Paul Ryan and lying

Politics

With a couple of disclaimers like almost everybody exaggerates – I sure have – and nobody remembers everything, I am fascinated by Paul Ryan’s lying. Not so much the lies themselves, but the foolishness of it; the riskiness. It is one thing to say that he ran marathons when he only ran one or to chop some time off that marathon when having a beer with a group of  business associates and an entirely other thing to put it out in front of the entire world.

For starters, part of that entire world includes people who were there and remember. I am very aware of that as I blog. Anything I say here, opens me up to someone saying, Hey! I was there and you never…. To me, it would be incomprehensible to exaggerate to a reporter, even one from, say, the Portola Valley Almanac.  For Paul Ryan, it is almost a guarantee that it will be checked. For Ryan to imply that he has run multiple marathons or that he climbed close to 40 of Colorado’s 14,000 peaks, just seems nuts.

What was he thinking?

 

 

Michael Lewis on Obama

Politics, Uncategorized

The latest Vanity Fair has an article by Michael Lewis (the author of Moneyball, Blindside, The Big Short, among other books). It is entitled Obama’s World and they sub-tag it  “Hanging out with the president—on the basketball court, in the White House residence, and on Air Force One—provides an eye-opening lesson in what it takes to lead the free world, as well as an unparalleled portrait of Barack Obama”. I am not, particularly, a Vanity Fair fan but I am a Michael Lewis fan and the article is well worth reading.

It is more than just about Obama, it is a fascinating investigation into the isolation and strain of being the president. You also need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” [Obama] said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.” The self-discipline he believes is required to do the job well comes at a high price. “You can’t wander around,” he said. “It’s much harder to be surprised. You don’t have those moments of serendipity. You don’t bump into a friend in a restaurant you haven’t seen in years. The loss of anonymity and the loss of surprise is an unnatural state. You adapt to it, but you don’t get used to it—at least I don’t.”

In reading the article, I ended up thinking about Bush almost as much as Obama. I highly recommend it.

 

Romney and forced errors

Politics

I used to think that Mitt Romney was a very smart man. “Used” is the operative word, here.  Now, I no longer think that he is that smart and I feel, vaguely, sorry for him. As a fellow – but almost infinitely poorer –  businessman, that bothers me. If he is not very smart, how did he make so much money? I know that he started with money, but, but, unlike George W. Bush who started with money from his father’s connections and ended up with less, Romney parlayed his wealthy start into making even more money. According to our national mythology, he has to be smart.

When you are the richest guy in the room, it must be hard not to think that you are also the the smartest guy in the room. After all, Romney is rich, he did make lots of money, and to many people – perhaps most – that is what “being successful” means. He is much richer than Obama so he must be smarter. Paul Ryan said it well when he said, “When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life. I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself.”  By inference, somebody who does think of themself as stuck in some low station in life – just because they were born black, or grew-up in poverty – is either not very smart or does not have the proper American character (it may not be their fault, but it is not Paul Ryan’s fault, either).

And this is where I feel sorry for Romney. I imagine that Romney thought that once he had a chance to go mano-a-mano with Obama, he – Romney – would have no problem beating him. After all, Obama’s base’s enthusiasm is down, the economy is in the tank and not getting better; how could Romney not beat him? And yet, Romney is slowly losing ground.

Somehow, Obama has a way of making forced errors. It happened to Bill Clinton in South Carolina, it happened to John McCain over the economy meltdown, and now it is starting to happen to Mitt Romney. He should be able to win on the economy but he keeps wandering off to other topics. He is not going to win by making Obama look friendly to radical Muslims! he is not going to win on birth control, and, yet, somehow he ends up there trying to double down on a stupid statement. It must be infuriating to a guy like Romney who is, after all, the smartest guy in the room.