Geopolitical Blackmail Redux

Pre-internet, we recall that the hostages from the Iranian embassy were released on the day Reagan was inaugurated.

Now, we see our embassies in Cairo and our consulate in Benghazi stormed, with Americans killed, and today our embassy in Yemen stormed. The Internet has everyone in touch with everything.

And what happens here? Romney blasts Obama’s handling of the situation on TV. Do you think we are playing into Al Qaeda hands? Of course. If Mr. Romney has some comments and advice for the President, perhaps he ought to provide it privately. Just a thought on what a patriot might do.

15 Thousand Journalists and an Empty Chair!

Some 15 thousand journalists have been credentialed to each of the national conventions. You’d think they were printing press passes on cereal boxes. The media have spent a reported $60 million sending those reporters. And what do the people get? Largely, scripted political positions, echoed by hundreds of speakers and spokespeople, even those “sitting” in empty chairs.

These farcical, archaic conventions are made all the more ludicrous by this sort of media pile-on. Not to mention the millions/billions spenty on the whole election campaigns. If America is to get value from its government, it should start with reigning in the endless campaign process and associated wasteful spending. Then maybe the political leaders could spend a little more time on building consensus and delivering action on governing policies that would actually benefit the nation. And the press would have something substantial to bring to the public, who crave constructive, cooperative solutions to the nation’s challenges and in their own lives.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/2012-conventions-journalists-media-coverage_n_1854320.html

 

Trump for President. “Great Presidential look?”

In his interview with Bob Schaefer of Face the Nation this am, Trump commented on Romney, saying ” Mitt has a great Presidential look, and whether we like it or not, that’s important.”

That’s not only a good demonstration  of Schaefer’s closing observation that the Republican primary debates have been increasingly about the candidates themselves, and not about the issues, but it also says why Donald would make such an appealing candidate himself, if he should run as part of a third-party ticket after the season close of Celebrity Apprentice in May — it’s the hair!

An encounter with Mitt’s dad George

I met George Romney not long after the 1987 President’s Volunteer Action Award went to McDonald’s Ronald McDonald House program, a network of homes away from home near children’s hospitals,  to assist families of seriously ill children, and staffed and supported by teams of volunteers. McDonald’s president went to the White House to receive the award from President Reagan and George Romney, founder and chairman of Volunteer, the nation’s leading volunteerism organization, later merged in the Bush’s Points of Light Foundation.

Romney senior scheduled a trip out to McDonald’s headquarters in the fall of 1987, to meet with our president, Ed Rensi, with my boss Dick Starmann and myself to “discuss possible volunteer programs you could build onto your Ronald McDonald presidential award-winning program.” Before Romney’s arrival, and he drove his own car from Detroit to Oak Brook, IL, for the meeting, I briefed Ed on his visitor. Romney was a long-standing McDonald’s fan, and company founder Ray Kroc had personally presented him with “a gold McDonald’s pass for free product” many years before. In the interim, Romney had become chairman of American Motors, Governor of Michigan, and then Secretary of Housing and urban Development under Nixon.

Over lunch at the McDonald’s Lodge, Romney assured Rensi, ” when you build a corporate public image, you help build sales.” McDonald’s discussed creating special restaurant tray liners for National Volunteer Week, the following April, as well as other supporting activities.

Romney, once a Presidential contender himself, had lost momentum to Nixon when after a briefing trip to Vietnam, he alluded to the “brainwashing” he’d received from the generals, and disavowed the war. Romney had been one of the first to resign the Nixon cabinet and distance himself from the emerging Watergate scandal.

When we met him, he was 80 years old, “but walks 8 to 12 miles a day and looks 25 years younger,” I reflected in my briefing memo. Few alive remember that in World War II, Romney was the chief spokesperson for the U.S. auto industry. Just yesterday, Mitt Romney‘s older brother recalled that Mitt was known as a boy for his amazing ability to make realistic auto sounds. With his  automotive history, no wonder George was a fan of McDonald’s drive-in restaurants.