All The News - Jason Linkins

The New York Times' Jeremy Peters reports that the new Crossroads GPS ad "Basketball" is set to "become one of the most heavily broadcast political commercials of this phase of the general election."

It's already one of the most heavily written about political commercials of this phase of the general election, thanks to Peters and the Times, who provide a 1,200 word exegesis on the creation of the ad, alongside an "Anatomy of" feature that explains to readers what they are seeing as they watch the one-minute spot. All of which is fairly surprising given the fact that the ad -- as acknowledged right up front -- isn't exactly that hard-hitting.

In fact, Crossroads' last ad, entitled "Obama's Promise" and released just six days ago, was made of much sterner stuff. But that ad received only a passing mention in an earlier article by Peters. In that piece, he wrote that Crossroads was helping to launch what would perhaps become "an unusually heavy and vicious air war as outside political groups assume a larger role than ever."

But last week's political theses are so seven days ago!

By contrast, the new ad is almost painfully generic. While it carries some dramatic touches -- it includes the "morphing" effect that was considered to be cutting edge back in 1991, when Pacific Data Images created it for Michael Jackson's video for "Black or White" -- its message boils down to the same fears about rising debt that Beltway hacks have sounded off about for years, only with much less hysteria. The ad even does that outside-group issue ad trick at the end where it just encourages viewers to lobby the White House to a different point of view, as if Crossroads would somehow get out of the anti-Obama game if tweaks were made to his policy initiatives.

The new, "subtle" ad was created by perennial bloody-shirt waver Karl Rove and Larry "I made the Willie Horton ad" McCarthy. But the message that Rove and the Crossroads Crew apparently want to convey, at this time, is that they aren't ready to be pointlessly brutal with their election ads. Not really! Or, at least not yet. Please just ignore the previous reports of their "hard-hitting ad" that ran in the same newspaper, a week ago.

Today, the Times allows the people behind Crossroads to retrench themselves as "subtler" provocateurs. They explain how contemporary polling and focus group research reveals that President Barack Obama is well-liked, if not well-approved, and that this cautions against tossing the high, hard stuff that they were tossing six days ago, but whatever, forget all that:

Middle-of-the-road voters who said they thought the country was on the wrong track were unmoved when they heard arguments that the president lacks integrity. And they did not buy assertions that he is a rabid partisan with a radical liberal agenda that is wrecking America.

"They are not interested in being told they made a horrible mistake," said Steven J. Law, president of Crossroads GPS and the affiliated "super PAC," American Crossroads. "The disappointment they're now experiencing has to be handled carefully."

All of this work pointed to a path forward: tap into the generic feelings about being let down by what's happened in the Obama presidency (and obviously, eliding over the broken economy it was tasked with rebuilding from scratch) without being -- you know -- mean about it. In this way, Crossroads mirrors the message that comes out of the Romney campaign (on most days) -- that the president is a nice guy who is in over his head. (Of course there's no way that Crossroads and the Romney campaign are coordinating, because that would be soooo illegal!)

In the end, we have what's described as a "hard truth wrapped in soft packaging," which isn't what anyone expected when Karl Rove got his hands on millions of dollars to indulge his political id. That said, let's remember something: Karl Rove has millions of dollars to indulge his political id. So while we may be in this weird period of focus-group recommended restraint, don't expect the restraint to continue.

There are reasons for this. First, it's an article of faith among a large portion of the GOP base that Sen. John McCain lost in 2008 because he wasn't willing to throw heat at Obama and turn the month of October into an all-Jeremiah-Wright-all-the-time sick-a-doo fiesta. Last week's revelation of a proposed ad campaign to do just that served as a reminder that there are plenty of people with money to burn who've a yen to fight the 2012 battle from the gutter. (This Crossroads ad, and the access the group gave the Times, does a nice job of washing away the nastiness of last week's big super PAC story, doesn't it?) And if Republicans are reminded too much of McCain's perceived failures as they watch Romney prosecute the Obama administration in a too-gentle fashion, they could end up discouraged.

Beyond that, though, this particular period of the election season isn't particularly good for the bean-balls, as most of the electorate is largely tuning out ahead of the fall campaign. Sure, the conventional wisdom is that now is the critical time where candidates fight to define their opponents, but as Brendan Nyhan observed last week while sizing up Team Obama Reelect's efforts to "define" Romney, the conventional wisdom is wrong:

More generally, reporters should refrain from overstating the importance they place on early-stage campaign squabbles. According to [political scientists Christopher Wlezien and Robert Erikson], the real action comes in the final 100 days, which is when campaign shocks start to "persist to affect the outcome of Election Day" (typically in the direction we would expect given the state of the economy).

Naturally, Nyhan points back to the earlier Jeremy Peters story that mentioned Crossroads' earlier ad, in which Peters describes the existence of broad "concerns" that money invested in political ads at this stage in the game "will be wasted on people who are not paying much attention five and a half months before Election Day." Hmmm. Maybe Jeremy Peters should read more stories by this Jeremy Peters fellow!

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Well, good morning and welcome once again to your Sunday morning chronicle of quickly typed reactions to stuff that happens on political prattle shows. My name is Jason. Happy Mothers day, to you all. Right off the bat, we have to hand it to Meet The Press, who last week actually managed to do something rare -- it had a moment of far-reaching relevance that actually impacted the world of politics. This is the Sunday Morning teevee equivalent of the "Miracle On Ice."

But hey, Joe Biden, out there, speaking his mind on marriage equality got a little idea snowballing, and pretty soon, the White House was abandoning whatever coldly calculated same-sex marriage rollout they had planned and President Obama was like, check it: now I am for this stuff, too. Okay! That was midway through the week, and I don't even know why other news was even trying to happen that day. Sorry, other news! We are going to all ride this Obama-is-for-marriage-equality pony until it gives out from exhaustion.

Of course, the being-for-a-thing is swell, and all. But it's possible to get overexcited. After all, the President cosigning marriage equality doesn't advance any policy or reverse any ban, and while the jury is going to be out for a while on this, it could even end up costing the President some crucial electoral votes. (For that reason, the decision to conclude his "evolution" might be deemed somewhat courageous.) But I have a feeling that we'll be talking about this issue all day today. (Know how I know this? Gavin Newsom is booked on Meet The Press, today.)

Anyway, y'all know what to do: crawl back into bed or go to church or brunch and let me HANDLE this. Meanwhile, you may also spend some time conversing in the comments, drop me a line, or follow me on Twitter, for other things.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

Okay, well, we're mixing things up today on FNS. Shannon Bream is here, instead of Chris Wallace, and we're going to be talking with Dianne Feinstein about national security and John Thune about...being handsome and running for President for a minute. Plus paneling. Sweet numnums, the paneling!

But first, hey, we blocked some terrorist attack from Yemen, and DiFi is here to explain it to us. Yemen, by the way, is the hot new place to be a terrorist? Afghanistan is yesterday's news, dude. Time to start getting in on these boss terror timeshares in Zinjibar. DiFI says that AQAP -- that's "al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula" if you are nasty (or a cartographer) -- is the number one threat to the United States. Time was that "I'm going to Yemen" was a joke on the show FRIENDS. Now, Chandler Bing goes to Yemen to start jihad!

Anyway, a bomb was recovered, and this is an "impressive victory" and a "substantial win" for the CIA, but we've got to "end this now" because it could get "complicated." Oh, hey, nice to know things aren't complicated yet. It's just a SIMPLE matter of needing a whole new war in a whole other part of the world than the one in which we are already fighting out exhausting, endless war.

But all of this "news' comes in the form of a "leak," and so there's a "big" investigation going on now to catch the leaker. DiFi says that the leak came to an AP reporter, and the story was held for a period of time after officials asked. "The leak," DiFi says, "really did disrupt sources and methods," and she says someone will get prosecuted. If you can catch me! I mean...If you can catch them!

So, are we going to catch underwear bombs, ever? DiFi says that the bomb material is hard to detect and when you keep this junk in their drawers, it's not easy to discover during a pat down. The TSA, DiFi says, has to learn and adapt. What will probably happen is that we'll all have to travel in jumpsuits that give the TSA easy access to our taints, I'm guessing.

DiFi says that in Dubai, there is a "big patdown." They are just very handsy, there. The Herman Cain of airport security.

DiFi is hopeful that we kill this particular bombmaker, and his associates, because who will make bombs then? No one, probably.

Moving toward Afghanistan, DiFi says that what the Taliban has done is expand their "shadowy presence" as a governing entity, and now they are moving into the Northeast and are essentially running things. And killing people! "This demonstrates that the Taliban are just waiting to come back," DiFi says. She goes on to add that most people in the Karzai government obviously oppose the Taliban, but they are strong in various areas. And they are making mad bank of opium, as well. This is why we probably aren't actually pulling out of Afghanistan in 2014. DiFi says that the "key to Afghanistan is action by Pakistan," and yeah, that makes 2014 unlikely, too.

Still, DiFi is positive that we will make our timeline, and she has two reasons why she thinks that and neither is "she's crazy, like, down to the bones crazy, jittering and shivering and talking straight nonsense." No. Actually, she says that we're apparently making very good progress on training Afghan security forces, and these forces are "in the lead in many missions." Also, DiFi says, there are schoolgirls going to school without acid being thrown in their face. So, remember, you're junior high school experience probably wasn't the worst thing in the world.

Moving to marriage equality, now. Has Obama flip-flopped? DiFi says that he hasn't flip-flopped and that there is "no political calculus in this." Ha ha ha. Yes. But DiFi goes on to basically say that the more you get to meet members of the LGBT community, the more your views change and prejudices disappear.

Moving to Jamie Dimon, who got caught in the deep end of the derivative market after telling everyone he didn't need a liferguard, and ended up losing $2 billion on some ill-advised prop bets. Loser! Should Washington get involved, though? DiFi says that JPM getting into this hedge trouble was a surprise, and a "danger signal" that various rules need to get set.

DiFi then goes on to explain how budgets and allocations work in the Senate.

Next, John Thune, who Bream assures me is "one of the most mentioned names in the Veepstakes." Who is mentioning this?

At any rate, Thune is live from whatever Fox studio is lit to make it look like a white-hot beam of light is being projected onto the subjects face from the direction of his crotch.

We begin with JP Morgan's big losses, because Thune voted against Dodd-Frank and wants it repealed. (This, despite the fact that Dodd-Frank was pretty toothless.) Thune says that "we don't know all the facts" about JPM's big fail. Thune says that his problem with Dodd-Frank is with the "compliance burdens" it puts on small banks. He goes on to say that JPM's losses do suggest that we need "some safeguards in place." (He also reckons that regulators need to fully interpret and implement Dodd-Frank, which he is trying to repeal?)

Moving to gay marriage -- which, in some polls, seems to be beneficial to the President. Bream notes that Thune has obviously endorsed Romney who has obviously endorsed the idea of marriage being between a man and a woman. What will Romney do, now, to avoid being "unfair" to everyone? Thune just sort of says that Romney believes what he believes, and the election will probably hinge on the economy, and Romney wants to talk about the economy, and here are some talking points, to choke on.

Of course, Obama is WARBLOGGING against the GOP Congress, and has given them a to-do list...which they will NOT DO, because LOL, it's an election year. Which doesn't mean that some of this stuff shouldn't get done, like offering tax incentives to bring business home whilst cutting tax breaks that foster outsourcing. Why won't the GOP consider this? Thune doesn't know! He's like, why didn't he come out with this three years ago? We would have rejected it then. Anyway, Thune isn't having it, because Obama blocked the Keystone Pipeline and gave him a sad, along with "class war rhetoric."

But why can't we just end these incentives that foster job losses? BECAUSE THE TIMING WAS SUPER BAD. (Also, lobbyists tell John Thune not to.)

Bream wants to know about Dick Lugar's loss to Dick Mourdock, and Lugar straight going off on Mourdock about the way Mourdock is an ugly-minded partisan hack who won't work with anybody. Is Thune worried about losing that seat in the fall, because Mourdock is so terrible? Thune isn't. (And I think he's right to not be, Mourdock is likely to beat the Democratic nominee.) He then goes on to describe the Senate's overall dysfunction, without ironically noting that Lugar was nominally in favor of the Senate not being such a desolate chamber of hack-obstructionists diddling one another all day long.

Thune insists that there is room for compromise, but the dividing line is that the Democrats believe in raising revenue, and just as soon as they give up on that there will be tons of compromise, okay?

Meanwhile, will Thune run as the vice-president? Thune filibusters, and intimates that he'd rather stay in the Senate. He, of course, "won't rule out" the possibility that he might consider being the VP if he is asked.

Welcome to the end of every single interview with a Republican on Sunday for the next few months, obviously.

John Thune has not been invited to play basketball with Obama, but would consider it a privilege. So, that's important for everyone to know!

Okay, so it's time for a panel, with Brit Hume and Liz Marlantes and Paul Gigot and Juan Williams.

Beginning with marriage equality, is this a plus or minus for the President? Williams says that the polls indicate that it's sort of a wash -- there are more people that say they are less likely to vote for the President than the reverse. That's sort of sums up the evidence for the argument that this was, at least on some level, politically courageous. Of course, the other big news on this front this weekend was the Jan van Lohuizen polling memo, which urged Republicans to undertake a reversal on gay issues because the populace is growing more and more in favor of LGBT equality in general. And that's sort of the evidence for the argument that you'd better get yourself into the 21st century, somehow.

Williams goes on to point out that Obama's decision will likely excite young voters and base traditionalists, while giving doubts to older voters and voters in places like Virginia. Williams also says that the fealty of the African-American vote will be tested, as they are a traditional liberal voting bloc that has held out against supporting marriage equality.

Gigot says that this might matter in some swing states, toward the fall, but it will probably only matter in a small way. Was it forced by Biden, though? Gigot figures that this was something that Obama and Biden were always going to do, they were just going to wait until the convention. Gigot does note that Romney gets some help, too, because it will motivate Christian conservatives to end their uneasiness with Mitt and get out and support his candidacy.

Marlantes says that Romney is not likely to go out and run on this issue, however. Both sides are pretty nervous about the issue. Marlantes says that the huge shift in favor of the marriage equality still indicates some volatility.

Hume says that there's reason to distrust the national polling on this, because the states still keep banning gay marriage. He figures that it's a net-minus for Obama and says that Obama hasn't actually "evolved" on the issue. He's just "revolved" around to an old position to maximize political advantage. (Of course, Hume prefaced all of this by saying there was no politica;l advantage to be had.)

Well, look, of course Obama did not "evolve." That was always a sort of fool's game. And that's why I don't get too excited about Obama's decision. Rather, I get excited about the fact that the activists on this issue have gained considerable clout in American politics. There are a considerable number of liberals who spit a lot of cynicism over this whole matter. Some are, of course, so overly concerned with winning elections that any expression of principle that isn't a slam dunk with all voters at all times is something to be afraid of. Others are a little more weird, prone to pointing out the cynical calculus, as if that eclipsed the symbolic importance of having a Commander-in-Chief swing to your point of view.

Look, y'all, I don't know what game of thrones you're playing, but anytime you can project yourself into a politician's political calculus, and get them hot and bothered about what you might do if you're not satisfied, that is A GOOD THING. I suppose that many people are sort of upset that Obama gets to sort of skate on this -- he was clearly always, at the very least, going to pop up after the start of his hoped-for second term and say, "Whoa, I am suddenly for gay marriage" -- and that marriage equality wasn't going to get hero president who led with courage and conviction on this issue.

"What a profile in courage," snarks Hume. Well, look. I like people with courage and conviction. But there are some times when courage and conviction are overrated. And I think that in politics, the one quality I absolutely love in a statesman is his or her capacity to get bent backwards over a barrel to the point where they have no choice but give me what I want, immediately. I'd always rather have some guy caught out with their pants down on the goal line between me and what I want, than someone with courage and conviction.

The people who have long advovated for LGBT equality have come from humble beginnings. I still remember a time when it was fearful to even present yourself in public as a member of that community. I still remember when their cries for help over a disease that was killing them was met with indifference (or even mockery). And now, these activists have the kind of pull that allows them to win a reversal in policy three days after someone says something on teevee? Sorry, y'all, I straight up refuse to be cynical about that.

Hume goes on to say that the Obama administration isn't going to do anything to advance the issue. I mean, except not fight DOMA. Have we forgotten about that? And as Chris Geidner points out, the Obama administration's decision to not fight DOMA does have repercussions in how the issue plays out in the states. It is of critical importance, for instance, to Ted Olson, the Bush Solicitor General who is fighting to overturn California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage.

One of the reasons, of course, that GOP pollsters are telling Republicans that they need to reverse themselves on this is because of the changing demographics:

Different states are evolving at different rates. And what happened in North Carolina is hardly a surprise -- they are one of the states that is uniquely resistant to marriage equality. But, the simple truth is that most of the people who oppose this tend to be closer to dying. So, unless they suddenly become immortal, this is going to be an issue that is looked back upon with some small amount of embarrassment.

Moving now to the Washington Post's story about Mitt Romney's high school years. Marlantes says that no one really wants to end up in a discussion about their adolesence, but the Romney camp flubbed their response to this story by not taking the opportunity to show some "largeness in spirit." "Romney's biggest problem isn't that people think he's mean," Marlantes says, "People think he's insincere."

Hume wants it to be known that forcing someone down and cutting their hair off is not a "prank," it's "hazing." That said, is that the Post failed to connect the story to some other part of his life or career. No big picture. I'm not sure that was the point though. Their reporter was assigned the story and he reported it. You know, that whole "making a larger connection" thing is nice when you can do it, but isn't that one of those places you open yourself up to criticism? "I have these facts, and in my opinion, they say something else, which I will extrapolate." That way lies charges of bias. I'm not saying that this is a bad form of journalism (though I really hate "psyhological studies" of politicians from reporters, who know nothing about psychology), I'm just saying that the Post reporter, in opting to stay in his lane, probably did himself a favor.

Hume says the story obviously struck the WaPa editors as a big deal, and he doesn't understand why, or why it got the presentation it received. (I am going with: 1) It's May and everyone is bored and 2) the Post wants to sell newspapers, and get talked about on the teevee.

I'll say this, as this Post story compares to the New York Times Vicki Iseman story of last cycle...well, there's no comparison. The Post's story is better. The Times Iseman story was awful. It felt like I was being conned, even as I read it.

Williams thinks that the Post expedited this story to connect with the gay marriage story of last week, but I was actually under the impression that they delayed the story slightly, to try to avoid that connection being made? At any rate, Shannon Bream points out that the Romney story was long-in-the-works, and of course, no one knew that Obama was going to make an announcement on marriage equality until a few hours before it happened.

Marlantes is probably the biggest defender of the story and its treatment, and she seems to find it silly that you wouldn't put this hair-cut story in the lede, after four people bring it up on the record independently of each other.

Will we see similar pieces on the President? Hume scoffs, "Are you kidding, from the Washington Post?" (Hume should actually meet the Post's editors!) He relents in the end, saying that the President will be judged on his presidency.

THE CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW

Okay, let's have some more FEELINGS about these stories with Chris Matthews and his Genius Bar colleagues, which today include Andrew Sullivan, Gloria Borger, Nia-Malika Henderson, and our own Howard Fineman. Howard and Nia-Malika are doing some color coordination today, by the way.

So, hey, y'all heard about this crazy stuff with Obama talking about how he was cool with the gay marriage, right? Andrew Sullivan, do you have any previously unblogged thoughts on the matter? No, but he's synthesized them all quite movingly. Sullivan says that Obama's announcement is "hugely important," and he didn't "realize how important it would be till it happened."

"I sat down and watched our president tell me that I am his equal. That I'm no longer outside, I'm fully part of this family. And to hear the President who is in some ways a father figure speak to that, the tears came down like with many people in our families. To be included. I never understood the power of a President's words until that day, really. I thought, all that matters is the states and the Congress and the Defense of Marriage Act and I had all this in my head and suddenly this man saying I'm with you, I get it, you're like me, I'm like you, there is nothing between us, we are the same people and we are equal human beings and I want to treat you the way you treat me, that -- that was overwhelming. That's all i can say. I was at a loss for words."

Matthews points out that in previous elections, gay marriage has been used as a brickbat in election years, but over the past few years, the opposition has diminished. Henderson notes that Biden's not wrong about the cultural impact of things like Will and Grace, and their ability to get people thinking in new ways. (Though most of the time I watched Will And Grace I thought about how boring the titular characters were.)

She also points out that gay marriage has been legalized, without the world ending.

Howard says that now this is a wedge issue on the GOP side, and says that Romney's campaign has been "calm and cautious" about this, even as the GOP forces outside of the campaign itself have gotten heated up about this.

In terms of the electoral college, Borger figures that his support for marriage equality ends up being a wash -- he loses some voters on the blue-collar margins that were likely leaning against him anyway, but he galvanizes the youth vote. (It's gone unsaid so far today, but deserves a mention, it also bring a lot of money off the sidelines and into Obama's warchest.)

Sullivan says that marriage, in itself, has a lot of "small-c conservative" values that mean a lot to families. Henderson adds that marriage equality resonates in libertarian pastures as well. (Gary Johnson -- in favor of marriage equality even before Joe Biden made it suddenly cool, let's not forget.)

Most of Chris Matthews' friends say that Obama's decision this week is either a wash or a net plus. Borger reiterates her position on the demographics. Howard goes macro, saying that it's a "historic moment" and that this is an example of Obama being the change agent he promised to be. The caveat -- and it's a big one: "It hasn't worked so well on the economy. If I was Mitt Romney, I'd say fine, go get married, then try to get a job."

"The irony is that this year, the Democrats are running a cultural campaign," Howard notes. Sullivan follows on that this is how Obama turns the election into a "choice" election. We've been over this before -- the administration would prefer the election to focus on "choice" and not be a "referendum election."

Moving to the WaPo story on Romney's tendency toward sociopathic high-school hijinks, which Romney can not remember. Sullivan "goes there": "Kids are committing suicide across the country because they're bullied in high school and we now know a future president was a bully in high school." Sullivan says that it's a "character issue," that affects him viscerally.

And now we're watching old clips from "All In The Family," which had an episode about Archie finding out a friend of his was gay, and Richard Nixon watched it, and he totally liveblogged his feelings onto those tapes he was always taping. (Nixon hated it, and turned it off, because he was so morally outraged by this teevee show, because BLARGH the Roman Empire was undone by a buncha homos, and he didn't want to see America become a place where you could be friends with a gay man, and blarrrgle-gargle-hooey, instead we ought to be like a "tough nation" like Russia, who "roots out" the gays. And then Nixon went on to be a figure that all Americans associate with moral rectitude, the end.)

What do Mitt Romney and John Kerry have in common? Uhm, they are New Englanders with yachts? (Actually, I do not know if Mitt Romney has a yacht. Our "yacht-politics" specialist, Elyse Siegel, is the person to ask about that stuff.) How about they are New Englanders who both speak as if they have been hooked up to a series of air pumps? Is that not it? Fine, what's the answer?

Apparently, to fight Romney, you must use the "Bush playbook," which I guess means, "Hope that Romney goes windsurfing." Oh, also: bolster your warfighter cred while making your opponent out to be an elitist flip-flopper. BUT SERIOUSLY, it would really help if Romney would go windsurfing.

Howard says that the Obama campaign probably have a lot of footage of Romney's homes and leisure activities. The collective strategy, he says, bears a resemblance to the old GOP campaigns -- running culture war strategy, burnishing the military aspect. That's why Obama went to Bagram AFB to announce -- well, he sort of announced that everyone should refer back to previous announcements. Seriously, I'm at a loss to tell you what new stuff was said at Bagram.

Is Romney hurting himself by showing off his wealth? Borger says that he does himself tiny little harms when he inadvertently blurts out something like, "My wife has a couple of Cadillacs." However, she says, there's no way Obama avoids running as an incumbent with a record to defend. And eventually, he's got to mount an economic argument.

Sullivan says that cultural populism is often a better motivator than economic populism. Henderson says that we're still in the "biography" phase of the election process, and so the Obama camp is off with an emphasis on the fact that he is "not far removed" from ordinary people. Howard says that the Obama camp would prefer to make almost any argument than one centered on the current state of the economy, but they won't be able to do it "all the way to election day."

Here are things the Chris Matthews did not know: Greece is leaving the Eurozone by the end of this year and it will have big ramifications on the election than anything they're discussing today (Sullivan), Democrats will continue consolidating women with the Paycheck Fairness Act (Borger), Al Sharpton will go out and make the case for marriage equality with blacks (Henderson), and the big Democratic donors are already out in force for the 2016 race, swelling around Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo, mainly (Fineman).

Matthews asks Borger why women are more supportive of gay issues than men. She answers, "Our humanity."

Matthews wants to know if anyone in the media today can move opinion across the board, like -- he intimates via clips -- Johnny Carson. Howard says that if there's a unifying figure that go across the spectrum, it's daytime women talk-show hosts, like "Oprah, Ellen, and The View." Henderson cosigns, saying despite the struggles of Oprah's network, she demonstrates the ability to marshal minds. Borger isn't sure that we aren't so culturally diffuse right now that one single figure in the media can shift the landscape. Sullivan says that he's relieved that no one has that kind of power, adding that he thought David Brinkley had too much power. That said, he gives props to Brian Lamb, who created C-SPAN.

MEET THE PRESS

So, Jamie Dimon leads off today's MEET THE PRESS, which is nice, because elsewhere, this story is getting downplayed, but unfortunate because if there's anywhere better that this show to provide someone like Jamie Dimon a safe haven, I don't know what that is. Obviously, I'm hoping for the best, but I think that Dimon would find tougher critics at "Jamie Dimon's Electric Funk Hour" which is the show he runs every Friday night at 3am on Manhattan's cable access. Probably. Have you seen cable access television in New York City? It's mesmerizing.

See, they will bring in Andrew Ross Sorkin, to comment on this, and I'm guessing that his commentary will be something like, "My friend Jamie Dimon is awesome, obviously."

Then we will have a lengthy reminder that an actual news story happened on Meet The Press, with Reince Priebus.

Anyway, do you remember how last week, Joe Biden was on Meet The Press? This was a proud moment, for Meet The Press, Meet The Press will tell you. But David Gregory thinks that JP Morgan's big old $2 billion loss is going to renew the old "Wall Street vs. Main Street" fight. That J.P. Morgan had a cock-up of this magnitude is fairly striking, because they have a reputation of being the best a hedging. (We will call this whole matter "hedging" despite the fact that it's sort of hilariously ironic.) In fact, it was JPM that invented the credit-default swap, hedging against the likelihood that Exxon would default on the $4.8 line of credit JPM extended them in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Well, right off the bat, Dimon does penance for his previous remark that all of the agita over his bank's trading habits were a "tempest in a teapot." "I was dead wrong when I said that." He says that he's coming clean on this to demonstrate that he's a good guy on the block. Again, Morgan's reputation being what it is, it makes you wonder how the other big banks are doing business. And by "makes you wonder," I am referring to a vague sense of impeding terror?

"We made a terrible, egregious mistake," he says, "There's almost no excuse for it." What kind of heavy lifting are you doing there, "almost?" Maybe we shall find out.

Were there warning signs? Dimon says in retrospect, there were red flags, and people got defensive instead of acting to solve the problem. Did the bank break laws or rules or regulations? Dimon says that internally, they have compliance officers examining the situation. "We know we were sloppy, we know we were stupid, we know we used bad judgement," Dimon says, but he adds, "We don't know if any of that is true yet." By which he means, rulebreaking. Outside regulators, he says, are entitled to come to their own conclusions about it.

What was the screwup? "In hindsight, we took too much risk. The strategy was badly vetted and badly monitored and it should have never happened." See also: 2008, everyone.

Just as a demonstration of what I'm talking about in terms of MEET THE PRESS beging a friendly haven, I'll point out that when Gregory gets around to the part where he's supposed to be holding Dimon responsible for steering his ship into a vortex, he puts the question like this:

"So here you are, Jamie Dimon. you've got a sterling reputation. Why? Because people say he knows how to manage risk better than anybody. You're known as the guy who ably led J. P. Morgan Chase through the worst financial collapse since the great depression. How does a guy like you make this mistake?"

BUT YOU ARE SO AWESOME OMGZ! LIKE TOTES AMAZEBALLS? WHAT HAPPENED, BUDDY?

Dimon is of course, AW SHUCKS WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES. Sometimes they are terrible and awful, you know, BUT I'VE GROWN AS A PERSON.

Meanwhile the point: aren't back to bailouts and "too big to fail," and whatnot? Dimon insists he wants to get rid of "too big to fail" banks. And he supports the parts of Dodd-Frank that offer "resolution" -- which takes apart a big bank piecemeal and includes compensation clawbacks and the dismissals of boards of directors, which Dimon says he supports. "The banks should be dismantled and their name buried in disgrace."

Great. But we've moved past the point. Let me kick this to Yves Smith for a second:

As we've noted, one of the big reasons it wasn't as badly hit in the crisis was that it took big CDS losses in 2005 on the Delphi bankruptcy (yes this is a rumor, but it is as pretty widespread rumor, and the sources are credible). The bank got cautious just as the subprime market was entering its toxic phase. So JP Morgan may have dodged the bullet at least in part by getting a wake-up call earlier than its peers.

But other issues seems even more important. First is that Dimon consistently misrepresented the seriousness of the exposures as soon as the press was onto it. Both Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal were digging, and Dimon was dismissive, calling the concerns a "tempest in a teapot". JPM shares are down over 5% in aftermarket trading. The CEO misled investors, but no one seems to care much about niceties like accurate and timely disclosure these days.

This is the disclosure in the first quarter 10Q:

"In Corporate, within the Corporate/Private Equity segment, net income (excluding Private Equity results and litigation expense) for the second quarter is currently estimated to be a loss of approximately $800 million. (Prior guidance for Corporate quarterly net income (excluding Private Equity results, litigation expense and nonrecurring significant items) was approximately $200 million.) Actual second quarter results could be substantially different from the current estimate and will depend on market levels and portfolio actions related to investments held by the Chief Investment Office (CIO), as well as other activities in Corporate during the remainder of the quarter.

Since March 31, 2012, CIO has had significant mark-to-market losses in its synthetic credit portfolio, and this portfolio has proven to be riskier, more volatile and less effective as an economic hedge than the Firm previously believed. The losses in CIO's synthetic credit portfolio have been partially offset by realized gains from sales, predominantly of credit-related positions, in CIO's AFS securities portfolio. As of March 31, 2012, the value of CIO's total AFS securities portfolio exceeded its cost by approximately $8 billion. Since then, this portfolio (inclusive of the realized gains in the second quarter to date) has appreciated in value.

The Firm is currently repositioning CIO's synthetic credit portfolio, which it is doing in conjunction with its assessment of the Firm's overall credit exposure. As this repositioning is being effected in a manner designed to maximize economic value, CIO may hold certain of its current synthetic credit positions for the longer term."

The last comment would appear to imply that if they can't unwind this trade at acceptable losses, they'll move some of it into a hold to maturity book, where they aren't required to mark to market. Charming.

Are we going to get into the institutionalized obfuscation? I'm guessing no.

Gregory does point out that Dimon's been particularly outspoken against regulatory intervention, and Dimon responds by...objecting to this characterization. "We support 70% of Dodd-Frank." Again, this sort of muddies the waters. What Gregory needs to do is look at Dimon and say, "Public money should never backstop these sorts of insane prop bets you're making, agree or disagree?"

"Specifically, hedging should make your bank less risky," Dimon says. YES, ONE WOULD HAVE THOUGHT. You are using the word "hedge," after all. But what is the key goddamned lesson from 2008? EVERYONE THOUGHT THEY WERE HEDGED. It's sort of not good enough anymore to say, "Oh, well, our activities just naturally create lower risks. We have a model, and I think you'll plainly see that most days, the economy does not collapse."

Has Dimon given "more ammunition to regulators." Dimon doesn't think so. He doesn't think Morgan needs any help. "This is a stupid thing that we shouldn't have done, but we're still going to earn a lot of money this quarter." Well, that's a strong stance against stupidity!

There is apparently another part of the interview, that Gregory scheduled with Dimon before the news broke, just because Gregory wants to chat with Jamie Dimon, because that's awesome. Jamie Dimon was totally cool about sitting for more interview after the news of JPM's cock-up came out, because he is a hell of a guy. But anyway, the original intention was to ask Dimon some horsey-race questions about the election, because no one relates to the typical voter like Jamie Dimon.

This all needs to be noted, lest you wonder why Dimon and Gregory have switched chairs.

So, isn't it sort of galling that people are really struggling as the people who created most of those hardships sail on, unburdened? Dimon says sure, he blames everyone in general, but some banks were better than others, and blah blah, you heard these monologues in the movie MARGIN CALL. He understands the anger, but we need "solutions!" Gregory asks, "What about accountability? Why hasn't anyone gone to jail?" Dimon says that you should "go punish the bad actors," and leave the institution alone. I sort of think we're looking past the whole part where all the actors, good and bad, get Henry Paulson to hand out several trillion dollars.

Is America better off now then it was four years ago? LET'S ASK JAMIE DIMON THIS, DEFINITELY. His answer: America is awesome and the economy is getting stronger. Could we be doing better, sure. But there was a crisis, and Bush and Obama fixed it the "old fashioned way." (Shoveling money at rich people.) He goes on to say that the debt ceiling crisis, the failure to advance policy out of Simpson-Bowles, and the huge regulatory push have hurt growth. Dimon says he remains "barely a Democrat." Maybe he understands that the "debt ceiling crisis" was a zany right wing stunt that nearly became an even zanier destruction of the global economy, because there weren't enough people who knew what the "debt ceiling" was among the armed hostage takers pointing guns every which way. (Metaphorically, I mean. Actual guns would have been even zanier.)

But Dimon is "disturbed" by some Democrats' behavior. We've entered a zone where irony flourishes.

Dimon laments that there hasn't been "collaboration" of some vague, undefined variety that leads to awesomeness. Presumably, he would like to participate in such a "collaboration." He'll have to forgive us -- it really looked for all the world that you've been mainly focused on making crazy prop bets in the derivatives market, Jamie! We had no idea you wanted to build a bunch of dams or something?

"I wish that everyone would put their knives down and get back to work," says Dimon, who maybe needs to read that Mann/Ornstein piece from a couple weeks ago? When he's done trying to create a fund from the glint he rubs off of two quarters that are rubbed together, I mean.

"I don't know the inside story of Simpson-Bowles," Dimon says, which is okay, because no one in DC has reported it correctly. For instance, Dimon has gotten it into his head that you can "read Simpson Bowles." He is probably referring to the "Chairman's Mark," that was leaked during the deliberations. The one that was never going to pass because it called for modest tax increases? Sure, everyone read it! But understand that despite what Dimon says, it did not contain "magic words" that moved the debate. And you can't blame Obama for not backing the "Chairman's Mark" -- the President was hoping that an actual plan would get out of committee!

Dimon goes on the elaborate on his preferred policy prescriptions, and they are fully and foursquare the precise policies that are being advanced from the current occupant of the White House, to the chagrin of many liberals! Only Dimon doesn't seem to "get it."

And now here is Carl Levin and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Levin says that the regulators will step in and battle lobbyists over the whole JP Morgan matter. Levin's take is that the Volcker Rule guards against these sort of bets, with some important exceptions, most notably "hedging," which Levin understands as a risk reducer, but Dimon has already lumped this entire $2 billion failscapade and put it under the penumbra of "hedging."

"We have to be careful that the regulators are not undermined by this effort to create a loophole in the area of what's called 'portfolio hedging,'" Levin says. Now we know what hundreds of lobbyists are going to be arguing in the coming weeks.

Does Levin accept Dimon's "accountability?" He says that the issue does not involve "personalities," it's a matter of law, and preventing more "too big to fail" bailouts. Levin says that the real battle is in DC, and often between regulators, some of whom want the strong law, and others who want to weaken it. Levin, not surprisingly, feints in the direction of Treasury when he talks about the willfull weakeners.

Why should anyone care about this in general? Sorkin says that the real story here is the Jamie Dimon is superhuman in his awesomeness and if he could make a $2 billion cock up, then everyone can, and that means nothing has changed and everyone is still doomed...which is all stuff I could have told you if the big Jamie Dimon story was that he formed a J-Pop band and is touring the malls of America.

Can anyone give anyone any assurance that anything will be safe one day? Levin says that if we can prevent these banks from making these crazy bets, sure. LOL. Okay. Sorkin says that even though Dimon says he supports resoution authority, applied at his own bank if need be, the truth is that no one will know if the "break-up-the-banks" mechanism has any teeth until we're past the threshold of crisis.

Reince Priebus is here now, to talk about the horsey-race.

Will same-sex marriage be a defining issue for the GOP in the coming election? Priebus isn't sure, but if anyone has strong views on the matter, they now have a clear contrast between the two candidates. That said, Priebus is still pretty sure that the election is going to be on the economy.

Gregory points out that more and more Republicans are coming out in support of marriage equality. Priebus counters with the fact that the states have voted against it. But the only recent data point is North Carolina, who as a state has been uniquely resistant. I fully expect that in many states, these bans will be lifted and repealed, even from the state constitutions.

This is probably not the conversation Priebus would prefer to have, by the way -- a lengthy discussion of same-sex marriage? There's a contrast, and that's the point: it needs no further elucidation. But it seems that the Obama campaign has bought another week of not talking about the economy.

Priebus has to contend with Rand Paul's "I didn't think Obama could get any gayer" comment, and he just doesn't want to. He wants to talk about Romney, and he insists that Romney will be very nice to gay people, even as he restricts their freedoms and denies them some measure of dignity. Is it a civil rights struggle? Priebus says no. Gregory points out that gay rights proponents compare this posture to the one that allowed Jim Crow laws to flourish. Priebus says that's an inapt comparison, because people got murdered in the Jim Crow days. He does realize that members of the LGBT community have been murdered, right?

Anyway, Priebus says that "people deserve dignity and respect, but that doesn't mean that it carries on to marriage." Yes. Marriage is a sanctified tradition, that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with dignity and respect. You can actually test this! You can meet a member of the opposite sex tomorrow and go get married on a whim, or a dare, or a bet. "Do they love one another? Are they going to go the distance?" The state doesn't give a crap! Take a marriage licence. Take a bunch! Everyone come in, with a complete stranger of the opposite sex, and get hitched, for poops and giggles.

It's all very sacred! We should definitely take the sacredness of this SUPER SERIOUSLY.

Priebus finally gets around to talking about how this show has been a waste of time because same-sex marriage is not as important an issue as the economy. Uhm...don't come on the show, then? Or at least don't come on the show and demonstrate that you have paragraphs of talking points on the matter?

What does Priebus have to say about the J.P. Morgan foul up? He says it demonstrates that we need less regulation, obviously! The bulk of Priebus' argument here is to blame Dodd-Frank for failing to regulate something that Priebus would prefer not be regulated. Making it an issue of Dodd-Frank's failure to prevent something, versus Romney/RNC's not-regulation, which would be successful, even if a bank impoded. "But the bank went craphouse, Reince!" you would say. He would reply, "Not because a policy we enacted failed!"

"Listen, I'm not an financial expert or an expert on SEC," says Priebus, "but I can tell you that this president talks a lot about regulation on Wall Street. He takes millions and millions of dollars from Wall Street." That's all true, and it would be a great position to take if you were coming at Obama from his left flank. As Priebus supports only talking about regulation and taking Wall Street money, it's more than a little fatuous.

Okay, it's panel time, which means I've got about twenty more minutes of chum-tunnel to wriggle through before I get to detoxify myself. Today we have Gavin Newsom and Al Cardenas and Chris Matthews and Kathleen Parker and Jonathan Capehart.

So, the New Yorker put rainbow columns on the White House, let's goggle at it. Whee! Matthews says that it's interesting that after Biden "got out over his skis," the White House made lots of leaks indicating how much trouble that made, which is pretty weird, I must admit. "I don't know why they wanted this spat to be public," Matthews says.

Newsom says that he has no idea if Obama was going to change his mind, but he's glad he did. Now we find out if it's a "good political decision or a perilous political decision." Cardenas, of course, thinks that Obama should have explained himself earlier, but in the end, it's "much ado about nothing."

Capehart notes that the states have always been handed the responsibility of defining marriage, and the idea that Obama is punting to the states on this is the wrong way to see this. I'll refer everyone back to Chris Geidner's piece which I linked at the top of this. Capehart goes on to note that Obama had to come out in favor of this, if for no other reason that his deeds (largely pro-LGBT policies) did not match his words (hesistancy to embrace the LGBT community). Parker contends that Obama did punt back to the states.

Parker (who is also pretty evidently pro-marriage equality) also says that "evolving" was always the perfect word to describe this because the American people are starting to come around to supporting it. Okay, but that doesn't describe what the President was doing. Obama was in a holding pattern, waiting to see what horizon line he'd hit first: total political safety or utter political untenability. Like Capehart said, it got untenable circa last week. That's not evolution.

Cardenas doesn't agree that the American people are evolving on the issue of gay marriage. He's wrong, but never mind.

Matthews, of course, is caught up in the history of it all, and essentially carrying Andrew Sullivan's argument into the discussion, without Sully's eloquence.

Cardenas says that social conservatives will probably come behind Romney more solidly and more passionately than they might have before. He also seems to think that social conservatives are new to the game of seeing marriage through a political prism. Matthews broaches Romney's high school bullying, to the objection of Parker, who isn't sure it's fair to extrapolate from Romney's adolescent experience. Newsom says that public opinion is swinging in favor of marriage equality, but the action at the ballot box will always lag -- when the SCOTUS ruled that inter-racial marriage was legal, public opinion was 70-30 against.

Capehart says some nice things about the gay community and Obama's symbolism, and Cardenas has a sad that Gregory picks that moment to end the discussion.

Okay, y'all. I'm going to call my mom, now, because it's Mothers' Day, so don't forget to do that. Just as a reminder -- there will be NO SUNDAY LIVEBLOG NEXT WEEK, because I will be out of town. We will return May 27th. Until then, best wishes to all of you!

CNN is terrible. A God-awful, wall-to-wall, epic mess. And now, they have, in their hands, the clearest sign yet of how bad things have actually gotten. This past April, CNN posted its lowest ratings in 10 years. The New York Times' Brian Stelter recently noted the slim upside, writing, "people tune in to CNN, the same way they hurry to a hospital when they think they are having a heart attack." But what news channel does CNN have to tune in to, to learn the gory details of its own longrunning, sad disaster? Good news: we are that news channel.

CNN, of course, has a proud legacy to fall back on, as it is the entity that kicked off the tradition of 24 hour cable news channels in the first place, and its coverage of the first Gulf War demonstrated that it had minted real newsgathering mettle. CNN founder Ted Turner, in a meta-theatrical appearance on Piers Morgan's show last night, noted that he "wanted CNN to be the New York Times for the news business." Instead, the network has fallen lower in esteem than the New York Mets, who people actually still watch, on the teevee.

Cue the handwringing! How did this happen, and what's to be done next? Well, if you listen to the people who run CNN, you will learn that they think April's ratings low "isn't much of a problem," and what needs to happen now is that management needs "to come up with a plan to restore momentum."

Shut up, people who run CNN! We have been watching CNN for a long time, because there is a television set in our midst that is constantly tuned to it, out of pity. And we've been noticing for a long time that all of the various innovations and "momentum-builders," combined with the very strange decisions made when it comes to coverage, invariably conspire and combine to make CNN steadily worse.

Here is what you are doing wrong, CNN.

For the better part of the past decade, you guys seem to treat the ticky-tack banalities of the modern world as extra-special gimcracks you just discovered yesterday. You are still reading Twitter to people, on live television. On election coverage nights, your anchors paw at "magic screens" like catnip-tweaked felines chasing after a laser pointer. You made Erin Burnett go out there, on live television, to demonstrate "the flick." Except "the flick" did not, strictly speaking, "work" consistently.

And between all the whooshing and flicking and zooming -- and, when, exactly, did the need to touch the news grow to the point that merely reading it become insufficient? -- everyone on screen is standing around with holographic weebles and political convention simulations. Anderson Cooper, representing your network's last thin shred of self-respect, stood out there on that stage and repeatedly made fun of what was going on around him. (What have you done to poor Anderson Cooper? He is now restaging the old MTV show "Boiling Points" on network television. That is where you have driven him.)

Your debates, CNN? They were a mess. You fully embraced the stupidity of reality television shows, with asinine introductions of the GOP candidates that reminded viewers of the opening credits of "Survivor." And then you asked questions like, "Deep dish or thin crust?" Over the course of a long primary season, viewers gradually grew tired of watching the debates. But they especially grew tired of watching yours.

Shall we continue? Well, there was that time we actually wanted to watch coverage of the May 18, 2010 primary coverage in Pennsylvania, and you guys were airing a Larry King interview with Mick Jagger. Mick Jagger! Why? Why in all the world?

You replaced Larry King with the insufferably thin-skinned Piers Morgan. You replaced Campbell Brown with "Parker-Spitzer." "Parker-Spitzer" was a complete trainwreck, and no one seemed particularly committed to allowing Kathleen Parker to participate in or emerge from the experience with her dignity intact. That show became "In The Arena with Eliot Spitzer." That was on for, like, a week? Now Spitzer is at Current. Surprisingly, we'd call that a lucky break.

Remember that time that Falcon Heene's transparently dishonest parents were caught in a transparent lie right to Wolf Blitzer's face, and Wolf Blitzer was the only person in America that did not instantly recognize what was going on? Or that time General David Petraeus fainted at a congressional hearing, and CNN ran a segment that was, ostensibly, a "closer look at what happens when public figures pass out?" If you recall, General Petraeus' mishap was compared to Marie Osmond's fainting spell on "Dancing With The Stars."

Do you guys recall that until you were shamed from doing so, you planned to send an army of 400 reporters to cover the royal wedding? That was eight times the number of people dispatched to cover the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. We seem to recall that eventually, it was decided that William and Kate would only merit the amount of personnel sent to Fukushima. Which was great! More people to staff that strange morning show where Ashleigh Banfield prank-calls people.

I'm sure we're leaving something out. Like the time your correspondent on the "Royals" beat, Richard Quest, was arrested in 2008 for drug possession when he was found in Central Park with meth in his pocket and a length of rope tied to his genitals. But we think we've made our point. Over the course of many years, CNN, you have made bad decision after bad decision. Your tanking ratings are not an accident. Things have gone exactly as you have drawn them up.

What's the momentum-building solution? Well here's our suggestion. What if everyone showed up for work at CNN tomorrow to find that all of the people who have been making these decisions were no longer there? What if you could free all of CNN's hard-working news professionals from the terrible grip of your toxic decisions?

If you'll permit us to borrow from Joss Whedon, CNN, here's a question for you. Did you know, that in certain older civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords?

It is a good death. There's no shame in it. It is a man's death, for men who once did fine works.

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The New York Times writer Nick Confessore's big Sunday read, "Obama's Not-So-Hot Date With Wall Street," hit the web Wednesday, and gives a very good depiction of the serio-comic lengths the Obama campaign is going to in order to retain any support from Wall Street's executive class. Things are not going well, apparently!

See, as you may have heard, Team Obama Re-Elect has been having a difficult time courting big Wall Street donors this election cycle, mainly because President Barack Obama has, at times, intimated that the wreck of the global economy may have had something to do with some sort of widespread misrule among members of the financial industry. (There are any number of good books on this subject that make this case, if you still need to read a book to be convinced, which isn't terribly likely.)

And, of course, the Obama administration did sign the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law, and while it is almost embarrassingly ineffective (having been nibbled to death by lobbyists, who were bought with bailout money, this is hardly a surprise), its existence does create the impression that maybe -- just maybe! -- some degree of financial regulation is desirable.

Meanwhile, corporate America has been posting record profits, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is (perhaps ominously) back to its pre-recession levels, and, of course, no one has actually been punished for that time the global economy nearly died in a ditch.

But gads! The whining! It remains. And the Obama team can't guarantee that some attempt to mine populist ire against the financial industry won't come up during the campaign season. As Confessore reports, when Obama campaign manager Jim Messina was asked if the president would make some sort of sustained attack on the private equity industry, because of Romney's history with Bain Capital, Messina said that while the president would refrain from such attacks, he "couldn't control what the president's surrogates -- like Priorities USA -- might do."

The Priorities USA super PAC is run by Bill Burton, Obama's close personal friend, but OF COURSE they cannot COORDINATE, oh no!

At any rate, these resentments and fears are all part of the gap that the Obama campaign is finding difficult to traverse, in order to shore up a larger share of that sweet, sweet campaign lucre. But that's not to say that the Wall Streeters themselves don't have some pretty great ideas on how the resident can make everything copacetic:

One of the guests raised his hand; he knew how to solve the problem. The president had won plaudits for his speech on race during the last campaign, the guest noted. It was a soaring address that acknowledged white resentment and urged national unity. What if Obama gave a similarly healing speech about class and inequality? What if he urged an end to attacks on the rich? Around the table, some people shook their heads in disbelief.

I sort of don't understand why rich Wall Streeters can't just go visit the small apartments of normal New Yorkers to get a quick dose of feeling a lot better about themselves, but there you have it. Rich people be having their feelings all hurty! Over at the Plum Line, Greg Sargent has some disbelief to offload:

One wonders if there is anything Obama could say to make these people happy, short of declaring that rampant inequality is a good thing, in that it affirms the talent and industriousness of the deserving super rich.

"Yes, yes, that's exactly what would make us happy!" say Wall Street donors.

READ THE WHOLE THING:
Obama's Not-So-Hot Date With Wall Street [New York Times]

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Good morning one and all! Welcome to the end of April, to another Sunday, and another rendition of your Sunday Morning Liveblog. My name is Jason. Last night was Washington's annual Masque Of The Red Death, and yet even still, we wake up and find out that everyone is still having these terrible shows, because we are without shame as a culture, or something. That said, there does appear to be a goody amount of phoning it in set to transpire today -- odd guests, B-team panelists, and some "Hey Osama bin Laden was killed a year ago today, let's just go with that, guys."

So, let's get on with that first part, where I drink coffee and regret waking up. As per the norm, y'all can feel free to have fun and frolic in the comments, drop me a line is you so desire, and, of course, you can always follow me on Twitter, as a matter of last resort.

Okay, well, let's begin with the show that comes on about the same time I bother to get up.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

So, we're going to have a lot of war on terror talk with John Brennan. And then Joel and Victoria Osteen are here? For some reason? And then paneling, with the Fox third stringers.

So, a year ago Wednesday, Osama bin Laden got got by the Seal Team Six. So why not remember it next week? Because this is a Beltway Media Television Show, and it's not about you or me or anyone else but them. And they all remember it happening the weekend of the White House Correspondents Dinner, and so this is its anniversary. "Where do we stand now in the war on terror," asks Wallace. The answer: far removed from it, and in relative luxury.

But, piss it, let's have John Brennan talk about it. But first! What's going on with Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, who yesterday made a rather daring escape from house arrest with the help of what was likely to be a network of people who risked their lives to free him. He is now rumored to be at the American Embassy. SO IS HE, JOHN BRENNAN? TELL NATIONAL TELEVISION ALL THE SECRETS.

"I"m not going to address the issue right now," he says. There are people doing stuff. Other people. Not John Brennan. No one currently in front of a teevee.

How does the President balance the need to occasionally pluck people from China's many attendant miseries, while maintaining good relationships with them? (As well as factories where people make the products we enjoy at all hours of the day in sweatshop conditions until they retire, by which I mean, kill themselves?) Brennan says that we try to balance out commitment to human rights by...balancing them. He literally answered the question by saying, "How do we balance it? You know, through a process I like to call 'balancing.'"

Are we going to give up Chen to satisfy the Chinese? Brennan won't say.

So, will terrorists be celebrating the death of bin Laden with a terrorist attack? Brennan says "there is no active plot" afoot to mark the occasion. But we won't "let down our guard" and will stay "extra vigilant." They hear about plots all the time, and they track down leads, and that's just what they do. (I suppose that our counter-terror efforts stateside have a pretty good track record, but, you know, you always remember the outliers.)

Moving on to the Secret Service scandal. Does Brennen take the matter seriously? Brennan says that the reports of what went down in Cartagena were very serious, but American Hero Mark Sullivan is on the case, and he is taking care of business, everyday, and working overtime, to make the Secret Services awesome again.

But was Brennan's "hair on fire" over this? He has very little hair. But it "raises questions," and the "investigation is still ongoing" and everyone is pretty sure the president's security was not compromised and SHUT UP MARK SULLIVAN IS WORKING ON IT.

Now, on to the TSA, who are bribing and drug smuggling out in Los Angeles. What happens if they allow explosives, or terrorism, or "the gay bomb" through airport security. You know what I'll do? I'll be like: "Yeah, this is what you get when you try to do this the cheapest way possible, you jerks." Brennan says that he obviously wants the TSA to not do this terrible things. And John Pistole -- the TSA's version of Mark Sullivan, except he is not sexxxy and beloved by everyone -- wants the same things, because otherwise people call him and they are yelly! "WHY DID YOU NEED TO SEARCH MY FOUR YEAR OLD'S CROTCH, ETC!"

Okay, Brennan does say that Pistole is a "first-class manager-leader." Whatever that means.

But do we need to take another look at the TSA and their activities? Brennan says that the TSA is looking at itself. So, it's being policed by itself, like all great American institutions, such as Wall Street banks. Everything is going to be fine.

Why don't we have any awesome snuff pictures from the bin Laden raid? "TRUST ME HE IS DEAD," Brennan says. COUGH, SORRY. He goes on to say that pictures will just incite emotions and perhaps make the wrong lunatics go on a psychotic break. But, HA HA: cagey Chris Wallace comes back by asking if that's true, why does the Obama campaign have this ad where Bill Clinton is like: "Obama is my new BFF because he got bin Laden? What would Romney have done? Probably give bin Laden MASSACHUSETTS STYLE HEALTHCARE -- ERR, I mean, HUGZ."

So won't this campaign ad incite violence? "I don't do politics, I'm not involved in the campaign," Brennan says. That said, he says that Obama made a gutsy call, and he'll keep giving the President advice. Wallace asks, if the campaign ad makes the job of keeping us safe, would he tell the president so? Wallace says that he advises the president on that matter. Does the campaign ad concern him? Brennan won't say. Is it fair to say that Mitt Romney is terrible? Brennan won't say. "I'm not a Democrat or a Republican," Brennan says.

Brennan says that we've "degraded al Qaeda significantly," by forcing them to star in "Real Housewives" type shows that were also all tossed in the ocean. "We are going to destroy" al Qaeda, he says. We are working hard with people in Yemen to eradicate their presence there as well. And they keep looking for lone wolves, in the hopes that they can be steered away from terrorism, and into singer-songwriter careers.

Brennan says that the drone program is a "tremendously capable program," because it gathers intelligence and drops bombs. We only use them "in full concert with our partners," which I assume means the states involved, but could just means the military contractors who build them?

Now, Wallace is showing Brennan pictures of himself, on the day Osama bin Laden was killed. "That day was a particularly solemn day, for all of us in the Situation Room," he says, and a day where everyone reflected on the people they'd lost to terrorism. He also wears a special bracelet to remind him of the importance of keeping Americans safe from terrorism. Sort of like I wear a bracelet to remind my parole officer of where I am and what I am doing. NOT KNOCKING OVER JEWELRY STORES ANYMORE, LET ME TELL YOU!

Now Joel and Victoria Osteen are here, because CORPORATE SYNERGY: his show follows this one on Fox, and he's having a big to-do at Nationals Park...uhm, sometime? Maybe it already happened? I'll keep watch to see if he says anything interesting.

Wallace asks Joel if he's just a "motivational speaker" teaching a "prosperity gospel," and he basically says yeah, sort of, but also not? He basically rejects the idea of humility and is more into this sort of theory of AWESOMENESS. Joel and Victoria Osteen are, essentially, the preacher equivalent of Jack Donaghy and Avery Jessups. They want Americans to spend more time "Reaganing," for Jesus.

Wallace asks Osteen what should be done about illegal immigrants. He doesn't know. It's so complicated. Who knows what is right? He wishes he knew! He says that being gay is a sin, but gays are "some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world" who are going to hell and miss out on the Lean Six Sigma of the Seraphim. What about Mormons? Osteen thinks they are swell, like vegan huevos rancheros. "Hey neat! This looks like actual huevos rancheros! Golly that's cute. Oh, I bet there is someone who would enjoy these."

[NOTE: I am actually allergic to eggs, so, in fact, I actually ADORE vegan huevos rancheros. Sorry I'm not sorry! The vegan huevos rancheros at Great Sage in Maryland are AMAZING.]

Victoria Osteen on contraception? Just type "youtube miss south carolina" into Google.

I am going to get some of the coffee that God made me. Be right back.

Okay, panel time with Brit Hume and also they've scrounged up Liz Marlantes and Charles Lane and Kimberly Strassel.

The Supreme Court are totally hating on the President's health care law and their argument against Arizona's "round up the browns" immigration law. Does Hume think it would be damaging if the SCOTUS ruled against these things? Hume does indeed think it would be damaging, though the health care law is obviously more serious. Hume intimates that it's Arizona's law, though, that might be in more trouble.

Marlantes says that Obama's opponents will totally be, "HA HA SUCK IT CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR," but upholding the Arizona law would really fire up the Hispanic vote and bring them to the Democrats. But Wallace points out that Hispanics are actually split on the issue. Strassel says that Obama has demagogued the issue, which is...just -- wow. Ha ha. Yes. THAT'S WHERE ALL THE DEMAGOGUERY HAS COME FROM, IN RE ARIZONA AND HISPANICS. (It should be remembered that while Hispanics nationwide may be split, Arizona Hispanics put that state's electoral votes in play.)

Charles Lane is now saying something that doesn't make sense to anyone else on the panel. He is the journalistic equivalent of a character from The Office.

Should Obama run against the Supreme Court? Hume says that it would be "ineffective" and notes that as controversial as the Court is, it is the only thing in Washington that still has a positive approval rating. (Also: You won't see Obama making a gigantic deal out of the SCOTUS unless he gets to the point where he is losing his argument on the economy and is desperate.)

And, we continue paneling, moving toward the horsey race. The Obama campaign is totally humblebragging on killing bin Laden and saying that Romney wouldn't have done the same. "WE KILLED BIG EVIL MAN AND THE OTHER GUY IS FLOWER WEAVING WIMP" is, basically, the plot of every post 9-11 GOP political ad ever. Hume says that Obama will get the same amount of credit in November for that as Bush 41 did for the first Gulf War. Meaning: not much, because of the economy.

The Romney is complaining that they are hanging their critique of him on a statement taken out of context. It's important to remember, of course, that a central part of Romney's campaign strategy will be taking statements out of context and walking around in high dudgeon about it. We've already seen this happen, and the Romney campaign has made it abundantly clear that they are going to keep doing it: "First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business.... Ads are agitprop.... Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It's ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context.... All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art."

But the strategy doesn't work unless they, having invited their opponents to do the same, don't whine like Miss Muffet about it being done to them. They have correctly surmised that the media refs work like this:

MEDIA: Hey, Obama campaign, not cool!

OBAMA CAMPAIGN: Sure, maybe? But remember when Romney did it, and was like, we're going to keep doing it, because "it's ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context.... All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art."

MEDIA: Sure, maybe so. But you are the guy who promised us a "new sort of politics" that was above that sort of negativity and cheapness.

OBAMA CAMPAIGN: And Romney?

MEDIA: Well, he only promised that he'd be a flip-flopping heel with fungible principles. He's living up to what he told us he would be.

OBAMA CAMPAIGN: Seems sort of unfair.

ME: It is. But this is why I always tell people in politics to NEVER PROMISE TO TRY TO BE BETTER PEOPLE. You guys aren't!

Anyway, Marlantes points out that Romney did not seem to grasp how much bin Laden's death meant to ordinary people, and after realizing that it made him look weird, he walked it back. But, I mean, Romney doesn't grasp how much cookies mean to ordinary people.

Strassel asks, "Do you think Obama wants to get into a foreign policy argument with Mitt Romney?" If the Mitt Romney who has lately been writing about foreign policy shows up at the debate, why not?

Lane points out that Obama has been using drones a lot, and that one can argue that he's extended these powers far beyond the range that Bush 43 did, and is "almost ruthless" with these drones, and in typical Washington Post fashion, finds a way to avoid sounding like he is FOR the ruthless use of drones and the accidental deaths they've caused or AGAINST the ruthless use of drones and the accidental deaths they've caused. You know, it's just NEAT! Hey, could cost him some Democratic votes? Care to add a rebuttal, charred pile of Pakistani child-corpses? Okay-doke!

(Actually, I take that back, Washington Post's Marc Thiessen is FOR that stuff, because it saves him the money he was spending on Viagra.)

Hume doesn't think that voters are impressed with GM recovery. (Michigan is a swing state.)

THE CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW

So, someone at the Chris Matthews Show has titled their bin Laden segment, "Bin Laden, Done That." Can you imagine, being that person, and knowing that you'll have to go on being that person for the rest of your life?

Today we have Richard Stengel, Katty Kay, Helene Cooper, and David Ignatius. Stengel, whose listicle and cocktail party company also publishes a magazine called "Time" (cleverly named for what you spend in the dentist's waiting room that you will never get back) and they have a whole big article on "HOW IT WENT DOWN," where "it" equals the operation to go get bin Laden.

Stengel says that Obama took the "high-risk, high-reward" strategy because they knew that using drones to get bin Laden would have never been conclusive. They'd never know if he was actually dead, and they knew that the Pakistanis would be disinclined to help find out. Stengel says that the length of time they spent planning the operation was risky, too, because something could have been leaked at any time during the seven month planning stage.

Cooper says that Obama had Leon Panetta on his side. Ignatius, noting the added back-up the mission got, has concluded that for all of Obama's public awkwardness, he is privately a "very, decisive and tough man," and "somehow he is going to tell the country that."

Liz Cheney and John Bolton, of course, hate Obama to death, and they think that Obama didn't actually do anything to kill bin Laden but "get out of the way." Matthews, in particular, is incensed by this, and Katty Kay says that "when you read Time magazine's account, it's clear that what John Bolton said is patently wrong." But you have to read Time Magazine, or else you are wallowing in Bolton's effluvia. Do you want that for your children? TO THE NEWSSTANDS!

Chris Matthews friends mostly say that killing bin Laden will "inoculate" Obama from the charges that he is soft on national security. How many electoral votes do you get for carrying Christ Matthews' Pals-istan? Not enough, I can tell you.

Ignatius says that the one thing to look for is that this was sort of a "mano-a-mano battle" between Obama and Osama with each trying to kill the other. Osama had a big ol' sad because when the Obama administration rebranded the "War On Terror" and made it specifically about al Qaeda, bin Laden's support began to diminish, leaving bin Laden sad and bored.

Osama bin Laden wanted to kill Obama and make Biden President, and Ignatius says that the Obama campaign will play that up, except for maybe that last part where bin Laden was saying , "On the other hand, if we could make Biden president, LULZ."

Stengel disagrees, saying that people vote for Democrats based on the economy. Everyone basically votes for everybody based on the economy.

Ignatius says that since bin Laden died, his jihad has grown even more popular. At the same time, however, the Muslim world is ridding themselves of their "apostate leaders," so "we shouldn't declare victory yet."

What is the best way to attack Mitt Romney? Dems be straight pondering this! Should he be cast as a flippity-flopper? Or take him out for a spin with his "I was a severely conservative governor" line? David Plouffe is already calling Romney the most conservative candidate since Goldwater, which...I mean...seriously, though? Okay! Whatever?

Cooper says that the Obama team is "shifting to treating Romney as a right-wing extremist" and tying him to the Tea Party types. Which is why on Student Loan Tour, Virginia Foxx's "zero tolerance for people with student loans" comments got a workout. Stengel says that the Etch A Sketch line, of course, is totally true, and isn't a scandal, and Romney has enough consistency in his message that he can fix the economy.

Kay says that the "people in the middle" matter more than the base now, and the obvious thing to do is remind them all of his primary season positions. This, Kay says, will play especially well with Hispanic voters, where Romney was "so far on the right." Ignatius says that you start with the conservative stuff, then hit him with the flip-flop stuff when Romney tries to adjust.

Oh, boy! But what if the only thing that matters is, say, real income growth in the three quarters leading up to the election, especially the one we are in right now?

Things Chris Matthews knows not of include: Stengel saysthe Democrats are going to say the words "Cayman Islands" over and over again (stoned people will hear this as "Kay, man. ISLANDS"); Kay says that the White House won't be talking about Europe because the whole continent be trippin' (government upheaval in France and the Netherlands and recession in Spain, and the U.K. is in its second dip); Cooper talks about her story in the New York Times (go read it) about Charles Taylor's conviction of war crimes in Sierra Leone -- Cooper is from Liberia and wants people to remember that Taylor committed many atrocities there as well; and Ignatius says -- well, it's hard to come after that -- but okay: the White House is saying that there's a possibility of a deal with Iran over nuclear power, and that Iran seems more receptive than usual.

Did Hillary Clinton basically announce her plans to run for President in 2016 with some jokes at Stengel's party? Stengel says no. He humblebrags about how he's traveled around with her and it's pretty awesome. Kay says that people should definitely announce their big plans at Rick Stengel's party. Cooper isn't sure she has any such plans, and that she may "rest and cool down," between then and now. Ignatius says that the DC consensus is that she is the best Secretary of State ever and she's expected to run for President, the end.

FACE THE NATION

So, over at Face the Nation we are going to have Haley Barbour and Jerry Brown and Antonio Villaraigosa - which means I'd better just CTRL-C the word "Villaraigosa" from here on in, because otherwise I will spell it differently every single time, like I already do with ALL THOSE OTHER WORDS.

CBS is making Bob Schieffer talk about Google hangouts? That just seems pointlessly mean.

We begin with the obligatory montage of White House Correspondent's Dinner stuff, which is no longer about actual correspondents at the White House. But then, is anything? I am pretty sure they would gladly turn the press room into a skee-ball arcade if they could just somehow fumigate all of the desperation from the room.

Anyway, here is Villaraigosa! Villaraigosa Villaraigosa Villaraigosa! I can CTRL-V that all day. Plus Haley Barbour.

So, okay, Romney, he seems confident about his Presidential run. Why is he not knock-kneed with terror, now that he is the nominee for President? Barbour points out that after the contest, the polls have Romney doing fairly well in the polls, and everyone expected Romney to emerge from the primary damaged. (Not me!) Villaraigosa says that the "only person that will be packing" are...the companies he bought (Bain?) and uhm...employees...and, WOW -- Villaraigosa is NOT GOOD at snappy surrogacy.

Villaraigosa eventually pulls it together -- the contest will be close and tough and Obama will win because of his record of "defending and fighting for the middle class." Much better.

Barbour of course, counters that Obama can't win running on his record because the recovery has not been robust and blah blah Obamacare. Villaraigosa counters by saying that Romney's record as governor is not that great -- big debts and bad unemployment. (There was one part of Romney's record that I think the President finds to be pretty neat-o, though, right?)

Villaraigosa: "I think [immigration] is going to be an issue." I can't stress enough what exciting television this is. THING THAT IS AN ISSUE WILL CONTINUE TO BE AN ISSUE. "I think on the issue of immigration Obama is more in tune with America." Schieffer: "What do you make of that, Haley Barbour?" Barbour, "Hispanics are being hurt by this administration, and the Democrats waited to bring up the DREAM act until the lame duck session."

He continues to question the president's seriousness -- why, after all, did he not bring up the Dream Act when he had sixty votes in the Senate. He doesn't seem to understand that he's painting his own party into something of an anti-immigrant corner here. "Obama should have KNOWN we wouldn't have voted to improve these peoples' lives or even attempt to create a sensible immigration policy!"

Barbour says that the DREAM act, as envisioned by the Democrats, has some "attractive" ideas, but he seems to be unsure about the whole path to citizenship concept. Villaraigosa supports the Dems' version completely and says that the version that Marco Rubio came up with makes Hispanics "second-class citizens," though he does not detail why. Villaraigosa also doesn't think that Rubio would help all that much as a vice president, but only because vice presidents don't tend to move the needle, electorally. Barbour essentially agrees, though he notes that the idea that a Veep can help you carry a state is a persistent idea that likely won't go away in this cycle.

Okay, now California Governor Jerry Brown is here. Schieffer wants to know how much politics has changed. Brown says that everything is more polarized, money holds sway, and the adversarial environment is "amped up several degrees" and there is widespread dysfunction. It's a very serious problem! And lookie here! Somehow a piece called "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem," penned by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, got smuggled into the Washington Post, in the same way that Chen Guangcheng got smuggled into the American Embassy (MAYBE!) -- past the censorious diktateer of the WaPo op-ed page, Fred Hiatt, to whom any non-"both sides do it equally as bad" premise is poison.

What can be done about it? Beyond burning people at the stake again? (Willing to try this!) Brown says we need a "breakdown that leads to a breakthrough." Unfortunately, the new, hip things in breakdowns are things like defaulting on the debt ceiling and spinning the planet into a global economic crisis. That is not the same thing as "that time I learned a lesson from when the milk boiled over on the stove top."

Brown says that Obama is "cool, reasoned, intelligent, reasoned and good under pressure" and "has the strength to go all the way." That is, I guess, an endorsement.

Would Marco Rubio help Romney in California. "I don't think Romney will win California," says Brown, who turns that really weird question into a lengthy criticism of the GOP and their "reactionary cul-de-sac" on immigration.

What will the election turns on? Brown says first, elections tend to move on people who make mistakes. Also, incumbency has a huge advantage. Romney has economic discontent to mine. Obama has to tell a story about how the economic dislocation is not his fault, and that he's actually fixing it.

Schieffer wants to know what advice or lessons Brown has for politicians. "Things don't get done overnight...you've got to take thirty years to get things done." He says it's too bad that people look at politicians who don't get their agenda passed in two years time and get considered a failure. "The world doesn't work like that."

What's harder, Mayor of Oakland or Governor of California. Brown says the latter -- "it's more abstract...as Mayor you're dealing with cops, criminals, and developers...more of a hands-on thing...as governor, you are in a capital, but the capital is everywhere." Is he mulling a second term? Sure, why not.

For some reason, Bob Schieffer's closing commentary has been moved up to the midway point? Anyway, the big thing is that Scheiffer and Jerry Brown sat together on a log and had an interview. It was the 1970s and the air was hazy, and hey, it wasn't unusual for a couple of guys, confident in their masculinity, squatting on a log and talking about junk. Brown was, at the time, linked to Linda Ronstadt, and Schieffer wanted to meet her. And someone was eavesdropping behind a tree? Was it Ronstadt? They don't know! They never found out! (TWAS THE WILY JERSEY DEVIL, ME THINKS. Or "Nell," from that movie "Nell," which was about "Nell.")

Anyway, Brown and Schieffer returned to that log and spent the rest of the day having "gentlemen's pleasure," the end.

Okay, now we're going to panel with Graham Allison and Peter Bergen from Time, who wrote the bin Laden story. David Ignatius is also here, with CBS' correspondent John Miller, who was the last person to interview bin Laden.

So, some of the President's senior advisors did not want to chance it, and do the raid. Biden and Gates, in particular, recommended against it. "So if Biden was president today, bin Laden would be alive," says Allison. (This creates a certain frisson, now, with Biden making the claim that Romney would not have made that call.)

"There's a temptation to think of this as a no-brainer," Allison says, who adds that timing plays a big role in when to do something like this. Bergen adds that it's a really rare experience to have two advisors pulling you in two different directions.

Bergen, who went to Abbotabad to see where bin Laden spent the last days of his life, describes his living conditions as pretty miserable, and says that the declassified documents showed that many of his plans were delusional.

Ignatius says, "Al Qaeda was an organization that burned itself out," and that they paid a high price for the many Muslim's bin Laden himself killed. At the same time, Ignatius says, again that while the "dreams of violent jihad died with bin Laden, the dreams of purifying the Muslim world of Western influence is happening."

Schieffer asks Miller if there's any evidence that Pakistanis were involved in sheltering bin Laden. Miller says that "they seemed to be geniunely shocked" that bin Laden was there and there is no indication that there was awareness of bin Laden's presence "at a high level." Allison throws some shade on that, saying that either the head of Pakistan's ISI had been living there, or he had no idea. "Which is more frightening?" he says -- either the ISI is complicit or incompetent. (He adds that so far, there's no intelligence that the ISI knew about it.) Bergen says that bin Laden was a paranoid person, and that there were people in the compound that didn't know bin Laden was living there.

How did they keep this a secret? Basically, it was the world record for shutting the f--k up and saying nothing. Allison points out that a majority of NSA officials had no idea what was going on, and they are probably monitoring everything we type on our laptops. He notes that if word had gotten out too far, some Washington jerkoff would have started complaining about how long they were waiting to pull the trigger.

Is America safer? Ignatius says yes: to the end, bin Laden was plotting to kill Americans. His replacement, Ayman al Zawahiri, is not seen as being as influential or as effective.

Bergen says that more Americans die in their bathtubs than they do from al Qaeda, so why aren't we bombing bathtubs, John McCain? (Actually, John McCain probably has beaten back the bathtubs to their pre-Austro Hungarian Empire borders.)

For some reason, CBS News pointed a camera at a Google hangout, where lots of people were Skyping each other, just jawing about immigration, and it is precisely as exciting as I am making it sound. Perhaps less so. I mean, do you want to see the RNC's Bettina Inclan complain that the President didn't put forth a plan for comprehensive immigration reform that the RNC's Bettina Inclan would then excoriate? That's one of my favorite political gambits: "The President has failed to provide the sort of leadership necessary to produce a piece of legislation that I'm already pre-committed to despising!"

Anyway, John Dickerson had to spend an afternoon listening to people on Skype yell at each other, so, you know, buy him some food or something? Because no one deserves that.

So, that bring us to the end of another week on the Sunday morning prattle-grind. Thank you all for joining me today. I hope that the rest of your week goes well! Just as a programming note, there will be no liveblog on Sunday, May 20, because I will be attending the University of Virginia's graduation ceremonies. (I finally got my degree! (Just kidding.))

[More liveblog is coming next Sunday. While you are waiting, check out this story from me and Jason Cherkis -- "'I Can Smell The Fires From Here': Broadcasts From The L.A. Riots" -- we spoke to radio reporters who covered the Los Angeles Riots twenty years ago, as well as deejays who spent days taking calls from the community. It's an intimate take on those major events, from the people who were closest to it. We've got transcripts for you to read and exclusive audio to listen to as well.]

Tonight, voters in Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, New York and Pennsylvania will cast their votes in their state's GOP primaries. Hey, remember the GOP primaries? Those were fun.

And, for all intents and purposes, I sort of figured that the primary season was a done deal, and now that Rick Santorum isn't standing astride the Keystone State, shouting "No!" at Mitt Romney, there wasn't much to be excited about. But it looks like I missed a memo or something, because I should apparently treat Newt Gingrich as if he's up to something game-changing in "the tiny but dangerous state of Delaware." Per Politico:

With Mitt Romney and the national press corps now focused on the general election, Gingrich is hoping to become the Christine O'Donnell of the 2012 race --

And ... I'm just going to stop you right there. To poach a quip from George Will, we are really defining aspiration down here, aren't we?

What is Gingrich pinning his hopes upon, in Delaware? The thinnest of vapors. There hasn't been any polling in Delaware on the GOP primary, so there are no numbers to cite in making a real-world assessment of his chances. What Gingrich has going for him is the fact that he's spent a lot of time in Delaware, while Romney has barely intruded into the lives of Blue Hen Staters. Gingrich's mere presence earned him the endorsement of Kent County GOP chair Hans Reigle, who said last week, "I previously endorsed Governor Romney, but since then Newt is the only candidate who has shown a willingness to meet and talk with Delaware voters for more than hour."

As Politico reports, Gingrich has since picked up the endorsement of "Priscilla Rakestraw, the longest-serving member of the Republican National Committee." It's an odd pairing. While Gingrich spokesperson R.C. Hammond is insisting that "Voters in Delaware...want a conservative nominee," Rakestraw is a well-known moderate, who is fending off her own challenge from her right flank. Per Dave Weigel:

Rakestraw...might have another motivation -- she is a few days away from a state convention fight that she's expected to lose. Endorsing the "last conservative standing" will prove... something or other about her bona fides, just in time.

Seems like Rakestraw is getting the better end of that deal.

Gingrich campaign sources tell the National Review that they will "reassess" the campaign if they fail to notch a "win or close second" in Delaware tonight. These words have almost no meaning. Delaware is a winner-take-all primary. If Newt wins, he gets all seventeen delegates. But a second place finish is as good as a last place finish. (Gingrich's hopes for finishing second hinge on beating Ron Paul, who hasn't competed in Delaware precisely because the state offers him no post-vote delegate-snatching game to play.)

In reality, only a win has much value for Gingrich, and it's not in the delegate count, which he will lose. If Gingrich still harbors any hope of getting to Tampa to call shenanigans on the whole operation, he'll need to get wins in five states. Only by clearing that threshold does he earn the right to get on the convention ballot, or to make any sort of credentials challenge. There are some upcoming states in which Gingrich might have a slim chance -- the May 22nd contests in Arkansas and Kentucky strike me as the ripest opportunities. But getting there requires Gingrich to achieve his stated goal of "breaking up the media narrative," and a second-place finish in Delaware won't cut it.

At any rate, that represents the one avenue for something resembling suspense tonight, so prepare your fainting couches.

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Yesterday, as Rick Santorum was bowing out of the race, the University of Virginia's celebrated political prognostication guru Larry Sabato sent out a tweet, announcing that we had reached a new stage in the 2012 election cycle.

Yes indeed! Now that Romney has all but sewn up the nomination, the political press can now turn its attention to Romney's policy positions choice for the person who will be "one heartbeat away from the presidency" and cutting ribbons at the dedication of historic monuments and shopping malls. It's "Veepstakes" time -- that time in the campaign where journalists fill the hole left in their hearts by the conclusion of the competitive primary season with a metric ton of panicky speculation about who might be the nominee's running mate. (It is also the time in the campaign season where we all use words like "Veepstakes," while somehow managing to avoid being embarrassed about it.)

In truth, Sabato may have missed the bell ringing on this stage of the race by about a week or so, because in some circles, the "Veepstakes" have already been in full swing. As Andrew Kaczynski reported, over at "Mitt Romney Central," an NCAA tournament-style bracket has been launched to allow Romney fans to weigh in on who they would like to see paired up with Mitt in the fall.

And at 32 names, it includes basically everyone: all of Romney's primary competitors, all of those guys that Bill Kristol would have preferred to see in the race instead of Romney, many of his key endorsers ... really, just about every single GOP figure who has generated a national headline in the past year. Condi Rice, David Petraeus, Sarah Palin ... Donald Trump. They are all on there.

George Pataki, however, is not. Sorry, George Pataki! (Good luck in the NIT!)

And while Santorum's decision to drop out of the running probably gives speculation about Romney's V.P. pick a shot in the arm, the truth is that your political pundits were already hot to trot. As Walter Shapiro notes over at the Columbia Journalism Review's Campaign Desk, "In truth, the press pack jumped the gun in the Heartbeat-Away Derby by anointing Romney as soon as he won the Wisconsin primary." He goes on to note that at that point in time, everybody suddenly got way into Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), and that fever only broke when a just-as-powerful boomlet of interest swelled over Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Here's how this sort of thing works. The media noticed that Romney was in Wisconsin, and they thought, "What pops into my head when I think about Wisconsin? Oh, hey! Paul Ryan! And look, Paul Ryan is endorsing Romney. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney and Wisconsin. I now associate these things in my head with one another, because I remember that I saw all of these things in the same place a few minutes ago. And Paul Ryan seems to like Mitt Romney. If he likes Mitt Romney, he probably wants to continue being near Mitt Romney. And now, wow! Paul Ryan is on the teevee, talking about his budget plan. That's so super-serious. And Romney likes the budget plan, so he must like Ryan on, like, some totally deep level." And then there's a pop and they think, "OMG, MAYBE THEY WILL BE BFFs and VEEPS and JUNK?"

And so, you get stories that include lines like the ones cited by Shapiro:

• "If Romney's campaigning in Wisconsin is any indication, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) may be the new favorite."

• "The name most associated with Romney in the last week is Ryan who looked to have a personal chemistry with the former Massachusetts governor when they campaigned in Wisconsin."

These reporters may as well just write, "Wheee! There are a bunch of shiny golden balls dancing in my eyes and they must be trying to tell me something!" Meanwhile, I would wonder why anyone would think Paul Ryan would give up an easy-to-hold seat in the House of Representatives that he's managed to parlay into enormous influence, but that's just terrible old me, fixating on some obvious political fundamentals again!

Shapiro's entire piece on the matter of the V.P. froth-frenzy is recommended reading. Here's a taste of his free-range common sense:

It's going to be an exhausting four months until Romney takes us out of our collective misery by actually picking his own version of Mini-Me. Probing analysis and deft biographical portraits of vice presidential possibilities are valuable at any stage since nothing in a campaign for the White House is more important in future governing terms than the selection of a running mate. The problem comes when the press corps gets too far ahead of reality with the frenzied speculation about the results of an election with only one voter (Romney) who is keeping his thoughts to himself. Recent history suggests that treating the veepstakes like another political horse race invariably produces lame conclusions.

That's exactly what the recent history of Veep-watching has produced. And here's something else I learned during the 2008 cycle about the vice-presidential speculation game and why it's like catnip. For pundits, the V.P. discussion is a low-stakes subject that allows them to indulge all of their furthest-flung thoughts about any random name you can float -- the demographic need that gets filled, the electoral college math that gets affected, the liability on the top of the ticket that gets papered over -- while allowing one's co-panelist to genially disagree with thought-goo of his or her own.

Meanwhile, every name that gets broadcast, in turn, excites the emotions of party activists and bloggers -- who tend to treat the matter as an absurdly high-stakes affair, who can never really agree if any one person is a savior or an albatross, and who are willing to speak about their enthusiasm or their despair at great length. This feeds the pundits ("The grassroots are talking about So-And-So's strengths/liabilities!") who in turn spur on the activist set ("The media is really taking What's-Her-Name's prospects very seriously!").

It's a pretty good feedback-loop mechanism, and since there's no cost to being wrong about who will ultimately be chosen, it's a safe space to have wild and woolly thoughts. Like Physics Club at Shermer High, it's demented and sad, but social. As long as you go into it with no expectation that there will be sense being made, or agreement being had, it will mainly be fun, or at least survivable.

At any rate, the one thing that everyone agrees on is that if history is any guide, Mitt Romney's vice-presidential pick will not be Tim Pawlenty. (Or will he?) (No.)

READ THE WHOLE THING:
The Heartbeat-Away Derby is Under Way [CJR]

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Over the past couple of days, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been going back and forth on whether the delegate math and Romney's superior war chest means that Mitt's going to be the inevitable nominee, or whether the result of this weekend's Masters should lead him to tattoo the word "TAMPA" on his forehead and inspire him to press on with his plans to unleash full-tilt Pinball King chaos at the Republican National Convention.

But that period of vacillation appears to have subsided with the news that Rick Santorum is exiting the race. Now, Gingrich is saying that his supporters are asking him to keep fighting. This raises a series of questions, like, "Wait, Newt Gingrich still has supporters?" and "If so, can they please send some money to Utah?"

Nevermind that! As the Associated Press reports, Gingrich has declared this a two-man race:

"It's not over and he has not won it yet," Gingrich said, speaking of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who moved closer to claiming the nomination a day earlier after his chief rival, Rick Santorum, dropped out of the race.

"It's very clear that Romney does not, today, have the majority of the delegates," Gingrich said.

Gingrich is correct that Romney does not yet have the 1,144 delegates it takes to win the nomination at the Republican National Convention, but Romney is well on his way with more than half the total.

(That third paragraph is best imagined as if the reporter was speaking it aloud and rolling her eyes, isn't it?)

But okay, let's recap what amounts to the revivified Newt Gingrich "two-man race" strategy (all of which I imagine would be more easy to pull off if he hadn't gutted his staff two weeks ago?).

Step one: Get back to attacking Romney. Which is odd, because Gingrich is now simultaneously saying that he could "enthusiastically" back Romney, whilst also saying that Romney is "dishonest" and an "Etch A Sketch," instead of being a straight-shooting, real conservative.

Step two: Appeal to Santorum supporters. Here's the written statement he offered in the wake of Santorum's exit:

I am committed to staying in this race all the way to Tampa so that the conservative movement has a real choice. I humbly ask Senator Santorum's supporters to visit Newt.org to review my conservative record and join us as we bring these values to Tampa. We know well that only a conservative can protect life, defend the Constitution, restore jobs and growth and return to a balanced budget.

Newt is asking "humbly," which he almost never does, but there just isn't time to challenge each Santorum voter to a Lincoln-Douglas debate. (They will be able to pay for the privilege much later, I imagine.)

Step three: Get some more delegates. JUST...I DUNNO, NEWT WANTY SO GIVE HIM SOME? Per Politico:

Newt Gingrich said Wednesday he has no plans to follow Rick Santorum's lead and get out of the race, noting he "would like to win as many delegates as possible" as the Republican primary continues.

Gingrich said on Fox News that with Santorum suspending his campaign, "I believe that now that we're down essentially to the two of us, we're going to gain delegates."

"I would like to win as many delegates as possible," Gingrich said, adding, "We're certainly going to win delegates," and "I'm campaigning selectively in places where we believe we will pick up delegates," and "We'll continue to pick up delegates."

Your delegates. Give Newt them.

At any rate, that's his new theory of a "two-man race," in which the third man he's somehow forgotten about, Ron Paul, is actually markedly better at all of this than Newt is.

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On March 21, 2010, conservative writer David Frum took to his FrumForum site and penned a piece titled "Waterloo," a lengthy lamentation on the passage of the Affordable Care Act. But unlike many of his ideological brethren, Frum wasn't merely upset about a Democratic victory; he was angry that the GOP had followed a foolish legislative strategy that prized taking the Obama presidency out at the knees rather than working as the loyal opposition to craft what would be, to Frum's perspective, the best possible bill while the debate permitted it.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise -- without weighing so heavily on small business -- without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.

Frum was correct. The Obama administration was more than willing to deal. The more liberal imaginings of universal health care -- in the form of single-payer, or a National Health-style system -- were dealt off the table from jump. The White House wanted all parties to add on, have input, play a part in shaping the policy. So much so that the president eventually embraced a concept with a Heritage Foundation pedigree. If anything, it should have been the Democrats spitting hot fire on the proceedings.

But the Republicans weren't willing to do much in the way of deal-making and negotiating. What they were willing to do, was develop any number of wonderful, ornate lies about a health care reform plan that was cooked up in their own laboratories and celebrated as a Republican accomplishment only a short time ago, during the 2008 primary season. At least, in this effort, they truly excelled. But as Frum noted, in this column that preceded his own banishment for apostasy, it was a missed opportunity to craft a policy with that stamp of "bipartisanship," that everyone says is important.

But, hey, some of those lies were pretty ambitious. Let's remember them all, shall we?

Healthcare In America Is Already 'The Best In The World'

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One of the more positive sounding admonitions from health care reform opponents was that the United States had "the best health care in the world," so why would you mess with it? Well, it's true that if you want the experience the pinnacle of medical care, you come to the United States. And if you want the pinnacle of haute cuisine, you go to Per Se. If you want the pinnacle of commercial air travel, you get a first class seat on British Airways. Now, naturally, you wouldn't let just anyone mess with someone's tasting menu or state-of-the-art air-beds. But like anything that's "the best," the best health care in the world isn't for everybody. The costs are prohibitively high, the access is prohibitively exclusive, and the resources are prohibitively scarce. What do the people in America who "fly coach" in the health care system get? Well, at the time of the health care reform debate, they were participating in a system that was, by all objective measurements, overpriced and underperforming -- if you were lucky enough to be participating in it. As anyone who's fortunate enough to have employer based health care or unfortunate enough to have a pre-existing condition can tell you, health care for ordinary people already involved all of those things that we were told would be a feature of the Affordable Care Act -- long waits, limited choice, and rationing. When the Commonwealth Fund rated health care systems by nation, the top marks in the surveyed categories went to the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the Netherlands. Ezra Klein examined the study, and observed:

"The issue isn't just that we don't have universal health care. Our delivery system underperforms, too. 'Even when access and equity measures are not considered, the U.S. ranks behind most of the other countries on most measures. With the inclusion of primary care physician survey data in the analysis, it is apparent that the U.S. is lagging in adoption of national policies that promote primary care, quality improvement, and information technology.'"

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One of the more positive sounding admonitions from health care reform opponents was that the United States had "the best health care in the world," so why would you mess with it? Well, it's true that if you want the experience the pinnacle of medical care, you come to the United States. And if you want the pinnacle of haute cuisine, you go to Per Se. If you want the pinnacle of commercial air travel, you get a first class seat on British Airways. Now, naturally, you wouldn't let just anyone mess with someone's tasting menu or state-of-the-art air-beds. But like anything that's "the best," the best health care in the world isn't for everybody. The costs are prohibitively high, the access is prohibitively exclusive, and the resources are prohibitively scarce.

What do the people in America who "fly coach" in the health care system get? Well, at the time of the health care reform debate, they were participating in a system that was, by all objective measurements, overpriced and underperforming -- if you were lucky enough to be participating in it. As anyone who's fortunate enough to have employer based health care or unfortunate enough to have a pre-existing condition can tell you, health care for ordinary people already involved all of those things that we were told would be a feature of the Affordable Care Act -- long waits, limited choice, and rationing.

When the Commonwealth Fund rated health care systems by nation, the top marks in the surveyed categories went to the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the Netherlands. Ezra Klein examined the study, and observed:

"The issue isn't just that we don't have universal health care. Our delivery system underperforms, too. 'Even when access and equity measures are not considered, the U.S. ranks behind most of the other countries on most measures. With the inclusion of primary care physician survey data in the analysis, it is apparent that the U.S. is lagging in adoption of national policies that promote primary care, quality improvement, and information technology.'"

Healthcare In America Is Already 'The Best In The World'

 

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One of the more positive sounding admonitions from health care reform opponents was that the United States had "the best health care in the world," so why would you mess with it? Well, it's true that if you want the experience the pinnacle of medical care, you come to the United States. And if you want the pinnacle of haute cuisine, you go to Per Se. If you want the pinnacle of commercial air travel, you get a first class seat on British Airways. Now, naturally, you wouldn't let just anyone mess with someone's tasting menu or state-of-the-art air-beds. But like anything that's "the best," the best health care in the world isn't for everybody. The costs are prohibitively high, the access is prohibitively exclusive, and the resources are prohibitively scarce. What do the people in America who "fly coach" in the health care system get? Well, at the time of the health care reform debate, they were participating in a system that was, by all objective measurements, overpriced and underperforming -- if you were lucky enough to be participating in it. As anyone who's fortunate enough to have employer based health care or unfortunate enough to have a pre-existing condition can tell you, health care for ordinary people already involved all of those things that we were told would be a feature of the Affordable Care Act -- long waits, limited choice, and rationing. When the Commonwealth Fund rated health care systems by nation, the top marks in the surveyed categories went to the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the Netherlands. Ezra Klein examined the study, and observed:

"The issue isn't just that we don't have universal health care. Our delivery system underperforms, too. 'Even when access and equity measures are not considered, the U.S. ranks behind most of the other countries on most measures. With the inclusion of primary care physician survey data in the analysis, it is apparent that the U.S. is lagging in adoption of national policies that promote primary care, quality improvement, and information technology.'"

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SLIDESHOW THUMBNAILS

Jeffrey Young contributed reporting.

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Good morning everyone, and welcome to Sunday, that traditional time of the week where you get to stay snuggled in bed with your loved ones while I emerge from my haze, hook up a coffee IV drip, and take one for Team America by watching the Sunday morning political chatterbox shows so that you don't have to. My name is Jason. Now, here's some bad news: I'll be taking the next two Sundays off -- it's Easter two weeks from now, and next week I am going to be on vacation in Boston.

So I won't be here to watch these shows and reblog their contents. Mind you, this doesn't mean you have to start watching them yourself. And I'll endeavor to have something in this place the next two weeks so that all of you can gather as you do and enjoy each other's company in the comments. Which I hope you'll do today as well! And I'll be back running this misery business soon enough.

So, like I said, welcome. Drop me a line if there's anything I need to know to avoid being shunned in Boston, like Martha Coakley. I will be shaking hands outside of Fenway Park at some point, just to be able to say that I did it.

Okay, let's get started.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

So, today, we'll have David Plouffe and Paul Ryan, so we're already off to an exciting start to a Sunday that won't bore us to tears. Rick Santorum won the Louisiana primary. However, Mitt Romney managed to get 27% of the vote, so he'll eat many of the delegates that Santorum would have gotten. Romney's more than halfway to the 1,144 delegates he'll need to become the GOP's nominee.

And now, let's get Plouffed. Chris Wallace starts in on him, pointing out that back in the day, the Obama campaign was totally blaming Bush for the high price of gas. And now? The price of gas is totally not Obama's fault. Plouffe should basically say, "Yeah, lying to the American people that the President has control over the price of gas is something that professional politicians do to win elections, sorry!" Instead, Plouffe says, OH WELL THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. Summer comes in a year divisible by four and POOF, gas prices go up, no biggie! "We have to do everything we can to produce energy in this country," he says. And soon we'll have windmills and giant hamster wheels too, and fuel efficiency is going up, too. Okay, has he gone on long enough, not answering the question.

At any rate, the President is pursuing an "all of the above" energy plan. But Wallace points out that a lot of the big gaping holes that have been dug lately, in the earth, are on private lands, and that federal lands have been spared many big gaping holes, so is the President taking credit for things he had no control over? Plouffe disagrees, and says that they've increased permitting on Federal lands, and have held auctions, and it's up to the private sector to purchase the rights to those lands and drill there.

"We are getting more energy independent," Plouffe says, adding that if "all we do is drill, and we let China" win the wind and solar sectors, then we'll all feel sad about our hole-ridden country and it's lack of energy diversity.

Wallace moves to the Keystone pipeline, an important way of getting the U.S. off foreign oil so long as we pretend that Canada is America. Obama went to Oklahoma this week to talk about the southern leg of the pipeline. Wallace says that the southern pipeline isn't important. Plouffe says it is. Wallace says that the President doesn't have much to do with the construction of that leg. Plouffe insists that there are some permits, and some Army Corps Of Engineers Things, that need to be expedited, and they the White House will expedite them. It sort of sounds like Wallace is right on the latter score, but my understanding is that the southern leg is plenty important.

"The Republicans play games with this," says Plouffe. Okay! But, I mean, when you kick the can past the November election, you're playing games with it, too.

Plouffe says that there are no immediate plans to tap the strategic petroleum reserve, though such a thing remains on the table for consideration. Wallace asks why he'd imagine it would be effective in lowering the price of gas. Plouffe won't "get into hypotheticals." "No one should expect there to be a magic bullet" on gas prices, he says, adding that tapping the reserve would be a decision based on supply constraints, not the price of gas. (By the way, I hear that supply constraints impact the price of gas?)

Wallace next asks Plouff why everyone hates Obamacare so much. Plouffe gives "pffft" to such polls, pointing out that no one really wants to refight the battle. He predicts that the GOP will come to regret coming out against Obamacare, and that as it's slowly implemented and people experience the reform for themselves, they'll come to like it. The administration can certainly point to examples of this. (They have, in fact.) He adds that the White House is confident that the Supreme Court will find the law Constitutional.

Wallace points out that the Ryan budget plan offers larger savings, a smaller debt, and a balanced budget, than the Obama budget plan, and says, "Say what you want, but it at least addresses the deficit," Yes, because Ryan just stops paying for things. The most famous thing he stops paying for is Medicare.

I could put money back into my household budget by ceasing all payments to Dominion Power. And when my wife complains that it's dark and the food has spoiled and we're roasting in an un-airconditioned apartment. I could say, "Say what you want, but it at least addresses our deficit."

Plouffe says that no one's seen all the details of the plan, but he happily points out that it favors the wealthy and it's also the plan Romney supports, so you should call it the Ryan-Romney plan, and -- well, here Wallace interrupts and says, "No one knows these things yet! We don't have all the details." Oh, well, forgive me, I thought you were the guy confidently saying "Say what you want, but it's secretly awesome" just a few minutes ago.

At any rate, Plouffe says that the President's plan is better.

Moving to the Trayvon Martin case. Wallace wants to know if the President considers it a "race issue." Plouffe says that the President considers it a tragedy and sad when things like this happen to anyone. I'll just go ahead and consider it a race issue, then, because I am pretty sure that I could go to that same community, at the same time of night, and wear a hoodie and hold skittles and not get shot to death. I bet you a million dollars that I can go to that community and wear a hoodie that says, "F--K THE NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH I WILL KILL YOU WITH KNIVES," litter the place with skittles, and clink bottles together whilst calling out, "GEORGE ZIMMERMAN COME OUT AND PLAY-YAY!" without getting shot to death.

It's really too bad that Obama saying that his son would look like Trayvon is some sort of political liability. This is one of those times that politics forces people to literally pretend to be stupid.

At any rate, Plouffe concludes the day by surprisingly endorsing the re-election of the President, which was unexpected and really had me on the edge of my seat. Let's definitely say pleasing, insincere things about a tragedy, and say them quickly, so that there's time left on the teevee to remind people that the president's surrogates support the president.

Now, here's Hair Captain Paul Ryan to talk about his most recent foray into Randian fantasia. Wallace asks him about the charge that the wealthy are favored by his budget plan. Ryan says that he's closing the loopholes that wealthy people use. Which is kind of an admission that it does favor the wealthy! But more to the point, as Travis Waldron points out, "Even in the unlikely scenario that the GOP managed to close every tax loophole available to the wealthy, each millionaire would pay an average of $187,000 less under Ryan's plan than they would under current law (which assumes an end to the Bush tax cuts)."

Waldron goes on to cite a study from Citizens for Tax Justice:

While Rep. Ryan does not specify which tax provisions he would repeal, these calculations assume he would repeal all itemized deductions, all tax credits, the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance, and the deduction for health insurance for the self-employed.

Even under these assumptions, over 92 percent of these very high-income taxpayers would enjoy a net tax cut, and the average income tax change for these taxpayers would be a reduction of $187,000 in 2014.

I'd also point out that when you get rid of loopholes, especially in terms of corporate taxes, the goal is to capture revenue. Other countries have smaller tax rates but capture more revenue because they don't have all the absurd loopholes and bailouts that we do. But Ryan is not into capturing revenue. He's into "deficit neutral tax reform," which, as I like to say around here, is like "cake-neutral baking" -- and exercise so pointless in the undertaking, that only an idiot goes to the trouble.

Sorry about the long pause...I was having internet problems, and problems with pausing my TiVo too much. Continuing on:

Ryan is asked by Wallace how on earth they'll pay for these tax cuts, and Ryan says in the same breath that they'll close all these loopholes, and bring in the same amount of revenue, which SHOULD lead Wallace to say, "Indeed, I just asked you how you would pay for this stuff!"

Wallace does attempt to nail down how heavily Ryan will bring down the axe on the most popular of the tax breaks -- like employer-provided health insurance and pensions, home mortgage deductions, and capital gains' lower rate. Ryan said that he'd limit those deductions to the higher income earners. Wallace says, "Are you willing to say this will be revenue neutral--." Ryan interrupts, "Yes." And indeed, again, HOW IS WALLACE MISSING THAT, but I digress, because Wallace asks if the plan would be distributionally neutral, and Ryan insists that there's no way of knowing or guaranteeing that. Which is to say: NO.

Ryan goes on to compare his plan favorable to "Bowles-Simpson," citing the fact that the Bowles-Simpson tax rate is lower. What he neglects to mention is that the Bowles-Simpson plan is revenue-generating, not revenue-neutral.

Wallace asks about the cuts to Medicaid and what not, and asks if he's putting the burden of the tax solution on the backs of the poor. Ryan says that that programs like Medicaid are unsustainable, and then there's a paragraph of Randian cant about breeding more self-sufficiency and training people for jobs, which sort of passes over the part where we have Medicare because people get old and sick and can no longer work to support themselves, because they are old and sick and not immortal and stuff and we decided long ago that watching our grandfathers and grandmothers lapse into pauperdom as a result of these things was sort of shameful.

Ryan insists that Medicare "denies people upward mobility." Which sort of fails to explain how the most prolonged period of upward mobility in the past century wasn't in any way impeded by the existence of Medicare.

Not for the first time will I point you to Matt Yglesias pointing out what the Ryan Medicare plan amounts to:

Here's Ryan's big idea. Right now the way Medicaid works is that the federal government pays states a fixed share of what it costs them to provide health care services to Medicaid beneficiaries. Under Ryan's vision for Medicaid, the way it will work is that states will get a fixed sum that grows with population growth and general CPI inflation.

So let's imagine that, by magic, health care costs grow in line with general CPI inflation. Now what happens as the population ages? Well, as everyone knows older people need more health care services than younger people do. So if you cap the per capita availability of health care services in an aging population, you get declining adequacy of coverage. That's the very heart and soul of the Ryan vision for Medicaid--lower taxes on the rich financed by less adequate coverage for the poor and disabled. And keep in mind that's the consequences of his plan with the heroic assumption that medical care inflation can be held to the level of average economy-wide inflation.

How likely is that? I would be willing to wager basically any sum Rep Ryan cares to name that whether or not his budget is enacted, medical costs will grow faster than overall inflation over the next 20 years. Over the past 50 years, the CPI for medical care exceeded core CPI only once.

Wallace asks a great question: what makes Ryan think that state governments are going to be any less corrupt and inefficient at running entitlement programs via block grants? Indeed, state governments are notoriously MORE corrupt and inefficient. Ryan's answer is that the closer government gets to you, the more responsible it is to you. Which explains why states that are full of women are passing laws that would allow the state government to shove xray wands in their vaginas.

Wallace asks about the whole plan to impoverish seniors by gradually ceasing to pay for their care, and Ryan says that the key difference is that instead of "fifteen bureaucrats" being in charge of Medicare, "50 million seniors will be in charge." Which is true! All those seniors will be in charge of trying to come up with the money to pay for the health care they'll need constantly because their bodies full of internal organs are slowly breaking down.

Of course, "nothing will change for current seniors," because current seniors will presumably be voting based on the interests of current seniors.

Moving to the horsey race, Ryan says that while Romney hasn't wrapped it up yet, he's on his way. And "he's not going to tell the candidates what to do."

And will he be vice-president? Ryan says that he doesn't know the answer to that question.

Friend of the liveblog Chris Blakeley is back! Hooray! He offers, via email:

For me the debate on the Affordable Healthcare Act is this simple: for myself, my family and all USA citizens, I want the same level of healthcare Cheney has received and continues to receive on the government dime. Most if not all of the legislators who are most critical of the Affordable Healthcare Act have access to healthcare that entails no out-of-pocket expenses to them while in Congress and in far too many cases continues as a benefit after their service ends. Too many of those most critical of this bill are far more concerned about the health of corporations versus the health of this country's citizens (even though we now know that "corporations are people").

And now it's Panel Time with Paul Gigot and Kirsten Powers and Brit Hume and Juan Williams.

The Supreme Court is going to be ruling, maybe, on the individual mandate, which is an idea the Heritage Foundation came up with, for healthcare. Hume says the action will center on the Commerce Clause, and "whether there are limits" that preclude the federal government from doing what the Affordable Care Act does. He expects it to be a long and interesting argument, though, and thinks that everyone saying that it's going to be a "slam dunk" one way or the other is wrong.

Powers says that the "administration obviously thinks it has a strong case or else they would not have gone through with it in an election year." I don't think the administration has a say in that, though? Anyway, Powers and Wallace get into some obscure case law, which I won't reblog because I do aspire to end this thing at some point. Anyone interested in relevant case law should read Dahlia Lithwick in Slate, right?

Gigot thinks that it's ultimately like compelling Americans to buy specific cars. Williams points out that the uninsured keep health care costs high for everyone who is insured. Williams describes uninsured people who get "smushed."

"Judicial activism is in the eye of the beholder," says Hume, "So the judicial activism argument is really sort of pointless."

Moving to the horsey race. Gigot thinks it's swell that Santorum won in Louisiana, and that it might have been some "blowback" from the Etch-A-Sketch line, but Santorum still needs to "deny Romney delegates." Williams says, "that's exactly right...and April is not going to be a kind month to Rick Santorum." Santorum will need to last until May, and he'll probably have to pull an upset. Hume notes that "all he can hope to do is deny Romney the nomination and force a contested convention."

I'm pretty sure that if you haven't spent time in a coma lately, any of you could have come on teevee and made these banal observations yourselves.

And now, Kirsten Powers is saying things like "Romney is the frontrunner" and "people who win primaries get delegates" and "the sun is hot." Okay, I get it. No one has anything new or interesting to say about this. Fast forward.

FACE THE NATION

Oh, hello, Norah O'Donnell, who is perhaps a future host of this show, is filling in for Bob Schieffer today. We begin with Rick Santorum and what O'Donnell calls a "big win." Which really isn't that big! But I get it...this race has sort of become a series of exciting storylines, and today, Scheherazade is singing about Santorum.

Anyway, Santorum is here, and he says that he's "reassured" by the way Louisiana voted, which makes it clear that voters do not want an "Etch-A-Sketch" candidate but rather someone whose values are "written on their heart" and not on an "erasable tablet." And he would probably like to say about 76 more variations on "Etch-A-Sketch," but the show is only a half hour long.

O'Donnell points out that he needs to win 70% of the remaining delegates to win the nomination, so what is his "credible path." Santorum says that he doesn't agree with "the delegate math that Romney is putting out there." By which he means, the delegate math that the people who count delegates for the media is putting out there. Santorum believes in a different math. A math unencumbered by decisions Florida and Arizona made to be winner take all states. A math that believes that Mitt Romney and Ron Paul will somehow forget to snatch up currently unbound delegates, and allow Santorum's shoestring operation to grab them.

Santorum really believes though, that he and Gingrich will get 50 delegates from Florida and Arizona. We'll see! I'd place no bets on it!

Romney is picking on Santorum now, mercilessly. His campaign in listless, and the way he said Obama's re-election would be preferable to Romney is "sad and pathetic" and the fact that he's even celebrating a win in Louisiana is mockable because he's a team down by "seven touchdowns." Ha, ha! Laugh at Santorum! Santorum says that Romney is "desperate" and that he's making "desperate messages," and he just thinks that the GOP needs someone who contrasts well against Obama, and Romney is the "worst possible nominee" for that task, because he can't "beat Obama on the issues" or "connect with voters."

O'Donnell really wants to press the point that he was deservedly hammered for saying Obama was preferable to Romney, and Santorum shrugs that off, but she wants to press the point by showing him exactly what he said, and...you know, what he said wasn't that unreasonable: "You win by giving people a choice. You win by giving people an opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who's just going to be a little different from the person in there. If you're going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have, instead of taking a risk on what may be the Etch-A-Sketch candidate."

It's no wonder Santorum was like, "Fine, Norah, play what I said." What he said was dramatically less exciting than, "Guys, piss it, we'll be better off with Obama instead of Romney."

Santorum points out that he is running for President, and that obviously he'd prefer that the country switched from Obama to him. I think that O'Donnell really didn't have the "gotcha" she thought she had.

Does Santorum have to win Wisconsin to change the momentum? Santorum says that Louisiana was a big win! And he'll come to Wisconsin, sure, and he's behind in the polls...and he's getting outspent...and...he went bowling in Sheboygan, did you see that? Okay, the answer to the question is: Yes he needs to win Wisconsin. And, as a corrollary: no, he probably won't.

Moving to the Trayvon Martin story, O'Donnell asks Santorum for his thoughts on Obama's statement on the matter, and whether race played a role in Martin's death. Santorum says that he's not privy to what's going on in someone's mind, but that Zimmerman's mind appears to be a "sick one," and his motives were "malicious," and the end result is a "tragedy." Which, you know, is a very fine way of responding to that.

A not-fine way of responding was Newt Gingrich's response. Gingrich was outraged that Obama would make the obvious comment that a son born to he and his wife would look like a black child. Gingrich just thought that was terrible, because it took away from the fact that it was a shared tragedy. It's sort of important to remember that Gingrich is an egomaniac, currently losing an election badly, and it makes no sense to him, because he is Destiny's Child. So he's increasingly desperate to get back into it. He knows that universally slamming Obama is one way to do it, so he's basically got to keep at that game. If Obama encourages people to floss inbetween meals, then flossing is for secular-socialist Rosemary's babies and supporters of flossing should be guillotined, and their headless corpses shipped to participate in a Lincoln-Douglas Debate with Gingrich.

Santorum is asked to comment on Gingrich's comments, and says, "All I can say is that there are a lot of people who have perverted reviews on reality...it's hard to generalize about one heinous act..." and it take a minute for me to remember that he's talking about Zimmerman, not Gingrich. Though the description certainly applies! (And I don't think Santorum minds anyone thinking that he's being too clever by half!)

Moving on the Paul Ryan, who will only have a few minutes to talk. O'Donnell asks if everyone will have to sacrifice under the budget. Ryan says yes. We've been over this:

Ezra Klein points out that the distributive inequities of the plan are hard to get past, once you factor in all of the GOP's pet premises:

The Republican plans we've seen share a few basic premises. First, taxes are too high, and must be cut. Second, defense spending is too low, and should be raised. Third, major changes to entitlement programs should be passed now, but they shouldn't affect the current generation of retirees. That would all be fine, except for the fourth premise, which is that short-term deficits are a serious threat to the country and they need to be swiftly cut.

The first three budget premises means that taxes and defense will contribute more to the deficit, and Medicare and Social Security aren't available for quick savings. That leaves programs for the poor as the only major programs available to bear cuts. But now cuts to those programs have to pay for the deficit reduction, the increased defense spending, and the tax cuts. That means the cuts to those programs have to be really, really, really deep. The authors have no other choice.

And we can move on to discuss the relative seriousness of Ryan's plan, again, with Klein's assistance:

Ryan tells CBO to assume his tax plan will raise revenues to 19 percent of GDP and then hold them there. He tells them to assume his Medicare plan will hold cost growth in Medicare to GDP+0.5 percentage points. He tells them to assume that spending on Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program won't grow any faster than inflation. He tells them to assume that all federal spending aside from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will fall from 12.5 percent of GDP in 2011 to 3.75 percent of GDP in 2050.

It's that last assumption, perhaps, that shows most clearly how unlikely Ryan's specified budget path is. He's saying that in 2050, spending on defense, on food stamps, on infrastructure, on education, on research and development, on the federal workforce, and everything other non-entitlement program combined will be less than four percentage points of GDP.

Consider that defense spending has never fallen below three percentage points of GDP, and Mitt Romney has promised to keep it above four percentage points of GDP. Ryan has not outlined a realistic goal.

It seems that Ryan has cooked up a pretty good way to create Panem, from THE HUNGER GAMES, but not necessarily achieve an equitable plan for America.

Anything new in the Ryan/O'Donnell dialogue that sets it apart from the Ryan/Wallace dialogue? Not really. But that's not Paul Ryan or Norah O'Donnell's fault.

O'Donnell does ask about the politics of backing such an unpopular plan that the public hates. Ryan says that he's morally obligated to offer a solution to our debt problem, which to my mind is not do things like pass the Bush tax cuts or Medicare Part D or launch expensive pointless wars in the first place. But all that stuff happened, and so now, seniors will have to manage their own health care financing in perpetuity. But they can call all that time they'll spend scraping money together and shopping hither and yon for marginal savings "freedom!"

Ryan says that the country deserves to spoken to "like adults and not children" He says this, however, after saying that his plan "preserves Medicare." Of course, he doesn't want to preserve Medicare. His plan is to eventually have "50 million seniors" in a state of nature, clawing for survival. So, that is like talking to America as if they were children, in the way that children are told that Santa exists and that "the ball won't hurt them" and that "it's really important to get a good grade in Chemistry and of course you'll use that knowledge later in life."

"Would you consider being Vice-President?" O'Donnell asks, as I fast forward the TiVo, because GAH.

Chuck Schumer is here now, which means the most dangerous place in the world is between Schumer and the camera pointing at him. Why is this happening? O'Donnell wants to ask him about Trayvon Martin. Schumer's against the "Stand Your Ground" law, and thinks it needs to be repealed. But if that happens, what recourse will twitchy paranoids have when the voices in their heads are screaming, "SHOOT THAT GUY! HE PROBABLY WANTS TO KILL YOU, WITH SKITTLES," huh?

Schumer is against Paul Ryan's budget, calling it "smoke and mirrors" because he doesn't say how it will be paid for, and without a plan to raise revenue -- Schumer cites capital gains rate increase, I wonder if he could be convinced to change the rules of carried interest (I'm guessing no!) -- then the balance falls on the backs of the poor. He says the Democrats will produce a plan on tax day, from Sheldon Whitehouse, that will enact the "Buffet Rule." It will "be on the floor on Tax Day." There, it will fail to get passed, the end.

As for the controversy over the Affordable Care Act, Schumer says that it's off the table if Romney is the nominee. It's almost too bad Santorum can't come back on camera and say, "See! See! This is what I was talking about!"

MEET THE PRESS

David Plouffe is here, and Gregory begins with a foreign policy question on North Korea's ambitions to develop a long-range rocket. Plouffe says that the White House's position on North Korea is that "we can't reward bad behavior" but that the world is now united against that sort of behavior, and you see the same thing in Iran. (Russia and China might dispute whether they've been unified with the rest of the world in their position on Iran. And vice-versa, obviously.)

On Trayvon Martin, Plouffe says that "our focus needs to be on the family, and on the investigation." Gregory badgers him as to whether race was a factor in the death. It obviously was, but as we've discussed before, this is an area where the White House "makes news" if they make the obvious observation that a normal human being would make. So that won't be happening. (In an odd way, you can see how Mitt Romney's robotic nature and lack of personal connection to anything would serve him in good stead in the White House. "How do you react to X, President Romney?" "Within standard operating parameters BEEP BLORP THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTION, REPORTER-HUMAN.")

If the investigation demonstrates that race was a factor, then maybe the White House will say that the investigation demonstrated this. Gregory keeps badgering him, saying, "The President of the United States would not have spoken out about this this personally with an African-American victim if he did not believe race was at the core." He says this as if it's some sort of gotcha. "HA HA! I CAUGHT THE PRESIDENT HAVING A PERSONAL OPINION! NAILED!" You know, maybe it does demonstrate that Obama is copping to a belief that race played a role, but the real reprehensible thing is that a child is dead and David Gregory and his media colleagues are excited that they might be able to get David Plouffe to slip up and say something controversial here. That seems to me to be a pretty irresponsible use of this story and its underlying lessons, be those racial or not. The reductiveness of the "horse race uber alles" coverage is staggering.

Gregory also thinks that there's something to be made about the fact that Obama called Sandra Fluke and not Trayvon Martin's family. Plouffe points out that the difference was that Fluke was under fire for "policy decisions that we had made." That's actually an interesting admission.

Gregory really wants to sort of catch the president in the trap of talking overtly about race, so that everyone can pounce on him though. And he sort of asks, and answers his own question, here:

GREGORY: There are people who made the observation, back when Professor Gates at Harvard was arrested, and the President at that point thought the Cambridge police acted stupidly, he said so publicly and there was a controversy and he ended up having that beer summit. He's been cautious about talking about race. As the country's first African-American president it was an issue of sensitivity during the campaign, but some people question why he doesn't lead more forcefully and say, this is a conversation we should have and I should more directly lead it. Why not?

The answer is that the media environment isn't conducive to having that conversation, with a sitting President of the United States, because the media environment favors, and recommends for itself, a situation where staging a clown attack on the political discourse is a good thing to do for generating ratings and stoking controversy. In the case of Gates, he was arrested for breaking and entering his own home. That was an objectively stupid arrest. I'll tell that cop right now, today, "Hey buddy! Nothing personal, but that was an objectively stupid thing you did. Yep! For one moment in your life, you were objectively stupid! Happens to the best of us. Own it. Move on. Try not to be so stupid!" As a private citizen, I can make this observation. And whether or not the cop agrees or disagrees, he's got to sit there and take it. I think Obama briefly made an objectively stupid move of his own, when he forgot that he doesn't have the right to say objectively sane and reasonable things about everything anymore.

But the answer to Gregory's question, "Why not?" is that people like David Gregory make the world a less inviting and productive place to have these conversations. And, indeed, for the past five minutes, on Meet The Press, he's been making it worse!

Plouffe is stuck saying that Obama is the President of "everybody," but he once gave a speech about the MLK monument, so he's demonstrably aware of black people, the end. (You know, when Obama spoke at the MLK memorial, there were media types that suggested that THAT would be controversial!)

Moving to gas prices, Plouffe helpfully explains that the reason that gas prices were briefly lower after 2008 was because there was this thing called the total collapse of the economy. Anyone interested in replicating that? No? Okay, moving on.

Gregory points out that Obama has, in the past, demonized his own opponents for the high price of gas. Plouffe says, "He was just responding to the political gimmickry of the moment," meaning the gas tax holiday that was being promoted at the time. But he was adding his own political gimmickry to the moment as well.

Gregory is perplexed that Obama hasn't been able to get his energy agenda passed, and is not left to "play politics." Plouffe replies that Obama is "making great strides" in many areas of alternative energy, and they've approved dozens of pipelines...and pretty soon there's a bunch of high speed blather that seems basically designed to test Gregory's willpower to keep talking about this.

I'd sort of like the next discussion on "WHY ENERGY THING NO HAPPEN?" to begin with the premise that the energy conglomerates spend an obscene amount of money and time influence peddling and lobbying, and then maybe we track who that money goes to, and then we say, "THAT GUY THERE IS ON THE TAKE AND IS TO BLAME."

Brief infomercial on Obamacare? Brief infomercial on Obamacare. "At the end of the decade, the Republicans are going to regret calling this Obamacare," says Plouffe, who adds that "Mitt Romney is the godfather of our healthcare plan."

What does Plouffe think about the state of the Romney campaign? He says that it's going to be a close race, but he's doing damage to himself, in this campaign. He also says, basically, "Pay no attention to the Etch-A-Sketch criticism," because Romney is unchanging on the following issues: he will cut tax cuts for rich people, he'll add to the deficit, he'll try and outlaw abortion, he hates clean energy, he doesn't like getting out of Iraq or Afghanistan -- "those things are etched in stone," says Plouffe, "they'll be seared in the public's conscience this year."

Remember, the whole crazy "Etch-A-Sketch" flap is over if Santorum or Gingrich can't kill Romney with it.

Gregory asks his standard questions about who might run for President in 2016, because did you hear? Everyone in the political media is just BORED TO TEARS with the current election, already.

The NAACP's Ben Jealous is here next. He'll be allowed to talk about Trayvon Martin like a human being, and Meet The Press will be able to congratulate themselves for booking Jealous and having the discussion. Just remember, if they'd booked Obama to have the same discussion, they'd go all clownshoes with it. Jealous is going to be joined by NPR's Michele Norris, Haley Barbour, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and David Brooks, who will be providing the effete sanctimony, whilst blaming the 1960's for everything.

What does it mean that the President talked about Martin's murder so personally? Jealous says that Obama was able to channel the painful feelings, as well as raise questions about what to do about laws that seem to value the lives of black men as less than others. Actually, Ben Jealous is doing the work there, that Obama is not allowed to do. Goodwin underscores that by confirming that the President can't talk about the issue like that, but maintains that a certain level of "humanity" to it.

Gregory is still doing his best to make hay out of what he perceives as Obama's "reluctance" to "lead a conversation" about the matter, in seeming ignorance of the fact that the media would make it their duty to hold a funhouse mirror up to that conversation and ruin it for everyone. Norris says that the President is trying to get the nation to engage in the conversation on their own terms, rather than staging a "grand national" drum circle on the matter.

David Brooks says that there's a website we can visit to find out how racist we all are, and that only trained professionals should be running around with guns, doing law enforcement. Barbour says that David Plouffe's answers today were all very rational, and that everyone should find out what happened before we're having conversations or crafting laws. Barbour somehow disagrees and agrees with Newt Gingrich's criticism of Obama.

Jealous points out, accurately, that the person who had the right to "stand their ground" in this incident was Trayvon Martin -- the person who was being hunted by an assailant, who was carrying a gun.

We're now in the thick of the section of the roundtable discussion where everyone is just describing the intense personal feelings that are having about this. There's nothing wrong with that! But it's pointless to try to recap them. Suffice it to say that everyone on the panel is revolted by racism and sadness. Goodwin and Jealous are cheered by the fact that now, incidents like this are publicly questioned and that people in general now tend to have some more personal relationships with people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Barbour, Goodwin and Jealous are cheered by the fact that the people in Sanford aren't "sweeping the matter under the rug," but are actually calling for additional scrutiny.

Brooks says he's concerned that "this is going to become an easy conservation where we all condemn some racists out there." Goodwin points out that the discussion about changing these weird "stand your ground" laws is a much different one than the one Brooks is describing. (And everyone was essentially just talking about that!) Jealous adds that he doesn't think it's an easy conversation about racism, pointing out that black cops often have the same misperceptions about young black men.

Moving to the horsey race. Goodwin says that "presidents lose popularity over gas prices" historically, but Obama can avoid Jimmy Carter's mistakes by continuing to present himself as being on the side of the people, instead of being strangely aloof. Brooks says that everyone says the other guy is responsible for the price of gas, but none are. That said, he hates the president's position on the Keystone pipeline.

Barbour is mad at Obama's policies, and for Steven Chu's supposed desire to elevate the price of gas. Jealous counters with an old saying from the Bush administration -- cheap energy. Here's the passage, from David Frum's The Right Man, that's relevant to this discussion:

I once made the mistake of suggesting to Bush that he use the phrase cheap energy to describe the aims of his energy policy. He gave me a sharp, squinting look.

"Cheap energy", he answered, "was how we got into this mess. Every year from the early 1970s until the mid-1990s, American cars burned less and less oil per mile traveled. Then in about 1995 that progress stopped. Why?"

He answered his own question: "Because of the gas-guzzling SUV. And what had made the SUV craze possible?"

This time I answered, "Um, cheap energy?" He nodded at me.

Dismissed.

Is it time for the race to end? Barbour says that it's for the primary voters to decide, and that he wouldn't be inclined to ask anyone to jump out of the race. Though, to his mind, Romney is going to be the nominee, "unless he steps on a landmine."

And now, Rachel Maddow is here to talk about her new book, Drift, which concerns itself with the idea that at some point in the past, America became inured to being "in a perpetual state of war." (Full disclosure: I have pre-ordered this book, and look forward to reading it.)

Why the interest in the topic? Maddow says that she had a radio, and later, a television show, to talk about many things, but that he thoughts on this matter didn't fit the format too comfortably. "It's been bothering me for a very long time, this idea that we've made a series of changes over time, over the course of my lifetime, I think, that in all cases have made it easier -- given us less friction towards using war, less political friction, less public discomfort with it in a way that we have gone to war...and felt it so much it bothers me emotionally. So I wanted to treat it in a long form way to lay out the case."

In the book, Maddow cites the way only a fragment of the population now expects to end up fighting these wars. That's a big factor, she says, in keeping ordinary people for feeling the pain of war. The big tax breaks we gave ourselves prior to launching those wars, she says, is also a cause of this.

Gregory remarks that Maddow's criticism is "bipartisan," and I mean...on this issue is sort of has to in order to be honest, doesn't it? "This is something that emerged over multiple administrations, and not in a conspiratorial way." She notes, for readers, that a lot of her case rests on emphasizing the post-Vietnam period, and not necessarily the post-9/11 period. Well, if that's the case, then it sounds like this is going to be a pretty smart book!

What to do when the troops finally get to come home from these far-flung misadventures? Maddow and Gregory agree that jobs need to be waiting for them. Maddow says that "of [her] generation of veterans, I know of nobody else in my age cohort who is more impressive, who has worked harder, accomplished more in my age group than the people I know who have been to these wars. They are an impressive group of people. They are leaders for our civilian life going forward." She adds that over time, America has a "moral responsibility" to learn more about how military families lived their lives during this period of time, so that we might feel these consequences more keenly than we already are. So that's Drift, out next week.

And with that, I will be taking my leave of you, to return to the fast-typing, teevee watching on April 15, which is tax day! And my sister's birthday! Again, I shall endeavor to fill this space with something, so that all of you can come and gather and have your own valuable Sunday conversations. Happy Easter in advance, and I'll see you again soon!

If a liberal critic of Mitt Romney were to pick a child's toy to symbolize his oft-criticized tendency to erase old principles in favor of more politically expedient ones, said critic could obviously do a lot worse than pick the Etch a Sketch. And on a long enough timeline, the comparison might have been seized upon and made by any number of liberal critics. But what caught the world on fire yesterday was that the Etch a Sketch comparison was made by Romney's trusted aide-de-camp, Eric Fehrnstrom. And he intended it neither as compliment or criticism of the former Massachusetts governor -- Fehrnstrom was merely speaking to the way tactics change from a primary election to the general election: the famous "pivot to the center."

Naturally, the Etch a Sketch imagery was probably an overstatement, dragged out of Fehrnstrom's brain-pan in the heat of an on-air interview. And everyone -- from the DNC to Romney's primary opponents -- jumped on it, precisely because it was a seemingly inexplicable thing to say. The imagery resonated poorly against Romney's well-worn reputation as a flip-flopper. And the gaffe came from someone from Romney's inner circle. So, it was treated by some as accidentally revelatory and others as a key mistake, with which Romney's opposition could make hay.

But was it really all that costly? Jonathan Chait, for one, is convinced that it is. He cites two errors here, the first being that the Romney campaign, in suggesting that once Romney moves to a general election the repositioning will be as simple as wiping the slate clean and starting over, is "giving away the game too early." "It's okay to do that after you've sewn up the nomination," Chait writes, "but not while conservatives can still make your life difficult."

I'd say it's an open question as to how difficult former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) can make it for Romney. But both of those guys are waving Etch a Sketches around on the stump now, so I suspect we'll find out the answer pretty soon. The second problem Chait cites is actually more interesting:

Second, Romney's campaign suffers from a general problem of failing to hide its cynicism. The campaign's grasp of the underlying dynamics is totally sound. It sees President Obama's political vulnerability as stemming entirely from the 2007-2008 economic disaster, and it views conservative ideology as ballast upon Romney. If Romney can avoid positioning himself too far from the center, and the economy fails to recover swiftly enough, he should win. Presto!

Romney's tendency to lay his cynicism bare is something that we sort of keep cycling back to as a curiosity in this campaign. It's probably best exemplified by these eleven words: "I'm running for office, for Pete's sake, I can't have illegals." But it shows up everywhere. You see it when he flaunts his wealth, against what one would imagine to be good advice. You see it when he decides to move a small gathering of supporters to a massive stadium, where it's all but certain the camera will capture the empty, cavernous space.

And if you recall, it shows up in his campaign's overall attitude to relentlessly lie about things. When the Romney campaign was called upon to defend its decision to release a deceptive ad -- which implied that a statement made by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and cited by then-candidate Obama on the stump in 2008 ("If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.") was actually made by Obama in the context of the 2012 race -- the campaign breezily blew off the criticism by -- once again -- laying bare their cynicism:

"First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business.... Ads are agitprop.... Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It's ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context.... All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art."

It's sort of breathtaking to see the Romney camp repeatedly emphasizing the artifice of their campaign in this manner. Students of Bertolt Brecht understand that the risk in creating this distancing effect is that you invite critical observation. There are some conservatives that seem to have assessed the risk in this manner. Yuval Levin opined:

I would have thought that no political professional -- indeed, no adult who has ever been around conservative politics or thought about it much -- would ever say something so patently foolish, which so thoroughly confirms every worry that every conservative has about the candidate for whom he works.

And Bill McGurn said that Fehrnstrom needed to be fired, post-haste:

Mr. Romney's problem is not his policies or programs; his problem is his credibility: many people just don't believe he really believes what he is telling us. Firing Mr. Fehrnstrom would be a welcome signal that Mr. Romney is offended by any suggestion, no matter how much it might be later explained away, that he does not really believe what he says -- and is ready, willing, and able to erase it away when he thinks he needs to. The worst part is that Mr. Fehrnstrom does not appear to have chosen unfortunate words that distort what he ways trying to say. To the contrary, his problem is that he appears to have inadvertently expressed what he, and by extension the Romney campaign, really does think.

This is a tough decision for any candidate. We'll learn something by Mr. Romney's reaction.

But, as Kevin Drum noted, such criticism was pretty rare on the right:

Here's the interesting thing about this comment. It's provoked loads of mockery from liberals. It's provoked a bunch of attacks from the other candidates. But among the conservative commentariat, it's mostly just been sighs. I haven't seen much outrage along the lines of "This just goes to show what a fake Romney is." It's mostly been disbelief that Fehrnstrom could say something so dumb; wan defenses that he wasn't really saying anything we didn't know already; and explanations that obviously Fehrnstrom was talking about campaign mechanics, not issues.

Here's what I think: this stuff doesn't really do Romney any harm while it's March, and his opposition, in practical terms, would have to pull of something miraculous to deny him the nomination. He's all but coasting into the general election, so why should Fehrnstrom worry? In fact, if Fehrnstrom is even a tiny bit smart, he knows all of the avenues of criticism that will be pursued against Romney this summer -- he's wealthy to the point of exclusion, his principles are malleable, his positions change with the wind, he'll badly lie if it helps him win. Any chance to lay these out for criticism today is a chance to inoculate Romney tomorrow.

There are two competing schools of thought on the long primary season. One holds that all the contention damages the eventual nominee, the other contends that it makes the eventual nominee stronger. I imagine that the Romney camp holds to the latter view. And they have precedent, in the form of the lengthy primary that went down in 2008 between Obama and Hillary Clinton. Clinton went hard at Obama's main vulnerabilities, pulling out all the stops in an effort to curb his momentum. But Obama survived. And when McCain got a chance to wield the same daggers, he found them worn and blunted and mostly useless. We'd adjudicated most of those matters in the media.

It's since became an article of faith on the right that Obama wasn't sufficiently "vetted" and that McCain lost because he was unwilling to go dirty, but McCain really didn't have a choice -- those critiques lacked novelty and utility by the time the summer swung into fall. (McCain's best gambit at the time was the one he took -- depicting Obama as a "celebrity" figure that contrasted poorly with McCain's own war-hero sacrifices. Unfortunately, the economy picked a bad time to keel over.) I read most of the complaints about Obama's inadequate vetting as a larger regret that it was Clinton that handled that vetting, and not a conservative, who could have gone at it with more venom.

The "Etch a Sketch" flap, as far as Romney is concerned, is much the same. Saying that Romney will say anything to win an election, and is a sell-out betrayer of conservative principles waiting to happen, carries a sting -- it goes right to the heart of conservative unease with Romney. Gingrich and Santorum really have no other choice than to pursue it with relish. But pursue it though they may, they will not, in all likelihood, win. It's a different story entirely if Obama tries to use it. It surely won't cause the spirits of conservative voters to flag -- when Obama tells them that Romney will say anything it takes to win, their reply will be, "Yeah, here's hoping."

And by the time we get to the general election, the media will be bored with most of this stuff. You're never going to have a better chance to hit Romney with an Etch a Sketch than you do right now. And as for any coming deceptions in campaign ads, I'd expect those complaints to have diminishing returns as well. After all, the Romney campaign has been so bracingly honest about its intention to deceive! It's something everybody does! The campaign expects it to be done to them! So dishonesty is just a interesting feature in the political landscape. A neat tactic. An interesting point of view. And it could prove to be somewhat harder to prosecute Romney for failing to provide the rose garden he said he wasn't promising.

In the wake of Fehrnstrom's remarks, the Romney campaign has offered its version of a walkback, thus fulfilling the requirement that the campaign show concern over this gaffe. But they aren't sweating it. This is a great time to up and embrace your cynical side -- when those who have the greatest reason to pillory you for it today can't stop you. By tomorrow, it will be yesterday's news.

As a side note, I'll point out that the Etch a Sketch gaffe has come at the same time as what might have otherwise been a much more glaring political error -- Romney's curious decision to align himself with the Bush-era bailouts. Chait noticed this too, and I've seen some chatter on the matter in today's cable news clatter. But do you imagine that discussion of this more constructive point will outpace the coverage of the Etch a Sketch flap? You shouldn't. In the political newscycle, the pseudo-event always wins.

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Is it too soon to start thinking ahead and madly speculating on how the horse race for the White House might look in 2016? Heavens, no! Like most of America, I already miss that period of time when a large slate of would-be candidates, including many who are manifestly unfit to lead the executive branch, gather together on a weekly basis for debates in which they are asked the same questions over and over again, until the entire nation weeps.

The way I see it, come 2016, there will either be a bunch of Democrats running for president about whom I'll have to care or I'll be six feet under the ground. So I applaud all of this future-casting, if only for the chance to aim my foot weakly at the ass of mortality.

So let's enter the 2016 Speculatron, shall we? Glenn Thrush announces today that one thing for which we should gird ourselves is the Full Unleashing of the Biden, who -- despite the fact that he'll be 73 in 2016 -- is clearly still alive with pluck and vim and an "old fire" that "crackles" and an enthusiasm that leads to hyperbole. Think Biden isn't serious about using what I'm guessing he assumes to be a soon-to-be-successfully achieved second term as a springboard for a run at the top job? Think again, because as Thrush reports, the vice president is getting his staff on:

Biden has gone on a recent staffing spree -- culminating with the hire of Clinton-era operative Steve Ricchetti -- that has many Democrats, and even some on Obama's own team, wondering if the preternaturally spry and congenitally upbeat vice president just might confound conventional wisdom.

Former Sen. Ted Kaufman, a Biden friend, staffer and adviser since the early 1970s, said it's "premature" to say Biden is laying the groundwork for a 2016 run but has no doubt that his golf-addicted buddy is physically capable of it.

"What I've been saying, and what I think he believes also, is that after this election is over, he should seriously think about 2016," said Kaufman, who is part of an informal kitchen cabinet that includes Mike Donilon, whom Ricchetti is replacing, and former chief of staff Ron Klain, who's been guiding Biden's moves despite a day job advising ex-AOL impresario Steve Case.

Thrush reports that the Obama team are "are amused rather than threatened" by Biden's subtle shows of ambition, but at least one person quoted in the story -- former Hillary Clinton aide Phil Singer -- makes the rather obvious point that Biden "should impose a gag order on any 2016 speculation." Too late, though, because the story to which Singer lent his quote is all about Joe Biden having some intriguing new guys doing some intriguing stuff for him, and his good buddy saying, "Ahhh, pay no attention to that, but on the other hand, now that you mention it, he is like a machine, physiologically speaking." Upon such thin foundations are mighty castles of speculation built.

But we needn't limit our focus to Biden, who draws such speculation primarily because he's Obama's running mate and our tendency is to respect the "next in line" concept. There's all sorts of people worth speculating about, and over at the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza uses the NCAA Tournament as the peg for a huge game of thrones that involves both Democrats and Republicans in 2016 electioneering. (Cillizza takes great pains to point out that he is not predicting an Obama reelection, it's just more fun to think about both parties battling it out for bracket supremacy.)

Cillizza has, however, weighed in on Biden's fate by not including him on the Democratic side of the bracket, instead according New York Governor Andrew Cuomo the "number one seed." (Marco Rubio is his counterpart on the GOP side of the bracket.) He also underrates Hillary Clinton considerably, giving her the number seven seed. WaPo readers get to vote their preferences, and the winners advance, and there have already been some exciting upsets (Clinton prevailing over Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley; New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand beating Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick). Today, readers will be able to start voting on their "Final Four," and it all culminates with an official GOP vs. Democrat matchup being decided on April 2.

The winner of Cillizza's bracket game will receive four years of being asked several thousand times about his or her presidential ambitions every single time they sit for an interview with David Gregory. (This is also what all the losers will win.)

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Last night, I stumbled upon Mother Jones' Kevin Drum and Steve Benen of The Maddow Blog having something of a congenial colloquy on "The Weird Politics of Simpson-Bowles."

Benen, having reacted to "renewed conservative love for the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan" with some mild bemusement, prompted Drum to delve into some of the deep details of that support as time has passed. Drum helpfully unpacked a litany of information that probably hasn't previously received a lot of specific attention.

The way the Senate Republicans voted on Simpson-Bowles differed from how their House colleagues did, for instance. That gets lost. Obama responded to the failure of that body by releasing a plan that "was actually more right-wing friendly than Simpson-Bowles was," Drum said. That gets lost as well. And so ordinary Americans haven't been properly informed on a variety of important details.

But we needn't stop there. While the various grand debates over the deficit that went down during 2011 received a massive quantity of coverage, the quality of that coverage was, at all times, pretty lacking. When the Senate's own attempt to form a deficit commission founders, David Broder posited that it was the fault of Democratic "committee chairmen."

This was comically wrong -- 10 of those committee chairs voted for it, versus six against, which was not enough to decide the matter. The measure failed because seven Republican cosponsors of the bill bailed on it. This stuff isn't that hard to figure out.

Once the Simpson-Bowles commission started foundering, readers of news began hearing of a "Simpson-Bowles commission plan" and a "Simpson-Bowles commission chairman's mark." The former plan was the shooting match -- the set of recommendations that failed to win the support of a supermajority. The latter idea was a concept kicked together by Bowles and Simpson themselves, who wanted their suggestions on the record. If you tried to follow along the coverage, it was hard to keep the two ideas disassociated from one another.

And once the ball really got rolling downhill into the uncertainty of the debt ceiling negotiations, President Barack Obama came to House Speaker John Boehner with a deficit reduction plan of his own, as Huff Post reported:

Obama had proposed to Republicans a "grand bargain" that accomplished a host of individual things that are unpopular on their own, but that just might pass as a huge package jammed through Congress with default looming. Obama offered to put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts on the table in exchange for a tax hike of roughly $100 billion per year over 10 years. Meanwhile, government spending would be cut by roughly three times that amount. It's no small irony that the party's dogmatic opposition to tax increases is costing the GOP its best opportunity to roll back social programs it has long targeted.

The GOP rejected the plan, and it was well within its rights to do so. But what's amazing is that the media has just about blanked out the existence of this proposal from the memory banks. Obama's opponents have routinely been allowed to claim that the president had not shown "leadership" on the deficit -- the implication being that he sat on his hands, instead of delivering a plan that a Ronald Reagan would have traveled the country waving around like the Stanley Cup.

And The New York Times' Thomas Friedman has aided this delusion by blundering around in a fog of his own thought-flatulence, wondering where the "grand bargain" was. (The "grand bargain" was always available via download.)

Again, in 2011, the deficit debate was a major story. These wranglings took us to the brink of default. And the coverage throughout was often severely lacking -- so much so that you could hardly hold ordinary Americans responsible for being confused.

But in Politico this week, that's precisely what happened! In a incredibly long and unbearably daft piece, Alexander Burns argues that the the electorate is "not entirely sophisticated about the choices it's facing in 2012" is because it is made up of a big shambling pack of helpless dumbasses, who would obviously be utterly adrift in their hopeless lives without Politico being around to occasionally mansplain things to them.

And we shall apparently begin with a mansplanation of how mentally infirm you, the people, are:

[I]rrationality on policy issues transcends party lines and cuts across groups that feel differently about the president. Taken all together, the issue polling compiled so far in the 2012 cycle presents a sharp corrective to the candidates' description of the race as a great debate placing two starkly different philosophies of government before an informed electorate.

In reality, the contest has been more like a game of Marco Polo, as a hapless gang of Republican candidates and a damaged, frantic incumbent try to connect with a historically fickle and frustrated electorate.

And "fickle" is a nice way of describing the voters of 2012, who appear to be wandering, confused and Forrest Gump-like through the experience of a presidential campaign. It isn't just unclear which party's vision they'd rather embrace; it's entirely questionable whether the great mass of voters has even the most basic grasp of the details -- or for that matter, the most elementary factual components -- of the national political debate.

Now, from what I know about Politico's culture is that you can never really tell if this is something that Burns actually believes and wanted to write or if this was foisted on him from above. And while Burns has offered a defense of this mess on Twitter, I still lean toward favoring the "foisted from above" scenario.

At any rate, as the Washington Post's Erik Wemple underscores in his understandably perturbed reaction to all of this, it sure seems like Politco's editor-in-chief John Harris is the guy who is really proud of this turgid pile of condescension -- right down to bannering the whole thing with an image of the aforementioned Forrest Gump:

Harris congratulated himself on the story's use of the photo of Gump, a character who he says "represents the sort of ignorant voters out there who are saying these wacky things in the polls." Stroke of pop culture genius right there.

I take this to mean that Harris thinks that ordinary voters are essentially a group of mentally infirm people, bumbling through life, occasionally succeeding by accident and without any real awareness of the deeper implications of the lives around them and the events they witness. But they are so adorable and plucky, so Politico has not given up on them yet. They're rooting for you! Now go get them some shrimp!

Shall I break this down further? Why not! Here is the Politco piece's lede, in which the rich tapestry of your essential stupidity is woven:

Voters are appalled at President Barack Obama's handling of gas prices, even though virtually every policy expert in both parties says there's little a president can do to affect the day-to-day price of fuel in a global market.

Americans are disgusted at Washington's bailout culture, and especially the 2008 rescue of the financial services industry. They're so fed up with bailouts, in fact, that a majority of them now think federal intervention in the auto industry was a good idea that helped the country.

They're aghast at the trajectory of the war in Afghanistan, which Obama helped escalate and extend, and they don't think the war was worth it in the first place. And many also think Obama is handling the conflict acceptably well.

There's a lot to unpack here. Why is America so "disgusted with bailout culture" yet nevertheless maintains that "federal intervention in the auto industry was a good idea that helped the country?" It's hard to say, right? But it's almost as if the expert take is that the auto industry intervention worked. Perhaps the "disgust" over "bailout culture" has more to do with the many trillions of dollars sunk into Wall Street banks, compared with the fact that everyone else is suffering through a prolonged period of unemployment, predatory foreclosures and income disparity. That does not exactly sound stupid, to me.

And if ordinary Americans seem confused over how well the war is going, they learned this from the media, too. Let's recall the way the media responded with yawns over the July 2010 WikiLeaks "war diaries."

"Oh, ho-hum," they reacted. "We've always been very privately pessimistic about the war in Afghanistan. WikiLeaks isn't telling us anything new."

A day later, the pessimism that the media made a big show of having was very quickly pushed aside in favor of more war cheerleading.

Media narratives that seed confusion reap the same. That's the lesson I would extract.

But I really like Politico's first example -- gas prices. And not just because it's the issue of the week. Politico here maintains, "Voters are appalled at President Barack Obama's handling of gas prices, even though virtually every policy expert in both parties says there's little a president can do to affect the day-to-day price of fuel in a global market." I take this to mean that the president definitely has little to do with the price of gas at the pumps. I further take this to mean that this truth is so self-evident -- so obvious on its face -- that to be in conflict with it means that you are stupid.

Well, here is another piece on Politico about how the "blogosphere is hitting on all cylinders over a new poll that shows President Barack Obama getting blamed for rising gas prices, with both left and right pointing out that the issue could represent a critical weakness for the president come Election Day." Nowhere is it mentioned that "every policy expert in both parties says there's little a president can do to affect the day-to-day price of fuel in a global market."

Here is yet another piece on Politico describing the way Bobby Jindal "scorched" Obama on gas prices. Nowhere is it mentioned that "every policy expert in both parties says there's little a president can do to affect the day-to-day price of fuel in a global market."

And again, on Politico, Democrats "scramble for cover" over gas prices. Nowhere is it mentioned that "every policy expert in both parties says there's little a president can do to affect the day-to-day price of fuel in a global market."

Then, a Politico piece about how Obama does his very best to make the very case that Politico describes as the "non-stupid" one. A perfect time to maybe mention that "every policy expert in both parties says there's little a president can do to affect the day-to-day price of fuel in a global market," right?

Well, Politico passes, in lieu of this:

For close to a month, Obama has been making at least one speech a week on his energy policy, visiting colleges and manufacturing plants in battlegrounds including Florida, Virginia and North Carolina as gas prices have risen steadily, to $3.82 per gallon on Thursday, up 30 cents from mid-February.

But public opinion hasn't turned in his favor.

In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released earlier this week, just 26 percent of those surveyed said they approve of how Obama is handling rising gas prices, while 65 percent said they disapprove. The president did a bit better -- but still not well -- on his overall energy policy, with 38 percent saying they approve while 48 percent said they disapprove.

Oh, look at that! Suddenly what Forrest Gump thinks about all of this is really important to Politico!

Did it not occur to any of the authors or editors of this piece that terrible, stupid news coverage leads to confusion, which in turn impacts public opinion? All Politico has done, on the issue of gas prices, is again and again fail to note that "every policy expert in both parties says there's little a president can do to affect the day-to-day price of fuel in a global market." And now, it has shown up, holding you responsible for not knowing that all along!

Who's the stupid one, here? I'm going to go with the website that's routinely asserted that the incorrect point of view on gas prices was perfectly valid, until it became necessary to insult its readership.

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Reuters has a story today about Rick Santorum's campaign swing to Puerto Rico, whose upcoming Sunday primary has 23 20 delegates at stake. [Note: Only 20 of PR's 23 delegates are bound during the primary.] On that trip, Santorum suggested that if Puerto Rico wanted to become a state, it would have to adopt English as its official language. So, go ahead and add the lion's share of those delegates to Romney's count. With zero precincts reporting, I can now call Puerto Rico for Mitt Romney!

Per Reuters:

In an interview with El Vocero newspaper, Santorum said he supported Puerto Ricans' right to self-determination regarding the island's political status.

"We need to work together and determine what type of relationship we want to develop," he told the newspaper.

But Santorum said he did not support a state in which English was not the primary language.

"Like any other state, there has to be compliance with this and any other federal law," Santorum said. "And that is that English has to be the principal language. There are other states with more than one language such as Hawaii but to be a state of the United States, English has to be the principal language."

But as Reuters goes on to point out, "the U.S. Constitution does not designate an official language" and there is no extant legal "requirement that a territory adopt English as its primary language in order to become a state," so it's hard to say what "compliance" issue exists, other than Rick Santorum just really, really wanting them to speak English.

In truth, Romney more or less wrapped up the Puerto Rico primary months ago, when he won the endorsement of Gov. Luis G. Fortuño. And his position on statehood, which he offered at the Hispanic Leadership Network (HLN) conference in January, is a key reason why he won that endorsement:

"I'm looking forward to the time when the people of Puerto Rico make their decision about becoming a state," he said as the audience cheered. "Wow, we've got some friends here.

"I think it's in November you're having a referendum and I expect the people of Puerto Rico will decide that they want to become a state and I can tell you that I will work with [Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuño] to make sure that if that vote comes out in favor of statehood, that we will go through the process in Washington to provide statehood to Puerto Rico."

As ABC News' Matthew Jaffe reported at the time, Romney's enthusiasm for Puerto Rican statehood was much greater at the HLN conference than it had been at that week's Univision debate. But Romney took advantage of Newt Gingrich's muddled answer at the HLN conference to win those cheers. As Jaffe goes on to note, the state of Florida was a key factor for Romney:

Statehood is a controversial issue among Puerto Ricans and not all support the idea. Others believe it should become independent or remain a commonwealth. But many Puerto Rican voters in the United States back statehood, including many who live in Florida. Puerto Rican voters are the second-largest Latino voting bloc in the Sunshine State, with about 420,000 living here, heavily concentrated around the crucial I-4 corridor in central Florida. And Puerto Ricans tend to be a swing constituency, backing Obama in 2008 and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in 2010, meaning they could play a critical role in the state's Jan. 31 primary and in the general election later.

By contrast, Rick Santorum tends to favor not wavering on his policy principles over winning popularity contests, a quality that led the National Review's Quin Hilyer to dub him the "un-politician" after watching him debate in Florida:

It strikes me that Rick Santorum is about the most determinedly anti-political top-level politician I've ever witnessed. No matter what state he is debating in, he refuses to find some wiggle room on issues where his position is at odds with a deeply held local position. For instance, tonight he has made zero attempt to provide any sops at all to the majority of Floridians who opposed drilling in the eastern Gulf -- not even any verbal nods to the idea that of course it is important to keep beaches clean, etcetera.

Santorum just believes that everyone should be in "compliance" with an English language standard, regardless of the fact that no such compliance requirement or enforcement mechanism exists. And he won't pander to satisfy the idiosyncratic attitudes of local constituencies. Romney doesn't have that problem. He'll pander up a storm! And so he'll win Puerto Rico's delegates.

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Bill Kristol says it's just getting started. Sarah Palin says all bets are off. Other GOP luminaries say that so far, what they've seen has been "a collective yawn." What are they talking about? The GOP race for the 2012 presidential nomination, that's what. And all of these assessments have been handed down from on high in the wake of Super Tuesday's results.

But wasn't Super Tuesday a pretty unequivocal win for Mitt Romney, leaving him as the only candidate with a path to the nomination that doesn't require a series of miraculous events?

Well, sure, if you're going to be all realistic and practical about it, concentrating only on fundamental factors like Romney's swollen war chest and his superior organization and the likelihood of him having success in the backloaded winner-take-all primaries to come and his current delegate count. But if you do like most of the media has done, and stare into the blinding lights of cloudcuckooland and allow yourself to be dazzled by all the SHINY SHINY so that you get a little light-headed and trippy, then maybe you can see that Romney's big wins Tuesday night were actually some sort of devastating setback.

OH, WE GET IT. You want to "keep things in perspective." You read Nate Silver's curtain-raiser on Super Tuesday, where he projected that Romney would likely net 224 delegates, and he won 213, and surely we're not going to start tearing our eyes out over the fact that he underperformed by eleven delegates. Well, did you go on reading? If you had you'd have seen that Silver's "upside scenario" was 267 delegates. So what's Mitt Romney's fatal flaw, that prevented him from succeeding as successfully as he could? Ron Paul stole three delegates in Virginia, after all!

Look. The important thing to realize is that the people who cover politics hate it when the game gets called early. Yes, Romney has the clearest path to the nomination. Rick Santorum, who remains in the next best position to win, would have to either win a staggeringly high portion of the remaining delegates or benefit from some sort of unforeseen Romney mega-mistake that causes the complete collapse of his support in order to get to 1,144 delegates and win the thing outright. But he (as well as Newt Gingrich) have not technically been mathematically eliminated, and coming up soon are contests in Mississippi and Alabama, where Romney is likely to lose. And if we squint at that at just the right angle, maybe Romney is actually in total disarray.

But if we're looking at this with clear eyes, it's actually become apparent that Mitt Romney is no longer running in a contest against Santorum, Gingrich and Paul as his competition. His only opponent now is the faint specter of a deadlocked convention. It's more likely, at this point, that his three co-competitors can deny Romney the 1,144 votes than it is that any one of them can overtake him and win them for themselves.

And that's the story of Super Tuesday. Which is now over! Welcome to much less super part of the primary season.

In other news from the campaign trail, Newt's exhaustion led to an awkward naptime, Mitt's Olympic-sized round of government gold-digging came back to haunt him, Santorum-speculators offered a bright assessment of his political future, President Obama may end up with an enemy delegate at his convention, and we're left to wonder -- are pollsters giving Ron Paul the stink-eye? All of this and more is waiting for you to enter the Speculatron for the week of March 9, 2012.

Mitt Romney

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So, let's review. Mitt Romney rode five straight wins into Super Tuesday, where he notched six more wins, including a come-from-behind victory in the "everyone says it's pivotal OMG OMG" Ohio, ensuring that he'd take the lion's share of the delegates and increase his lead over the rest of the field. Along the way, it's clear that he's being held in growing esteem by conservative voters, including Senator Tom Coburn, who gave Romney his endorsement with the message that no subject is more important than the economy this year. He's even doing decidedly better this year than John McCain did in 2008. All of this has allowed the Romney camp to make the perfectly reasonable claim that he's going to be the inevitable winner, and renew a call for his rivals to quit the race. And the truth is, Romney has all the advantages that come from being an exceedingly well-organized and cash-infused campaign. As Katrina Trinko reports, all of that trumps the fleeting momentum of Romney's rivals. But as it turned out, it was easy enough for the media to ignore this, and call Romney's Super Tuesday victory a "split decision." Sigh. Of course, the reasons for doing so are pretty transparent. Coming up on the calendar are a pair of primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, where Romney is not (and never has been) expected to do well. So we're all in thrall to the coming "Deep South narrative," where Santorum and Gingrich get to demonstrate a brief burst of vitality and the overall storyline gets another timely twist to keep the excitement alive. Jonathan Chait notes that this coming narrative is really stupid:

[Romney's] struggles with Evangelicals and the South are the opposite of a problem. Obviously, you want all the votes you can get. But if you're in a competitive primary, you're by definition not getting all the voters on your side. And the best group of voters not to be getting are voters who are certain to support you in the fall.

But Romney isn't completely untouched or unscathed by the ongoing race, either. Right now, he still faces something of an "image problem" that's "worse than almost all other recent candidates who went on to win their party's presidential nomination." The prevailing factor remains the perception among conservatives that he's not one of them, but there are other factors in play as well. For example, Romney hasn't yet broken through with evangelical voters. Perhaps more importantly, he's still only broadly appealing to the affluent and not to working-class voters. None of this will impede his nomination, but it could impact his appeal among independents once the general election arrives, and he's getting attacked as the "Swiss bank account" candidate. (This is a good time to wonder why the Romney campaign is having Donald Trump robo-call America.) It's also getting harder and harder for Romney to put some distance between himself and his Massachusetts healthcare reform initiative -- especially his affection for mandates and the fact that he touted his plan as a model for the nation (which has now become a model for the nation). And despite casting himself as the only Washington outsider in the race, it seems that he's got enough inside knowledge of the Beltway money game to have extracted all manner of pork for his Winter Olympics. And he's bragged about soaking taxpayers as well. Meanwhile, more details on Romney's tax plan continue to emerge, including a reminder that it mostly favors wealthy people, especially wealthy people like this dude named "Mitt Romney" that you may have heard about. On top of that, it turns out his tax plan can't be scored by the CBO, because Romney made sure to leave "out all the hard stuff." On foreign policy, Romney has basically hinted that he'd temporarily abandon the effort to bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinians, saying that "talking about a peace process right now is a bit like setting up a tent in the middle of a hurricane ... there has to be some settling down of a number of questions, I think, before the peace process is going to get its legs again." Yeah, okay, let's definitely put that off for a few more years, why not? Meanwhile, in Iran, Romney promised to step up the military belligerence, writing in an op-ed:

I will take every measure necessary to check the evil regime of the ayatollahs. Until Iran ceases its nuclear-bomb program, I will press for ever-tightening sanctions, acting with other countries if we can but alone if we must. I will speak out on behalf of the cause of democracy in Iran and support Iranian dissidents who are fighting for their freedom. I will make clear that America's commitment to Israel's security and survival is absolute. I will demonstrate our commitment to the world by making Jerusalem the destination of my first foreign trip. Most important, I will buttress my diplomacy with a military option that will persuade the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions. Only when they understand that at the end of that road lies not nuclear weapons but ruin will there be a real chance for a peaceful resolution.

Former Mossad director Efraim Halevy told The Huffington Post's Joshua Hersh that this is not actually helping:

"This means to an Iranian, if you will wait until another few months and there is a change in the White House, then maybe there will be trouble, so the lesson is, Let's redouble our efforts to do it as quickly as we can," Halevy said. "In the effort to demolish the president he is making the situation worse." [...] "I think people have to be extremely careful with the way they speak," he added. "I don't have any bones about who wins the election, but what Romney has done is a serious problem here. It causes serious issues here."

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So, let's review. Mitt Romney rode five straight wins into Super Tuesday, where he notched six more wins, including a come-from-behind victory in the "everyone says it's pivotal OMG OMG" Ohio, ensuring that he'd take the lion's share of the delegates and increase his lead over the rest of the field. Along the way, it's clear that he's being held in growing esteem by conservative voters, including Senator Tom Coburn, who gave Romney his endorsement with the message that no subject is more important than the economy this year. He's even doing decidedly better this year than John McCain did in 2008.

All of this has allowed the Romney camp to make the perfectly reasonable claim that he's going to be the inevitable winner, and renew a call for his rivals to quit the race. And the truth is, Romney has all the advantages that come from being an exceedingly well-organized and cash-infused campaign. As Katrina Trinko reports, all of that trumps the fleeting momentum of Romney's rivals.

But as it turned out, it was easy enough for the media to ignore this, and call Romney's Super Tuesday victory a "split decision."

Sigh.

Of course, the reasons for doing so are pretty transparent. Coming up on the calendar are a pair of primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, where Romney is not (and never has been) expected to do well. So we're all in thrall to the coming "Deep South narrative," where Santorum and Gingrich get to demonstrate a brief burst of vitality and the overall storyline gets another tim... more

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Fading Fast In It To Win It

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