Romney visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem (photo via NY Daily News)
When is a gaffe not a gaffe? When the candidate says it, means it, and accepts criticism of it with a cat-ate-the-canary smile because he knows the truth: he’s just where he wants to be. Like Newt Gingrich winning points with conservatives by making offensive pronouncements about minorities and the media that bucked political orthodoxy as well as politeness, Mitt Romney is appealing to his base by going over the edge — not so far over that he can’t technically scoot backward, but far enough to show his cards (and ostensibly his heart) to those same Gingrich and Bachmann fans he’ll need at the polls in November.
Romney’s remarks in London about the country’s Olympic preparations were perceived as gaffes by both sides even if they disagreed on the magnitude, with Republicans dismissing the anger over the disparagement as an overhyped media firestorm and Democrats citing the misstep as evidence Romney “lacks the preparation and the diplomatic skills to be able to be the commander in chief.” But when the candidate left the U.K., he embarked on a series of statements viewed very differently from each side of the aisle. Democrats said they were errors, Republicans countered that Romney was merely speaking truth to power (or at least powerful super PAC donors), and Romney himself cannily charted a path down the center, walking back his comments or claiming they were misinterpreted while not rejecting their core message. He quietly made qualifications to the mainstream media, all the while aware that the goal of throwing red meat to the base had been achieved. The dynamic that had disadvantaged him a day earlier – once you’ve erred, you can never unspeak the words – had now turned to his advantage. Though Romney walked back his London criticism, he couldn’t expunge it: the damage had been done. A day later, though he technically walked back his remarks on Iran and Israel, he couldn’t erase them: the victory had already been won.
Just what did Romney say that prompted such varied reactions? First, foreign policy adviser Dan Senor seemed to suggest that the candidate would support a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Romney later clarified, staking out a position a step beyond President Obama but in line with Israeli officials, who contend that Iran must be prevented not only from obtaining a bomb but also from having mere capability to develop one. “No option should be excluded,” he said, before immediately excluding the current one: “We must not delude ourselves into thinking that containment is an option.” Despite the apparent softening of his stance, the candidate had got what he wanted – namely, the airing of a line on Iran harder than even a Republican could safely admit, without the consequences of having to stand by and explain a position so dangerously out of the mainstream. If this was a gaffe, it was a supremely calculated one. While big-name media outlets painted the disconnect between Senor and his boss as a misstep, I suspect Senor actually followed his orders perfectly. The campaign did clean-up duty, complaining that press accounts had made it seem as ““if Mitt was for launching Israeli f-16s to Teheran. Absurd.” Whiny demands for retractions aside, a trial balloon had been floated, and conservatives hailed Romney as a truth-telling believer in American power. “Against the backdrop of the Old City of Jerusalem, he delivered a powerful speech in which he passionately supported Israel’s right to defend itself against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran,” wrote Daniel Halper at the Weekly Standard. “Israel score: a big-time positive for Romney.”
Romney’s second “mistake” — his repeated and deliberate reference to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — was hardly a mistake at all, even to liberal ears. Republicans have been pledging, as Romney did yesterday on CNN, to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem since 1996. Once in office, however, presidents are faced with the reality that aggravating the Palestinians, who also claim the city as their capital, would do more to hinder the peace process than advance it. George W. Bush, despite his own election-season vow to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, ultimately followed in his predecessor’s footsteps; there is no reason to believe Romney would not do the same. Still, making the Jerusalem-as-capital declaration has become almost a requirement for office-seeking Republicans, and it surely resonated with Romney’s immediate audience of Jewish donors — particularly Sheldon Adelson, a passionate Zionist who has dropped $10 milion into the pro-Romney super PAC. But Romney’s remarks were directed at another, more important, audience as well: American evangelical Christians, whose support will be vital for the candidate in November. Former Gingrich and Bachmann devotees will never vote for Obama, of course, but their enthusiasm for Romney will affect turnout and may decide the race in crucial states like Florida. The Washington Post reports that “those close to the Romney campaign reject even the idea that the foreign trip was a net negative for them,” pointing instead to the “overall message” telegraphed by the candidate’s appearances in Israel and Poland. “As evidence, advisers point to a series of front pages in swing states like the Palm Beach Post, the Dayton Daily News and the Las Vegas Review Journal — all of which played the Israel visit very favorably.” What this is really evidence of is the degree to which Romney’s foreign policy trip was never about foreign policy at all. Even as he took fire for insulting the U.K.’s Olympic preparations, Romney’s eye remained trained on the larger prize: American voters. By this logic, the candidate could — and pretty much did — offend every country he visited, as long as the trip paid domestic dividends. Who cares if you’ve made impossible-to-keep promises to Israelis when you’ve managed to send the right message about the Holy Land to Floridians?
Again, Romney technically qualified his rhetoric about capital cities, making the anodyne statement that “My understanding is the policy of our nation has been a desire to move our embassy ultimately to the capita. I would only want to do so and to select the timing in accordance with the government of Israel.” Without costing him Adelson’s support — after all, his impassioned declaration that “It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel is already out there — this inoculates him at future debates with Obama from accusations that he is undermining the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. And Romney has already given the conservative intelligentsia what they want. “Romney’s position has implications far beyond the status of Jerusalem,” Noah Pollack writes glowingly. He continues:
It is a pledge to stop subordinating American policy and conforming America’s treatment of her allies to the desires of the “international community.” No more “engagement” for engagement’s sake, which under Obama, like Jimmy Carter before him, is often bad news for Israel.
With that, Pollack identifies another constituency targeted in Romney’s Jerusalem speech: conservative conspiracy theorists, who see in the U.N. the beginnings of a world government determined to subvert American sovereignty, take away our guns, and send everyone back to a luddite Dark Ages in pursuit of a radical environmental agenda (Google “Agenda 21” and be prepared to guffaw). In this reality, the U.N. is hostile to Israel and a threat to the U.S. — and Romney will stand up to it! Tellingly, at the very moment Romney was courting Jewish American millionaires in Jerusalem, Newt Gingrich was making an appearance at a Romney campaign event, condemning international aid to the Palestinians. “The United Nations camps have been terrorist training grounds,” said the former candidate. “And I think that they’re a disaster and have taught socialism.” The conservative spin on Romney’s remarks has been a giant Christmas present for Boston: the U.N. and Jimmy Carter! Is These are right-wing dog whistles par excellence.
Even the supposedly liberal media is not dense enough to see Romney’s comments on Iran and Jerusalem as true mistakes. An editorial in the Times notes correctly that “the Republican presidential candidate delivered a lot of bellicose rhetoric to please right-wing Israelis and the deep-pocketed donors traveling with him.” Yet the paper misses the point when it concludes that “the real audience for Mr. Romney’s tough talk was American Jews and evangelical Christians, some of whom accompanied him on his trip,” or when it writes in a news article that Romney “did not seek to recalibrate his remarks, as he did in Britain” because they “came as he has been trying to show his fealty to the Israeli cause and slice into President Obama’s Jewish support.”
For all the talk out of Boston about Obama’s “insults” to Israel and Romney’s supposed ability to put the Jewish vote into play, I doubt Romney is really aiming at the handful of American Jews who vote Republican. Even if Romney peels off a few percentage points of Jewish support from Obama, the president has as little to worry about that demographic as he does about black or Latino voters. There simply aren’t very many ready to defect from the Democratic Party. The Times does not place nearly enough emphasis on the true target of the Republican candidate’s speechifying: evangelicals. I suspect Boston’s expectations for the Jewish vote remain markedly lower than its “fighting for every vote” pronouncements suggest. However, talking a good line about appealing to American Jews sends a message to the far larger, far more important group of Christians who consider themselves “pro-Israel” (and who, by extension, see the president’s realpolitik as “anti-Israel”). These are voters for whom Judaism’s highest purpose is as a prefix in Judeo-Christian. Support for Israel has become as much of a litmus test for evangelicals as abortion or the Affordable Care Act, and the notorious coolness between Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu is proof to them that the president is insufficiently committed to protecting Christian interests abroad.
To some degree, there is logic to this position; if you believe the End Times are upon us and that Jerusalem is a key part of any number of prophecies associated with the Second Coming, unwavering advocacy for an independent Jewish state is a given. Not only does the Bible prophecy that Israel will be “besieged” as “all the nations of the earth are gathered against her” (Zech 12:2) — a description that fits with the conservative view of Israel as a tiny island of freedom surrounded by hostile neighbors — but it suggests that Jesus will reappear after the Jews (“the remnant of my flock“) reclaim the city, that the establishment of Israel’s sovereignty is the fig tree in the Luke 21 parable that will bloom when “the Kingdom of God is near,” and that the Messiah will rule from the Holy City that he has made “an immovable rock.” (I would note here that Israel’s military and nuclear edge complicates its image of victimhood, but that’s a liberal argument, not a conservative one.) It is not the Jewish “remnant” that Romney speaks to but another, more modern “remnant”: the rump of Rick Santorum backers and Michele Bachmann aficionados who long to hear an explicitly Christian message from the GOP nominee. Romney’s remarks are salve — the balm of Gilead, to run with the Biblical theme — to these disgruntled and grudging returnees to the mainstream Republican fold. A strong stance on Jerusalem, then, is no mistake or throwaway statement; it is a calculated entreaty aimed at the heart of American evangelicalism, and the right-wing and religious websites that praise the candidate — “Has any Republican candidate for president ever made such a strongly and thoroughly pro-Israel declaration as Romney did yesterday in Jerusalem?” — delivered the message straight to the target audience.
If the left-leaning punditry seemed to miss the boat by characterizing the Jerusalem remarks as a gaffe, a few conservatives got it depressingly right. I don’t often agree with Walter Russell Mead, who writes for The American Interest and usually focuses, laser-like, on marshaling exhaustive evidence against the sustainability of Social Security and the “blue state model” in general. However, as disturbing as I find the messianic tone of this blog post on Romney’s visit to Israel, Mead displays a better understanding of Romney’s motives than most mainstream writers:
Presidential candidates stressing their pro-Israel positions by supporting hard line Israeli leaders are more likely to be chasing non-Jewish than Jewish votes. In American politics, taking a strong pro-Israel stand is a way of communicating your commitment to American exceptionalism and to American global leadership.
For Governor Romney’s campaign, then, visiting Israel and stressing his support for Israel (and the support of many Israelis for him) is a way of solidifying the governor’s support among Republican evangelicals, but also of reaching out to a broader community of voters for whom the ‘miraculous’ establishment of Israel serves as a powerful sign of God’s continuing work in history.
It is a way of reinforcing his claim to be an authentically American heartland candidate in the race, a toot on the ‘dog whistle’ conveying the message to tens of millions of Americans that whatever investment banks he may have worked in, however many extra scriptures he believes, and however many times he has changed his views on important public policy issues, he “gets it.” He knows America is an exceptional nation with a unique world mission, he knows that God is guiding history, and he knows that America must stand by Israel — that miraculous sign of God’s continuing rule.
What is perhaps more interesting than the accuracy of Mead’s interpretation is that Mead himself is exactly the sort of voter that Romney is reaching for. I doubt Mead would consider himself prime fodder for gauzy, flag-wrapped advertising, or would admit that he could be swayed by Romney’s anodyne declarations of faith. But who, if not someone who writes approvingly of the U.S. as “an exceptional nation with a unique world mission” and treats the existence of God as self-evident, is the target of the Romney Religious Outreach Office?
The far more significant gaffe of the Israel trip, the one that truly produced a media buzz, was also in part an appeal to Christian voters. Though his comparison of Israel and Palestine and the suggestion that Israel’s unique culture is responsible for its economic success made the most news and drew the sharpest reaction from top Palestinian aide Saeb Erekat, who protested that “to talk about the Palestinians as an inferior culture is really a racist statement,” the later bits of Romney’s speech were clearly meant to appeal to a religious audience. Even leaving aside the offensive implication that, in the words of ABC News, “the discrepancy between the wealth of Israel and Palestinians was due in part to their different cultures,” Romney’s penchant for religious rhetoric should at least make secular Americans roll their eyes:
And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things. One, I recognize the hand of providence in selecting this place. [The Jews who left Egypt] came here recognizing that they must be relied upon, themselves and the arm of God to provide rain from the sky. And this therefore represented a sign of faith and a show of faith to come here. That this is a people that has long recognized the purpose in this place and in their lives that is greater than themselves and their own particular interests, but a purpose of accomplishment and caring and building and serving.
Romney then proceeded to connect the country’s religion to its economic prowess, saying “There’s also something very unusual about the people of this place” and segueing into a discussion of “Start-up Nation,” a book written by national security adviser Dan Senor (yes, the same Dan Senor who got out ahead of the candidate on Iran):
[Senor] described why it is Israel is the leading nation for start-ups in the world. And why businesses one after the other tend to start up in this place. And he goes through some of the cultural elements that have led Israel to become a nation that has begun so many businesses and so many enterprises and that is becomes so successful.
This isn’t a dog whistle to the faithful. It’s a siren.
The truly controversial lines in the speech were these, however.
As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality.
Romney’s figures are incorrect; the Times observes that he “vastly understated the income disparities between the two groups,” which are closer to $29,800 for Israelis and and $2,900 for the West Bank and Gaza. After musing about similar differences between other pairs of countries — Mexico and the United States, Chile and Ecuador — Romney spoke of two books he’d recently read. In particular, he praises David Landes’ Wealth and Poverty of Nations, which attributes economic success to cultural factors. Romney paraphrased Landes’ conclusion, then made the previously quoted connection to his host country and its neighbor:
[Landes] says, if you could learn anything from the economic history of the world it’s this: culture makes all the difference. Culture makes all the difference. And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.
The problem here is not so much that Romney disparaged Palestinian culture — indeed, CBS News notes that “Romney did not specifically mention Palestinian culture in his remarks, but the comparison between the Israeli and Palestinian economies, and his comments about culture, seem[s] to suggest an implicit judgment on Palestinian culture” — but that he ignores the elephant in the room: Israel’s economy-crushing restrictions on trade and movement out of the West Bank and Gaza. The Economist’s Democracy in America blogger looks at the divergent GDPs and concludes, “Those aren’t the kinds of numbers that divide industrious Protestants from happy-go-lucky Catholics. They’re the kind of numbers that divide South Korea from Ghana. You don’t get those kinds of divisions because of cultural differences.” He pushes vehemently against the idea that the Palestinians’ own ineptitude is to blame, noting that the inequality between Israel and Palestine goes far beyond Romney’s U.S./Mexico parallel:
The reason most Palestinians have low third-world income levels is that they are born into impoverished towns or refugee camps inside the gerrymandered Bantustans of the Palestinian Authority, where border crossings are controlled by Israeli military authorities, water sources are tapped to feed Jewish settlements, Israeli-built infrastructure bypasses them, the education system is funded by paltry international contributions and paltrier taxes, agricultural land is periodically taken by Jewish settlers whose illegal seizures are retroactively approved by the government, land values are undermined because of the overhanging threat of expropriation by Israel, and on and on through all the savage indignities and economic violence of a 50-year-long occupation by people whose ultimate goal is to force you off as much of the territory as possible.
The New York Times steps in with a more even hand to detail what Romney left out:
Mr. Romney did not speak to the deleterious impact of deep Israeli trade restrictions on the Palestinian economy, an effect widely described by international organizations including the World Bank, which recently reported that “the government of Israel’s security restrictions continue to stymie investment.”
The Palestinians have long complained that their economy is in a chokehold from Israeli security measures. The West Bank is subject to trade restrictions imposed by the Israelis, while Gaza was subject to a near-total Israeli blockade on people and goods after Hamas took control of its government five years ago. Mr. Romney mentioned neither during his speech on Monday.
Mainstream reporters and left-of-center pundits immediately jumped on the statement, labeling it a “stumble” (Eugene Robinson) and a “diplomatic fumble” (ABC News). The National Journal theorized that, while Romney had “internalized” some of the “unwritten rules of foreign diplomacy,” others had “apparently slipped out of the briefing book on his flight across the Atlantic to debut as a potential leader of the free world.” And the speech was indeed a misstep in the sense that, regardless of the validity of Romney’s economic theory, the prime objective of a foreign policy trip is never to stir up outrage in the world community. The candidate’s criticism of Britain’s Olympic readiness was a gaffe not because he was wrong — the Brits themselves complained of security snafus and overshot budgets — but because it was an insult. If the first rule of international relations is to do no harm, Romney committed a major infraction. Would it have been so difficult for Romney to get through his entire visit to Israel without deeply offending the Palestinians? No one had asked the candidate to address unpopular (and, in my view, unsupported) economic realities, yet he did it anyway, and did it in a posh hotel in front of some of the most aggressively hawkish — and fabulously wealthy — Republican Jews in the country. Juan Cole, the University of Michigan professor who has written extensively about the Middle East, acidly observes that, if Romney were so concerned about the gap in wealth between the two regions, he might have visited Ramallah or deigned to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “If he is going to this Middle East hot spot,” Cole writes, “why doesn’t he visit a Palestinian refugee camp so as to understand the nub of the dispute, instead of hobnobbing with the uber-rich in Jerusalem?”
Two columnists for the Times, both of whom are generally bullish on the idea that culture — whether that culture is expressed via “traditional” WASP values of leadership and and family or via the embrace of modern “flat world” economics — plays a significant role in a society’s success, notably echo Cole’s realistic take on the situation in Palestine. David Brooks, no apologist for Palestinians when assigning blame for turmoil in the Middle East, believes Romney’s is “obtuse” in this specific case to single out cultural differences as the driver of economic inequality. “The problem is that it doesn’t really apply to the Palestinians,” he writes. “Whatever one thinks of the situation in the Middle East, they have been living under some pretty horrific restrictions from the Israelis and they have been saddled with a spectacularly inept government of their own. Moreover, the Palestinians are one of the most industrious peoples in the region.” Thomas Friedman, who has written many a column criticizing Arab societies for failing to tap the skills and imagination of their young people, is perhaps a more surprising Romney detractor:
Israel today is an amazing beehive of innovation — thanks, in part, to an influx of Russian brainpower, massive U.S. aid and smart policies. It’s something Jews should be proud of. But had Romney gone to Ramallah he would have seen a Palestinian beehive of entrepreneurship, too, albeit small, but not bad for a people living under occupation. Palestinian business talent also built the Persian Gulf states. In short, Romney didn’t know what he was talking about.
Friedman ends with the caustic contention that Romney doesn’t really care about the situation on the ground: “Since the whole trip was not about learning anything but about how to satisfy the political whims of the right-wing, super pro-Bibi Netanyahu, American Jewish casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, why didn’t they just do the whole thing in Las Vegas?”
Right-wing commentators concern-trolling about Obama’s shaky relationship with independent voters like to “advise” Obama to have a “Sister Souljah” moment with his Occupy Wall Street base, but they never urge Romney to do the same with his wealthy Jewish donors. Instead, they commend his “bravery” for stating inconvenient truths about the Palestinians. But there is nothing brave about going after an easy target in front of an audience predisposed to agree. The amount of courage it takes to insult the Palestinians in front of a group of committed Zionists is equivalent to the courage it takes to bad-mouth the EPA at a ea party rally. Romney may have been technically correct, but why even say it? There are plenty of “honest” things to say about Israel, none of which involve scoring points with Sheldon Adelson or inflaming cultural divisions. There’s a reason it’s so distasteful to watch white Republicans lecture about how what they define as black “culture” – out-of-wedlock births, reliance on welfare – is more of a hindrance to the African-American community than racism. It doesn’t take courage to criticize those different from you. It certainly doesn’t take courage for a multi-millionaire to bloviate to his fellow multi-millionaires about the causes of Palestinian poverty. There is a reason Bill Cosby can get away with speaking harsh truths about the need for strong black fathers that would merely sound ugly coming from someone who has never known racism or grown up in a difficult environment. Returning to Juan Cole, we find a suggestion of what might constitute a Sister Souljah moment for Romney: “It is distasteful the Romney will not commit to a two-state solution within 1967 borders or demand Israel cease illegal squatting on and unilateral annexation of Palestinian land.” Might this have something to do with Sheldon Adelson’s outspoken opposition to the two-state proposal?
Still, even the Romney camp seemed to realize that his latest comments were of a different breed than his cheap promises about moving embassies and containing the mullahs in Iran. After all, “racist” is not exactly an epithet a savvy political operative wants attached to his candidate. Chief strategist Stuart Stevens told reporters that the remarks had been misinterpreted, proclaiming that “this was not in any way an attempt to slight the Palestinians. And everyone knows that.” Everyone? This is a bit of a stretch. What are the Palestinians supposed to feel, if not slighted, when someone says to Israel, You’re rich, your neighbors are poor, and if they’d just be more like you, well . . . they’d be rich, too.
For what it’s worth, though I did find Romney’s comments needlessly inflammatory, especially on such a tinderbox subject as the Israeli-Palestinian divide, I wouldn’t consider them racist. That a country’s economy is influenced by its culture is not a controversial idea; in fact, I read and agreed with most of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s Why Nations Fail. Acemoglu and Robinson identify culture — and they define culture broadly, in terms of the values (like transparency) and institutions conducive to good governance — as a determining factor in the differences between some of the same countries, like Mexico and the U.S., that are covered in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. This is not where Romney’s analysis fails; rather, it is incomplete and misleading because it ignores the pervasive and pernicious effect of Israeli policy. I certainly don’t agree with the far-left stance taken at the Huffington Post by Cenk Uygur, a Current TV host who apparently specializes in throwing rhetorical Molotov cocktails, who unfairly translates Romney’s comments as: “If Israel is richer, by definition, it must be superior.” Uygur contends that the words were “both deeply racist and deeply stupid,” when they were neither; simply impolitic and ill-advised, two characteristics dangerous enough in a future head of state. Unfortunately, Uygur’s description will inevitably become the only “typical” liberal response name-checked on conservative blogs, which will gleefully latch onto his inexcusable (why does the HuffPost run this stuff?) reference to Romney as a “son of a bitch [who] actually thinks he’s better than the rest of us because he was born to a mega-rich dad.” Sigh. The left does not need its own Michelle Malkin.
What even more sedate liberal critics fail to understand, however, is just how closely Romney’s “culture” comments parallel his earlier base-inspiring remarks. To suggest that the candidate made a classic Kinsley gaffe (“when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say”) is only half accurate, and underestimates the depth of Romney’s strategic thinking. “Culture makes all the difference” both is and isn’t an inadvertent expression of the candidate’s true beliefs. While what Romney said was not inadvertent — to the contrary, it was deliberately aimed at the conservative intelligentsia in exactly the same way his Jerusalem remarks were aimed at evangelicals — the repercussions of it were. Like any partisan, Romney exists in something of an ideological and creative bubble; he is surrounded by people who see no controversy in blaming the miserable Palestinian economy not on Israel’s blockade but on the lack of free-market values. If the conservative media are any indication, he is also surrounded by people for whom the inferiority of Arab culture is a given. Even supposedly respectable publications like National Review, where Romney chose to publish his own “what I meant was . . .” follow-up to his speech in Jerusalem, will fire one writer for penning racist satire while allowing another — Mark Steyn — to inveigh weekly on its pages about the evils of Islam and the threat to America of Muslims in general and sharia law specifically. The enthusiasm with which right-wing pundits cheered Romney’s remarks was disconcerting and slightly creepy. What does it mean that Romney’s conservative compatriots find it acceptable to write things like this, from Aaron Goldstein at the American Spectator:
What are we to expect of a Palestinian culture that dances in the streets and hands out candy to children when Jews are murdered as was the case with the Fogel family in March 2011? Can we honestly expect Palestinians to be prepared to live side by side with Israelis in peace when they delight in the slit throat of a 3 month old girl?
So the Palestinian leadership in Gaza and the West Bank is angry at Romney. Well, too damn bad. After all, it is these same leaders who see fit to name schools, soccer fields and streets after suicide bombers and that should tell you everything you need to know about Palestinian culture.
I expect this sort of dreck from Ann Coulter or the Breitbart empire, but the Spectator has been around for more than two decades. It purports to be a legitimate magazine. This, then, is what passes for normal in the conservative bubble, where democracy is to be praised — until it arrives in Arab countries, where it ushers Islamic-influenced governments into power. Suddenly, Romney is pontificating about Obama’s supposed mishandling of the Arab Spring and waxing nostalgic for Hosni Mubarak, who apparently could have been enticed to make “incremental” reforms. It is the same bubble in which Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich can talk seriously of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “infiltration” of the U.S. government and allege with straight faces that the administration coddles “radical Islamists.” No wonder Romney seemed clueless about the potential of his comments to offend.
Romney must have expected his comments about culture to be uncontroversial. He also expected them to send a very specific message to an important constituency. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones is blunt in his assessment:
Can I just point out the obvious here? This wasn’t a gaffe. This was a deliberate pander to the conservative base in the U.S., which pretty strongly believes that Palestinian culture is indeed corrupt, indolent, and sullen. Romney knows this perfectly well. He was demonstrating once again, in a very concrete way, that he’s no RINO. He really, truly feels tea-party style conservatism in his bones. It wasn’t just an offhand mistake.
A survey of the reaction from the conservative media elite (yes, there is such a thing, though it gets less demonizing publicity than its liberal counterpart) confirms Drum’s take. The Wall Street Journal waves its hand at any criticism as “silly,” choosing to nitpick about the semantics of the Palestinian denunciation — “neither Jews nor Arabs constitute a distinct race; in the usual racial taxonomy both are classified as white” — rather than take on the uncomfortable truth that Romney’s critics are angry not so much at his judgment of Palestinian culture but at his refusal to attribute any problems in the territories to the role of Israeli checkpoints and trade restrictions. Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner offers a similar analysis, writing that “The only way there will be peace in the Middle East is if there’s a major change in culture among Palestinians. But unfortunately, the media has decided that it’s too politically incorrect to acknowledge this reality and they would rather allow Palestinians to blame Israel for their problems.” The Palestinian Authority indeed needs to address the corruption, subsidies and government spending that hampers its administration of the territories, as calmer conservative voices at National Review remind us. The impenetrability of the conservative bubble is evident in Klein’s conclusion that such advice is best paired with remarks like these:
When Palestinians weren’t busy destroying greenhouses that could have boosted their economy, they elected the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, built an intricate system of tunnels for smuggling in weapons, launched thousands of rockets into Israel in the hopes of killing civilians and produced a children’s TV show that glorifies suicide bombers and teaches their children to be martyrs through characters such as a Mickey Mouse look alike talking about the annihilation of the Jews and a Jew-eating rabbit.
Then again, Republicans do love to blame the victim, from “welfare queens” to minorities who see affirmative action as a guard against persistent discrimination. The GOP has a talent for taking flawed systems — no one is denying that some welfare recipients could probably be working, just as no one is denying that the Palestinian Authority has problems — and harping on only the flaws caused by the people they dislike.
There’s also this predictable response from Charles Cooke at National Review, who trots out the old conservative meme about certain ways of life — namely, the capitalistic, Judeo-Christian traditions of the U.S. — are innately superior to others.
Some cultures are demonstrably better than others and it is often a positive thing for those who are faltering to have this pointed out to them. Mitt Romney knows a thing or two about success. Why should he not share this with those whose culture is failing them?
Well, perhaps because nobody asked Romney for his opinion. Mahmoud Abbas did not arrive, hat in hand, at Romney’s door in search of economic advice. Perhaps Romney should not have “shared” his take on Middle Eastern inequality because the purpose of his foreign policy trip was to highlight the positives, not come off as a negative, undiplomatic harpy with an inefficient attention to politeness and protocol. Romney’s chief strategist, Stuart Stevens, praised his boss by saying “he has a tendency to speak his mind and to say what he believes, and whenever you do that, there will be those that disagree with you, and there will be those that agree with you.” The trouble with lauding Romney’s ostensible truth-telling abilities (other than the fact that Romney refuses to “say what he believes” on any other issues, from taxes to women’s rights) is that honesty is not always the wisest policy for a president. As David Brooks asks at the Times, “since when did Mitt Romney start speaking frankly, and why do it at the most inopportune moment possible?” Senator Lindsay Graham, a GOP authority on national security, observed that “Words are important. I think you, as a candidate for president, you’ll soon understand that what you say is different.” In other words, the leader of the free world can’t go around tossing rhetorical firebombs into crowded rooms. It’s interesting that the Romney camp so often acts affronted at political interpretations of his remarks. Could this be because — and here I engage in my own Frank Luntz armchair psychology — because Romney does not regard himself as a politician? He identifies as a wildly successful capitalist and a savior of the Olympics who dispenses pearls of wisdom about economic progress. How dare anyone question his motives or impugn his purity of heart?
Perhaps that theory doesn’t hold much water, though, as the candidate more often seems to speak out of deep political calculation, with one finger held up to the wind to determine the direction of the electorate. When the AP begins its run-down of Romney’s trip overseas with the lament that “It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” the reporter misses the point. Actually, it was supposed to be this way. Romney knew exactly what he was saying — which makes his attempt on Fox News to clarify his statements so transparently fatuous. He claims legalistically that he wasn’t talking about “the Palestinian culture or the decisions made in their economy.”
I’m not speaking about it, did not speak about the Palestinian culture. That’s an interesting topic that perhaps could deserve scholarly analysis but I actually didn’t address that. I certainly don’t intend to address that during my campaign. Instead I will point out that the choices a society makes have a profound impact on the economy and the vitality of that society.
Ah. That contrast between Israel and Palestine, and the subsequent attribution of Israel’s success to its unique culture, was apparently not meant to say anything about Palestine itself. In that case, I suppose when he talks about the choices made by politicians in the U.S. to run up the national debt and expand health care access, he isn’t talking about “the American culture or the decisions made in their economy.” Sure, no connection whatsoever.
This denial is not helped by the opinion piece Romney published online Wednesday at the National Review. Politico calls it a “doubling down” of his comments about Palestinian culture, and it appears to be just that. It also raises the question of whether the candidate even understands why his remarks provoked such outrage from the Palestinians. Here are a few key bits, and a few key questions:
But what exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture? In the case of the United States, it is a particular kind of culture that has made us the greatest economic power in the history of the earth . . . But one feature of our culture that propels the American economy stands out above all others: freedom.
I imagine it’s difficult for the Palestinians to feel free when their movements in and out of Gaza are shunted through Israeli checkpoints and concrete security barriers wend their way through fields that used to boast olive orchards and farmland.
The Founding Fathers wrote that we are endowed by our Creator with the freedom to pursue happiness. In the America they designed, we would have economic freedom, just as we would have political and religious freedom . . . . Economic freedom is the only force that has consistently succeeded in lifting people out of poverty.
Questions for Romney: How do the restrictions imposed by Israel on Palestinian imports and exports allow for economic freedom? Is it possible for a region blockaded by a foreign power to have economic freedom? What role does freedom of movement, which is essential to free trade, have in lifting people out of poverty? Most importantly, how can Gazans foster a culture of economic freedom when that freedom is parceled out by the Israeli military?
The linkage between freedom and economic development has a universal applicability. One only has to look at the contrast between East and West Germany, and between North and South Korea for the starkest demonstrations of the meaning of freedom and the absence of freedom.
David Brooks is right to call the candidate obtuse. Not once does Romney mention the role of the Israeli occupation – though he would never call it an occupation – in the “economic development” of the Palestinian territories. The comparison would only be apt if South Korea were occupying the North, and if the famine in the DPRK were caused not by the ruinous policies of a dictator but by a deliberate economic stranglehold imposed by the South. Both North Korea and the Palestinian territories are dependent on food aid, but if international restrictions were removed on both countries, Kim Jong Un would still strip North Korean farms of their produce and devote outsize resources to military buildup. If Israel would ease its iron grip on the Palestinian economy or return seized agricultural lands to their previous Arab owners, military expenditures would still be a problem, but life in the territories would certainly be easier. As Talking Points Memo points out, even George W. Bush “described Palestinian economic troubles as a challenge that needed to be overcome en route to statehood rather than a sign of Israel’s moral superiority and pledged aid to that effect.” The Washington Post reports that GOP foreign policy elder Lindsey Graham cautioned yesterday that Romney “missed important nuances about that region.” Graham pointed out “that one Palestinian area, the West Bank, was growing quickly, while the Gaza Strip–controlled by the militant group Hamas–was stagnating.” Of course, Graham doesn’t mention that the Gaza Strip is also “controlled” by the Israeli military, which restricts the comings and goings of the region’s civilians and cramps its once-lucrative exports.
More from Romney:
As the case of Israel makes plain, building a free society is not a simple task. Rather, it is struggle demanding constant courage and sacrifice. Even here in the United States, which from our inception as a nation has been blessed with freedom, we faced monumental challenges in harmonizing our ideals with our institutions. We fought a bloody civil war against slavery and it took a nonviolent civil-rights movement to bring political and social equality to all Americans. In these epic struggles we changed our “culture” and vastly improved it.
It is supremely ironic that Romney writes of the role of war in American cultural development. If Israel and Palestine were not in constant conflict – conflict for which each side bears considerable blame – the income disparities between the regions would not be 10-to-1. The United States indeed fought a blood civil war, much as the Middle East is fighting its own internecine battles. I’d be interested to know what cultural improvements Romney thinks will emerge from half a century of “epic struggles” in Palestine. He speaks regularly of his admiration for the Founding Fathers, who took up arms against an occupying power and won their freedom through bloodshed. Presumably Romney is not encouraging the Palestinians to do the same (note to Romney: Shabab missiles are not rifles), though by this hastily written piece in National Review, you’re left to wonder.
With his National Review piece, Romney is essentially announcing to the world, This was not a gaffe. He meant exactly what he said, even if the mainstream media was too dense to appreciate it. Undoubtedly, a few comments about culture will not play a major — or even minor — role in deciding the 2012 election. But the Romney campaign inadvertently did its candidate a huge favor during a visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Poland, where press aide Rick Gorka eliminated any possibility of continued media focus on the speech in Jerusalem. Gorka’s tried-and-true distraction? Replace one gaffe with an even bigger one. As reporters shouted questions to the candidate, Gorka fired back, telling the press to “shove it.” He added:
Kiss my ass; this is a holy site for the Polish people. Show some respect.
Yeah, Rick, that was sure a respectful comment. Over at The New Republic, Timothy Noah makes this priceless tongue-in-cheek observation under the heading “Clarification, Please”:
I don’t understand. Rick Gorka’s ass is a “holy site for the Polish people”?
And with that, the incredible Media Gaffe Machine is off and running.
. . . So Well Read. . . 