I now hold our press with the same level of contempt I had reserved for GWB. Perhpas, with even more contempt, if that's possible.

It's true that it's stupid, in the purest sense of the word. Because Romney could have made a similarly compelling case -- and avoided pandering to the UAW -- by touting the viability and importance of manufacturing in general. I think plenty of Michigan autoworkers would be perfectly happy to have good paying jobs with firms that make machine tools, or precision instruments, or engineering devices, or energy sector equipment, or whatever. The US manufacturing sector is actually booming right now. I saw a TV spot recently about a firm in Milwaukee that was facing a fair degree of challenge finding workers for its plant (I forget the product), and these were jobs that start out at $30/hr.

Romney is the Joe Isuzu of presidential candidates.

Your defense of Romney is bizarre.

You should be for the press being as hard on others as they are on Mitt. That their skepticism does not extend to other candidates should not be as significant as the fact that they are generally not that skeptic at all.

Intellectually I know that I should root for Romney. At the moment he appears to be shaping up as the least electable Republican with the possible exception of Huckabee (though his nifty footwork in switching from social to economic messages worries me). I know that supporting Romney in Michigan delayed the GOP's settling on a candidate, which is supposed to be helpful. I know Romney believes in nothing except his own ambition, and would allegedly govern as a competent technocrat. I understand all that stuff.

But I just can't stand Romney so much that it's impossible for me to root for him on any level.

Perhaps the press -- their pro and con biases concerning specific candidates having been pointed out so loudly that even the stupidest and most provinicial can see it -- will actually start trying to cover every candidate with comparable fairness and toughness.

Sorry, forgive my moment of fantasy... Your last sentence -- "the press hates Romney for lying to them, while McCain has figured out how to get them to lie for him..." -- is a pretty elegant summary of what's really going on out there.

Ezra, I think you make the beginnings of a cogent argument that progressives need to have a firm, broad plank in our plans for media reform. We can't control what people say (and shouldn't), but we can make sure that more voices are heard and that cabals of journalists can't direct our public discourse as easily as they do currently. They have had major impacts on electoral outcomes in the last several elections (Clinton, Gore, Kerry, et. al).

It is time for some TR-style trust busting in the media biz. Break up the Murdocks, the GE's, the Comcasts, the AT&T's, the Time-Warners. Let a thousand flowers bloom, so to speak.

I seriously wonder how much good press McCain gets because of his campaign's free ways with the booze. Seriously.

Any number of pieces picking over McCain's carcass in 2000 talked about how his press bus was a non-stop party with high-spirited drinking binges and whatnot. I specifically recall something about W. learning this trick and making sure the press were catered to with some seriously good nosh.

At any rate, I'm wondering if there isn't a level of animosity here simply because Romney, Mormon that he is, probably doesn't provide much in the way of booze and there's considerably less partying on the campaign dime.

I'm sure there are other, perhaps more substantial, reasons for the press' immense disdain, but there are some little things that set a tone through which the rest is filtered.

Is it just me or was it a little weird how in the video of the "confrontation" between Romney and the reporter, the reporter was sitting on the ground the whole time? Made it a little hard to take him (the reporter) so seriously. Could just be me though.

Well, this is the same thing they've always done to Hillary, criticize her for stuff that every politician does. It's amazing to watch them pretend, for example, that she's the only candidate who engages in political strategy. This is how the "calculating" narrative (or in Romney's case, the "dishonest" narrative) gets reinforced.

Still, the reason they went after Romney so aggressively on the jobs thing isn't just that they hate Romney, but that he was going after Saint McCain on the issue.

Kevin Drum just argued that it is the size of the lie that matters. Romney has made many rather large whoppers. Oh but wait - so has RUDY as welll as McCain as well as Thompson. No - the press is not unfair to Romney but they should be attacking the rest of this GOP field with the same vigor.

I too hate the media. Regardless of that, it's true that those jobs are never coming back. In fact, in the next 10 years Ford and GM will either be bought out by foreign competitors or they will cease to exist completely. They lose money on each small car they make, and that's why they are unable to acknowledge that small cars are the only future of the car industry; it would be an acknowledgement that they are not viable in the long term.

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/can-detroit-be-relevant/
"But none of the American automakers seem committed to developing a proper small car for the United States, which is to say that they are ceding this entire segment of cars to foreign companies."

I think what's happening to Michigan workers is horrible, but what else can happen when the leadership of Ford and GM refuse to make products for the world we live? I don't hear anyone crying for the candlemakers, blacksmiths and horse-and-buggy makers that all went the way of the Dodo. American car manufacturing is no different.

At least when Ford and GM are gone or subsidiaries of Toyota and Honda it will be a big wake-up call to America.

Interesting. It seems that the conservative establishment is split between the party operatives, who prefer Romney, and the press, who prefer McCain, with the pundits split pretty evenly.

The idea of McCain as simon-pure is absurd. You'd think 90% of the press corps didn't know that he was one of the Keating Five, and only started on his "Straight Talk" crapola AFTER he nearly was forced out of the Senate over it.

I agree with the poster above that your post and defence of Romney is bizarre.
The press has been going after Dems like this for years, finally a Repub gets his and you cry foul?

No wonder we're perceived as soft.

Sorr, but the posters who think Ezra is somehow 'supporting' Romney have literacy issues. As for the reason for the post, I think it's invaluable in that it can be used to show your wingnut friends an example of the beltway teens' snottiness, with the issue unclouded by a Democrat being the target.

One favor to ask of Mr. Klein, though, please could you clear up this slightly mistyped sentence? Especially given its position at the climax of the post, and of your indictment of McCain-worship, its garbledness is unfortunate.

"He's just been able to get the press to report on him as if he were pure as the driven snow and animated by a deep hatred of corporate interests and the whole corrupt, is irrelevant."

Phoenix Woman, you're right about the timing of "straight talk," though I've heard that McCain's involvement in the Keating Five was less than that of the other four (Democratic) Senators and that, unlike a lot of other Republicans, he didn't actually commit any crimes.
Ezra, I don't think the press is being too hard on Romney--I think they should be that hard on all the Republicans.

Your objection seems even weirder given that in this case, we're not so much talking "white hot hatred" as "reasonable question about how precious work affects current thinking." I'd love an answer to just the hypothetical Cox is proposing (and dissing my gin swilling heroine! how sad!) - Romney says hes got a way to "bring jobs back"? Funny, Bain's investment strategies, as she notes, were pretty contra to that approach. Huckabee's line about being the guy you work with rather than the guy who laid you off comes to mind - Romney worked with the "strategic" thinkers who sent manufacturing jobs overseas, and now says that strategic thinking was a problem. Fair question, it seems to me. And McCain, penalized for essentially telling the truth (those jobs ain't coming back... but perhaps "suck it up and deal with it" doesn't make a real upbeat slogan), probably has it right: solving this problem means doing things differently, not propping up industries that have "lame duck" signs stretched across their large, SUV, bumpers. Really, just an odd, odd post.

Just imagine if Romney and Hillary face each other in the general: Who would the press hate more? As much as I wish the press would be more high-minded, I wouldn't mind them training their animus on a Republican for a change.

Romney aides: Robotics and automation, naturally.

The message I got from this is that all Democrats should be rooting for and perhaps even openly working for Romney to win the GOP nomination. The press will savage him in the national, just like they did to Gore. Pair Romney with the press-love of Obama, and I think we'd have a landslide.

I think the main reason the AP reporter was so exasperated is that, a Mitt was claiming to be lobbyist-free, his very close advisor - LOBBYIST Ron Kaufman - was standing RIGHT THERE NEXT TO HIM.

That's not the same thing as the "common campaign lie" that Ezra is talking about. Maybe it's not as important to the electorate, but on a personal level it's far more infuriating. If a candidate makes wild promises on the stump, that's almost expected. To fire up a Marlboro Light and then state "I don't smoke and I abhor tobacco" - well, that just takes massive balls.

Skeptism is one thing, cynicism and intellectual dishonesty another. It's hard to imagine the level of ungrounded assessments in the media and the blogs. If you reinforce falsehood often enough, it refers back on itself for meaning, but never becomes the truth. How do these people know that one candidate is motivated by greed and unbridled ambition and another to serve? Give me a break. What does Gov. Romney possibly have to gain since he is already a multi-millionaire? Why would anyone put up with the punishment and abuse of being the POTUS?

I think all the candidates are motivated by a desire to serve. I'm not a cynic. Candidates differ in their view of how to achieve results and their ability to deliver on their promises. Many of you folks are way to cynical.

Finally, the fact is, no matter what anyone says, jobs even auto jobs can come back with innovation and change. How did we lose the jobs in the first place? Because the industry was not as competitive... Part of the equation is Gov't investment in primary research, as Gov. Romney has said. For every one dollar invested in NASA there is a two dollar multipier effect in the economy. Despite these facts the fed gov. spends only about 3/10 of 1% on NASA, and not much more on other scientific research.

I totally believe Gov. Romney when he says it can be done. Maybe not tomorrow, but in the years to come. Part of the problem in Washington and in Corporate boardrooms is the failure to look with vision, to the future. There are short term solutions and then there are long term directions for the nation. Romney offers both.

Go Mitt!!

"Barfin'" Jake Garn? The space-shuttle-riding Senator? Is that you? :)

I think Romney is certainly the better candidate: He doesnt work for Bush/Cheney as McCain does. I have no Idea what they did to McCain but he seems to be on Prozac accompanied be a hidden Agenda written by Dick Cheney. So better vote for Romney, he at least seems to have a sense for responsability.

Wait - a politician is being called for making a transparently ridiculous promise and you have a problem with that? Romney's burned a lot of his credibility a long time ago. The promise to bring manufacturing jobs back to Michigan was transparent pandering, and the press corps rightfully derided it.

The solution to a lack of uniformity in political criticism is not to criticize one of the few times the MSM gets it right. Wait for the fictional McCain hypocrisy and _then_ criticize hypocrisy.

Jake Garn, I too believe that presidential candidates are largely motivated by a desire to serve. The problem is, "WHO do they desire to serve?"

Romney generated a lot of intense dislike among the press when he was governor of Massachusetts. I remember some pretty nasty stories and columns about him in the Boston Globe and elsewhere. He seems to have a knack for getting under people's skin. I always thought he was pretty creepy, myself--like an alien android preparing the way for an extraterrestrial invasion.

It's a good sign that Romney generates dislike among the press owned by the oligarchs. The emperors new clothes: John 'Prozac" McCain – Dick Cheneys Frankenstein Puppet.

Making a business competitive often makes some people loose employment. Not making busines competitive makes everyone loose employment. Iocca had to cut wages and let people go, BUT IT SAVED THE COMPANY. THAT LEFT JOBS IN PLACE FOR MANY PEOPLE. Romney has a long record of turning around businesses. He turned around the Olympics. He had to get sponsors on board when they wanted nothing to do with the Olympics. There were several layers of institutions from local to international to get cooperation from. Each time Romney finds answers in the detailed audits that are done. He gets people aboard from both sides to come up with possible solutions. I would like a better solution to the health insurance problems. It saddened me that Hillary did not succeed, but then she mostly left out the insurance companies when making her plan. From Romney's past I would say he would not do that. Both sides need to be at the table. I can not think of one candidate,other than Romney, who by his leadership at the top has effected so many sucess stories from the companies, the Olympics, and govenorship. The senators running have sponsored bills, but that is rather a group effort.

Making a business competitive often makes some people loose employment. Not making busines competitive makes everyone loose employment. Iocca had to cut wages and let people go, BUT IT SAVED THE COMPANY. THAT LEFT JOBS IN PLACE FOR MANY PEOPLE. Romney has a long record of turning around businesses. He turned around the Olympics. He had to get sponsors on board when they wanted nothing to do with the Olympics. There were several layers of institutions from local to international to get cooperation from. Each time Romney finds answers in the detailed audits that are done. He gets people aboard from both sides to come up with possible solutions. I would like a better solution to the health insurance problems. It saddened me that Hillary did not succeed, but then she mostly left out the insurance companies when making her plan. From Romney's past I would say he would not do that. Both sides need to be at the table. I can not think of one candidate,other than Romney, who by his leadership at the top has effected so many sucess stories from the companies, the Olympics, and govenorship. The senators running have sponsored bills, but that is rather a group effort.

Oh, God, I can see what shit rolling we have to look forward to.

mccain...mccave,

I caught a sound bite of him speaking in Michigan and telling the crowd that if elected, he would fight for Michigan and the auto industry to get their jobs back for them....

My immeadiate thought was where was he during the past seven years in the Senate and leading the charge to help Michigan workers displaced by outsourced jobs.....?

The MF was nowhere and this pandering of his was so disgusting that one has to believe that whatever gray matter he has upstairs is rapidly shrinking...Jesus, we had to live through the last 4 years of his idol ronnie with alzheimers...why should we elect someone who is 1/2 step away from the rubber room...?

Can't help but thinking of that picture of him hugging bush contrasted against what bush did to him South Carolina with the remarks about his adopted daughter. How can we elect someone who wouldn't even fight for his adopted daughters honor...?

to hutch & sally who may be one and the same and/or one of milt's kids...?

You did not mention Massachusetts (I am a lifelong resident)....pretty boy did jack shiite for Mass. other than making sure that every hair was in place. Why, when he was announcing his run for the presidency did he go to Michigan? Would not an announcement in front of our beautiful State House with the Common in the background have been apropos?

Even pretty boy knows that most citizens in Massachusetts despise him because he is a fraud and a liar....he knew that:
1) his announcement would have been poorly attended
and
2) the booing of those attending would have embarassed his bid....

Massachusetts has had some great governors both dem and repub....pretty boy was an asterisk (*) and slides easily into the worst governor we have ever had to endure....

Nice try hutch/sally....not having the chance to meet you I have to assume that your collective noses are broken every time romney bends over....?

You are right about the Sally/Hutch thing because I had a hard time posting it and kept trying. Sorry about the repeat. It has been a long time since I was a resident in Mass. So, I'm only going on the numbers and what I've read. Numbers are always something I've felt kindly towards. That a candidate decides to announce his candidacy in a favorable environment is usually done. When I read recently about the big dig, seems like he spent over 2 years trying to get an independent agency to oversee it, but those in the statehouse rejected that until there was a collapse. I read that Melanie's Bill (crack down on drunk driving) was proposed by Mitt, passed with some watering down by the Democrat-dominated legislature, and after that the number of repeat offenders was cut in half. I read that a change of order in sheltering the homeless saved MA $20 million dollars per year by simply using FIFO instead of FILO at the homeless shelters, still offering shelter to the homeless. So, saving $20 million and year and cutting repeat drunk driving offenders seem to be good things.

Hutch/Sally, when I'm looking to hire a management consultant, I'll track down Romney's contact info and give him a call.

However, Romney made a half-hearted attempt at rebuilding the Republican party in MA, and when that failed, he promptly got bored of being governor and started running for president.

I might also add that those small but useful cost-saving measures were just the sort of thing that his electoral opponent was running on, because she had a similar track record of taxpayer savings for the agencies her office was in charge of.

I think many of us Dems view Romney the most favorably of the Republican candidates, because at heart he's just a technocrat, apathetic about the "grand ideological war" that the other candidates see themselves as a part of. However, this makes him merely the "least bad" candidate among the Republicans. The biggest worry and his greatest weakness is that, as a man with no essential core, he's just going to end up indebted to all of the extremist factions he's been forced to pander to in his question for the presidency. This became most clear in his idiotic "Double Guantanamo!" statements and the fact that he is apparently trying to appease the most anti-immigration factions of his party in order to outflank McCain and Huckabee. It's this penchant for him to tack hard right in the absence of a genuinely conservative track record in other venues that is potentially worrisome.

Romney did try to LIE and Johnson caught him.

At the beginning of the clip, Romney starts to say "I don't have lobbyists that are tied to my..." but doesn't finish. THIS is where Johnson interjected and perhaps that was the statement he was objecting to initially.

Thank you Tyro for your comments. I found them more informative than all the previous ones. I was at dinner last month and someone said Romney saved money at the Olympics by having bagged lunches for the workers and no free lunches for the volunteers. That was just the beginning of a long line of much more difficult choices. I like numbers, Romney makes decisions by the numbers, and Clinton also was a numbers guy. The previuos Fed Reserve Chairman liked Clinton better than the Bush presidents I think because they understood numbers.
So, I'm reading a sentence from Hugh Hewitt (biased conservative a given) book on Romney that says " Romeny's team found a $600 million current year shortfall with only 6 months left in fiscal year 2002-2003, and a projected deficit of $3 billion for FY 2003-2004. Romney balanced both the current and following year budgets without raising taxes." That impresses me especially since he was working with a Dem legislature which has "tax and spend" usually associated with it.
When Clinton first ran for President the slogan was, "It's the economy stupid." Well, we may soon be back to "It's the economy stupid" again.

Years ago, I used to be a construction worker. Now I'm an assistant principal. My principal does not go around telling people that she's leaving the running of the school in the hands of a construction worker, because I'm not one, even though I once was. Mitt said his campaign isn't run by lobbyists. What they might have once been is irrelevant when they're too busy running his campaign to be lobbying. Romney's enemies will look for ways to make the things he says seem like lies because his squeaky clean image is just more than they can handle. When you can't dig up smut like alcoholism, sexual escapades, and other indiscretions, the press would rather invent their own definition of dishonesty rather than accept the fact that a good person, and an honest person, is actually running for political office. The press has never been interested in furthering the interests of the country - instead they think it is their job to promote their own personal agendas, in this case trying to make an upright, righteous person look bad in order to make them feel better about their own miserable lives.

It's amazing how people get off subject in comments.

Ezra's post was about the perfidious Washington press corps that picks its favorites and warps its coverage accordingly.

This example just happens to be about a Republican.

A slightly larger story here is that the press so loves John McCain that they'll deflect his gaffes, his lies, his willful ignorance and produce a heroic narrative at every opportunity. For his principle opponent they'll seek out, create or twist any word or deed in an attempt at destruction.

Ezra was not advocating for Mitt Romney.

As Ezra says, Romney's suggested solutions for Michigan's problems are bullshit.

However, I wouldn't give you 10 cents for anyone in public life who tells people in a depressed area that they're toast as McCain did in the GOP debate. That's not acceptable. McCain deserved the drubbing he took.

To go off subject myself I have to say that our continued decline as a nation is sealed judging by some of the comments made on this post.

Abandoning any area of the nation is a sign that we've lost the sense of community necessary to remain strong and viable.

Simply telling the people in Michigan or Ohio or upstate New York that they're finished is no better than abandoning New Orleans.

In the 1930s a large destitute area of the south was transformed into a region with a future by Federal projects. Incredible that today we simply allow a significant region of the nation to rot while we subsidize the growth of other areas that lack the natural resources to suuport their growing populations. Morbid overdevelopment in one region, while subsidizing the decay and depopulation of another region.

Insanity.

I do not feel the Mitt Romney is lying at all. I feel that He is one of the true statesmen in this Presidential race and the only one besides maybe Fred Thompson. I like Senator Jake Garn believe He really believes He can get those jobs back in Michigan. I also believe him when he says he does not have lobbyist running his campaign. He has a lobbyist who is an unpaid advisor, but like he said to the knucklehead AP reported he does not run my campaign, He is a longtime friend who is unpaid. Maybe the reason so many have such hatred toward Mitt Romney is because of his goodness. I have observed that selfish, sinfull and wicked people cannot stand those who are good and decent. Maybe the disdain toward Mitt Romney is a reflection on the truth and light he represent and those full of hatred, selfishness, arrogance, greed and all the other characteristics of darkness cannot stand those who are actually righteous.

However, I wouldn't give you 10 cents for anyone in public life who tells people in a depressed area that they're toast as McCain did in the GOP debate. That's not acceptable.

But why? Your point is taken about the south, which we invested a lot of public works projects into to modernize it. However, there are several parts of the country that are collapsing under their own weight. Camden, NJ comes to mind. Parts of the North Dakota prairie are being depopulated of people. Some situations are just experiments that ended in failure (the settlement of the northern plains) and some are places whose hey-day has simply passed them by (the manufacturing sector in NJ isn't coming back). There's nothing wrong with trying to ask how we can cut our losses and reorganize in these situations.

Romney is clearly superior to his fellow GOP adversaries. He's eloquent, does well under pressure, speaks well from the cuff, and is on top of things. Organized, prepared, and ready. On top of that, he actually has a record of success and a lifelong career as a very accomplished executive.

I'm sorry, I will never so long as I live vote for John McCain. The man has stabbed the Republican Party in the back far too many times. He has an arrogance I haven't seen in a political candidate outside of Hillary Clinton. All one has to do is view this amnesty nonsense he crammed down our throats--TWICE--to get a view of the man. Well, that and his immature and pedantic treatment of Senator Corynyn in which he declared that he knew "more than anyone in the room" on immigration.

I like Fred Thompson, as well, but I'm just not convinced he has the fire to be the Chief Executive. He never really took the lead in the Senate, and frankly a President has to be at the forefront setting the agenda. We shall see how Fred does after South Carolina.

Wow, what candidate are you all looking at? Mitt Romney is the dorkiest political candidate I have ever seen. He comes off more as Ned Flanders than he does as Machiavelli.

Cal, the people here don't seem to care. They are perfectly willing to let millions of people suffer with no futures. They are too busy caring fighting the culture wars to bother trying to solve economic problems. That pretty much goes for the Republicans and the Democrats. Abortion is everything, who really wanted a broad and powerful middle class anyway?

All one has to do is view this amnesty nonsense he crammed down our throats--TWICE--to get a view of the man.

That he backs up the Republican president and does what's probably best for his campaign backers and southwestern constituents?

McCain continually gets a raw deal from Republicans-- the guy loyally and continually votes a straight-Republican line in the Senate, backs up the Republican president when people are practically begging him to stab the president in the back, shills endlessly for the Iraq war to the point of delusion, and what does he get for it? A bunch of ungrateful lip from right-wingers who treat a much less competent pro-amnesty GW Bush like God's chosen one.

Will we ever put the country first and give an honest evaluation of the experience and ability of the candidate?

Mitt Romney represents, better than any other candidate,the complete package for a good leader of whom we can all be proud. He has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to lead and succeed - the two most important ingredients to stabilizing our country.

He also sets a higher standard than any other candidate when it comes to pride, dignity and self respect - characteristics essential to the survival of our country that have deteriorated horribly in recent decades. He epitomizes the strength of a man to devote his life to his family - we are in crisis for having husbands and wives dedicate themselves to each other and their children - wake up America - the family is the future strength of this country.
Enough of the baby talk - "I just don't like Mitt Romney" - grow up and get serious - we are in real trouble in the country and that does not help us - united we stand - divided we fall.

You forgot to mention that the press has been ganging up against candidates it hates since Clinton, but especially in regard to Gore in 2000.

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