Here’s the question from the Ann Althouse blog (via Instapundit):
Let’s assume you’ve got complicated, extensive financial affairs. We’re talking about all your life’s savings, all the contingencies of a long retirement for you and medical care for you and your family, and all of the wealth that could be preserved for your children and grandchildren, and all that you might be able to contribute to various causes.
You have to choose one of these individuals to take care of everything:
-Newt Gingrich
-Barack Obama
-Ron Paul
-Mitt Romney
-Rick SantorumWhich one would you choose?
And here’s the answer:
That will be the question asked at the American election in November, and in ours as well, whenever we finally have one. Because when all is said and done, that is the question that needs to be asked and needs to be answered. Putting it that way makes it very clear what the right answer in the US actually is.
Peter Costello – please come back!
blogstrop
29 Feb 12 at 4:40 pm
Yes, Romney would be great at taking care of your family affairs – unless you are a dog lover.
Les Majesty
29 Feb 12 at 4:45 pm
I wouldn’t want anyone who was gifted in these totalitarian/socialist skills.
Althouse asked a Euro-Nanny question and was given the Euro-Nanny answer.
C.L.
29 Feb 12 at 5:02 pm
So what skills would you want them gifted in?
Steve Kates
29 Feb 12 at 5:06 pm
A wonder what skills monica lewinsky wanted the president to be gifted in?
Entropy
29 Feb 12 at 5:12 pm
I want a President who uses a quality cologne.
Infidel Tiger
29 Feb 12 at 5:13 pm
So all locally trusted US HRBlock pencil pushers/agents should run for the greatest political office in the free world?
And Kates asserts Santorum and those fellow conservatives who support him are religious fruitloops?
Not surprising from Kates but a huge disappointment from Ann Althouse to even suggest that it makes a “strong case for Romney”.
JamesK
29 Feb 12 at 5:27 pm
So come on, what are those skills you would like the President to be gifted in? Ann’s was not a complete list, of course, but a pretty good start. I need some detail.
Steve Kates
29 Feb 12 at 5:59 pm
Would you necessarily put Ronald Reagan in charge of your personal fortune and children’s health needs?
It’s a ridiculous question.
I would put Ronald Reagan in charge of a country which, over eight years, would be met with a variety of situations, contingencies and emergencies – ones requiring somebody with the right values and instincts.
I can’t imagine Romney saying, “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” He’d probably say, “Mr Gorbachev, allow graffiti on this wall!”
C.L.
29 Feb 12 at 6:18 pm
“You have to choose one of these individuals to take care of everything.”
Therein lies the problem …
Ellen of Tasmania
29 Feb 12 at 6:41 pm
Of course that was the kind of question we were looking to Ronald Reagan to answer after four years of Carter. I can make you up some other questions in relation to foreign policy as well, but we are looking for someone who can deal with our collective problems. A presidential system puts someone at the top whose judgement on a variety of matters is crucial, of which economic matters as described by Ann is amongst the most important.
Steve Kates
29 Feb 12 at 6:51 pm
Well if you have wives or daughters, lock ‘em up before you choose that hobo, Newt.
Peter Patton
29 Feb 12 at 6:55 pm
Ann’s wasn’t any list in answer the question Steve now correctly if belatedly poses which is:
1. Well, leadership on liberty and some humility, Steve.
As spelled out by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution including the Bill of Rights.
That liberty allowed for, among other benefits, economic growth historically unsurpassed anywhere else in the world in time or place.
The so-called 4th arm of government – the bureaucracy – needs to be curtailed and should only be allowed function with direct Congressional oversight not Presidential oversight or worse no oversight – checks and balances
2. Leadership of the free world – a return to Pax Americana.
3. The President needs to address at least rhetorically the social ills in the US – else the Republic as founded is done if it isn’t already.
The majority of children born to women 30 years old and less are to unmarried women – in blacks it’s greater than 3/4.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s worst predictions were underdone.
It’s a social disaster causing human misery on an epic scale and liberty is impossible in such an environment.
4. The US as founded (and essentially the apogee of western culture) is based on “In God We Trust”, individual liberty (and the consequent responsibility) and “E pluribus unum” (the antithesis of multiculturalism).
I’d like to see the President advocate for that.
Just like Reagan.
JamesK
29 Feb 12 at 6:58 pm
And doesn’t wear clip-on ties.
Peter Patton
29 Feb 12 at 7:08 pm
So.. the question is ‘identify the corporatist’?
If you structured the question to ask who will defend your constitutional freedoms you would get another answer.
If you structured the question to ask who would take the fight to the evil muslims and expand religion’s influences at home you would get a third.
If you asked who was most likely to look after themselves and to hell with everyone else you would end up with a fourth.
It’s not the only set of questions that can, or is, being asked. It’s an important one, and one that only 9% got right, but its hardly the only one.
Driftforge
29 Feb 12 at 7:09 pm
Looks like any of them would do better than the Obummer!
Jazza
29 Feb 12 at 7:09 pm
Gary Johnson – 1
Yobbo
29 Feb 12 at 7:25 pm
Yobbo
Will you please stop pushing Johnson. Romney looks like he’s going to win the primary. All Johnson will do is hive off voters from the Romney ticket.
You did say recently your choice between odumbo and Romney was Romney, so what the fuck are you doing?
JC
29 Feb 12 at 7:30 pm
Jeez! Don’t get so bogged down in the literal. Most votes are cast on impression, not analysis.
Biota
29 Feb 12 at 7:33 pm
Matt Damon.
Peter Patton
29 Feb 12 at 7:38 pm
Yes JC, but you didn’t give me the choice of choosing Johnson, and I would 100% vote for Johnson over anyone. I would vote for Johnson over Reagan.
Yobbo
29 Feb 12 at 7:48 pm
If the US does not get it’s budget back into surplus it’s foreign policy will be asking how high it’s debtors want it to jump.
Consequently Romney is the right answer. Yes there are other important questions that could be asked but just at this moment in time the fiscal situation is so desperately serious that all other issues pale into insignificance.
If you weighted the issues on level of seriousness then romney could be the wrong answer on every other issue an still be the overall right answer!
kingsley
29 Feb 12 at 7:49 pm
Not only is Johnson the only candidate who would end the war on drugs, but he’d also end the US ban on internet gambling. No other candidate would consider either.
What is so great about Romney apart from the fact that he’s not Obama?
Yobbo
29 Feb 12 at 7:52 pm
Nonsense. You have it bass-ackwards.
So long as the US is the world’s dominant power, it’s budget deficit is irrelevant.
Les Majesty
29 Feb 12 at 7:52 pm
Don’t know about clip-on ties Peter but elasitic ties area a sadly under appreciated invention.
sdfc
29 Feb 12 at 7:54 pm
I am not sure why the cool dude with the teleprompter didn’t do better, but I blame the relentless negativity of Tony Abbott.
Entropy
29 Feb 12 at 7:59 pm
sdfc your lack of pride disturbs me.
.
29 Feb 12 at 8:04 pm
dot
I was starting to feel sorry for him, because only an orphan, who grew up fatherless, could say something like that. Any father can go the grave content he had done a good job, if his sons can tie their own ties by the time they are 21.
Peter Patton
29 Feb 12 at 8:08 pm
Well doesn’t the fact he isn’t Odumbo count for something- at the very least not throwing a vote away?
I’m being hypothetical as I presume you don’t vote in US elections whereas I will through a defacto vote.
JC
29 Feb 12 at 8:10 pm
Not so sure. Countries can go broke- not technically in a fiat regime. However it may no longer be the dominant power by virtue of meeting everyone down the pike.
JC
29 Feb 12 at 8:12 pm
Have you no same SDFC?
JC
29 Feb 12 at 8:13 pm
Dot
Elastic ties are more efficient but for some reason they are vilified.
sdfc
29 Feb 12 at 8:13 pm
JC
Having less shame is about the only benefit of growing older.
sdfc
29 Feb 12 at 8:15 pm
They are vilified because public servants in the 60′s and 70′s used to wear them also wearing shorts and long socks in public transport.
You ought to be banned from this blog for this alone.
JC
29 Feb 12 at 8:16 pm
I don’t wear shorts or long socks. I’m not a bus driver.
sdfc
29 Feb 12 at 8:16 pm
You should be stoned, SDFC.
JC
29 Feb 12 at 8:17 pm
I’ve brought this subject up at work and get the same response.
sdfc
29 Feb 12 at 8:18 pm
And you haven’t been fired yet? I would and feel no guilt.
JC
29 Feb 12 at 8:21 pm
Anyone who takes ties seriously is a goner.
They are a metaphor and embodiment of men’s oppression.
Kelly of Kenmore
29 Feb 12 at 8:23 pm
Kelly, I used to think that too, until I worked in a place which revelled in ‘mufti Friday’.
Peter Patton
29 Feb 12 at 8:26 pm
Dot and PP, I grew up without a father and could tie my own ties by eight.
Not to Gabs standard of course, but well enough.
And I didn’t use aftershave, either.
Winston Smith
29 Feb 12 at 8:29 pm
Meanwhile, we’ve handed everything over to Gillard and the Greens.
I want someone who can deal with it all like a grown-up, plus wear a tie properly. That’s Tony, isn’t it?
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
29 Feb 12 at 8:33 pm
Now, aftershave is the REAL sign of male oppression!
Peter Patton
29 Feb 12 at 8:33 pm
Peter, mufti or casual Friday? You gotta be joking.
Yeah, wild days, all those people becoming real one day a week with a change of clothes. It’s the same deal wearing a 20cm tie decorated with pink flying elephants.
Kelly of Kenmore
29 Feb 12 at 8:39 pm
Unless it’s Old Spice.
Which is the cologne of liberty!
JamesK
29 Feb 12 at 8:41 pm
Uh-huh.
Yobbo’s Johnson love now becomes clearer.
Fair enough.
C.L.
29 Feb 12 at 8:41 pm
I don’t consider voting for the best candidate as throwing your vote away. Every vote Johnson gets makes it harder for the 2 major parties to ignore Libertarian policies.
Yobbo
29 Feb 12 at 8:42 pm
Kelly, in the US, ‘mufti/casual’ Friday meant ALL the guys wore chinos, a Brooks Brothers chambray shirt, and Gucci loafers. Just AWFUL!
Peter Patton
29 Feb 12 at 8:43 pm
Men pretty much wear what other men wear with little variation in cut or colour. How dull. Ties provide one main avenue towards the nirvana of “self-expression”.
Telling that the diversion is felt to be so essential.
Kelly of Kenmore
29 Feb 12 at 8:51 pm
Not really. Not if the parties think those voters are glued to that minority party in which case it would make no difference to them.
JC
29 Feb 12 at 8:52 pm
The libs are scared shitless. I can feel it. That’s what Operation Hilarity or whatever it was called was all about. They are horrifed about the prospect of facing Romney.
Alex Pundit
29 Feb 12 at 8:53 pm
Kelly, there is a word for men who wear to work ties, with “road runner” or “tweety pie” motifs; solicitor.
Peter Patton
29 Feb 12 at 8:54 pm
If you put the same question in Australia you will get Malcom Turnbull but does this mean we want him to be Opposition Leader?
kelly liddle
29 Feb 12 at 9:26 pm
Les Majesty the US is the dominant power because it currently (just) has the financial capacity to be so. Tanks and jet fighters cost money. No money no jet fighters. It is that simple.
The greatest military and foriegn risk to the USA today is it’s own budget
kingsley
29 Feb 12 at 9:27 pm
lulz
.
29 Feb 12 at 9:30 pm
Mark Steyn pointed out today that the interest payments on US debt to China now fund 80 percent of expenditures for the People’s Liberation Army. It will soon be 100 percent. He observed that this is the first time in history that a declining hegemon has financed the rise of its possible replacement.
C.L.
29 Feb 12 at 9:59 pm
Indeed. Quite vulgar. Socks with thongs (the flip-flop type) are cool, so long as they are sports socks, never long socks.
Peter Patton
29 Feb 12 at 10:01 pm
Well, it looks as though the retarded GOP establishment will succeed in foisting upon us yet another lovely milquetoast moderate along the lines of Bob Dole and John McCain. And he’ll likely be just as successful at the ballot box come November.
I’ll hold my nose and vote for him if he gets up, as I did with McCain. But I’m quietly resigning myself to the likelihood of four more years of Obama.
spot
29 Feb 12 at 10:39 pm
The very premise of that poll shows how totally fucked America has become.
None of those things are safe to leave to the State to control. Any State. None of them.
FMD.
Decline and fall, baby. Decline and fall.
spot
29 Feb 12 at 10:44 pm
Alex
You mean the Dems, yea?
JC
29 Feb 12 at 10:47 pm
You can’t say that Alex.
They will do anything to see Obama re-elected.
If Romney lost in his home state it would have been devastating bercause it would definitely have greatly prolonged the primary process which is good for Obama no matter who the nominee is.
Plus the longer the process the less money available to the GOP nominee in the fall.
Even if Romney had won he would be easily cast as a less than enthusiastically endorsed cadidate.
It doesn’t mean they specifically “fear” Romney.
That’s rubbish.
Meanwhile they are painting Santorum as the future Theocrat-in-Chief.
JamesK
29 Feb 12 at 10:58 pm
Also he Dems had a 20% turnout in 2000 for the GOP Primary inn Michigan.
Tonight it was 9%
JamesK
29 Feb 12 at 11:01 pm
If Santorum wins Ohio next week then there may still be a path forward for him.
JamesK
29 Feb 12 at 11:03 pm
He’s nowhere near as bad as McCain. Probably can fly a bit better than Maverick too.
Infidel Tiger
29 Feb 12 at 11:05 pm
JC, yes.
You haven’t seen the Daily Kos polls. I’ve seen one recently. It had five choices with the question being who they would like to see Obama face in November. Romney was the least favourite.
Alex Pundit
29 Feb 12 at 11:32 pm
When I hear a Dem or lefty say that Obama has the election in the bag because the Republicans are too crazy, they’re overgeneralising in their cockiness.
Yes, there are some crazy Republicans that have run, and that are still running. The ones that are ‘crazy’ per se have had their moments where they have imploded or made some extraordinary gaffe in which they couldn’t recover from. We all know what they’ve been and we don’t need to revisit them but saying that, there has only been one candidate that hasn’t done anything yet that has cost him the election. Sure, he’s made some minor mistakes recently but they weren’t enough to make it the endgame. That candidate is Romney. And the more serious Dems realise this. That’s why they’re nervous.
Alex Pundit
29 Feb 12 at 11:38 pm
JamesK, I’m not exactly sure about what you’re saying there at 10:58pm because you’re speaking in past tense like Romney has lost those two primaries. He didn’t lose them.
Yes, they’re painting Santorum as future theocrat in chief and that’s how they want to frame him. They also want to face him. This is why the people at The Daily Kos tried to get away with their version of Operation Chaos, and epically failed.
Turnout I don’t think is really a deciding factor here either. I think turnout for both parties is down this year due to disillusionment with politics in general with the average punter.
Jonah Goldberg makes that point here.
Alex Pundit
29 Feb 12 at 11:43 pm
That’s helpful for ya, Alex.
Steve Kates might be interested in fellow economist Tom Sowell’s take on Romney
Thomas Sowell:
“Mud-slinging has replaced rational discussions of differences on serious issues — not only during the debates themselves, where the moderators sic the candidates on each other, but even more so in the massive television character assassination ads in which Romney supporters seem to specialize.
Groups supporting Mitt Romney have turned character assassination almost into a science. You take something that most people, outside of politics, do not understand and twist it to sound terrible to those who are unaware of the facts.
Blanketing Florida with misleading ads attacking Newt Gingrich won that state for Romney, after Gingrich scored an upset victory in South Carolina. The ads made a big deal out of charges that the former Speaker broke tax laws — charges that the Internal Revenue Service exonerated him of, after a long investigation.
When Rick Santorum suddenly surged after his upset victories in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado, the Romney character assassination machine attacked him for having voted in the Senate for various things that conservatives don’t like.
But, when it comes to voting in Congress, seldom do you get a pure bill that you can agree with in all its parts. If you never voted for bills containing anything you didn’t like, you might get very little voting done.”
JamesK
29 Feb 12 at 11:58 pm
If Obambi is going to lose, I want him thoroughly broken. Wiped out at the ballot box, scoured electorally from the face of the earth and dumped arse-first into history’s waste-basket.
A narrow victory for the Republican candidate would be worse than four more years of Obama, because we would have to listen to four years of Democrat screeching about “stolen elections” and crap like that. Four more years of paralysis and denial.
No, we need to see a stunning, unassailable, unquestionable wipeout – one which will leave the Dems blinking and so shock them that they actually start to think about what a fucking stupid thing they did putting Obama into office.
perturbed
1 Mar 12 at 12:07 am
[...] Steve Kates reported on a survey in the United States that showed the true question to be asked. I have created such a survey for Australia – please take part [...]
Well, when you put it that way (2) at Catallaxy Files
1 Mar 12 at 6:25 am
It’s called “a sense of fun”. Look it up sometime.
Spot The Dog, try: “have access to and nominal control of, whether you like it or not:”
wreckage
1 Mar 12 at 1:04 pm
*Mr Kates, the first skill set would be to inspire confidence, in voters, in businesses, in the beaurocracy and the military. The second skill set would be to make decisions based not upon preferred outcomes but upon realistic outcomes and further to that to be able to judge people, situations and the interelated dynamics of the two to garner the best and most well rounded advice. The third skill set needed is justice skills, to know when to punish and when to move on, not for your own political interest but for your countrymens best interest. Finally knowing how to play the game to win and conclude not to score points and continue would be highly desirable.
* Sorry about the mister but I’m not certain as to your further honours.
Simon
1 Mar 12 at 2:13 pm