Vox Pop

The Prospect's politics blog

The Worst Debate Performance Ever, Really?

(AP Photo)


Putting Mitt's Footnotes on the Obama Doctrine

(AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

Yesterday, standing in front of the flags of all five military branches at the Virginia Military Institute, Mitt Romney offered his “vision for a freer, more prosperous, and more peaceful world.” He didn’t stray far from his expected talking points: get closer to Israel, get tougher on Iran, lead the Middle East, fight the perpetual war on terror, spend more money, and sign more free-trade agreements. It is your basic neoconservative vision for ushering in another “American century,” one that pits the “torch” of America’s exceptional and “proud history of strong, confident, principled global leadership” against the “dark ideology” of terrorists.

No, There's No Poll Trutherism On the Left

Ahhh! Panic panic panic!

Today, the Pew Research Center released a poll showing Mitt Romney rocketing ahead of Barack Obama to a 4-point lead among likely voters. Needless to say, this is pretty remarkable. Is it true? Well...maybe, maybe not. Just a few weeks ago Pew showed Obama ahead by 8 points among likely voters, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who found that unlikely. But referencing the recent "poll truther" insanity on the right, Slate tech writer Farhad Manjoo tweeted, "Watch for liberals to start questioning Pew's methodology/sampling/etc in 3, 2, 1...." Well, you can keep waiting. I have seen some liberals express the belief that these results may be inaccurate, particularly since they show the two candidates tied among women. I don't even think Ann Romney thinks her husband is going to be tied among women. But there aren't any liberals, as far as I can tell, questioning Pew's methodology or intentions.

Better Know a Ballot Measure

(Flickr/radarxlove and jamelah e.)

When Oregon voted on the nation’s first ballot initiative in 1904, the idea—as high-school civics teachers have told students ever since—was to take power away from the industries that ran the state legislature through bribes and corruption and return it to the people. In those days, corporate interests dominated and corrupted state politics all across the United States. Mining and railroad companies loomed particularly large, buying off entire legislative chambers and putting lawmakers on their payroll.

Obama and Romney's Proxy Debaters Take the Stage

Saturday’s “Rumble 2012” debate between Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly shared one key feature with last Wednesday’s presidential debate: a bipartisan meta-loser. While Wednesday’s title went to moderator Jim Lehrer, Rumble 2012’s was Nox Solutions LLC, a third-party venue hired to host the streaming website, which failed miserably.

However, that was pretty much where the similarities ended.

Why Do the Sunday Shows Suck So Much?

I know you're dying to know what these two have to say.

In the American media landscape, there is no single forum more prestigious than the Sunday shows, particularly the three network programs and to a slightly lesser extent "Fox News Sunday" and CNN's "State of the Union." The Sunday shows are where "newsmakers" face the music, where Washington's most important people are validated for their importance, where issues are probed in depth. So why do they suck so much?

I live and breathe politics, yet I find these programs absolutely unwatchable, and I can't be the only one. On a typical episode, there is absolutely nothing to learn, no insight to be gained, no interesting perspective on offer, nothing but an endless spew of talking points and squabbling. Let's take, for instance, yesterday's installment of "This Week With George Stephanopoulos"...

Romney Versus the People

(AP Photo/Scott Applewhite)


Mitt Romney Finally Gets a Bounce

(Jamelle Bouie)

This weekend, the questions for everyone tracking the election was straightforward: Has Mitt Romney received a bounce in the polls on the strength of his debate performance? And has it turned the race into a toss-up? The national pollsters have yet to release their live-interviewer surveys from the last several days, but swing-state polls show signs of improvement for the former Massachusetts governor.

Mighty Morphin Mitt

The oddest thing happened after Mitt Romney finally, emphatically, Etch A Sketched himself from flinty-hearted Ayn Randian into the spitting image of "compassionate conservative" George W. Bush in Wednesday’s debate: The right wing didn’t squeal one bit. Au contraire! The same folks who celebrated Romney’s vicious "47 percent" rant, the ones who’ve been policing his every syllable to check for apostasies, the ones who’ve spent years howling at Bush for betraying conservative principles—these same people reacted to the reemergence of “moderate Mitt” like Baby Boomers at a Springsteen show.

Why Can't Candidates Bring Notes to the Debates?

(AP/Charlie Neibergall)

Apparently, there are a few liberals out there concerned (or maybe just bored) that Mitt Romney brought some kind of a cheat sheet to the debate the other night, because he was seen taking something out of his pocket and putting it on his podium. The participants aren't supposed to bring any notes with them, but his campaign assures us that it was just a handkerchief. I'm not even going to get into the George W. Bush suit bulge affair, because I wouldn't want to encourage any tedious Zapruder-style analysis, but here's my question: Why the hell shouldn't they be allowed to bring notes?

Obama's Other War

What’s weighing President Obama down? In a brilliant essay, Garance Franke-Ruta of The Atlantic (and a Prospect alumna) argues that the emotional toll of his job—particularly, of presiding over two wars and having to reckon with their casualties—has emotionally “shut down” the president.

The Sound of Crickets: Conservative Sites Silent about GOP Voter-Registration Fraud

(Flickr/ Schristia)

What began last week as a trickle—a report from the Palm Beach Post that the Florida Republican Party was cutting ties with a firm that turned in "questionable" voter-registration forms in one county—has now grown into a pretty ugly flood. Turns out the Florida GOP paid the firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, to do voter registration, while the Republican National Committee paid the same firm millions to register voters in four other battleground states: Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada, and Colorado.

We're All Values Voters

(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

As recently as last month’s convention, Democrats were getting their narrative back. They were uniformly praised for their message discipline and for laying out an inspiring vision for the country, reflected in a string of rousing speeches that told a story and signaled (instead of concealed) their values. After last night’s debate, Dems risk falling back into the lost decades when the party could offer only a grab bag of policy goodies to its fragile coalition instead of a coherent governing philosophy. If Barack Obama’s debate performance is any indication, they seem poised to forget a key lesson from the last three elections: We’re all “values voters.”