There’s a saying in Washington DC that they think is very clever but it’s mostly just annoying. Anytime someone says something outrageous that also happens to contradict their party’s official line, they are applauded for being honest. Today’s example comes from Aaron Blake and Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post:
In Washington, there’s an old cliche: A gaffe is when a politician is accidentally honest.
That’s what happened to Newark (N.J.) Mayor Cory Booker during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Booker, who is widely regarded as a fast riser in Democratic politics, veered badly off message when he defended Bain Capital — the longtime employer of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney — and described the negative tone of the campaign as “nauseating”.
Maybe Cory Booker was being honest about his personal opinion, but what he said was ridiculous. It was a gaffe because it was stupid, not because it was truthful. I don’t think it’s surprising that an ambitious New Jersey politician would defend private equity firms. But to equate the attacks on Romney’s Bain Capital with the attacks on Rev. Jeremiah Wright was moronic on all levels.
What really happened is that Booker made an appearance on Meet the Press where his job was to be a surrogate for the president and his reelection campaign. And he forgot that and decided to use his appearance to ask for money for himself from Wall Street. That’s not being courageous or honest or smart or loyal or anything praiseworthy.
Yet, it’s portrayed in Washington as something completely different. Cory Booker let the “truth” slip out. If by ‘truth; you mean that Jersey politicians are as beholden to Wall Street as West virginia pols are beholden to coal, then he let the truth slip out. But if you mean that the ‘truth’ is that attacks on Romney’s record at Bain Capital are meritless smears that are no different in kind from attacks on the black church, then you’re suffering from Beltway Disease.
Exactly right. This was just deeply stupid on every level.
My first thought was that Booker’s getting ready to run for governor next year.
If the Dems give him a single dime for any campaign, I’m finally done with them.
Not Future President Spider-Man?! But I thought he was the next golden child? He shoveled sidewalks and uses twitter!
I guess it goes to show, do not publicly cross the O, or the internet will turn on you in 0.03 seconds flat.
The only reason you can come up with to explain why liberal bloggers didn’t like Corey Booker’s defense of Bain Capital and the private equity industry as a whole is loyalty to Obama?
You have completely lost your perspective.
It was something said on Meet the Press…in May.
It could not possibly be any less relevant to anything that will happen five months from now. The only thing that’s getting the remark such attention from headline writers, bloggers, and GOP operatives is that Booker is black, which makes his “disloyalty” (wank wank wank) astonishing and unbelievable.
If the Democratic Party had an actual problem with the private equity industry, they would stop taking contributions from PE executives and would propose legislation on the industry and the pension industry. The Democrats don’t have a problem with private equity, they have a problem with private equity being used to finance Republican candidates and Republican causes. Booker knows the score.
It could not possibly be any less relevant to anything that will happen five months from now.
…which would seem to make it less likely that the motive is the defense of Obama’s electoral chances, no?
How about some Occam’s Razor here? Why would liberals object to people defending Bain Capital from the “vulture capitalism” attack? Because liberals dislike vulture capitalism.
If the Democratic Party had an actual problem with the private equity industry, they would stop taking contributions from PE executives…
No, I think they’re (largely) making an emotional response, tinged with subtly racist expectations, based on the messenger.
I don’t think any bloggers would give a shit in the same way if Mark Warner, or any other classically wealthy Democrat, said something similar. His hypothetical lack of fidelity to the message would be “expected.”
From what I’ve seen, people can’t believe Cory Booker said it. He’s supposed to be “one of the good guys.”
I think they’re (largely) making an emotional response, tinged with subtly racist expectations, based on the messenger.
Ah, that’s it: liberal bloggers don’t actually have a problem with the private equity industry; they’re just racists.
I think you’re straining really hard to find a reason why it must be unfair to object to what an Obama critic is saying. The idea that liberals would be ok with someone defending Bain Capital, as long as he’s not black, just isn’t going to fly.
You’re right, nobody (least of all someone a couple of comments down in this thread, for example) has been injecting racial expectations into things.
Because when I think about what Booker said, I think Sistah Souljah. I mean, how could you not?
Agreed.
Get over your racist crap. Truth is, Booker’s “golden boy”, “rising star” takeoff is what had some racial component — it made a good story. He became an icon for the “can do” guy who might just become the next black president. That’s why the reaction is so justifiably hostile and shocked. He wasn’t Mark Warner or Mary landrieu — as you say, he was one of the good guys. They never were.
Interesting how all you have is a lot of whiny rhetoric with no apparent insight into what the hell he was thinking when he decided to defend Romney and his poisonous ideology against a perfect valid Dem ad.
Ha, thank you so very much for continuing to prove my point, Dave. Such anger. Such emotion.
Honestly, some of you are acting like you just found out that there’s no Santa Claus at the same time as hearing your dog was hit by a car.
All Booker said was the same pitch he’s been giving his donors privately to keep them on the hook for months. Dozens and dozens and dozens of Democrats have been telling their donors the exact same thing behind closed doors.
Democrats aren’t frickin’ socialists. Unlike the President, they need Big Money to be viable candidates.
Anger and emotion don’t demonstrate your point; they refute it.
Anger and emotion are the ordinary outcomes of taking genuine offense at someone’s statement, not of finding it politically inconvenient.
BTW, the Democrats did regulate private equity. One of the big accomplishments of Dodd-Frank was to bring the private equity industry under the oversight of the SEC for the first time.
Which is probably why private equity donors are flocking to Mitt Romney.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-03/private-equity-partners-rally-around-romney-as-the-antidote
-to-dodd-frank.html&sa=U&ei=9mK6T-KcOork6QHyhZThCg&ved=0CBMQFjAB&usg=AFQjCNEjUGzKFbY
WgRdQKFwOfHuk73uNnQ
Hedge funds and PE firms (those that weren’t already publicly traded) are required to register with the SEC and present information on their valuation methodologies, yeah.
Hardly a broadside against the industry that’s being portrayed as a job-destroying, pension-robbing, nation-threatening vampire in this campaign.
I’m delighted with the administration telling the truth about the way Bain Capital makes money. But I’m also not fool enough not to notice that private equity executives and fund managers still get places of honor at Obama (and other Democratic) fundraisers in Manhattan and Chicago, and will continue to do so.
It doesn’t matter if you feel like the regulation is strong enough. There are plenty of regulatory regimes that you don’t think are strong enough, that the regulated industry still despises. Imposing regulations on such an industry is still difficult, and still fraught with political peril, even when it doesn’t go as far as you think it should.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/205025-dems-receive-more-bain-dollars-than-gop
I’ve got 1.2 million reasons why Democratic attacks on Bain are completely full of shit. No savvy observer of politics should see them as anything but the smart, cynical play they are. They might be the philosophical truth (the world and their own better nature Dems wish existed), but they are in practice and policy, complete hogwash.
That’s why I bear no ill will towards Booker whatsoever. He’s looking past 2012 already, as he is right to. The President will be fine. Call the mayor a bad surrogate if you want, but this reelection is a one-time thing. Campaign contributions are forever.
His only future beyond mayor after 2012 is as a Republican. He coulda been president. He can’t anymore.
That’s it, but not just a bad surrogate – a treasonous one. It’s like agreeing to be part of a mission where tactical surprise is essential to achieving the mission’s objectives and then at the beginning of the operation you stand up and shout, “Hey Rommel! We’re landing in Normandy – just wanted this to be a stand up, mano-a-mano fight!”
The subsequent fragging would predictable and justified.
If Corey Booker believed the words that came out of his mouth then he should not have agreed to speak on Obama’s behalf. He’s neither ignorant nor stupid – he took this opportunity to promote himself at the expense of Obama, so I will not weep for the man’s career when he’s relegated to the sanitation engineering department of the convention instead of possibly getting a convention speaking slot.
A bad surrogate indeed…
Oh? I don’t see where Mayor Booker actually asked for money from anyone. And BTW, Obama is getting plenty of money from Wall St. Unless you’re arguing whatever money might be going to Booker should go to Obama instead, your criticism here is hypocritical.
Actually, here’s what happened:
Booker is to be condemned for getting one of the four talking points “wrong”?
Exactly: “Booker made the mistake of being honest”. Oh, the horror!!
Ezra Klein further points out:
I’m chalking all of this to “much ado about nothing”.
There’s plenty of time to get the anti Rmoney/Bain talking points correct, ad nauseum, as if any voters are actually paying attention.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-romney-should-have-learned-at-bain/2012/05/
21/gIQAcXdMfU_blog.html
Am I missing something? Where exactly is the misrepresentation on the Obama side? He says they’re misrepresenting Romney’s record at Bain, but then he says exactly the same thing that I’ve been hearing out of the Obama campaign: Mitt ROmney got rich by firing people.
I mean, if someone who made his fortune by firing people runs on his record of job creation, isn’t that a problem?
In the ordinary course of events, I would be more likely to accuse you of excessive cynicism than naiveté. But not here.
You didn’t hear Mayor Booker ask for money because he didn’t ask for money in a literal sense.
He’s the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. It’s a city that was absolutely decimated by white flight after the 1968 riots. His job is to invite investment back into his city. He wants to attract cooperate headquarters and branches.
He also wants to be governor some day, and he wants to be seen as a safe guy by the monied interests.
So, for both good reasons and bad reasons, he decided to send a message to the capital guys that he’s on their side.
And that’s the same thing as asking for money (for himself and his city).
Ezra Klein? Hahaha!! You really think Ezra Klein is going to rip Cory Booker? Ezra Klein wants to be the next David Broder. And people like Klein(and the rest of Versailles) love the fraud that is Booker because, as he showed yesterday, he’s a Democrat who rips other Democrats. It wasn’t his job yesterday to “ask” for his 2013 run for Governor(or 2014 run for the U.S. Senate). It was to be a surrogate for the Obama campaign. And he got an “F”.
“I don’t see where Mayor Booker actually asked for money from anyone.”
Just wanted to highlight this.
I think it puts the rest of the comment, and the one that will undoubtedly follow this, into some useful perspective.
Well, they claim he’s accidentally being “honest,” rather than accidentally telling “the truth.” It’s nonsense either way, but Blake and Cillizza don’t even seem to be interested in ascertaining what’s true and what isn’t.
In the same piece they describe an upcoming “Bain attack” this way: “Overall, the ad says, the company shed 1,500 jobs while Romney and his investors made millions off of it.”
Now that’s nauseating, but they want to pretend the President is being rude for calling attention to it. You can call it negativity, but it really isn’t Obama’s fault that Mitt Romney is such an asshole.
No more of an asshole than Booker turned out to be. There are only two credible explanations for his rant: either he went insane right on, or shortly before the show, or he got an offer from Romney/GOP he didn’t have the integrity to refuse. I hope for his sake that he enjoys being a mayor, because this rising star just turned into a clinker.
I was a union machinist back in the 80’s when these vultures were hovering, picking on both union and family shops that had been profitable for decades. There’s no defending the Bains of this world.
Bet Obama’s team never expected a Sistah S. moment from Booker. Ye, gods.
vulture capitalism != private equity
The key to the Bain Capital story is the difference between entrepreneurship and speculation. Romney was never really a capitalist but a speculator.
The difference is that a capitalist raises funds through the stock market, private equity firms, etc. in order to do something useful. It’s certainly true that many many jobs are created that way.
But as long as there have been financial markets, there have been guys like Mitt Romney figuring out ways to game the system and turn money into more money without having to go through that whole tedious process of doing something useful in between.
I have read that Adam Smith disapproved of speculators, but I haven’t read him myself so I’m not sure.
Well said. There is a distinct difference between “venture capitalism” and “vulture capitalism”. This isn’t about private equity in general, it’s about one specific exercise of it. In fact, the Obama campaign and adminsitration has always been supportive of private equity except for this brand of it.
If he had just been there, as an independent sellout like the Dark Sith-Harold Ford, there’d be no problem.
BUT
he was there as an OFFICIAL CAMPAIGN SPOKESMAN
and THUS, the problem of your bullshyt, Corey.
Booker’s fail was about working the election political ropes. The guy may be too honest and ethical to survive politically in a party that long ago rejected the New Deal in favor of neo-liberal economics but at election time pretends that it still cares.
LOL @ Corey Booker is “too honest and ethical.”
The truly funny part of this is that you undoubtedly think the comment you just wrote is a demonstration of your hard-boiled skepticism.
It’s somewhat obnoxious to be told by third parties what I think. Completely obnoxious when they get it wrong as you did.
Booker’s comment — his disgust at Obama’s campaign rhetoric attacking rMoney’s record at Bain — is exactly what I’d expect from an honest, non-cynical, believer in neo-liberal, predatory capitalism. His public policy positions, outside certain individual rights such as same-sex marriage, supports that interpretation.
And the fact that this “honest, non-cynical” paragon of yours agreed to appear on the show as an Obama spokesman in the first place, and then performed this little stunt, doesn’t shake your faith at all?
While a cynical, corrupt, dishonest politician who was shilling for Wall Street for money – he would have sounded differently than this “honest, non-cynical believer?”
I can’t believe the benefit of the doubt that more-progressive-than-thou types are giving to Corey “I’m love PG&E” Booker.