“1980 In Slow Motion.”  That is a quote I read today from some professional pundit; I find it to be quite accurate.  The 2012 presidential race seems to be wrapping up and barring any totally unexpected event from left field, the cake would appear to be baked.  There is a momentum that has been gathering for the Romney campaign since the first debate and even though it has ebbed a bit here and there, it has nonetheless continued unabated and shows no sign of letting up.  It appears to be sweeping not only the nation, but more importantly the acclaimed swing states.  When I look at the campaign pictures on the internet and television, I am struck by the images of President Obama.  He seems to be like the struggling, frustrated, and tiring man trying to hold back the overwhelming weight that threatens to crush him.  The harder he struggles to combat it, the more frantic he becomes and the more desperate he appears.  Romney is increasingly more energetic and relaxed.  As we all know, both campaigns have the best pollsters in the business and have a very good idea where this whole deal is headed.

As I had written a few blogs back, the recognition is slowing sinking in that Ohio is quite possibly more essential to Obama than it is to Romney.  The current state of play begs the question: What if Romney now wins Ohio?  If, in fact, Romney wins Ohio, then it is quite likely that he will also win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (perhaps Michigan as well?).  Rather than the popular notion of a “razor thin” victory for one side or the other, we could very well be looking at a big win for Romney.  It is only reasonable to expect that if that big win occurs, then the close Senate races that will determine control of that body will tilt Republican.  Romney might very well be coming into office in January of 2013 with Republican control in the House and the Senate, and a big elector count, thus setting the stage for some very significant first-term legislation.

On the other hand, if Obama prevails in what would likely be a narrow electoral victory, he will be facing, at best, a Republican House and a Senate with a small Democrat majority; a perfect formula for gridlock and executive action adventures.  This same scenario might apply to Romney if he squeaks out a win and is unable to extend sufficient coattails to the Republican Senate candidates engaged in competitive races.  Either way, it is difficult to see how continuing tensions between our Legislative branch and our Executive branch bode well for dealing with the major issues facing our nation; issues such as the expiring Bush tax cuts, the continuing deficit and debt problem, immigration reform, and the Middle East tinderbox. 

If you look at the possible outcomes based solely on an “ability to govern” basis, I submit that the preferable outcome is a big Romney win.  Romney may not be the panacea that his campaign makes him out to be, but there is little doubt that his first two years in office will give the American voting public a glimpse of what Romney and Republican philosophies can or cannot do for the country and come November of 2014 and 2016, establish a good basis for how we would like to go forward.

Three Things To Improve Baseball.  I’ve been a baseball fan my whole life.  I was never a great player, but they never kept me from imagining (like millions of kids before me) being the hero in the bottom of the ninth inning.  I must say, however, that today’s game suffers in comparison to some of its sports competitors.  NFL games move much more quickly.  College basketball is much more passionate.  Even NHL playoffs, with their low scores, rate higher on the “action per minute” dial than major league baseball these days.

At the risk of showing my ignorance, I will suggest three things to improve the game for its many viewers; both in the parks and at home on the screen:

1.      Speed the game up.  How you do it is up to the folks who write the rules.  The constant stepping in and out of the batter’s box; the eternity between pitches; the deep thought processes that seem to occur between plays…all of this is dragging the game out.  Baseball is a game of anticipation leading up to action to begin with; we need more action and less anticipation.

2.      Implement instant replay.  Now how you do this, once again, is up to the rules makers.  There might be a replay official in the booth to view the film; there might be a limited number of challenges per team; it could even be discretionary for the umpires.  Whatever the circumstances of the process, there is far too much invested in potentially critical calls to rely on the fallible judgment of umpires who are not always that reliable; especially when a better system is readily available.

3.      Finally…what is up with the strike zone?  I swear there are some umpires who call more strikes balls than strikes strikes.  As I understand, the umpires have long claimed their unalienable right to call balls and strikes according to their own strike zone.  What possible purpose is there for having a strike zone in the rule book if it going to be adjusted by each and every different umpire that calls a game?  Whether or not the strike-trackers that we see on television are accurate, they clearly show that each umpire has their own ideas about high, low, and off the plate.  In my humble opinion, the game would be much improved by an increased effort to uniformly enforce a universal (see rule book) strike zone and to grade umpires on how accurately they call balls and strikes.

America’s pastime is still the great game it always was, but it has taken some hits over the last few years with strikes, lockouts, prima donna players, and Gordon Gecko owners.  A bit of tweaking around the edges might serve to bring some lost love back to the game that this type of drift has resulted in.

Both Sides of the Tolerance Coin.  There are moments in life that pass us by and we do not realize until later how very significant they might have been.  I’m not certain about this, but we (America) may have just had one of those moments.

 “The Book of Mormon” is a popular play currently on Broadway that satirizes the Mormon faith and Christianity in general.  It has either won or been nominated for, I think, nine Tony awards.  There are numerous instances over the last couple of decades where the National Endowment for the Arts has not only sponsored, but openly supported anti-Christian works of art all across this nation (Loveland?).  Hardly a month goes by without a State, County, or Local school board taking some type of action to make certain that our children are learning the valuable lesson of religious and cultural tolerance, yet we continue to see many of the tenets of the Christian faith, the faith that nourished the founding of our nation, removed from our schools and public facilities.  Now don’t get me wrong; I heartily support the separation of church and state when governing is considered in practice.  What I do not understand is how we give awards to a pair of gentlemen who produce a play that ridicules the Mormon faith while we drag a man out of his home in the dark of night in front of his family and friends for producing a trailer that ridicules the Muslim/Islam faith.  And now, to cap it all off, and following a litany of apologies for even feigning to defame the Muslim/Islam faith, our government officials are spending $70,000 to produce an apology film for any offense that “may have been” perpetrated by any particular Muslim-related piece of film, satire, or documentary emanating from America.  What the #$@* is wrong with this picture?

Webster defines tolerance as “being tolerant of others’ values, beliefs, practices, etc.”  How can we, as a nation, accept a premise that on the one hand demands tolerance beyond all reproach and question and, at the same time, practices extreme intolerance of any beliefs other than its own?  That is what we are seeing with the Muslim/Islam issues today.  While Muslim/Islam believers openly practice their faith in America, build their abodes of worship, and recruit newcomers to their beliefs, Christians across the Middle East are being persecuted.  That persecution extends not only to public distain and ridicule, but to the point of open hostility to the extreme of homicide and the destruction of their houses of worship.  Maher, Leno, Daly, Letterman, Saturday Night Live, Mad Magazine….the list goes on and on.  We have not only a history of tolerance in this country; we have a history of extreme tolerance.  Why is it that we demand anything less from the governments that we prop up with our foreign aid and political capital? 

There is political pragmatism and there is rank hypocrisy; I fear that what we are now seeing play out in this current Middle East crisis is not only the latter, but a total and unashamed abandonment of some of this great nation’s most precious principles.  The widening chasm between the political parties is another symptom of this trend.  Somehow, someway…a leader(s) must emerge to bridge the gulf and bring some semblance of function back to our government.  And we, as individuals, must further accept the fundamental truth that, as espoused by  liberals, there is a fundamental role for government in our lives and there are things that can be better served by government than the private sector.   There is also the right to live one’s life, as long as it does not infringe on the lives of others, in the legal fashion that they might choose to be personally and morally appropriate.  By the same token, liberals must better accept the fact that many conservatives value the founding documents of this nation dearly and would like to see a much greater adherence to those documents than we are currently witnessing.  The government is not the answer to all of society’s ills and America is heading towards a nanny-state condition.  Much like some middle-eastern governments, liberals must understand that if they demand tolerance for cultural decisions, they must in turn tolerate those who choose not agree with decisions.  I think the word I am looking for here is “civility”.  The tragedy is not so much that it has ceased to exist in America; the tragedy is that nobody seems to be looking for it.

Playing “The Game” to Win.  My life has been spent registered as either a Republican or an Independent.  I register Republican because my personal philosophies on government align more closely with their party; but I switch over to Independent when some of the influential idiots in the Republican Party forget that only the winners get to govern and start going their own way.

It is my opinion that one of the most inaccurate concepts in this election is that Mitt Romney is a weak candidate.  For the life of me, when I look at his resume and his overall (not individual) performances on the campaign trail, he is certainly not one of the weakest Republican candidates I have ever seen.  The truly amazing thing is that a great deal of this “weak candidate” chatter is coming from the Republican Party.    I don’t believe there has been or will be a more significant election cycle in my lifetime than the one coming up in November and I view the process as deadly serious and significant.  It infuriates me personally to see many Democrats take a more casual approach to the election, but I have realized that they have a much more effective strategy to win.  Each national party is composed of disparate groups and it is a continuing challenge for each to unify their groups behind their national candidates.  The Democrats seem to better understand this requirement and what some may call blind loyalty and irrational support would be classified by them as “playing to win the game”.  Republicans on the other hand seem to relish the role of being “political experts” and continue to dissect their candidates far past the point of good advisement (like now).  The taking heads on the blogs and radio are so very certain of their conservative principles that they do their utmost to wield whatever self-perceived influence they might have to continually fine-tune the Republican candidate.  In reality, this amounts to dithering while the Democrats long ago accepted their candidate and all his/her flaws and focus on the true point of elections…winning.  The truly amazing thing is that given these two approaches, the Republican Party stands to hold the House, has a decent chance to take the Senate, and is running neck-and-neck for the White House. 

An objective analysis will show that the majority of voting Americans agree more with Republican philosophies than with Democrat philosophies; it has been this way for awhile.  The simple truth, however, is that Republicans think it is sufficient to be more right than the Democrats and the candidate is just a vessel for the Party.  It might very well be the ultimate truth that the party is the vessel for the Candidate.

Is He Really “That” Good?  Under the watch of the President who was going to stop the rise of the oceans, heal the planet, write better speeches than his speechwriters, who knew more about foreign policy than his foreign policy experts, who would bring us the most transparent administration ever, who would have nothing to do with lobbyists and crony capitalism, and who would instantly, with his inauguration, heal all the outstanding wounds between America and the Muslim world…we now have the current middle east crisis and a simultaneous meltdown of  the U.S. economy.  If Obama is correct in saying that his lack of successful policy implementation is the mess he inherited from Bush, does that mean that if Romney wins in November, he will be totally unaccountable for all he heirs?  Because one can make a strong case that his legacy would be far more flawed than the one waiting for Obama.

There has been a theme woven throughout the Obama presidency; a theme of arrogance.  We have all seen those movies where the character can move at super-speed and this is illustrated by them moving through the room while everyone else remains still.  I honestly believe that this is how our President perceives himself in his current position.  He truly believes that he is “so” good, that all he has to do is show up for work, listen politely, and grace others with his glorious prose on selected occasions.  He moves through the room oblivious of those around him and cognizant only of himself and his purposes; ridiculing others at will and with no consequence.  Once the Democrats passed their health care legislation and Obama signed it, he gave up on governing and has put our government on auto-pilot in order to seek re-election; to do otherwise would have required lowering himself to deal with less stellar individuals, such as Senators and Representatives and Voters and that, no doubt, is challenging work.

What we have seen in the failure of both our national economy and foreign policy isn’t so much a sin of commission, but rather a sin of omission.  As Condi Rice so aptly stated at the Republican convention, when leadership is not exerted, it creates a vacuum...and that vacuum will be filled.  History may record that Obama’s auto-pilot methods were successful; the verdict may not yet be complete.  It has been argued on occasion that government is best that governs the least.  However, it also the hard truth that our greatest regrets involves not the things we did, but the things we didn’t do.  Another hard truth is that the Presidency is hard work, it requires making hard choices, and it requires taking actions in clear and unequivocal terms.   Whatever verdict history may deliver on the merit of Obama’s policies; the verdict is clear on his leadership…MIA.

Dueling Icons of Deniability.  My, but those Democrats do love them some Clinton; very much like those Republicans do love them some Reagan.  You would think that given their enshrinement in party lore, their records would reflect the bedrock principles of their respective parties.  I submit to you that a closer and broader reflection on their accomplishments tells a different story and that each party, in their loving embrace of the two icons, is in a state of denial.

One would think that each man’s record would reflect a “party platform’s worth” of conservative or liberal principles, but is that really the case?  A close examination of each President’s record shows that their most significant and effectual benchmarks were in fact products of bi-partisan actions; great examples of the two parties compromising in order to fashion legislation that truly reflected the “will of the people”.  Is it any surprise that both men started out their first terms as “firebrands” for their parties and encountered, in some form or fashion, a high degree of gridlock and resistance from the opposing party?  But each man, in his own way, learned to function in their office as a leader and producer of results.  This ability to evolve and grow resulted in some historical accomplishments for each man.  The American People recognize and respect results.

Watching the party conventions transpire over the last few days and reading their official platforms, one would think that the extreme factions in each control the policy apparatus of the organization; I would hope this is not the case.  Rather, I would  hope that each nominee, if fortunate enough to reach the magic 270 number in November,  will realize history has shown us that the only meaningful accomplishments of past Presidential icons have been of the bi-partisan nature; the kind that reflect the best thinking of both parties and their respective leaders. 

Like many others, I was hopeful that after the Democrats were soundly rebuked in the 2010 election cycle, Obama would turn towards the center and we would see some actual legislative progress over the last two years.  That obviously did not happen and, I am sure, there is sufficient blame for that failure on both sides of the political aisle.  However, the ultimate challenge lies with the ultimate leader and that is the President.  Of all the things that one might fault Obama for, this to me is the most damning.  The colossal expenditure of political capital on Obamacare in his first two years was, in hindsight, a huge miscalculation; a squandered opportunity.  But, a case can perhaps be made that the cause it represented was sufficiently important to Obama and the Democrats that they should spend whatever it took to get it done.  However, following the unambiguous message of the 2010 mid-term elections, President Obama would clearly have been served much better by finding some way to work with Boehner and McConnell to pass some good law and begin to clean up the mess this country is in.

This Is It?  I was thinking about a title for this note and Kenny Loggins solved the mystery for me.  The title applies to the three nights of Republican Convention I have just witnessed, concluding with tonight’s Romney acceptance speech.  And…it is not meant in a disparaging fashion; rather one of disappointment.

I have read with amusement that Romney is a weak candidate.  Per the media, this must be so because the economy is historically bad and the President is tied with Romney in the polls.  A Republican of better timbre would surely be several points ahead of a sitting president with such a dismal record.  I haven’t bought into this logic and still do not.  As presidential candidates go, I find Mitt Romney quite impressively qualified.  I have often wondered how it would work out to have an effective CEO for President and see if our government might function better if it is run as a business.  Agree or not with this proposition, one must admit that it is an interesting thought.  I think that Romney’s perceived (by some) weakness as a candidate is a result of media bias and the Republican Party’s eternal quest for the perfect candidate.    But I digress; back to the topic at hand.

Anticipating a business-like acceptance speech from this recently-crowned nominee, I was frankly looking forward to a refreshingly detailed approach to setting this country’s economy back on the path to prosperity.  Instead, I heard a fairly unimpressive regurgitation of highlights from the Romney Campaign for President Organization to date.  Now, I still believe that Romney is clearly the right choice for this election based simply on Obama’s poor performance and Romney’s clear qualifications for the job, but I must express significant disappointment in not hearing Romney totally buy-in to a business-like approach to government in tonight’s speech.  I heard nationalism, personal history, swipes at an all-too-easy-to–hit Obama record, and recycled platitudes to a convention hall full of ready-made disciples.  This will be an interesting 60+ days of Presidential campaigning to come and I wait with anticipation to see how the Democrats will rebut this Republican show next week.