Jon Huntsman ran what turned out to be a pretty pathetic campaign for president in the 2012 cycle. Running to capture the nomination of a party that at several times was in the thrall of figures like Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum, he was already fighting an uphill battle to become acceptable to …
Tag Archive: 2012 presidential election
Mar 27 2013
Mecha-Obama and Micro-Payments
Technology guru-turned-Cassandra, Jaron Lanier, thinks he knows why Obama won reelection. In a recent interview with UK’s Spectator, he said: If you have the biggest computer and the biggest data, you can calculate how to target people with a political message, and have almost a guaranteed deterministic level of success. Politics then becomes about who …
Jan 23 2013
Toby (3 Years Old) Assesses the 2012 Presidential Race
My three-year-old boy Toby and I were talking about presidential politics in the car this morning, like we do. (While his baby sister Phoebe said, “RaaaUUUuUuurrrrRRrgh.”) We were looking back at the 2012 election, and Toby has drawn some interesting conclusions. He often asks whether such-and-such a politician “did a good job,” and this time, …
Dec 24 2012
Romney Didn’t Want to Be President? Don’t Believe It.
The Boston Globe has a really good behind-the-scenes look at what went wrong for the Romney campaign, including the still-baffling decision to put a Clint Eastwood improvisational sketch in a prime time convention spot in lieu of a very compelling biography video. But what really caught my eye is this assertion from Romney's son Tagg: …
Nov 06 2012
Voting is Apparently All the Rage in Small-Town Maine
Jessica and I voted first thing in the morning today, and I decided to bring Toby along. He’s not even three, of course, and he was bored and a little cranky most of the time (I had forbidden him Munchkins from Dunkin Donuts, and that about severed our familial bonds), but I thought it was …
Sep 02 2012
Not Loyal Enough
Steve Coll compares Chris Christie’s keynote speech to Obama’s in 2004, and finds Christie sadly wanting. Obama came to Boston as an unknown and left as a rising star. Christie came to Tampa as a rising star and obviously hoped to acquire Obama-like momentum as the Republican Party’s “truth teller,” a more salable alternative in …
Aug 31 2012
The One Way that Weird Eastwood Thing Could Screw Things Up for the President
If any single speaker at the Democratic National Convention decides to, even slightly, make fun of Clint Eastwood. The media and faux-outrage machine would collapse on the Time Warner Cable Arena like a ton of bricks, each of which would then be thrown through every Democratic office-holder’s window with threatening notes attached. And I fully …
Aug 30 2012
GOP Festival of Lies, Day Two
Once again, on day two of the Republican National Convention, it was ominous how few mentions of the nominee himself were made. It wasn’t quite as stark as it had been on day one in the speeches of Chris Christie and others, but notable nonetheless. I asserted that the first night’s speeches were evidence that …
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