"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."In the 2nd Presidential Debate of 2012, the thing that stood out almost as dramatically as the theatrical "act of terror" doublespeak event was what happened a little over an hour into the debate. It is significant because Obama sounds like he suddenly loses all that composure that is most evident when he's expecting Crowley to back him up (which happens only a little later in the debate) and becomes desperate for the topic to change.
Romney had briefly started to return to a topic that he hadn't quite finished remarking on (it seemed he had been told repeatedly that they would have plenty of time to address each topic), which was the topic of fiscal relations between America and China. Obama had continued in the vein that had characterized his campaign in painting Romney as the evil "corporationy" corporate guy who rides around on his yacht and invests in China.
Romney starts to point out that pensions and 401Ks depend on the sort of portfolios that diversify in order to be low risk and not a gamble. Don't you want your pension plan to pay out Instead of answering Romney's question, Obama not only denies he knows much about his pension (yet another thing he pleads the 5th on), but he tries to deflect the attention of the audience by saying, "Hey Romney's rich unlike me." If Obama's pension plan is simpler than Romney's, why doesn't he understand it? Is it because he's expecting to get more for honorariums and memoirs and interviews like Dead Broke Hillary did when she left office? If Obama isn't well-to-do, why doesn't he care to know what's in his pension plan?
He knew enough to be afraid of where Romney was going with it, and the last thing this Progressive wanted on national tv was an economic lesson from someone who knows economics. Worse, he didn't want anyone to realize that their pensions come from the same wealth-creating mechanism that liberals hate: investment, corporations, capitalism. (Three dirty words in the liberal dictionary.) When you tax corporations you deincentivize the investment and risktaking that results in dividends and job growth. Without those things, your pension (and your social security) are guaranteed by a Ponzi scheme instead of by invested capital.
The "Rich Romney" bogeyman was the red herring that Obama kept pointing to whenever he didn't want to have a "teachable moment." Why did so much of American buy that act? Why have they preferred a rich guy that knows very little economics and shows little respect for the Constitution to a rich guy that knows a lot about economics?
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