Posts by Jon Talton

The Nimitz-class carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and strike group.

Exactly sixty-eight years ago, American warships obliterated the remaining combat fleets of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the greatest sea battle in history. It was the last stand of the battleship and the first use of kamikaze, a foreshadowing of asymmetrical warfare to come. In the aftermath, the United States Navy has ruled the oceans, and helped ensure Pax America, with a dominance only exceeded by the Royal Navy in the century of Pax Britannica after Trafalgar.

Maintaining this is not a matter of mere numbers, however, as President Obama hinted at in his devastating bayonets-and-horses rejoinder to wealthy Republican financier Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney. Building more ships will further the corporate welfare for the defense contractors and has personally enriched Romney's top naval adviser. Beyond this, the strategy is murky — particularly considering the cuts the nation is expected to endure while also further spending on the military.

For the record, the Navy had 285 active ships last year. Contrary to Romney's claim that, "our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917," the Navy was even smaller under George W. Bush. And numbers of ships are meaningless era to era. A modern Arleigh Burke class destroyer is far more lethal than a World War II battleship. A single Nimitz-class carrier strike group is more potent than all the fleets assembled at Leyte. Total firepower controlled by U.S. fleets is overwhelming. Obama made the point without going too deep into the weeds. (I hope; never underestimate the ignorance of the average voter and the coveted GOP demographic of white males and size issues).

Much has changed since I wrote the first post on this topic. The biggest being that wealthy Republican financier Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney may well be the next president. Between the hard-core right, the duhs-and-ignos, and the whites who hate that black man in the White House more than anything, it could well happen. And don't forget the huge post-Citizens United money and vote suppression favoring the GOP. Disappointment in the incumbent is substantive — but enough to turn the country over to this man and this bunch? Possibly.

I want to attempt to get beyond the horse race or debate analysis to contemplate a Romney presidency. So, a few thoughts:

The man is frighteningly opaque. We've been conditioned to believe "all politicians lie." Maybe so. But I can't think of a presidential candidate in my lifetime who has held so many different and conflicting positions. Not evolving or changing one's mind when the facts change, but cynical shape-shifting to close the deal. Anything to win. Even if this doesn't reveal a dangerous sociopath, we must ask: Who is this man? The hard right doesn't care; it has given him a pass to play "Moderate Mitt" just to defeat Obama. But does "Moderate Mitt" really exist? Or was that merely the calculus of a man who won one term as governor in blue Massachusetts ("my state" as he always says in debates, creepily avoiding saying the state's name). Is it the lazy fantasy of the mainstream media that also had a misplaced crush on the "maverick," wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III.

UPDATED

One of the treasures of my home in exile is Town Hall Seattle, a setting that consistently holds intelligent and searching events featuring top authors, artists, scientists and other intellectuals. The audience is always smart, never boorish or full of thugs and trolls. The vital issues of the day are on the menu, the setting a restored majestic church downtown. That such a place not only exists outside of New York but is highly popular is almost enough to give one hope. But this is a very blue city that consistently ranks at or near the top in the nation for literacy.

A very different town hall will take place Tuesday night: The second presidential debate. As the New York Times reports, the format "is designed to be a little less stiff — a free-flowing question-and-answer session between the candidates and a studio
audience." Get it: Studio audience. Not only is this "debate" actually highly scripted, it is intended to mimic the great god of Moronistan, the television. Please, let us trivialize what should the solemn obligation of learning real issues and acting as real citizens. Far better Donahue/Oprah/The View with pretend issues and a premium on treating Americans as stupid children. Wasn't it the first such "town hall debate" in 1992 when George H.W. Bush checked his watch? I felt his pain.

In the Obama/Romney version, we will see 80 participants "culled by Gallup…from a sample of uncommitted voters." Right there is what cops and crime-writers call "a tell." Uncommitted? Seriously? How could anyone be uncommitted or undecided in this election. Only people who are imbeciles. People who should not vote. I hearken back to Gore Vidal's famous line about 50 percent of Americans don't vote and 50 percent don't read a daily newspaper — and he hoped it was the same 50 percent. Today the number of actual readers is far lower. But we will have Messrs. Romney and Obama pandering to the duhs and the ignos, consumers not citizens.

Remember when progressives were told not to worry, that President Obama was playing chess while everyone else was playing checkers. Unfortunately checker-players ended up winning most of the matches. And then there was Obama as "zen master." No Drama Obama. And he was peacefully stoic as the Republican right captured nearly every agenda and framed nearly every debate. We are left with one last chestnut: That the president is at his best when his back is against the wall.

Based on the results of the respected Pew poll, we're about to find out if this is the case. Calling the poll findings "devastating, just devastating," Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast wrote:

I've never seen a candidate this late in the game, so far ahead, just throw in the towel in the way Obama did last week – throw away almost every single advantage he had with voters and manage to enable his opponent to seem as if he cares about the middle class as much as Obama does. How do you erase that imprinted first image from public consciousness: a president incapable of making a single argument or even a halfway decent closing statement? And after Romney's convincing Etch-A-Sketch, convincing because Obama was incapable of exposing it, Romney is now the centrist candidate, even as he is running to head up the most radical party in the modern era.

Daniel McCarthy of The American Conservative writes a thoughtful article asking, "Is the GOP still a national party?" He points out the increasing popular vote dominance of Democrats in presidential elections, contrasting this with the GOP landslides of earlier years. Yet the map that goes with it is arresting: County by county, this is a very red nation (admittedly this was from 2004; the Obama "high tide" results are shown, I believe by congressional district, above). But, with a few exceptions such as Phoenix and metros in Texas, the biggest population lives in blue counties. "Republicans," he writes, "are actually closer than Democrats to being the real 47
percent party. (Though it’s more accurate to say the GOP is the 48-49
percent party and the Democrats are the 49-50 percent party.)"

McCarthy points to the dichotomy: GOP ideological purity, discipline and grassroots strength have given it big advantages over Democrats in state legislatures and Congress. But that same base, and the need for Republican presidential candidates to please it, becomes a liability every four years. McCarthy is a conservative in the Russell Kirk mold and is rightly concerned about what passes for conservatism today.

The long knives are already out in the campaign of wealthy Republican financier Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney and one reads about the bloodbath to come in the GOP if Romney goes down. (It ain't over!). But bloodbath to where? The Eisenhower, Ford, Nixon and even Reagan and Bush I Republicans have been read out of the party as RINOS. All militant passion resides with the extreme reactionaries that, when most Americans really grasp what they're about, further marginalize the party.

UPDATED (2)

President Obama got a bounce. Wealthy Republican financier Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney got none. Key swing states are slipping his reach. Many in the progressive blogosphere are a bit too confident for my comfort 50 days out. The richest men and most powerful industries in America are not prepared to see their hundreds of millions of dollars contributed to Romney and Citizens United-enabled GOP super PACs flushed down the toilet. Voter suppression efforts are in full gear, especially critical in Ohio.

No question the Romney campaign is in such disarray that, as Politico reports, the long knives are already out. The Republican Convention ended in calamity, from Chris Christie's Tony Soprano 2016 acceptance speech to Clint Eastwood's performance art with an empty chair — and little memorable about the nominee. Then last week, Mitt's "Lehman moment" on Libya, that moment, as with McCain in 2008, when the man shows himself profoundly unqualified for the presidency.

And why would he be? He's not "Mr. Fix-It" the businessman. He's Mr. Break-It, the kind of finance capitalist that has spent decades weakening the nation by looting the productive wealth it took a century to create. He was a failed one-term governor of a mid-sized state. If Mr. Obama lacked executive experience, he at least has a first-rate temperament, to use Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous assessment of FDR. Unlike Roosevelt, he also has a first-rate intellect, although my discontents with the president are well known.