Mayan Campaign Mashup 2012: Perry as [white folks’] champion

12 01 2012

You noticed who’s not there, right?

What, they don’t need a champion? What the hell?

And Perry looks rather too much like like the previous occupant of the White House in that shot of him standing next to his plane.

He has no chance of winning of course, but I like that he’s pissing away the millions given to him by conservative donors.

As I used to say when working for a left-wing paper and we were criticized for taking money from non- and anti-lefty advertisers: Spend it all—make them spend it all!

(This one’s for you, dmf.)

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Mayan Campaing Mashup 2012: Mitt’s unwit

12 01 2012

Shocking news: I am not a fan of Mitt Romney.

I’m not at all clear why he’s running for president, other than that he wants to be president, and I don’t think he’d be any good at the job.

I also think that for all his professionalism as a campaigner, he doesn’t really understand what the presidency requires.

Matt Yglesias has a nice take on this:

Of course there is envy in America, but there’s also spite. And I think you see some of it in Romney’s reply. He has a lot of money, personally. That money is very useful to him in a number of ways. It lets him consume more goods and services. It offers him security against the ups and downs in life. It lets him be assured that his kids will have a leg up in life. But over and above that, Romney seems to revel in the idea of being better than the lower orders of society and resists the leveling impulse even though it would in concrete terms leave him with plenty of money.

I don’t know if he’s spiteful or not, but  statements about envy and [the out-of-context] “I like being able to fire people” make it difficult to conclude otherwise.

Narrative, man, narrative! You do not want to feed your weaknesses: it doesn’t turn the weakness into strength, but strengthens the weakness. Tch tch tch.

Anyway, this gives me another chance to pull out a much-used Rousseau quote:

[I]f one sees a handful of powerful and rich men at the height of greatness and fortune while the mob grovels in obscurity and misery, it is because the former prize the things they enjoy only to the extent that the others are deprived of them; and because, without changing their position, they would cease to be happy, if only the people ceased to be miserable.

This is not the impression you want to leave with would-be voters.

h/t  James Fallows