Reviewing the Red Dawn Remake

SPOILER ALERT: This column contains details related to the 2012 remake of Red Dawn.  If you plan on seeing the movie and don’t want know too much about the storyline before watching it, stop reading now.

The world that existed in 1984 when the original Red Dawn movie appeared in movie theaters and that of the remake are two very different times. 

The year before the original’s release the Soviet Union shot down Korean Airline Lines Flight 007 after the commercial jetliner flew through Russian airspace and the United States military invaded the Marxist-ruled Caribbean nation of Grenada. 

And in between burying Communist Party general-secretaries and rumbling mechanized units through Red Square on May Day, Moscow was locked in a bloody quagmire in Afghanistan.  The USSR, through the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and Communist FMLN in El Salvador, managed to establish a tenuous beachhead in North America.

Things were tense between the two superpowers in 1984, a tension that would eventually strain the Soviets beyond their capacity to compete and led to the collapse of Communist regimes across eastern Europe. 

In 1984, there was a better chance of World War III than the Soviet bloc’s largely peaceful dissolution that played out six years later.  The movie Red Dawn had an audience because Americans thought direct conflict between the US and the Soviet Union was likely.

The villains of yesterday are no more pleasant but seem less threatening.  Russian soldiers no longer patrol a divided Germany but their country’s western frontier with Ukraine.  And their ally Cuba, which played a role in bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war in the 1960s, is grudgingly adapting to capitalism. 

The Red Menace has been displaced by Islamist terrorists, but the real thing makes for a political unpalatable nemesis for the entertainment industry.  And it turned out that Plan B wouldn’t work either, but for financial reasons.

The Red Dawn remake was supposed to be released two years ago, though it underwent a seven-figure editing job to remove all spoken and visual references to the People’s Republic of China, which was slated as the movie’s original (and more plausible) aggressor, and inserted North Korea as the invader.

Now the thought of North Korea landing soldiers in the United States sounded ridiculous. 

The hilariously named Democratic People’s Republic of Korea can barely feed its people and its “green water navy” is best equipped for challenging coastal civilian fishing vessels than moving a large occupation force over 6000 miles (roughly the distance between Pyongyang and Los Angeles).

And even if North Korea could magically move undetected across the Pacific Ocean the world’s fourth largest army, their 1,000,000 person active force would be spread pretty thin along America’s 2100 mile long western coastline. 

With China “not appearing in this picture”, a North Korean invasion of the US not resembling King Arthur’s assault on the French castle from Monty Python’s Holy Grail requires a super-sized suspension of disbelief. 

So where did the 600 million screaming Chinese (a reference to the original film) and their 730 million cousins that didn’t get nuked in 1984 go? 

It turned out that Beijing takes not only a keen interest in what their citizens tweet and blog but also what comes out of Hollywood. 

The Global Times, a publication owned by the Chinese Communist Party, took public issue with its national military playing the villain and Red Dawn’s producers took the hint: sanitize the movie or its only entry into that country’s lucrative movie market will be through bootleg dvds. 

It might come to that anyway as the Global Times has even mocked the changes and called the Red Dawn movie style “brainless fun”.  I’d be willing to lay 60 yuan ($4) that a movie about popular insurrection against Communist military forces will never be projected upon the silver screen of a licensed mainland cinema, if only as a favor to their “Dear Friend” Kim Jong Un, AKA The Onion’s sexiest man alive.

So how do parts of the United States come under the jackboot of North Korea?

After a night of high school football in Spokane, Washington, the power across the entire town mysteriously goes out.  The next day the skies are clouded with North Korean paratroopers raining down on the eastern Washington State population center. 

It is later reveled that an EMP-like “super weapon” (the same thing that prefaced occupation in the television miniseries Amerika) knocked out communications and power across the country allowing the North Koreans to tiptoe across the world’s largest ocean. 

Spokane is targeted because the west coast and eastern seaboard have been devastated by a surprise quasi-nuclear attack. 

America’s capacity to launch a nuclear counter-offensive has been neutralized by the “super weapon” as our boomers (ballistic missile subs) were knocked out by the EMP.

It is also revealed that Russia, which is led by a radical nationalist, is behind the assault on America, leading the invasion of the east coast and having counter-insurgent personnel in Spokane.  There is also a weak-reference to Mexico and Cuba being involved, though that was also likely watered down to avoid upsetting Hispanics/swing-voters. 

Americans being a resilient and well-armed people (a little reminder that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting), unorganized citizen militias and detached military units operating independently stymie the invaders’ onslaught around Alabama in the southeast, Michigan in the northeast, Texas in the southwest and Colorado and Montana in the northwest.  

The movie largely is a recreation of the original, including an homage to the 1984 film’s signature ambush scene, but in a different setting and with a change in the Communist occupiers’ ethnicity.  The 2012 version of the Wolverines are more diverse than the 1984 band of rebels.

A few other things worth noting:

1)      Though they are very much villains, the North Koreans are portrayed more benign than the Russians from 1984.  Knowing how they treat their countrymen, I have a tough time believing the DPRK invaders would allow Americans to largely live as they did before, including operating businesses and driving cars.  I’m still stuck on the thought of them allowing civilian fuel consumption in the middle of a war.  Of all of the suspensions of disbelief, this was the toughest for me to overcome.

2)      The most interesting aspect of the movie is how American society is shown reacting to the occupation.  With few exceptions, most people seem to go along with the regime while more than a few actively collaborate with the invading forces, including the town’s mayor and the media, accepting subservience to the new state in exchange for necessities and privileges.  That got me wondering how many of our countrymen would readily exchange freedom for security, whether from immediate persecution or hardship. 

3)      The objective of the Wolverines was not merely killing the enemy and damaging their military hardware but inspiring their subjugated brethren to resist.  This is the reverse objective of terrorism, which aims to demoralize. 

4)      I can understand why the movie wasn’t released until after the election.  The film’s opening is a montage of actual press clips featuring President Barack Obama, Vice-President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fumbling America’s foreign policy as the global situation spirals down.  Also featured throughout the film are the North Korean occupying forces’ ubiquitous propaganda posters that decry corporate greed, stuff straight out of Occupy Wall Street and President Obama’s re-election campaign. 

And the Romney Aides Snipe Back

Romney advisers recently began leaking their displeasure concerning criticism that has been heaped upon the 2012 GOP presidential nominee’s political carcass, with one unidentified aide specifically citing Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich.

The anonymous campaign aide mocked Jindal and Gingrich as “real profiles in courage” for sniping at Romney after the election.  Concerning the Indian-American governor, the aide emphasized his eagerness to be picked as Romney’s running mate, even after a tape of the presidential candidate’s infamous 47% comment was made public, a political faux pas Jindal pounced on after Romney lost.

Gingrich’s lack of praise for Romney should come as no surprise.  The ex-Massachusetts governor and the third-party Super PAC that promoted Romney’s candidacy carpet-bombed Gingrich in direct mail pieces and in television advertisements that tied the former speaker to “influence peddling” for the mortgage entity Freddie Mac and accused him of leaving Congress in disgrace. 

With the notable exception of John McCain, few of Romney’s intraparty rivals from his 2008 and 2012 GOP presidential bids professed much affection for him though all with one exception (Jon Huntsman) dutifully toed the party line in the general election, though without enthusiasm.

If Gingrich’s “airing of grievances” is rooted in his rocky past with Romney, Jindal’s is centered on the future…and his own.

The new Republican Governors’ Association head has one eye on the White House and another on what happened in the caucuses and the primaries, where Republicans dragged their feet in embracing the conservative-talking, yet moderate-governing presidential candidate.

Jindal is looking to carve his niche in the national GOP electorate by planting his flag as the anti-Romney for 2016.  Jindal’s initial criticism and its media recycling courtesy of the anonymous aide to the 2012 GOP nominee have helped the Louisiana governor towards that objective.

Though Jindal was an active surrogate for Romney in the general election, the Louisiana governor had initially backed Texas governor Rick Perry in the primaries and after the Perry campaign’s collapse in January, Jindal didn’t endorse the ex-Massachusetts governor until April.

While a charge of opportunism would be fair, Jindal can’t be accused of hypocrisy.  And Jindal’s words were far softer than what Romney had to say about the character of his fellow Republicans in the primaries and caucuses.

Besides, it’s not like Romney will be doing any favors for Jindal, as he is certain to line up behind whichever Floridian (Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush) ultimately throws his hat in the ring for 2016.

If Jindal can’t have Romney, then he’ll gladly settle for inheriting his enemies, especially since a Lyndon LaRouche endorsement might be more valuable than Romney’s come 2016.

And even if Jindal has ulterior motives for his harsh analysis of the GOP nominee’s campaign, how is it out of line? 

Should we attribute Romney’s defeat to “gifts” and call it a presidential cycle until another “country club” Republican declares himself the next “too moderate to fail” establishment candidate that we should quietly shuffle behind?

Now is the time to have this conversation, not in 2016 when Super PAC ads will drown out discussion. 

Mitt Romney talked about holding President Obama accountable for the current state of America, yet why shouldn’t Republicans hold accountable Romney, his campaign operation and the national GOP for blowing the election?

Romney talked about how President Obama wasted our tax dollars yet Republicans are not to inquire how our campaign donations were squandered?

Jindal’s not the only “veep-wannabe” that “Romney sources” have shived in the press. 

Days before the presidential election, “campaign insiders” put out word that New Jersey governor Chris Christie may have made himself conveniently available for President Barack Obama’s tour of his Hurricane Sandy-ravaged state in revenge for being passed over for the second spot on the GOP ticket. 

You would think Romney aides would have had more productive things to do than discreetly dump on their candidate’s top supporter in the primaries, but this seems to be their main area of expertise.  Just ask Sarah Palin.

That a Romney staffer chose to take public issue with Jindal’s critiques shows exactly how little his team understood politics, as the Louisiana governor’s gripes were a one day story that the mystery campaign aide kept alive for another week in the press.

If Jindal ever finds out which aide took issue with him, the governor might send him a fruit basket and a thank you note. 

Election 2012: Four Senate Candidates Worth Backing

Four Candidates Worth Backing

With the federal election less than a week away the time for conservatives to make an impact is drawing near.  It’s not too late to lend a hand by phone banking from home,  writing a check or donating on-line in a number of important elections across the country.

There are a few Republican senate candidates who conservatives residing in either solidly red states or hopelessly blue states should consider supporting.

George Allen-  The former Virginia governor is in the midst of a political comeback this November and is running for the very seat he lost six years ago.  Admittedly it was a tough year for Republicans though Allen made even more difficult for himself by taunting a Democratic field operative at a campaign rally.  Had Allen survived that race, he would have sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and probably won it as conservatives were lining up behind his nascent candidacy.  And then the “macaca” hit the fan. 

Allen is locked in a tight race with Tim Kaine, a former Virginia governor and President Obama’s chosen chairman of Democratic National Committee.  Kaine was reportedly on Obama’s shortlist for running mate in 2008 and he is harboring ambitions for even higher office later.  As the presidential race is very close in the Old Dominion, helping Allen would help out Mitt Romney’s chances there.

Tommy Thompson-  Another former governor, Thompson served as Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush.  Thompson is seeking the seat held by retiring Democrat Senator Herb Kohl.  Thompson was elected governor of the swing state of Wisconsin on four occasions and is credited with creating “workfare” while in office. 

Despite his political success in a state is figuring to be important in this year’s presidential election and his conservative credentials as governor, Thompson endured abruising primary en route to winning the party nomination by only three points in a four-candidate field. 

Thompson’s opponent in the general election is Democratic US Representative Tammy Baldwin, one of the most liberal members in all of Congress.  Baldwin has been a vociferous advocate for same-sex marriage since her days in the Wisconsin legislature in the mid-nineties and co-authored a measure to impeach Vice-President Dick Cheney. 

Wisconsin voters should be worried that Baldwin’s focus as a US Senator will be on advancing her radical “progressive” agenda on the national stage and not the interests of her state.  While Tommy Thompson might not be the flashiest Republican running for office in America, “Senator” Baldwin will prove herself to be a constant source of excitement for conservatives of all stripes, social, defense and fiscal. 

The only way to stop Baldwin is to elect Thompson, who has a slight lead in the most recent polls though the presidential race in Wisconsin might carry the Democrat over the line if Obama wins the Badger State.

Josh Mandel-  Admittedly Mandel is a longshot.  His Democratic opponent, incumbent US Senator Sherrod Brown, has led in every poll I’ve seen though Mandel has closed the once large gulf between them.  But Mandel matters for a bunch of reasons. 

First, he’s running in Ohio- the state that the media has been saying that will choose the winner of the presidential election.  Well up until Romney took a slight lead.  The point is the stronger Mandel performs, the better for the top of the GOP ticket in the Buckeye State. 

Secondly, Mandel served in the Marine Corps Reserve and was deployed to Iraq in 2004 and 2008.    

Thirdly Mandel, who is Jewish, is not your typical Republican candidate for US Senator or for that matter any office higher than councilman.  He’s only 35 years old, which is exactly what the party needs for America to see- that the GOP doesn’t stand for Grumpy Old Politicians.      

Mandel is not a good bet to win but he is a great candidate running in an important state. 

Scott Brown-  The Massachusetts senate race is the second most important election in America.  While he’s not the most conservative Republican in Washington, Brown is the most conservative politician that can win in Massachusetts. And he’s running for re-election against what is perhaps the worst Democrat on the November ballot not named Barack Obama: Elizabeth Warren.

If you think the media’s in the tank for the president, get familiar with their fawning coverage of the leftist Harvard professor.  And the liberal establishment has big plans for her after Warren dispenses with the formality of her victory over Senator Brown.

Though burdened with sharing space on a presidential ballot in a state so blue its resident presidential candidate will be lucky if he breaks 40%, Brown has fought hard to keep the race within the statistical margin of error. 

In their first debate, Brown challenged the Warren, a Caucasian, on her “Cherokee” status and whether she exploited her ludicrous racial minority claim for personal advancement.  While in some cases physical appearances can be deceiving related to ancestry, Professor Warren has as much chance of being taken for a Native American as Joe Biden does as a Mongolian. 

Professor Warren represents the worst in liberal hypocrisy: a class baiting elitist who falsely masqueraded as a member of an ethnic minority to get ahead. 

That a Brown victory helps advance the GOP’s prospects of taking the senate is almost secondary to Warren’s defeat. 

Purple Mountain Politics: The Fight for Colorado

If voters in the Buckeye State are agitated from all of the special attention they've been receiving from the presidential candidates, major parties and 527s, they might take some solace knowing that folks in Colorado feel their pain. The Rocky Mountain State has been one of most intensely fought over swing states outside of Ohio. And with Virginia, North Carolina and Florida seemingly drifting towards the Republican column, Colorado's importance rises as a both a firewall for President Barack Obama's re-election bid and as a potential detour around Ohio to reach 270 electoral votes. George W. Bush won Colorado in the razor-close 2000 election, which inspired a wealthy Californian to cook up a scheme where in the future Colorado would allocate its electoral votes on a proportional basis. Had such a system been in place in 2000, then-Vice-President Al Gore would have received enough electoral votes from his competitive second place finish in Colorado to claim the presidency. The idea was based on the hope that the 2004 election would be as close as four years before and thus hand the White House over to the fill-in-the-Democrat nominee. Fortunately the move got exposed for what it was and Bush won by an even bigger margin nationally, which would have made the electoral vote redistribution academic. In another, yet more legitimate, play for Colorado's electoral votes, the Democrats chose Denver as the site of its 2008 convention, where then-US Senator Obama, standing before faux Greek columns in an open air football stadium, delivered his acceptance speech as his party's nominee for president to his teary eyed faithful. After the Democratic Convention left town, Obama's campaign unleashed a torrent of television advertisements linking his 2008 opponent to President George W. Bush, going so far as including in the commercial an image of John McCain, who is partially disabled due to the torture he endured as a POW during the Vietnam War, awkwardly hugging the unpopular incumbent. Perhaps the Obama camp was also looking as much to exploit McCain's age and infirmity with that particular picture. Because McCain refused to budge from his commitment to cap his general election campaign expenditures by accepting matching funds, Obama, who had made the same pledge but later crawfished, was able to dominate the Colorado airwaves. There was also plenty of Obama art to be seen around town. Street artist Shepard Fairey's iconic "Hope" posters were plastered over boarded up storefronts and an impressive mural painted on the rear of the building that housed the popular Rocky Mountain Diner showed a contemplative Obama before a mountain range. The latter would have been the envy of any socialist country that promotes a cult of personality around their leaders. The huge investment by the Democrats in Colorado paid dividends as Obama handily carried the state. But things are different in Colorado this time around. While the Obama campaign is once again heavily investing campaign funds there, a fiscally unfettered Romney campaign is spending big money to win Colorado. In 2008, McCain's ads were drowned out by Obama's media buy. One evening in particular I had seen five Obama commercials before viewing my first McCain advertisement. Things have evened out between the candidates in 2012. In addition to money, Romney is spending a good deal of time in the state. The Republican presidential nominee recently held one of the biggest events of the campaign at the Red Rocks amphitheatre just outside Denver that featured Kid Rock and attracted thousands of people. It was just announced that Romney is returning to Colorado this weekend. In between visits to Colorado, Romney's sons have been meeting with volunteers at call centers that are focused on winning the early vote in 2012. Four years prior McCain had been buried so badly in early voting that he had essentially lost the state before Election Day. Colorado will likely be one of the closest states on November 6th. The most recent poll gives Romney a one point edge over the president though both candidates have traded slight leads over the past few weeks. In addition to the "air war", the Obama and Romney campaigns have assembled aggressive grassroots operations with supporters from the two camps waving posters at busy intersections and canvassing neighborhoods and rallying on street corners. While there are as many Obama yardsigns in 2012 as there were in 2008, this time the Republican candidate has a comparable presence on front lawns. One remarkable thing about the Romney campaign in Colorado is that it's mimicking Obama's first presidential run by attracting participation from people who had not previously been involved in politics. At a rally outside the Denver GOP's headquarters, Craig Romney asked those in attendance to raise their hands if this was their first time volunteering on a campaign. Half of those present did. There's no less than a 75% chance that whoever carries Ohio will be the one dancing with his wife at the January inaugural balls. However, if New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Iowa go to the other candidate, then a winner won't be projected until the most politically important state in the Mountain Time Zone checks in.

The Case Against Re-Election

The conservative publication National Review is hawking on its website a poster that lists 689 reasons to vote against the re-election of the president. Granted some of their entries consist of punchlines and multiple refernces to Joe Biden. NR's humorous pokes at the incumbent aside, there are plenty of legitimate arguments why the president should be defeated for re-election as Barack Obama has failed on multiple levels, from policy to leadership. Failure On Energy President Obama's record on energy is disatrous on multiple fronts. First his hostility towards our primary energy resources (oil, natural gas and coal) defies comprehension and leads one to speculate that he's not for an "all of the above" approach to energy but is for a "cold turkey" shift away from our reliance on oil. Secondly, his fervent faith in green energy that are many decades away from remotely displacing oil and coal defies logic, though not politics. The Obama Administration is captive to special interests that have profiteered off his investment of taxpayer dollars into green companies like Solyndra that went belly-up and cost the public nine figures. Executives with that infamous green concern did manage to pay back one debt- to President Obama via campaign donations. President Obama has stubbornly refused to permit the Keystone Pipeline, which would bring in more oil from Canada and thus make the US less dependent on oil imported from outside of North America. His opposition to the Canadian pipeline is a good example of how the president prioritizes the wishes of his green constituency over America's national and economic security, since access to energy is critical to both. An Economic Failure The nation's unemployment rate stands at 7.8%, which is where it stood when President Obama took office. In between then and now, America's unemployment rate was at 8% or higher for over forty consecutive months. The president celebrates that as progress, but I don't think the over twelve million still looking for work were dancing in the unemployment lines when they heard the news. In another statistic that is a measure of how well/ill the Obama economy truly is, over 46 million Americans are on food stamps and tens of thousands are filing for disability. This past June, slightly more people filed for disability than landed jobs. The president has also failed as the country's fiscal manager. Instead of closing the deficits and chipping away at the national debt, his administration has added over five trillion dollars to it. Failure on Foreign Policy Obama's foreign policy has been equally misguided, pulling the missile defense rug out from under our staunch allies in eastern Europe while extending to Russia more trust than advisable. Iran has not shut down its nuclear weapons program but is four years closer to producing an atomic bomb. And while the details about the events that led to the slaying of our ambassador and three other Americans continue to trickle out of Libya, we do know that President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other White House officials misled the country by stating that the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi was a reaction to a YouTube video. They either lied to America or revealed themselves as dunces. Being guilty of either charge makes them unfit to occupy the positions they hold. Failure As A Leader Despite being a gifted orator, Barack Obama has tried to distract the electorate from the shortcomings of his first term by engaging in unprecedented demagoguery by a president to demonize the opposition. He's also a hypocrite concerning his pleas for bipartisanship. Joseph Cao, the country's first Vietnamese-American member of Congress, took the president at his word about working with Republicans on Capitol Hill. Cao was hardly a lockstep vote for the GOP, breaking party ranks often to support Obama's agenda yet the GOP freshman had his trust repaid in daggers when the president supported his opponent. President Obama has also dodged accepting any responsibility for the high gas prices and wheezing economy. You'd swear George W. Bush was in his third term the way Obama avoids accountability and furiously shovels fault on to his predecessor. Obama was only a few years removed from the Illinois legislature when he began his quest for the White House. It is with great disappointment that he has not grown beyond his community organizer roots during his time in office. Clint Got It Right While Clint Eastwood's address at the Republican National Convention has been widely panned and mocked, the Hollywood icon said something that is simple yet profound: the guy who was hired four years didn't get the job done and it's time to bring in someone else to do it. Only a blind partisan or someone whose vote is motivated by a far lesser consideration than his job performance could look past the president's record and vote to give him another four year term. Voting for change for the sake of having change is not wise though America has an able and mature alternative to the incumbent in Mitt Romney. The GOP candidate not only represents a different philosophy but a drastically different life experince that has prepared him for the job he is seeking. In contrast to the president's partisan and academic background, Romney was a consensus builder as governor of Massachusetts, a state dominated by Democratic officials on all levels of government. Romney's ascension wasn't based off giving a handful of high profile speeches but real accomplishments, having played the lead role in saving the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and achieving success in business and finance. Rather than being envious or jealous of Romney's earned wealth, Americans should look at his success in the private sector as a statement of qualification that he understands how the economy works and what solutions need to be put in place to create more jobs. I am optimistic that an overwhelming majority of American voters will be guided by reality as it is and not what Obama and his allies try to make it appear to be when they vote on November 6th. President Obama had his chance and it's time to go in a different direction. Mitt Romney should be elected our next president.

Election 2012: The Missing Obama Bounce 2.0

Political observers and wishful liberals have been waiting for the president to receive that surge in the polls that’s due to hit any time now.

After all, we’ve been told he won not one, but TWO debates over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

The post-debate instapolls said one thing yet the national and battleground polls are indicating something else.

Four days removed from the final presidential debate of the election cycle, an event where the president managed to work in an attack on his Republican opponent almost every time he had the microphone, Obama is still trailing in most of the benchmark national polls.

Romney leads President Obama by five points in the Gallup poll and three points in the Rasmussen poll.  The Republican candidate for president also has a one-point lead in an ABC News/Washington Post survey.

The battleground state polls don’t paint a much better picture for President Obama.  Romney leads in two Florida polls (+5 in Sunshine State News and +2 in Rasmussen) and enjoys a lead in two North Carolina surveys (+8 in Gravis Marketing and +1 in Civitas). 

Rasmussen has Romney and Obama tied in Wisconsin, a state where the Republican nominee had been trailing the president in recent polls, and a group called Purple Strategies has the race a tie in Virginia.  Polls conducted by Fox News and Rasmussen each gave Romney a two-point lead in the Old Dominion on Thursday.

The news on the poll front is not all bad for President Obama, who has leads in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio and Colorado surveys conducted by various polling entities, though the president does not exceed 50% in any of the polls.

After winning (according to the instapolls) a debate centered on what was billed at the Democratic ticket’s strength (foreign policy), why hasn’t President Obama experienced his own surge in the polls the way Romney vaulted over the incumbent after the Republican’s strong showing in the first debate?

Pitted against Monday Night Football and the seventh game in the National League Championship Series, 8 million fewer people tuned in to the third debate though the final match-up between President Obama and his GOP challenger still attracted 59.2 million viewers. 

Furthermore the president’s aggressiveness and his zingers made headlines and were recycled through the media for a few days, so the public received secondary exposure to the last debate. 

The debate did not take place in a vacuum so the lack of presidential leap isn’t attributable to an absence of audience.

That Romney has maintained most of his first debate gains might be indicative that many Americans made up there minds after the initial square off with the remaining debates being political theatre for the mostly decided. 

As I pointed out in a previously column, Richard Nixon performed strong in the second, third and fourth televised presidential debates of 1960 but John Kennedy won the debate that counted most, the first.

There are other explanations for President Obama’s relatively static poll numbers.

First, dissatisfaction with the economy cannot be mitigated with pithy one-liners.  Bad times can’t be spun.  There’s only so much damage control any politician can do in a televised debate when the economic reality of the times is there to greet people in the morning.

Secondly, the festering matter of Libya has eroded President Obama’s foreign policy credentials. 

The Obama Administration’s “Who’s On First?” routine concerning Benghazi would almost be amusing if an American ambassador and three others had not been killed. 

Though Romney punted on Libya in the debate’s opening and the media has worked to sweep it under the rug, the issue is still there as are some very important unanswered questions that the White House continues to dodge. 

Third, the president once again failed to offer a compelling defense for the high unemployment rate that has been part of his first term.  Though the final debate was supposed to be focused on foreign policy, the economy made a cameo appearance in the debate thanks to Romney’s linking it to national security.  And the president whiffed it again.

Finally, Obama’s third debate “smack talk”, while music to the ears of his hardcore supporters, came off as unpresidential.  The president may have impaled himself with his own rhetorical bayonet, appearing less worthy of the office he occupies.

Just as only one person at the table had the title, only one person exhibited presidential dignity.  And they were sitting in different chairs.

Scoring points doesn’t help your cause when you’re losing badly on style.

The post-debate polls don’t reflect two victories for President Obama, but a staggering loss in the first and two straight incompletes. 

It's Election Day(s)!

Yes, it’s still October but Louisianans can cast a ballot in the November election at early voting locations, with some parishes having multiple sites, through the 30th. 

Thirty-two states plus the District of Columbia allow early voting, which includes every state west of the Mississippi River but Missouri and Minnesota. 

Oregon and Washington State don’t even have an actual election day as all voting is conducted by mail, which saves money but provides the greatest opportunities for election fraud. 

Early voting is a bonanza for political machines, which don’t engage in convincing so much as hauling and perhaps providing under-the-table incentives along the way- food, booze, cigarettes or cash- for their electoral bounty. 

Election Day is supposed to be when the decision is made, not just revealed.  Furthermore, there have been instances where a candidate had won on Election Day but lost because his opponent ran up the score in early voting.

Early voting benefits political consultants, incumbents and well-funded candidates. 

Because of early voting campaigns have to sustain a high level of media expenditures for weeks and must invest in a protracted GOTV operation rather than focus their resources on a single day. 

Early voting in Arizona for the 2012 presidential election began on October 11^th, 26 days before Election Day.  If you had voted the morning early voting started, you would have cast a ballot prior to the vice-presidential debate (which was that evening) and two of the three presidential debates.

According to the National Association of Secretaries of State, the battleground state of Iowa along with four other states opened early voting in September, before any of the presidential debates were held.

The day before early voting began in Iowa, a Public Policy Polling survey had ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney at 44%, 7 points behind the president.  The week after the first debate between the major parties’ nominees, a Rasmussen poll had Romney down in Iowa only by 2 points.  Apparently Iowans had learned something about the candidates in that timeframe to cause a significant shift in the polls.

While there are people who knew they were going to vote for President Obama’s re-election in 2012 as early as November 5, 2008 (the day after he won) just as there were plenty of voters who were itching to vote for the fill-in-the-name Republican candidate before Obama had taken his oath of office, states should not encourage people to vote for president before they’ve at least had an opportunity to see them defend their records and articulate their agendas in a debate. 

Voting too early is like being a juror who renders a verdict in a trial after missing half the evidence and testimony. 

There should be provisions in state election laws to ensure the handicapped, servicemen and women and those who work away from home have their voices heard and their votes counted. 

Having thirty “election days” is unnecessary and opens the door for negative unintended consequences, from vote hauling by professional GOTV organizations to inviting people to make uninformed decisions before the maximum amount of information has been presented.

Ideally, the eve of Election Day should be a time of reflection and contemplation about where we are and where we need to be as a country, state and community. 

I’d wager that Americans have spent more time playing Angry Birds than thinking about candidates for the US Senate- the legislative body that confirms cabinet secretaries and federal judges and ratifies treaties. 

The arguments for early voting have merit, mainly providing for convenient civic participation by allowing people to “get it out of the way” and reducing crowds at voting locations. 

But early voting’s virtues are outweighed by its drawbacks: vote hauling, driving up the costs of campaigns and “early voter’s remorse”.

And though I am not an infrequent participant in early voting, I wouldn’t mind waiting  fifteen minutes or more in line on Election Day if it meant those waiting ahead of me were better informed about the decisions they were going to make.