eater win!

Horse Races

It’s fashionable, and totally correct I might add, to carp about how politics – the very serious business of organizing how people are governed – is all too often reduced to a horse race.  Who’s up, who’s down, who’s ahead of whom in the polls, by how many points, yada, yada, yada.   

I have to confess.  I’m one of those bad people who love to view politics as a spectator sport, which probably points to a defect in my character or at least a sad statement on the state of my life. 

So, for a political junkie like me, this is shaping up to be a lost weekend at the racetrack.  There are gripping elections in both the US and Finland. 

Well, maybe it’s an exaggeration to say “gripping” in the case of the Finnish presidential election, which takes place tomorrow, Sunday.  Compared to the Las Vegas sheen of recent US campaigns, the election here in Finland is, let’s say, understated.  The numerous televised debates between the eight candidates have much more in common with Charlie Rose than American Idol.  In terms of squabbling, they haven’t even reached the level of the McLaughlin Group.  (I realize some of these public-affairs TV shows will be familiar only to political junkies like myself, so starved for entertainment as we are.) 

Also, you can make the case that the race for Finnish president doesn’t mean that much, since in Finland’s parliamentary system the president doesn’t have much power beyond setting foreign policy. 

Still, Finns are generally very civic-minded, so when they go to the polls to elect a president every six years they take it seriously, as they should.  And, with the political landscape in flux here, there’s probably even keener interest than usual in the outcome of this election.  The surprising success of the reactionary True Finns party in parliamentary elections turned Finnish politics on its ear last spring.  And the on-going European debt crisis keeps calling into question Finland’s role in the EU, as well as all kinds of domestic economic issues here. 

This uncertainty notwithstanding, there is practically no doubt who will win tomorrow’s election.  The conservative National Coalition Party’s Sauli Niinistö is sure to be the next president, according to polls, breaking the Social Democrat’s 30-year hold on the presidency.  (As a point of interest, the “conservative” party here occupies about the same spot on the political spectrum as the Democrats in the US.)  The weakness of the long-dominant Social Democrats is one of the biggest surprises in this race, as well as the projected poor showing of the True Finn’s candidate, Timo Soini.  

With the outcome seemly certain, the biggest question now centers on who will come in second.  In the Finnish system, if no one receives more than 50% of the vote, there is a runoff between the top two contenders.  With the vote being divided between eight candidates, it can easily happen.  Many people I know are voting for Pekka Haavisto, the hugely popular candidate of the Green Party, hoping he’ll make it to the second round. 

Haavisto, who is openly gay, seems to have been propelled to second place in the latest polls by his personal favorability, which is much higher than the level of support the Green Party itself enjoys.  As the results come in on Sunday, we’ll all be watching to see how good the news is for Haavisto and how bad it might be for Soini, who is running a distant fourth in the polls and has no chance of making it to the second round. 

Before then, an even more interesting question will be resolved – who wins in South Carolina.  Like Ground Hog Day, what happens today will decide whether “spring” has come for Republicans, or if they might have to slog through six more months of GOP winter.  The conventional wisdom is that a win by frontrunner Mitt Romney in this deeply conservative state, and the first in the South to vote, will settle the issue. 

Romney’s anointment seemed like a done deal until this past week, when feisty Newt Gingrich surged in the polls and bumbling Rick Perry narrowed the field by quitting.  I’m on pins and needles about this.  I can’t say for sure whom I want to win.  I’m hoping that Republicans, after carefully vetting each candidate and weighing their true devotion to conservative values, will choose the man absolutely best suited to go up against Obama in November, and lose. 

Many Tea Party Republicans hate Obama for pushing through “Obamacare” health insurance reform, which was largely modeled after “Romneycare”, created by none other than Mitt Romney.  I relish the thought of Tea Party supporters, who want to kick out the president because of Obamacare, having to vote for the man who made the template for it. 

As great as it would be to see Republicans face that dilemma, I still worry that Romney comes across as reasonable (dare I say, sane) enough to be a real threat to Obama.  So, imagine my excitement by the prospect of Newt regaining his vigor in South Carolina and giving Romney a real run for his money.  For all his presidential good looks and slick operation, Romney lacks the passion that true conservatives seem to be searching for, the passion needed to win their hearts.  Passion is one thing that Newt has – an abundance of it, in fact.  He is so passionate about so much that it can be heartbreaking at times – just ask the two ex-wives he cheated on. 

We now have the titillating possibility of Gingrich winning South Carolina, staying in the race and, who knows, catching enough fire and momentum to ride Tea Party anger and resentment all the way to the convention in Tampa.  Thinking what a spectacle a race between Obama and Newt would be, I have no choice but to "endorse" Newt Gingrich as the GOP candidate.  (Now, there’s a game changer!)  Still, given how surreal US politics have become, there’s a little voice in my head that says, “What if he actually wins?” 

Then, sweet Jesus help us all.