by Margaret Carlson, October 31 2012, 09:45 | 0 Comment(s)
FACE-OFF: Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney answers a question as President Barack Obama listens during the first 2012 US presidential debate, in Denver on Wednesday. Picture: REUTERS
WHO would you rather weather a storm with? That is what this presidential campaign has come down to, and the choice is between the candidate with no responsibilities and the one already in charge (although not yet in charge, despite the hopes of his ardent supporters, of the wind and rain). This election’s October surprise is a surprising late-season hurricane.
For Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the best strategy is to first, do no harm. If he truly has momentum, as some polls and pundits would have it, then mum’s the word. When he goes unscripted, it is never pretty. "Corporations are people, my friend"; "I’m not concerned about the very poor"; his infamous apathy for "the 47%": This is not a man practised at expressing common cause with the little guy.
So far, this week, so good.
Mr Romney has been both grounded in the details (bring those campaign yard signs inside; "in high winds they can be dangerous and cause damage to homes and property") and full of lofty rhetoric ("I’m never prouder of America than when I see how we pull together in a crisis," he said on Sunday night). From afar — wisely he has not donned the cliched parka, lest it blow in the wind — he says he is getting updates on the storm from the governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, and the governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell.
At all costs, Mr Romney must avoid putting himself at the centre of the disaster.
That did not work out well on Libya, when he jumped ahead of the president with his ill-considered statement after the US consulate in Benghazi was attacked. Mr Romney has another reason to keep quiet: he may not support the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As always with Mr Romney, it’s hard to know where he actually stands. In a Republican primary debate in June, he — in his conservative phase — said more responsibility for disaster relief should fall to the states.
"It is simply immoral," he said, for the federal government "to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids".
As governor of Massachusetts, Mr Romney had no catastrophe to compare to this. When floods ravaged the state in May 2006, many mayors complained that he had vetoed flood-prevention funds a few years earlier. The Democratic mayor of one town said Mr Romney only "showed up for the pictures" after the flood.
Which is why Mr Romney as mere candidate may be better off than Mr Romney as actual officeholder. No public official, not even the most powerful, is more powerful than Mother Nature. No matter what President Barack Obama does, Sandy will result in more people dying and losing their homes, while millions of others will be frustrated and angry (and in the dark). So much for those early-voting returns, which Mr Obama seems to be winning.
Natural disasters usually cause elected officials to lose their jobs, not keep them.
Michael Bilandic, Richard Daley’s successor, was ousted as mayor of Chicago by a snowstorm. The younger George Bush’s presidency did not recover from his slow reaction to Hurricane Katrina. Mr Christie got it wrong when he decided not to interrupt his 2010 Christmas holiday in Disney World for a storm in New Jersey.
So maybe Hurricane Sandy gives Mr Obama a chance to appear presidential. And unlike Mr Bush, Mr Obama did not hire a political hack as head of the FEMA. Mr Obama has had some experience travelling to the sites of natural disasters. He saw what remained of Joplin, Missouri, after tornadoes blew through in May last year. He visited the Gulf Coast several times just after the oil spill in 2010.
And he stopped himself (almost in midair) from making a mistake this time. On Monday morning, instead of remaining in Florida to keep a crucial campaign appearance with former president Bill Clinton, he returned to Washington. Did the Big Dog call and say he could handle it alone, not to risk the blowback? Or did Mr Obama rethink the situation for himself? Did someone on his staff describe the split screen that awaited him, with the raging storm on one side and Mr Obama disembarking from Air Force One in sunny Orlando on the other?
Elected officials cannot control the weather, but how they respond to it does matter.
Mr Obama does not have the minister-in-chief demeanour of Mr Clinton, which carried the country through the Oklahoma City bombing. And it would not be presidential to adopt the tweeter-in-chief persona of mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey, offering to shovel his constituents’ sidewalks after a snowstorm.
Still, Mr Obama might try to channel a little of Mr Booker’s man-of-the-people energy with Mr Clinton’s I-feel-your-rain warmth. He could come out on the other side of the storm better than he went in if he drops the cool.
Bloomberg
Read more: http://www.bdlive.co.za/world/americas/2012/10/31/storm-test-for-candidates-on-eve-of-us-election
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