Benghazi dispatch

This is probably the best analysis I've seen so far of the Benghazi bloodshed.

What's missing from a lot of the on-air commentary -- and Mitt Romney's bellicose attack on President Obama for sending "mixed messages" that he believes spurred the attack -- is the fact that the world, and the Middle East, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, is a "complicated and, at times, confounding."

In-depth reporting by, among others, Rachel Maddow makes it plain that there may be a lot of factors behind the devastating attack besides an obscure, really bad, blasphemous film: Islamic extremists, frustrated, angry youth idled by the slack post-revolutionary economy, and general instability in a nation that's trying to figure out its own future.

For my money, this paragraph gets to the heart of it:

No specific group claimed responsibility for the attack, which was well orchestrated and involved heavy weapons. It is thought to be the work of the same Salafi, ultra-religious groups who have perpetrated similar assaults in Benghazi. They are religious, authoritarian groups who justify their actions through very selective, corrupt, and ultimately self-serving interpretations of Islam. Under Qaddafi, they kept quiet. In the early days of the revolution some of them claimed that fighting Qaddafi was un-Islamic and conveniently issued a fatwa demanding full obedience to the ruler. This is Libya’s extreme right. And, while much is still uncertain, Tuesday’s attack appears to have been their attempt to escalate a strategy they have employed ever since the Libyan revolution overthrew Colonel Qaddafi’s dictatorship. They see in these days, in which the new Libya and its young institutions are still fragile, an opportunity to grab power. They want to exploit the impatient resentments of young people in particular in order to disrupt progress and the development of democratic institutions
.

After a day of leaving Mitt Rimney twisting in the wind over his hamfisted, callus and bellicose statements on the deaths of the US ambassador to Libya, it seems as though the GOP is taking reluctant, belated steps in bucking up their nominee.

As unrest in Tripoli and Cairo, Egypt, continues today -- and reporters sifted through evidence the attack was planned and had little to do with an offensive, provocative anti-Islam film -- Sen. John McCain blames the attacks on Obama and the perception of American military weakness.  Ditto Donald Rumsfeld, although why anyone would listen to Rummy on matters of foreigh policy is a mystery to me.

Yet the assault on Romney's assault on the administration continues to be picked apart for fallacies, errors in timing and outright lies.  And the defense of Romney, in addition to being a day late, looks to be more than a dollar short, hewing to Republican talking points issued in the wake of yesterday's debacle.

Gail Collins, the floor is yours.

No.  Just, no.  

That was my initial reaction to Mitt Romney's wooden, tin-eared, desperate statement to the slayings of Chris Stevens, US ambassador to Libya.  It was unbelieveable, and typical of a candidate that carries the whiff of desperation with each passing day. 

It's unfortunate that Romney's blunder has overshadowed the death of a man who by all accounts was a skilled diplomat, one that even Condoleezza "Bin Laden Determined To Attack the U.S." Rice praised as a man worthy of the most difficult diplomatic assignments in the Mideast.  Given his resume and the accolades, I can imagine he was out on the street trying to quell the violence that ultimately took his life, and those of four others at the embassy that night. 

But the knee-jerk reaction by Romney probably did the electorate a favor, an actual, real, 3 a.m. phone call that showed the nation waht he's made of and how he would react in a crisis. 

Which is, in a word, badly. 

Ham-fisted Mitt

Hard to beat a lede like this: 

I’ve been following politics for many years; I’ve written a book on presidential campaigns and I’ve delved quite a bit into the minutiae of the 2012 campaign. And I’m increasingly convinced that Mitt Romney is the worst national politician I’ve ever seen.

The New York Daily News' Michael Cohen articulates here something I've long thought: that Romney is not a natural pol, is not likeable, and doesn't have the skills -- or diversity of experience, or experience with diversity -- it takes to be an effective presidential candidate, let alone president.  To my view, the biggest reason he's contending for the title boils down to two numbers: 14.7 and 8.3. 

The former refers to the amount of money he spent in Florida to put away Newt Gingrich in the Florida primary, eliminating his last effective challenger. The latter, of course, is the current unemployment rate, the political millstone around President Obama's neck. 

During the primary season, I kept wondering if it was just me, or f the GOP presidential nomination field was the weakest I'd seen since I started paying attention to this stuff. And it seemed that Romney thought the same, governing himself as if he could just walk on stage and seize the nomination in a hostile takeover, then bashing Obama with a hard eight until he succumbed.   

And given the fact that omney was the best choice for the party, he struggled mightily to put away the last two men standing, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich - a pair of has-beens whom voters had run off the national stage years ago. Romney brought them to heel only after dropping a few well-placed money bombs and reminding people he looked more like a president than that black guy does. 

Cohen puts his finger on the heart of the problem - that the fault lies not in the political stars, but in the awkward, gaffe-prone, distant, sometimes arrogant Romney himself, particularly after he criticized the Republican-dominated congress for sequester-deal defense cuts his own running mate, Paul Ryan, supported: 

So what we have is a presidential candidate attacking their own party and their own running mate on an issue that is as much as a political liability as it is a political benefit. That’s our Mitt!

Read Cohen's entire story here. 

Speaking of Joes...

This is just ... wrong.  

Above-Average Joe

For all his gaffes, for all his goofiness, for all his Joe Biden-ness, I can't for the life of me imagine why any pundit or consultant worth his or her salt would propagate the rumor that Hillary Clinton should or would replace a guy who can give a speech like this. 

Biden may have his faults, but I think he tends to be underrated by those of us in the chattering class. Certainly President Obama talks about seeking his counsel, praising him in Charlotte as a better vice president than he could have hoped for.  And certainly Biden has enough legislative experience, connections, and common touch, to be a top White House asset rather than a liability. 

And he's got something on display in this speech, something for which there's no substitute: heart. 

Sure as Shirt

Three days on, I still haven't completely unpacked my bags (or my noggin) from my chaotic trip to Charlotte and the Democratic National Committee Convention.  Due to technical difficulties, I wasn't quite able to blog or tweet as much as I wanted.

But a piece of bootleg swag - a large graphic-print Obama 2012 T-shirt - has kept the conversation about Charlotte going in ways that I didn't expect.

Strangers walk up and ask me where I got the shirt (some street vendor outside the Time-Warner Cable Arena), while others want to know what's going to happen in 56 days.  As if I know: I'm just some guy who happens to be wearing an unofficial Obama T-shirt some other guy sold me on a streetcorner for $10 (three for $25).

 In the supermarket deli line, some old coot with a cane, pants hiked up to his navel and a flat-brimmed baseball cap, challenged me: "What has he [Obama] ever done for the black man??"

Excellent question.

Nonetheless, it was striking that a cheap item of clothing probably made in China and sold illegally has become an identifier of authoritative, thoughtful political analysis.  Or at least a conversation starter with people who think I may keep up on politics and isn't wearing the gear to be fashionable.

Must be the glasses.

Still, I gave some guy at my gym a snootful of political analysis once he saw my shirt and asked me what I thought would happen on Nov. 4.  I told him things are looking good, though conventional wisdom still indicates it's going to be a nail-biter.  President Obama leads in a few key swing states, I told him, and is within striking distance of Romney in the ones where he's trailing.

At the same time, I noted, the president had a monthly fundraising edge for the first time this year, while GOP challengers Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are stumbling from one lie to the next, getting called out by the media, where -- after months of letting the falsehoods slide -- slapping them around has apparently become fashionable.

"Keep an eye on things," I said.  "Odds are 60-40 for Obama."

I was speaking after a workout, and was all hot and sweaty and high on endorphins, so I'm surprised anyone would take me seriously.

Then I came home, and saw this.  And this morning, this showed up on my Twitter feed.

I love it when I'm right and don't even know it.  Kind of like finding a $20 bill in a pair of pants you hardly wear.

If I were a more skillful blogger, I'd be able to separate out the graphics on the right side of Nate's blog, which is what I'm referring to.  It shows statistical models that put Obama's chances of re-election at 80 percent or so, and all but one of the nine swing states trending his way -- with, oddly, North Carolina the lone execption.

It also indicates what could be an historical first: Romney and Ryan could be the first presidential ticket in danger of not even winning their home states.  Obama leads in Wisconsin AND Massachusetts.

I'll have more on this later.  But if the trend holds, Michael Tomsky thinks we should all get ready for a GOP sleaze-fest with race as the main attraction.