Third time's the charm for Romney? -- Oct. 16, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Oh, Mitt, they need you.

No, not the out-of-touch, loser Mitt Romney of 2008 and 2012.  

What they want is the new and improved Mitt, version 2016, who would connect with voters by showing his compassion and his competence. And maybe his sense of humor. That, anyway, is the hope of establishment Republicans who have been trying for months to persuade Romney to make his third bid for the White House.

“Run, Mitt, run!” supporters chanted in Iowa last Monday.

As always with political nostalgia, the boomlet for Romney says more about current discontent than a true longing for the past. Romney is the Republicans’ national leader, and he looks positively statesmanlike next to, say, Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Showing their compassion, the Romneys will raise $50 million for the just announced Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases, which will bring 200 scientists together to study multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s and other diseases. Ann Romney, 65, was diagnosed with MS in 1998; it is in remission. The center is scheduled to open in 2016 in Boston.

Even so Romney, 67, is an odd choice as the GOP’s next big thing. He was a terrible presidential candidate.

To recap, Romney in 2012 lost women, 18- to 29-year-olds, African American, Hispanic and Asian voters to President Barack Obama. Romney’s fan base was whites, people 45 and older and especially those 65 and above. Romney barely won college educated voters, but Obama took the post-graduate school set.

  

Romney’s defenders blame his advisers and insist voters never saw the real Romney. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Romney’s running mate in 2012, says he will forgo his own presidential run next time if Romney tries again.

“Third time’s the charm,” Ryan says.

For now, Romney is generating buzz by saying he’s not planning to run for president. His wife also says he has no plans to run. She told the Los Angeles Times the family is “done, done, done” with presidential campaigns.

But Ann Romney told The Washington Post, “Honestly, we’ll have to see what happens.” Romney himself recently conceded that “circumstances can change.” Aha!

Romney says he learned a lot from 2012, particularly that anything he says may wind up on the front page. At a Florida hotel in May 2012, he thought he was speaking only to donors at a closed fundraiser when he disparaged the “47 percent” of the electorate who are dependent on government, pay no income taxes and will vote for Obama “no matter what.” Mother Jones later obtained the video and put it online – where it lives in perpetuity.

Given that the video will live forever, consideration of Romney for 2016 has an air of desperation:  Who else could stop a kook like Rand Paul or Ted Cruz in the GOP primaries? Who else might stop the Hillary Clinton juggernaut? 

Jeb, of course. If former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush decides to run, the pressure on Romney to run could evaporate. Bush also hasn’t decided whether he’s in, although he now says his wife is supportive and his mother has moved to neutral.   

To prove he’s not running for office, Romney actually told a joke the other day. Advisers always tell candidates to avoid jokes. Here it is:

“President Obama went to the bank to cash a check, and he didn’t have his ID. And the teller said, `You’ve got to prove who you are.’

“He said, `How should I do that?’ She said, `The other day Phil Mickelson came in; he didn’t have his ID but he set up a little cup on the ground, took a golf ball, putted it right into that cup so we knew it was Phil Mickelson. We cashed his check.’

“`And then Andre Agassi came in and...didn’t have his ID either. He put a little target on the wall, took a tennis ball and racquet, hit it onto that target time and again. We knew that was Andre Agassi, so we cashed his check.’

“And she said to him, `Is there anything you can do to prove who you are?’

“And [Obama] said, `I don’t have a clue.’

“And she said, `Well, Mister President, do you want your money in small bills or large bills?’”

The crowd loved it. Meet the new Mitt. What a card.

© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Defrosting Capitol Hill? -- Dec. 12, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Asked how to start writing a novel, Ernest Hemingway supposedly replied, “First you defrost the refrigerator.”

Ah, procrastination. Everyone puts off getting to work – and Congress is the classic repeat offender. But Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin deserve kudos for defrosting the Capitol fridge – at least for a while. We can all hope the thaw lasts so Congress can do its job.

Murray, a liberal Democrat who heads the Senate budget committee, and Ryan, a conservative Republican who’s chairman of the House budget panel, did what many thought impossible. They delivered a compromise budget agreement that keeps the government open -- no shutdown! -- for two years. During a couple of months of negotiations, they reportedly bonded over football and fishing and agreed, for the greater good of the country, on a deal neither likes much.

“I see this agreement as a step in the right direction,” Ryan said Tuesday, announcing the agreement. “In a divided government, you don’t always get what you want.”

“For far too long here in Washington, D.C., compromise has been considered a dirty word, especially when it comes to the budget,” Murray said. “We have broken through the partisanship and the gridlock.”

Breaking through partisanship and gridlock, even temporarily and for a modest deal, is no small matter. Since 2011, Congress has staggered from budget crisis to budget crisis, raising the blood pressure of the business leaders and infuriating ordinary citizens. The last crisis ended in a 16-day government shutdown in October and low approval ratings for Congress.

The bipartisan deal is far from perfect. It’s not a Grand Bargain that tames the country’s appetite for entitlement programs. It’s an OK deal that has more thorns than blossoms.

Ryan insists the deal doesn’t raise taxes, but Republicans balk at its higher airport and other fees. Democrats resent the lack of an extension of unemployment benefits for more than a million long-term jobless workers. The deal also trims pensions of younger military retirees and requires new federal workers to contribute more to their pensions.

President Barack Obama approves, saying, “This agreement doesn’t include everything I’d like – and I know many Republicans feel the same way. That’s the nature of compromise.”

My favorite comment on the deal came from Eugene Steuerle, budget expert at the Urban Institute, who told the Washington Post: "With this little package, we're not going to climb out of the hole we've dug. All we're doing is agreeing to stop throwing shovels at each other."

Members of Congress get to go home for Christmas, unlike last year. But the masters of putting off until tomorrow what they should have done yesterday have much work ahead. Their to-do list is long, starting with the farm bill, immigration reform, raising the minimum wage and tax reform.     

On C-SPAN the other morning, a viewer named Johnny from Woodbridge, Va., called Democratic Rep. John Garamendi of California on the carpet for Congress’ slack work habits. Johnny said members of Congress don’t even work 10 hours a month.

“We actually work at least 10 hours a month,” Garamendi said, although he conceded, “The amount of work is very, very slim.”

When another viewer suggested Congress should work harder earlier in the session, Garamendi said, “Congress doesn’t act much differently than most of us did in high school and college.” He sounded flip but Congress loves to bunch its work at the end.

“It’s human nature. Sort of like college students cramming for exams,” says Martin P. Paone, who retired in 2008 after 30 years on the Senate Democratic cloakroom staff.

Senate Historian Donald Ritchie notes that in the very first Congress, Sen. William Maclay of Pennsylvania complained in his diary that he was overwhelmed by bills in the last days of that Congress. Maclay said he didn't have enough time to read everything that was coming through, Ritchie said. Some things never change.

But with the 2014 congressional elections, the House is scheduled to be in session only 113 days next year, nearly two weeks less than this year. More work is likely to pile up or be postponed. Murray and Ryan may have defrosted the refrigerator, but there’s a loaded freezer waiting in the congressional garage.

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Pushing term limits for Congress off the cliff -- Jan. 3, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Did you hear the one about sleep-deprived octogenarians in the Senate?

There’s no punch line. A Republican House member told his colleagues it would be ridiculous to follow the old fogies in voting for the fiscal cliff agreement. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, and the joke was on him.

One lesson we can learn from the fiscal cliff drama: Experience matters.

We’ve debated for years whether Washington insiders are a boon or a bane in public life. Too often it seems that the less a congressional candidate knows, or wants to know, about how Washington works, the more voters like him or her. 

The motto of the U.S. Term Limits group, “citizen legislators, not career politicians,” is appealing -- until there’s a crisis that requires political skill.

Were it not for two savvy old political pros, the country would have plunged over the fiscal cliff permanently and landed in the ravine of recession. The New Year’s Day deal to avoid tax hikes and deep automatic cuts in spending was far from perfect, but it was good news for the country.  It was bad news for advocates of congressional term limits and ageists who prefer stereotypes to real life examples.

Two 70-year-olds who had served together in the Senate for about a quarter of a century rose to the occasion. Vice President Joe Biden, formerly the Democratic senator from Delaware, and Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky, reached the compromise that had eluded the president and house speaker.

President Barack Obama isn’t a natural negotiator. Goading when he should have guided, Obama infuriated Republicans every time he opened his mouth. Critics complained that Obama should have been more like Lyndon Johnson, but Obama lacks LBJ’s long years in the House and Senate. Nor does he have Bill Clinton’s or George W. Bush’s gubernatorial experience, coping with legislators from the other party.

As for Speaker John Boehner, he gave up trying to herd the tea-chugging cats in his own party. Boehner, a lad of 63 who came to the House in 1991, grew so frustrated after needling from Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, who’s a decade older with four more Senate years, that Boehner used locker room language to Reid -- in the White House.

The approval rating for Congress hovers below 20 percent, so it’s no big surprise that three out of four Americans tell pollsters they favor limiting how long someone can stay in Congress. But after Arkansas tried to do just that, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that states may not restrict the number of congressional terms. To limit terms requires a constitutional amendment. The Florida legislature last year passed a resolution urging Congress to adopt a term-limits amendment.

The twin public appetites for term limits and the sweet bird of youth can result in odd moments.

While campaigning for his eighth term in Congress, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was asked if he supported congressional term limits of two terms for the Senate and three for the House. Yes, indeed, he said; he’s a big fan. Really?

  

In November, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, 72, was asked by NBC News’ Luke Russert, 27, whether she and her team were keeping a younger generation of Democrats from taking the House reins. Her deputies, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, are 73 and 72.

“Some of your colleagues privately say that your decision to stay on prohibits the party from having a younger leadership and hurts the party in the long run,” Russert said, and asked for her response. She allowed that his question was “quite offensive” but he probably didn’t realize it.

Pelosi, a formidable fundraiser for Democratic candidates, proved her leadership skills during the fiscal cliff-hanger. She held her Democratic caucus together in support of the agreement, allowing many Republicans to make a show of voting no, pretending they opposed the agreement.

Such theatrics belie the serious challenges that face our country. Thank heavens we still have experienced hands in Congress. Let’s hope they use their political expertise to do right for the country. This is no time for amateurs or snide comments. 

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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