First half a draw, second to Romney

(Can’t get to my computer, so forgive brevity and typos posting from my phone.)

Both candidates were aggressive and effective in the beginning. I couldn’t pick a winner. But beginning with Romney clobbering Obama on the economy while the poor guy had to just sit there, he gained a small but decisive win in the second half. 

Obama stood up to try to repair the damage after the shellacking on his economic record (what he could have said I can’t imagine) but got sent back to his chair by the moderator. I felt bad for
the guy. Obama then failed to decisively prevail on the women’s pay and immigration questions, which should have been easy winners for him.

Libya was uncomfortable for the president even though Romney should have hit harder. Crowley was despicable in falsely coming to the president’s aid, saying he did call the attack terrorism in the Rose Garden. He didn’t. And even that was before his “natural protests” remark. Romney had a fabulous answer to gun violence and poverty by championing marriage. Obama got in the 47% only at the very end, but it might have taken some wind out of Romney’s sails in an otherwise superior second half for him.

It was either a Romney win or a draw. I don’t see an argument that Obama pulled this one out or changed the trajectory of the race away from Romney.

Tim Kowal

Tim Kowal is a husband, father, and attorney in Orange County, California, Vice President of the Orange County Federalist Society, commissioner on the OC Human Relations Commission, and Treasurer of Huntington Beach Tomorrow. The views expressed on this blog are his own. You can follow this blog via RSS, Facebook, or Twitter. Email is welcome at timkowal at gmail.com.

84 Comments

  1. This is truly one of those “were we watching the same debate?” moments. I usually think that line is an exaggeration. Not right now. But these things are subjective.

    • FTR, I saw Obama kill in the first half, Romney find his feet 1/2way through with a solid 2-minute speech, then the end was a free-for-all featuring the dreaded Crowley intervention on behalf of Obama—which technically was like a standing 8-count.

      • Let me reiterate that I don’t profess to be good at this. I didn’t even regard the first debate as being the blowout it was widely characterized as. I figure I was overcorrecting for all the negative stuff about “my guy.” This time I might be doing the opposite.

        Debates are directed at two sorts of people: the decided, whom the candidates want to inspire, and the undecided, whom the candidates want to persuade. On the first point, I feel comfortable calling it a tie or a near-tie — no big argument either way. On the second point I feel less comfortable because I have a harder time understanding how anyone could be undecided in the first place and what that sort of person would find persuasive. I’m personally disgusted on the Libya issue and intuitively believe/guess that undecideds also feel that was a particularly bad moment for Obama last night. I also thought Obama continued to recycle 2008-sounding stuff mixed with some digs at Romney with varying rhetorical effectiveness. But to the undecided, that’s just more of the stuff they’ve already heard so I can’t imagine they found it very persuasive. But we’ll just have to wait and see how it plays.

        • Jeopardy! or Family Feud, eh? I agree here:

          I also thought Obama continued to recycle 2008-sounding stuff mixed with some digs at Romney with varying rhetorical effectiveness. But to the undecided, that’s just more of the stuff they’ve already heard so I can’t imagine they found it very persuasive.

          or at least the post-debate polls seem to.

          CBS Poll: Romney Wins 65-34 on Economy; CNN Poll: Romney Wins 54-40 on Economy, 49-46 on Health Care, 51-44 on Taxes, 59-36 on Deficit, 49-46 on Leadership, All in Favor of Romney

          http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Press-Romney-Loses-Debate-Voters-Romney-Wins-Debate

        • Hope you don’t mind going over it, but I really don’t understand this outrage (or whatever) about the Libya issue (presuming that you’re speaking of Bengazi).

          Everything that I saw of Obama during that two-week period is of him (and his representatives) reaching no conclusions, but promising to investigate it. There seems to be this presumption that not “admitting” that it was a pre-planned, expertly-executed strike against the consulate and the Ambassador was something that would be politically harmful to the administration, and that they were stonewalling for purely political reasons, causing additional harm to the nation.

          I have no particular dog in this hunt, but this seems wrong to me in all of its presumptions (assuming, of course, that I understand the sources of conservative outrage here). I see no political advantage here in delaying the “reveal” that it was, indeed, not only an “act of terror,” but executed by “terrorists,” as well. In fact, I would think that a political advantage would have been wasted, given our rally-round-the-flag tendencies when attacked. I see no political calculation, no sleazy deception, and no additional cause to our nation. All I can potentially see is, well, prudence: the reluctance to jump to, and announce, an inflammatory conclusion before certainty was reached.

          So, I really don’t understand this meme that the administration “lied” on Libya, or did something dishonorable. Would you mind explaining it to me: I would really like to understand.

          • Snarky — Totally agree that the Administration was not (or at least should not) be expected to have “jumped to conclusions” re terrorism. My impression, without going back now to confirm, is that Susan Rice and maybe others had in fact taken the position it was NOT terrorism, that it was, as the President would put it, “natural protests … used as an excuse by some extremists,” or words close to that. That it was all spontaneous, not planned. I watched Susan Rice that Sunday. She was on Face the Nation right after Libyan President Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf (iirc) said it WAS a planned attack. (Here’s the link — I haven’t reviewed it, just going from memory here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57513819/face-the-nation-transcripts-september-16-2012-libyan-pres-magariaf-amb-rice-and-sen-mccain/) El-Magariaf pointed out that you don’t bring rocket launchers to a spontaneous demonstration. Rice said they were investigating, but then went on to make the point that they currently believed the attacks were merely spontaneous. In other words, the Administration could have just said “we don’t know, we’ll get back to you.” It took a position, albeit interim, that the YouTube video was the big deal, that most of the mischief was all centered around that, and the killing was all part of that same chain of events. That was probably an important narrative because it put blame on the video producers, not the lack of foresight that a terrorist act might happen on the anniversary of 9/11.

            No single detail here is damning. The whole thing is not that big a deal, I suppose, in the scheme of things. Like Will says, focusing on any particular statement makes it sound like nitpicking. But in politics, if you can’t find a hook, the whole thing blows over without any accountability. That’s probably why Romney tried so hard to have a gotcha moment on the Libya question. But it didn’t work. The Administration still screwed up moderately big on Libya, but it can’t be explained in 100 words or less so it’s not big enough to have a real impact. Though because it was raised last night, and because Crowley underscored it in a buffoonish way, and because we have a FoPo debate coming up, maybe people will be willing to pay enough attention that it will matter. We’ll see.

        • Snarky,

          The apex of it all was when the evidence was mounting that this was a coordinated terrorist attack, the Libyan government said tha tit was a coordinated terrorist attack, and the administration said they were wrong. Not with absolute definitiveness, but saying that the evidence didn’t point in that direction despite the fact that it did.

          • I dunno, I would weigh that in the Administration’s favor.

            Attacks on the US, or US citizens, by an organized group or nation call for a different level of response than a mob action: and it seems wise, to me, to not make that declaration until pretty damn certain that it was true. They might have taken a while to come to that conclusion (two weeks!), but I still don’t see how the nation was harmed, particularly when compared to the downsides of coming to that conclusion in error.

            Sorry, Will. I still don’t get it.

          • Sorry to double post, but here’s an interesting story from the NYT, linked to by Kevin Drum, about how the “conclusion” that this was an act of terror by a terrorist organization was pretty muddy all along.

          • Snarky,

            My problem is that they weren’t saying “We don’t know what happened and shouldn’t jump to conclusions about whether this was an orchestrated terrorist attack.”

            They said, “We believe that this was not an orchestrated attack and those saying otherwise are wrong.”

            Some caution before making a declaration would have been wise. Instead, they perpetuated and defended the opposing narrative. They made, and stuck to, the wrong narrative. If you don’t know, say you don’t know. Don’t say “It was probably because of that flik that Terry Jones marketed.”

          • I’m not seeing where Rice said “they’re wrong to assume it was premeditated.” Rather she says that “the evidence we have available tells us x.”

            Which was later revised to “well now our investigation is ongoing and it’s likely not x as we first thought.”

          • Snarky, the link casts doubt on al Qaeda involvement, but not really that it was a terrorist attack. I actually agree that the evidence on AQ is somewhat thin. The main question being whether this was an orchestrated terrorist attack or a spontaneous rebellion. The extent to which it matters involving whether or not it was in direct response to something we did, or whether it was a general pre-planned attack for the anniversary of 9/11. The administration took the position that it was (probably) A while the evidence was increasingly pointing to B.

            Nob may be right that it was a fog of war/bureaucracy issue that had Rice saying what she did. That’s the most benign explanation that comes to mind. The degree to which the Terry Jones narrative was a political benefit to the administration makes less benign explanations more possible, to me, than they otherwise would be.

          • Will –

            Can you explain “the degree to which the Terry Jones narrative was a political benefit to the administration?” Like Snarky above, I just don’t understand how one narrative serves the administration while the other doesn’t.

        • Scott,

          Spontaneous riots are less predictable. The notion that an administration should be able to prepare for them is much weaker. I’m not particularly one to criticize this for happening under Obama’s watch, but the case would have even less meat if it were to be considered unforeseeable rather than something that was planned and could have been intercepted.

          It also speaks to Libyan stability and what we accomplished there. Having assisted in a regime change. Post-regime change, we have insurgents/terrorists killing Americans. Even though they really shouldn’t be because we don’t have the troop control like we did in Iraq, I believe there to be psychological connections. A desire for it not to be another Iraq precludes advantageously using this to put troops on the ground and help keep the peace. It sort of boxes Obama in. This is all far less the case if we’re dealing with spontaneous actors.

          Also, the Terry Jones narrative makes this at least somewhat about Obama’s domestic adversaries. It keeps the talk at least a little bit on extreme anti-Muslim bigotry in a way that makes the right look bad to some.

          That’s my view, anyway.

          • Okay, if you say so.

            You want a scandal so badly you’ll invent it from whole cloth.

          • Scott, I may have my faults, but being a partisan hack isn’t among them. Or an Obama-hater, scandalmonger, or whatever else leads you to that impression of me.

          • Will –

            I was out of line to lump you in with others who are taking similar lines of argument with more hackish intent. I apologize.

            I’ve enjoyed reading your comments here and elsewhere, so the impression I’m getting now is at odds with what I know of your thinking. That is why the tenacity with which you are hanging your argument on semantics here is so inexplicable to me.

            There are legitimate issues with the tragic events that occurred in Benghazi. Obama’s choice of words in the Rose Garden isn’t one of them.

          • Scott, it’s okay. I was mostly taken aback because I thought we’d had productive conversations in the past. You’re FKA 62across, right?

            To clarify something, I don’t really have a problem with the Rose Garden speech. I am cutting some meta semantic cloth, but it’s most because of what I believe what was and was not said. Even that’s been a mixed bag. I defended Obama having referred to Benghazi as an act of terror, but did not believe that constituted calling the perpetrators terrorists. I suppose I haven’t been clear in saying that I don’t have a problem with that. He thought they were rioters. So did I.

            My issue was with what came after. What I believe was likely a purposeful misdirection. You’re apparently flummoxed by that reading of the situation (at least in part) because you see no percentage in it. I do. My reading of the situation is that this was rotten. I don’t think this administration is rotten, but I genuinely believe that was and (perhaps uncharacteristically) am having a hard time accepting the more benign explanations put forth.

            Anyhow, my time is limited and I need to focus on the new member of the Truman clan arriving in four days (eep!), so I’m (gradually) checking out of these threads. Cheers!

          • You’re apparently flummoxed by that reading of the situation (at least in part) because you see no percentage in it.

            That’s it right there, Will. As far as I’m concerned, the absence of any percentage here makes it very difficult to find something nefarious in the WH’s actions or words at any point in the timeline here. Thanks for trying to make that case, but I just don’t see it.

            This may be due to my seeing the costs and benefits in this situation almost as mirror opposites of what you appear to. I’d think, based on the national mood in this country since 2001, that the truly beneficial position politically for the Administration would have been to play up the terrorism angle all along. Here in the US, we like us some saber-rattling and reminding the people of a continuing imminent threat would be a good way to get the electorate to rally around the flag while Obama’s still holding it. But to my mind, this is the most counterproductive way to respond to terrorism.

            The effectiveness of terrorism depends primarily on the target responding in terror. Every time a politician in America says ‘9/11 changed everything,’ whatever remains of Al Qaeda’s leadership drinks a toast somewhere. One heinous action by a couple dozen attackers more than ten years ago still has a country of 300 million dancing on a string (at TSA checkpoints, in libraries, on the battlefront in Afghanistan). Talk about a Return on Investment! We’d be much better off as a nation if we could respond to terrorism with lethal pursuit of those responsible accompanied by as little fanfare as possible. Nothing weakens the power of terrorism like deafening silence.

            [Note: This comment is written with full knowledge that it may not be read for several days, when I see some waking hours in the middle of the night for you. Good luck with the little Truman! And, yes, the crossword aficionado and I are one and the same.]

  2. A couple additional thoughts:

    Grading on a curve, Obama had the edge. He brought a good to excellent performance following a poor to abysmal performance two weeks ago. The trajectory of his individual performance elated his base and probably boosted his rating a couple points last night. This is also the reason Biden’s performance was so well received right after the veep debate: He was strong where his ticket had been exposed as effete, and assuaged supporters like Andrew Sullivan and Jon Stewart who wondered aloud whether Obama wasn’t going to re-elect us. The last two debates reassured Democrats that their ticket is still breathing.

    Beyond the debates themselves, both Biden and Obama opened the Libya issue wide open. Even Crowley’s remarks, while they had the immediate effect of helping Obama, will draw the news cycle for the next several days to the Libya timeline, that Obama referenced “terror” but didn’t direct it at the attack on the embassy, and Carney and Rice both thereafter said repeatedly it wasn’t terrorism, and Obama himself called it a “natural protest.” All this flowing from a question that Obama refused to answer: Who was asked for more security in Benghazi and why was the request denied? This is a big problem for the President as he prepares for an upcoming debate devoted entirely to national security.

    Biden and Obama went for optics in their recent debates and, grading on the curve, arguably won. But between Obama’s unconsciousness in the first debate, Biden’s mugging in the veep debate, and both of their gaffes on Libya, they’ve exchanged one set of problems for another, and haven’t really laid a glove on their opponents.

    • Fair points, especially the trajectory of improvement on the Dems side, Tim. I’m not sure how Obama opened up Libya for himself more last night, but neither do I think he shut it down completely. I can’t see either a gaffe nor a failure to answer the question by him last night: he was asked what the hell happened, and he said he’s endeavoring to find out. i.e. he doesn’t know.

      I do still think that irrespective of prior performances, on style and substance Obama clearly had the better of it last night, but I can see how the trajectory of improvement might make you doubt your eyes on that.

  3. “Crowley was despicable in falsely coming to the president’s aid, saying he did call the attack terrorism in the Rose Garden. He didn’t. And even that was before his “natural protests” remark.”

    Um… what? He didn’t do it but he did do it before something else?

    • Speech in the Rose Garden came before.

      So you can judge for yourself on what he did or didn’t say in the Rose Garden, here’s the relevant passage:

      “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”

      That’s the only instance of the word “terror” or any derivative thereof in the entire speech.

      • So did he or did he not refer to what happened as an “act of terror”?

        Are we going to start having arguments about how language works again? I thought we finished all that with the “You didn’t build that” nonsense.

        • He clearly thinks he did.
          The republicans think he was being wishy washy.

          I’d say we take the gentleman at his word.

          • Kim,

            I’ll consider this proposition. As I said, I wouldn’t be alarmed by the Rose Garden speech if not for everything that happened afterward. So even if he gets a pass, he’s still got lots of problems on Libya. And was it in Crowley’s purview to insist that viewers “take the gentleman at his word”? She was indisputably in the wrong, wasn’t she?

          • man. how pushy.
            I don’t see much problem. There were two contending views,
            one of which gradually seemed better than the other.
            (you can bet a few egos needed running over to get to the post).
            Then the administration aboutfaced (probably a day or two
            after “suspicions” got leaked).

            This is normal for detective work.

          • The issue is, as Detectives, they loudly proclaimed that John Smith did it. Even though there was evidence from very early on that Smith might not have done it. Then, even as the evidence against Alan Johnson accumulated, they continued to say that John Smith did it. And now, as it became clear that Alan Johnson did it, they say that they didn’t say so sooner because they didn’t want to jump to conclusions.

            Back to the real issue, I’d have less of an issue here if they had said “we don’t know” rather than “it was the film.” They jumped to the wrong conclusion, which was an understandable error even though in retrospect they shouldn’t have jumped to any conclusion, but then essentially told the Libyan government and people pointing to the mounting evidence not only that they may not be right, but that they were actively wrong.

          • Will,
            yes. I agree someone might be upset. But this is normal for detective work. detectives make asses out fo themselves all the time.

        • Transcript speaks for itself: http://www.forextv.com/forex-news-story/full-transcript-of-obama-s-rose-garden-speech-after-sept-11-benghazi-attack

          Obama reference to “acts of terror” follows a reference to the 9/11 attacks. With respect to the Benghazi attack, he uses a number of other words, but never terrorist: “attack,” “attackers,” “killers,” “brutal,” “senseless violence,” even “terrible” — but not “terrorist.”

          As Duck mentioned, one might rehabilitate the reference to generic “acts of terror” as a possible reference to Benghazi if Ambassador Rice didn’t thereafter embark on a tour serially denouncing Benghazi was terrorism while Obama took fundraising trips and apparent skipped security briefings in the wake of the tragedy, and while the Administration was otherwise badly waffling on the question.

          • I’m sorry, but if you don’t think he was referring to Benghazi as an “act of terror” when he wrapped up a speech about Benghazi with the phrase “acts of terror” than I really don’t know what to tell you, other than the lighten up your partisan-colored glasses a bit.

          • Tim, he used the words “acts of terror” in the same paragraph that he referred to “this (terrible) act”… so it seems pretty clear to me that he was indeed referring to this act as one of those acts of terror. I have to bend around to come to another interpretation.

            It’s really unfortunate that Romney focused on that wording, given the correctness of his broader point that the administration denied that this was an act by organized terrorists (or something other than frustrated rioters) long after it became evident that was what happened.

          • Will, it’d be a strange case of burying the lede in any event. I’ll grant there’s room for argument on the point. But Crowley was still procedurally wrong to step in, and substantively wrong to call the interpretation issue as if it were settled. You can “refer” to lots of things in a statement, but in politics you generally have to state it clearly to make it stick. Carney recently had to backpedal that “the Administration” “clearly” doesn’t refer to the President and Vice President. You can bet that, if events had unfolded differently and Benghazi turned out NOT to be an act of terrorism, we’d be hearing the Obama campaign saying exactly what I’ve said above, that “acts of terror” is a general not a specific reference, he wasn’t referring to Benghazi specifically, he was referring to 9/11, etc. This was a slippery statement and intended to be.

            Totally agreed on your last paragraph.

          • For God’s sake, Tim, you’re really reduced to arguing that Obama only said “act” instead of attack, and “terror,” but not “terrorist”? You’re not litigating a fracking contract, you know? You’re arguing over phrasing, not substance, and you’re acting as though it’s a big deal. You’re smarter than that–don’t let partisanship during an election season rot your brain and make you stupid.

          • “For God’s sake, Tim, you’re really reduced to arguing that Obama only said “act” instead of attack, and “terror,” but not “terrorist”? ”

            Words mean things, bro. Had he meant “terrorist” he’d have said it.

          • In this pivot, I am actually more sympathetic to Tim and Duck. I think that generally, we consider rioters and terrorists to be two distinct sets of people. The first are acting out of emotional energy, the second are acting in a calculated move to instill terror.

            So while I believe that Obama did in fact quite clearly refer to Banghazi as an “act of terror” I believe he meant that it was an act of terror committed by rioters. He clearly did not believe that they were terrorists in the sense that we think of them. Which is what Romney was trying – and failing – to get at.

          • Let’s say you’re right, although I don’t agree.* So then in those first hours after the attack Obama should have known precisely whether it was out-of-control rioters or a planned terrorist attack?

            Come on, the administration can be critiqued for being muddled on the issue for the next coupke of weeks, but there is no way that their immediate response can be seriously attacked for any reason than moronic partisanship. I can’t remember a campaign season when the level of moronic partisanship was ratcheted up so high. For God’s sake could we at least try to make the League a moronic partisanship free zone, and just keep it to the level of normal partisanship?

            Look, all you Republicans, let me know when Obama has his marines in Beirut or Iran-Contra moment. Then I’ll take you seriously. But the way this issue is being treated as a major blunder is just bullshit to the nth degree.
            ____________________
            * Acts of terror are not terrorist acts. Got it. And the small degree of difference apparently has huge FoPo implications that prove Obama is unqualified to be C in C. Got it. No, Todd, I know you’re not saying the latter, but lots of dumber-than-mud people are, and I hate to see someone as bright as our author here fall into line with those folks who aren’t worthy to wash his jock strap.

          • James,

            The reason why the speech the day after matters is that it was what was cited by Obama that he was calling it an act of terror. Everything afterwards pointed the needle away from it having been committed by terrorists. If he’d declined to call it a terrorist act the day after, but did so as the evidence pointed in that direction – or had simply refrained from saying that it was due to the film – we wouldn’t be talking about what he said so soon after the attack.

            Does that make sense?

            (I don’t think this singularly disqualifies him from being the C-i-C. I wouldn’t vote against him for this reason. But I still do thing the broader issue to be legitimate. The president successfully dodged it by being right about what he said in a particular speech when Romney said he was wrong.)

            Obama Critic: He never called it a terrorist attack.
            Obama Defender: Actually, he did the very day after the attack.
            Critic: Actually, at most he called it an “act of terror.”
            Defender: Why are we fixating on what he said the day after the attack?

          • Obama Critic: He never called it a terrorist attack.
            Obama Defender: Actually, he did the very day after the attack.
            Critic: Actually, at most he called it an “act of terror.”
            Defender: An act of terror is/em> a terrorist act.
            Critic: Me fail English? That’s unpossible!

            FTFY.

          • “So what I want all of you to know is that we are going to bring those who killed our fellow Americans to justice. I want people around the world to hear me: To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished. It will not dim the light of the values that we proudly present to the rest of the world. No act of violence shakes the resolve of the United States of America.”

            Barack Obama, September 13, 2012

            Further on September 19th at a senate hearing:

            “I would say yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy,” Matt Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said Wednesday at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, in response to questioning from Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-CT) about the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

            And the State Department’s official response on September 14th was:

            “I’m going to frustrate all of you, infinitely, by telling you that now that we have an open FBI investigation on the death of these four Americans, we are not going to be in a position to talk at all about what the U.S. government may or may not be learning about how any of this this happened — not who they were, not how it happened, not what happened to Ambassador Stevens, not any of it — until the Justice Department is ready to talk about the investigation that’s its got,” State Department spokeswoman Victorian Nuland told reporters late Friday afternoon.

            etc. etc.

            This was a complicated issue, and the likelihood was that individual actors got different talking points based on different staffers drafting memos. These things happen, but State’s slowly been moving toward a consensus opinion on the subject.

          • Will, man, this is getting meta. But I think I got you, and you’re right.

            All I’m saying is, I will NOT vote for Crowley for president.

          • Nob, the Olson quote definitely has some teeth to it. It would have been more helpful, of course, if they hadn’t sent Rice out to say that it was what it wasn’t.

            James, whether an act of terror is the same as a terrorist act is a matter of interpretation and not English reading comprehension. Does a rioter committing an act of terror qualify as a terrorist? Not in the sense that I perceive the word “terrorist” (whose actions are by nature political and not spontaneous). It does seem relatively clear, however, that the administration continued to push the narrative that it was rioters rather than how the evidence was actually pointing after the evidence was pointing there.

          • Oh, also, I wanted to state that I had intended to take the Critic/Defender out of that comment. I don’t know how I left it in there as it came across more acrimonially than was intended.

          • Rice’s statement was:

            “Based on the best information we have to date … it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent…. We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.

            The bolded one which I assume is the offending quote. I’m willing to chalk this up to bureaucratic fog of war and Rice herself being briefed incorrectly by the memos she was dealing with.

          • Will, sorry, but I’m not willing to concede there’s some meaningful distinction between an act of terror and a terrorist act. If a rioter commits an act of terror, he’s a terrorist. If you’re unwilling to call him a terrorist, then on what basis do you call it an act of terror? A terrorist is someone who commits acts of terror. This is the first time I’ve heard someone suggest that people can commit acts of terror without being terrorists. So if committing acts of terror don’t mean you’re a terrorist, what does? I’m also surprised to hear that an act of terror is not necessarily a terrorist act. Is it equally true that a feat of athleticism is not necessarily an athletic feat? An act of compassion is not a compassionate act? It sounds to me like you’re importing some definitions that aren’t standard and probably weren’t on the President’s mind when he was speaking the day after the event.

            As to critic/defender, it didn’t seem overly acrimonious to me. I just didn’t like standing in as a defender of Obama, rather than just as a critic of his critics.

            Seriously, if this had happened in May 2011 all anybody would be talking about is the administrations’ communication problems. This isn’t even a tempest in a teapot, but a stiff breeze in a thimble. (Although it is more substantive, if less amusing, than Romney’s binders full of women comment. I can’t help but laugh at his ineptitude–and what would conservatives be saying if that had come out of Biden’s mouth?–but how pathetic is it that it’s our biggest post-debate topic of conversation? And there, may I point out, is exactly why I avoided watching it. We’d be better off without them.)

          • James, my definition of “terrorist” would correspond with WordNet’s:

            1: a radical who employs terror as a political weapon;

            Dictionary.com’s definitions also correspond, roughly.

            A spontaneous demonstrator would not qualify, even if they were violent and actually caused terror.

            It does seem clear to me that the administration’s response was that it was (probably) not terrorism in the conventional sense (al Qaeda or something like it – an organized militia of some sort with a plan to cause terror for political gain), which was Romney’s broader point where he muffed the delivery. That he referred to it as an act of terror does not, in my view, change the fact that they were pointing the finger towards “spontaneous demonstration.”

          • P.S. The Mark Lynch piece linked to by Nob in the comments of his front page post reflects my view exactly.

          • The Lynch piece does a great job of puncturing Romney’s “two week” claim, making it at best semantically right (if it weren’t for his being semantically wrong for the “acts of terror” part).

          • Somebody killing an American ambassador as a response to an offense that came from America would not be “employing terror as a political weapon”?

            “We’re going to respond to perceived American hatred of Islam by attacking and killing the American ambassador” is not political?

            Does somebody need an Al Qaeda ID card to be a terrorist? How many months of planning is required for an act of terror to become a terrorist act? Is it not possible to be a spontaneous terrorist, someone with a political hatred who fantasizes about striking a blow, then is further inflamed by a new offense, and having plenty of motive finds himself with both means and opportunity and suddenly decides to take advantage of the moment to act? By definition that person can’t be a terrorist?

            More importantly, you’re the President and somebody has just killed your ambassador in response to an American offense against Islam–do you think to yourself, “Well, it was a political act, and it was an act of terror, but it wasn’t the use of terror as a political weapon. So I’ll call it an act of terror, but I won’t mean that it was a terrorist act.”?

            That beggars my imagination.

          • Somebody killing an American ambassador in a fit of anger due to a video does not strike me as “employing terror as a political weapon.” Which was what it was initially thought to be, by my recollection. If I thought that it was the position of the administration that such spontaneous actors were terrorists, I would disagree, but that would ultimately be beside the point because the question to me is and was the extent to which it was a response to the film or a spontaneous fever pitch.

            I should also add that on the broader point, you (and others) may be completely right. I’ve mentioned previously that my judgment could be clouded by my personal anger at the administration continuing to advance (either because of bureaucratic mishap or something else) a theory that had ceased to be credible.

            This isn’t as big a deal to me as Obama’s actions on medical marijuana, but it is a point of agitation for whatever reason.

          • Will, I find myself unable to understand your position. It seems to boil down to a certain amount of pre-meditation being required before an act becomes a terrorist act, even if the act itself is otherwise identical to a non-terrorist act. We do distinguish between premeditated and spontaneous murder, treating the first more seriously than the second, but not only do we still call them both murder, but one doesn’t have to meditate very long on the act for it to become premeditated. I’m not following why people who commit acts of terror have a more forgiving standard.

          • “So if committing acts of terror don’t mean you’re a terrorist, what does?”

            Oh, I can think of a few things…

            (James, please chime in on my “Off the Cuff” post on this very subject, if you will.”

          • Kazzy, I second Nob on that post 100%. He and I are coming from the same background, academic definitions. I can’t add anything to what he said. Just re-read what he wrote and mentally replace his name with mine so it sounds more reputable. (Just kidding, Nob!)

          • Cool. Yea, I don’t object to the academic definition being used consistently. My objection was to all the other ways the term is abused. Frankly, I don’t think it really matters what we call it. I mean, it does, and it doesn’t. Understanding why folks are doing what they are doing is exceedingly important. But calling someone a “bad guy” versus a “super duper bad guy”… what’s the point other than to manipulate people’s emotional responses?

          • James,

            I consider an Act of Terror to be any act that causes terror. I consider a terrorist to be someone who fits a particular profile that engages in acts of terror for specific and psychologically strategic reasons. The Israeli Army and Palestinian revolutionaries may both engage in Acts of Terror (arguably, we did in Hiroshima) but I would identify the actors in the first case as “soldiers” and in the second case “terrorists.” Rioters would similarly get a different designation. It’s not a matter of an act of terror by a rioter being less bad or worse than one by a terrorist, but it doesn’t follow (in my mind) that calling something an act of terror means that the person who committed it is a terrorist in the way I consider the term.

            I don’t believe it to be coincidental that Obama used the phrase “act of terror” the day after, but the word “terrorist” was not used (according to Lynch’s timeline) until some time later.

          • Will, fine, so Obama was being cautious. I still can’t fathom any reason intelligent adults with a modicum of integrity would make this out to be an issue of any real significance beyond the effectiveness of the White House’s coordination of messages. Just because it gets played up heavily by a bunch of notorious partisans desperately seeking some traction in a prez campaign is not reason for other people to think maybe there’s really something.

            [Serious news voice or crazy talk radio voice, as the reader prefers] “Today President Obama said X prime when we all know that it’s really X subprime. Clearly he is unfit to lead.”

            I know you’re not saying that, but by treating it as a serious issue of any sort you play right into their game of trying to make the public believe it is a serious issue. It’s just pure political theater.

          • If there was an issue, Romney botched it by getting high and mighty about something he was wrong about.

            As I said (maybe here, maybe elsewhere), this was a point of anger (or at least irritation) for me at the time even before Romney said something. Not the precise wording (terrorism versus AOT and so on) but that he at least appeared to be pushing a narrative that had already fallen apart in my eyes. That narrative could have, as Nob suggests, simply been a matter of people not being properly briefed. I have some skepticism on that, but my views may be clouded.

            I agree that this doesn’t make Obama unfit to lead. Nor does MedMar. But it is an issue that uncharacteristically excites me, apparently. 🙂

          • “Will, sorry, but I’m not willing to concede there’s some meaningful distinction between an act of terror and a terrorist act.”

            Libya is a huge deal and the issue goes way beyond that. It’s not just that President Obama didn’t call out the Libya/Egypt attacks as terrorism when they happened but also because at the time the Administration, its surrogates and allies in the media were blaming Mitt Romney’s tweet and some filmamker in Florida (who nobody knows) who made a film nobody saw.

            It wasn’t until the 1-3 weeks later when the terrorism story gradually got straightened out. We know your Rose Garden theory doesn’t hold water because the terrorism story everybody knew that the narrative surrounding Libya had significantly shifted, almost completely flipped in fact.

          • Koz, that was delightfully incoherent, which only reinforces my claim that this is an issue only partisan ideologues with their heads somewhere under their tails are exercised about. Go on, write something else that further convinces me. I’m so fishing sick if all the political bullshitbright now I’m totally in the mood to get have more partisan gasbags to mock.

            You can get in line right behind the idiot libs whining about the death of Big Bird.

            If we really could get a pox running through both your houses, now that’s a bandwagon I could jump on.

          • Will, I can get irritation. But for me it was more a sadly-shaking-my-head-wonder amusement, Locke watching the bottom not top ten plays on Sports Center, or any number of bad ideas gone wrong on Americas Funniest Idiots. Or maybe watching the Chargers blow a twenty four point lead to Peyton Manning and the Denver Tebows. They needed to shut down everybody ASAP and tell them nobody is to say a word outside the daily White House directed line. G.W. Bush’s administration would never have made this blunder–they had the fiercest and most effective message control of any oresidencybin history (in years 1-6, then it slid), and they would have been well versed in their response techniques. Team Obama clearly hasn’t been practicing that play, and were slow to recognize how this run of the mill comminications blunder could be played for real electoral gain. Maybe it’s because I teach presidency without having any emotional attachment to either the office, the larger institution, or it’s holders, but the problem doesn’t strike any outrage buttons with me. It’s just filed away as another case study in communications screw ups and how they can dog a presidency.

          • The semantics of the Rose Garden speech was a misdirection and I fell for it. But the Libya issue is as important as anything the President does, isn’t it? How he handles the fallout of a national security incident? W with the bullhorn screaming after the people who knocked down these buildings was a highlight, maybe the highlight, of his administration. No such clarity from O. In fact, rather than uniting, he confused most of us and sent the rest worrying/bickering about what the hell’s the matter with the administration. Parallels to Fast and Furious with DOJ saying “I don’t know, talk to ATF,” and ATF saying “I don’t know, talk to DOJ.” We know how that wound up: bipartisan contempt vote.

            Which is still, of course, just political theater.

          • Those are reasonable questions. I’m open to correction, but I don’t think it means much about the Middle East Fo Po wise. We knew such folks are there, and we know ultimately it’s impossible to prevent them from succeeding sometime (which, if course, doesn’t mean we know that about this particular time). And 8 ambassadors have been killed in the line of duty since 1950, according to reports, so clearly these security failures happen more than once a decade on average (though to be fair, most were in the ’70s, with 1 in the ’80s, and hyoid being the first since then, a long lull).

            Perhaps the most significant thing to come out of it is Libyans condemning it and showing support for the U.S. that’s a big FoPo win, I think.

            Linking it to Fast/furious is interesting. One message breakdown is good for a few laughs at amateur hour. Two such is cause for concern about internal organization at the White House. A third such would suggest a real pattern. Discussing that wouldn’t necessarily be pure political theater (unless it was made out to be evidence the Prez was doing blow daily so that direction was coming from the Exchequer of the Oval Office toilet*

            Standing by themselves I’d have a hard tie seeing such a problem being a deciding factor, but the effects of White House disorganization as a regular matter are significant enough that I think they’d make a legitimate factor among others in a multi-variate consideration of whom to vote for.
            ______________________
            An office instituted in the Clinton presidency by the First Lady, to make a daily check for exes in the Oval Office restroom.

          • “If we really could get a pox running through both your houses, now that’s a bandwagon I could jump on.”

            James, there is no pox on both houses. If somehow you can manage to read anything I write, get that. The cause of the problem is libs. Get rid of the libs, get rid of the problem.

            As far as Libya goes, what I wrote was reasonably clear. Libya is a serious incident that needs to be addressed on its own terms. Blame needs to be accepted where it lies. And wherever that is, we know at least two places where it isn’t. 1. Mitt Romney 2. Some dude in Florida whose name has been forgotten already.

            As far as your other point goes, it’s a semantic point which might be relevant in different circumstances. But as the narrative actually transpired, for a long time after the attacks the Administration’s line as propagated by its functionaries and surrogates was plainly not compatible with your Rose Garden theory (and Candy Crowley’s). We know that, among other reasons because those in and out of the media who did clarify the terrorism narrative saw themselves as pushing back against the Administration (and were seen by others that way as well). Check the dates on these citations:

            thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/26/u-s-officials-knew-libya-attacks-were-work-of-al-qaeda-affiliates.html

          • online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444180004578018534242887950.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

          • washingtonexaminer.com/morning-examiner-obamas-alternative-middle-east-reality/article/2508201#.UH9sc7RK3yR

            In short, whatever semantic value your Rose Garden theory has, nobody understood the President that way at the time.

          • If somehow you can manage to read anything I write, get that. The cause of the problem is libs. Get rid of the libs, get rid of the problem.

            There you go, Koz! What a great way to prove you’re not just a blind partisan. Now please ask mommy top help you put your mittens back on.

            As for the incident in Libya, it’s the 8th death of an ambassador in the line of duty since 1950. They happened under the presidencies of LBJ, Nixon, Carter and G.H.W. Bush as well. I don’t recall that anyone of those was turned into an opportunity for pure partisan hackery on this level. Maybe people were just better back then. Maybe the internet and talk radio have ruined us. But going absolutely apeshit and acting as though the failure of a prez and his state department to get their stories coordinated in a timely manner is ridiculous, shallow, the province of someone who doesn’t really understand how White Houses work but is always ready to suck down what some media flack tells them is the horror story of the moment about the damn Yankees, er, I mean, whoever the hell the team you hate happens to be. Libs in your case, conservatives in someone else’s case.

            You want the important story about Libya? It’s protestors condemning and attacking the militia groups in response to this killing. Because they’re damned grateful to the U.S. for intervening in their revolution. But for a two-bit partisan like you to focus on that, hell, that might mean you have to give Obama credit for something, and you partisans as a rule are to goddam small to do that.

            My own position was that I opposed our intervention, but that so far it seems to have worked out well. I’m a cynic and skeptic, so I’m still holding my breath. But goddam if Libya doesn’t seem to be taking meaningful steps toward democracy, and damned if masses Libyans haven’t stood up for us in gratitude in response to this killing, so maybe Obama did the right thing after all.

            You should try the non-fanatically partisan position sometime. I know it doesn’t provide the comfort of always being 100% certain that you’re 100% right, but there’s a certain feeling of decency and integrity that you can’t get any other way.

          • No James, the idea that the Administration’s incompetence and malevolence is limited to a “failure of a prez and his state department to get their stories coordinated” doesn’t hold water. In fact, stated that way it’s only a small part of the issue. A bigger share of the blame goes to the Administration, its surrogates and allies for blaming Mitt Romney and an obscure person who made a movie trailer unflattering to the Prophet Mohammed. That was not a matter of momentary confusion but a clear unforced error.

            And it’s worth considering why that error came to be. As others have mentioned, it’s likely the President would have been politically better off to attribute immediately the attacks to terrorism, state firmly his resolve to oppose them and ask the American people for their support. But he didn’t do that.

            And the reasons why are illustrative. First of all, he would have to place his trust in the American people which he likes to avoid if at all possible. Like a litigator who never asks a question of a witness that he doesn’t know the answer for, the President tries to minimize the uncertainty of meaningfully engaging the American people if he can avoid it. He would also have to confront issues that he’d prefer not to deal with: the Libya invasion, the President’s policies toward Egypt, the lack of security for our embassies (which is clearly the Administration’s fault though maybe not the President’s).

            As far as Libya goes, I don’t see much upside here. The United States has very important military, diplomatic, cultural, social interests in a hundred places in the world: Brazil, Korea, Israel, Ireland, Poland, Saudi Arabia, etc., etc. Libya is (or at least was) blessedly not one of them. The world already had plenty of places of trouble for America before the President decided to invade Libya. The President should try to straighten them out as best as we can, ie turn off ESPN for an hour and try to conjure a coherent thought about Afghanistan before his term ends. I don’t want to have to carry a rabbit’s foot hoping for good things to come out of Libya.

            And this partisanship business from you is dubious at best. It has more to do with your lack of comprehension than anything else. When the Republicans are right, that’s the way I write it. If it seems like I don’t praise the Demo’s very much, it’s most likely because they are not doing anything praiseworthy.

          • Nobody blamed Romney, you fucking idiot. They criticized him for immediately politicizing the issue–jumping onto it for political gain faster than a frat boy can jump a drunk girl.

            I have no comprehension problems, Koz. I’m just not blinded by ideology the way you are. You engage in nothing but confirmation bias–you look only for facts (mostly factoids) and interpretations that confirm what you already want to believe, ignore those that might tend to disconfirm what you already believe, and never spend any noticeable amount of time questioning your beliefs and putting them to a real test.

            That’s the behavior of an ideologue; a person who for all their bluster and outward confidence is too cowardly to really challenge their comfortable and comforting set of extant beliefs. It doesn’t matter whether they’re conservatives, liberals, or my own folks, libertarians; they all behave in exactly the same intellectually shallow way. You just go ahead and comfort yourself that I just don’t get it. I see it all around me, I’ve looked closely at it, and I get it all too well.

            The problem is, you can never break through the rigid shell of belief ideologues build up around themselves. They’ll defend it with all their might because questioning their own preconceptions is just too damn terrifying.

          • “The problem is, you can never break through the rigid shell of belief ideologues build up around themselves.”

            If youlive in America, you’re a terrorist, because American attacks on people in civilian areas cause terror, and therefore Americans are terrorists.

            What? I’m only using your own reasoning re: terrorists!

          • Duck, that’s just bizarre. That doesn’t follow the logic of my reasoning at all. I don’t dislike you the way some other folks here do, but comments like this make it very clear to me why some folks hate you. I still don’t, but, geez, you sure do make it tempting.

  4. “So did he or did he not refer to what happened as an “act of terror”?”

    It would have been a lot easier to say “yes” if the next two weeks hadn’t seen Susan Rice and Hilary Clinton–and Barack Obama–claim that it was not.

    • I think this is based on the idea of “an angry mob attacks people” NOT being an act of terror.

      Having seen instances of japan bashing in the 80’s (on tv, at least), and in China near present, I dispute this idea.

    • I’ll try again…

      How does “angry mob” attacks Consulate, getting through insufficient security to kill an ambassador, reflect more positively on the Obama Administration than “organized terrorists” attack Consulate, getting through insufficient security to kill an ambassador?

      • Because “organized terrorists” allows his critics to say, “HE’S NOT KEEPING US SAFE FROM THE TERRORISTS!”

        We’re waging a War on Terrorism. Every victory by the terrorists means we did something wrong.

        We’re not waging a War on Angry Mobs. Not yet, at least.

        • Maybe, but that would still be much better than what they did, especially when you consider that whatever he loses for incompetence he might pick up with the rally around the flag effect.

          • Oh. I’m not supporting or defending what the administration ultimately did. If the President had his pick of what ACTUALLY happened, I think he would prefer the angry mob over the terrorists. That’s all. Generally speaking, I am a firm believer in being forthright. If there is reason why doing so is impossible or inadvisable, mum ought to be the word.

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