Election 2012: Romney's Campaign Strategy Could Determine What Kind of Running Mate He Needs

After the American Century  

The election campaign is moving into a new phase that will test Romney in ways he has not been tested until now. The questions and problems he now faces cannot be solved by spending more money or by negative campaigning. These two fundamental questions are the following.

(1) Can Romney move toward the center and still attract the more conservative Republicans? He must move toward the center to court the swing voters, most of them Independents. They decide most elections. Almost every candidate makes this move toward the center after the primaries, but it may be harder for Romney to do so, because he is constantly referred to as a flip-flopper on the issues. I have seen at least five editorial cartoons showing him speaking out of both sides of his mouth or contradicting himself. Moreover, can Romney move toward the center in a way that leaves the evangelical and right-wing voters feeling comfortable and enthusiastic? One possibility is that he will do this by making the campaign a contrast between himself and Obama. The more he emphasizes persons the less policies will matter to many of the voters. This approach has a problem, however, namely that Romney is not a terrific personality. Whether you liked or agreed with FDR or Ike or Reagan, all of them were warm, likable people. Call it charisma or what you will, they each had in their own way a strong personal presence. But Romney does not have anything like that, and to a greater degree, Obama does. He has turned out to be somewhat less inspirational in office than he was on the hustings, but he does have oratorical powers that no recent candidate can match, certainly not Gore, Bush, Kerry or that Senator from Arizona who ran last time, you know who I mean, but his name is fading away. In short, emphasizing personality might not be a winning strategy for Romney.

Romney would be better off choosing the other option, which is to emphasize policy differences and to keep personality in the background. If he can convince voters that the election is about fundamental policy differences, then the more conservative Republicans presumably will help push that bandwagon. He would need to stick to domestic issues using this approach, since Obama has continued the Bush foreign policy more than most people thought he would. The Defense Department has the same head, and the troops are still in Afghanistan. (It may be fortunate for both candidates, in fact, that the public does not care too much about foreign policy.)

(2) The answer to the first question has an effect on the second one. Will Romney choose a running mate who appeals to women and minorities more than he does? He wants a VP who brings him votes that he cannot get himself, but is he looking on the Right, in the Center, or toward women and minorities?  His ideal partner would have more of the common touch, appeal to women and minorities, and be a big lovable personality. With such a side-kick Romney can be a bit more centrist, presenting himself as the analytical businessman and champion of free and unregulated markets, smaller government, and lower taxes, while leaving alone the cultural issues like abortion, gay marriage, teaching Creationism in the schools, etc. etc. that instead the VP can talk about. His VP  might borrow Santorum's playbook but tone down the rhetoric. In short, the ideal VP should be a more intelligent Palin. (A certain Minnesota member of Congress does come to mind, but note that I did not name her in my list of four leading candidates for VP, posted here at the end of March.)

Assuming this is how Romney decides to play it, he might have a good chance to win. However, how much different is this from McCain's strategy?

See also my earlier posting on four possible VP candidates. 

Election 2012: Florida's Discriminatory Voting Laws Continue

After the American Century

The State of Florida has perhaps never conducted an election that was fair, when it comes to race. The long and sorry history is outlined in a New York Times article. 

After the debacle of the hanging chads in the 2000 presidential election, one might have thought that Florida would do all in its power to make its voter registration and election above reproach. Not so. The Republican dominated state legislature is actively inhibiting voter registration. It has done so by passing laws that fine volunteers who help others to register to vote. These are not trivial fines. The first version of the law set the fine at $5000 for every form with a mistake on it. The League of Women Voters, hardly a radical organization, took this law to court and it was struck down. But the Florida Republicans know that their state is crucial in the coming election, and they immediately got up another law which reduces the fine to "only" $1000.  

The intimidation and fines have worked: the League of Women Voters has stopped registering people to vote in Florida. 

Imagine that you are a volunteer, seeking to register voters for either party, and the form you help someone submit has a mistake on it somewhere. Perhaps the middle initial in the applicant's name has been left out. Perhaps you have forgotten to tick the small box, which says that you have never been judged insane or mentally handicapped. (I am not making this up.)Three forms out of 100 lack that little tick in the box, and are rejected.  Register voters at your peril, for not only is there a fine of $1000 for each erroneous form, but the volunteer's name ends up in a database. Instead of being praised for trying to do the right thing - helping people to vote - volunteers feel threatened by the Republican State of Florida.  In other words, every mistake is treated as though one were engaged in the fraudulent activity of intentionally filing a false claim. That, of course, should be punished.

But the State of Florida has created more obstacles. Suppose that you discover an error in your own voter registration, quite possibly an error made by some state employee in recording the information. Possibly a computer error, especially when dealing with a Spanish or Russian or Scandinavian name. Suppose your name has the letters ñ or ø or å in it, and suppose that  the State of Florida - glorious state of the hanging chads - has computers that simply do not process those strange letters. Un-American letters. What then? Even if the mistake is not one you made, on election day, you will not be allowed to vote. 

Now, who benefits from such a system? Who are those new voters that the Florida Republicans are so keen to punish? The punishment is completely non-partisan, of course, and the fines can be taken from anyone, rich or poor, white or blank, Anglo of Hispanic.  These laws are surely not directed at poorer people, who tend to vote Democratic. Why would the State want them to decide not to register since it could cost so much money?  It would be unworthy of me to suggest that Florida's Republicans are  carrying on the traditions of voter intimidation pioneered in the American South and used so successfully against African-Americans and poor people for more than a century. Of course Florida today has escaped from its racist heritage and it is ashamed of the disgraceful 2000 Presidential election. Or so one might think.

In fact, Florida is a disgrace to American values. Its history of voter intimidation offers a model only to tin-pot dictators. Florida ought to be ashamed, but it is apparently a state with no conscience, no shame, and no shred of self-respect. 

The Presidential election of 2000 was quite possibly stolen in and by the State of Florida. Land of the hanging chads.

Historical Document, 1891: Horses Won’t Go Out of Fashion

Horse driven cotton gin

After the American Century

The following article appeared in the Rocky Mountain News on July 14, 1891, page 23. It declared the unnamed author's belief that horses would continue to be popular and numerous in the United States, regardless of the technological changes in the wind. In fact, the number of horses in the nation would continue to increase to an all-time high during World War I. So for at least a quarter century, the author of this piece proved correct.

Horses Won’t Go Out of Fashion

If any one is laboring under the delusion that horses are going to become curiosities when the trolley railroad people have grid-ironed the streets with electric wires, he will soon get rid of it. He will catch the fact that the horse is still appreciated as the pet, companion and pride of man, woman and child, even if he is to be relieved of the heavy labor of pulling streetcars. A similar change in the condition of horses occurred when the railroads took the place of turnpikes and engines superseded horses, but the census showed no diminution, but an increase in the number of horses sold, raised and owned. Rapid transit may be improved until the city or country man may go anywhere he wishes at a hundred miles an hour. The dry goods stores may deliver bundles by pneumatic tube express, and plowing and harrowing for a whole township be done by a central electric power plant with wires running to each farm – imagine any improvement or extension of motive power you will, but you can’t imagine the horse becoming effete and disused, so long as men’s blood runs red in their veins. In fact, the horse – the typical, average horse – will be vastly improved, a thing of beauty, power, grace and intelligence by his enfranchisement from coarser and heavier labors.  [reprinted from Horse and Stable, n.d.]

Notes about the technology of 1891

Streetcars were being rapidly adopted after Sprague's successful construction of a system in 1887 that worked well in hilly, Richmond, Virginia.

Pneumatic tube systems of moving mail and other small items were successfully being used in Paris, London, New York, and elsewhere.

Electric power stations had been around for a decade by 1891, although they were largely confined to larger cities and towns. Almost no one in 1891 had electricity in their home yet.

Election 2012: Four Republican Vice-Presidential Possibilities

After the American Century

[We now know that Romeny has picked Paul Ryan to be his running mate, but this piece reminds us of the other alternatives he had, two of which could have helped him with women voters.]

Who will be Romney's running mate?  A common option, historically speaking, is to select one of the other candidates. This conceivably could happen, though I strongly doubt it because there were no women, no minorities, and no one even remotely young.Then there was all that negative advertising, souring relations. Therefore, I am going to assume that other candidates in the primary are out, and that shopping for a Republican VP is a matter of looking at governors and members of Congress. Here are some people that might get considered.

So many have mentioned Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie that I will just let their names stand, and anyone interested can find out more elsewhere. But I am guessing that Romney will look for someone a little unexpected, younger, and less typically Republican, i.e. a woman or a member of a minority group.

He could get both at once by picking Rikki Haley, Governor of South Carolina. She is young, only 39, and got into office with strong support from the Tea Party. She is from the South, which balances Romney's frigid Northern-ness. She has an Indian immigrant background, which would dispel the Romney Harvard old-boy image quite a bit. Since one effect of the primaries so far has been to alienate many women from the Republicans, this choice would help Romney win back female voters. Remember that without women voters Clinton and Obama would never have been elected. Had only men been voting, the Republicans would have held the presidency without a break since at least 1980.

Governor Rikki Haley

Then again, perhaps a young Latino is Romney's missing ingredient. In that case, the most exciting option might be Mark Rubio, Senator from Florida. He is of Cuban-American background, and one of the up-and-coming generation. This choice would also reach out to the Latino voters who have not been much drawn to the Republicans in recent elections. If nothing else, Rubio could deliver the largest swing state to the Romney column, freeing him to focus his campaign on other swing states. Rubio is a good public speaker, and will be a potential candidate for some time to come. He has just endorsed Romney.

Senator Mark Rubio

Yet another young face is New Mexico governor Susana Martinez, born in 1959. She is tough on crime and would appeal strongly to the Hispanics of Mexican background. Note, however, that New Mexico is a far less important swing state than Florida or Ohio, and she is not as well known as Rubio.

Gov. Susana Martinez

But thinking of swing states, Ohio Senator Rob Portman (below) might be just the man to deliver his state to the Romney camp. Portman, born in 1955, is a former White House budget chief under Bush II. However, I am guessing that two white men from Northern states, both focused on economics, is not the ideal team for the Republicans. To maximize the impact of their VP candidate, they need to show some sympathy with the Tea Party and/or the evangelicals and to show a more multicultural and youthful face.

Senator Rob Portman

These are four possibilities that each have something to offer the Romney campaign. For that matter three of them (but not Portman) would help Santorum, another white man from a Northern state, if he should manage to become the nominee. In the  unlikely event that Gingrich becomes the candidate, then a different slate of possible VPs would be needed.

Nevertheless, predicting the VP is generally a hopeless task. Who could have imagined that the first Bush would choose the maladroit Dan Quale? Or that Nixon would pick the obscure Spiro Agnew? Or that Obama would pick Joe Biden, for that matter.

These and other candidates considered likely possibilities have been discussed in the New York Times, whose list did not include any women.

Election 2012: Does Bishop Romney Have a Positive Message, or only a Negative Ad Campaign?

After the American Century

After a decisive victory in Illinois, Romney appears close to winning the Republican nomination. Notably, Gingrich's candidacy faded to fourth place, just behind Ron Paul. This leaves Santorum as his only real challenger, and Romney beat him by more than 10 percentage points. 

One can spin this somewhat differently, and point out that Romney still did not manage to get half the votes in Illinois. This means that despite outspending all of his rivals -- by a wide margin -- the Republicans as a group gave more votes to others than they did to him. There clearly remains a high level of dissatisfaction with him as a candidate.

But the mathematics of delegate counts suggests that after winning Puerto Rico and Illinois, he will be hard to stop. In terms of pledged delegates, Bishop Romney has more votes than his three rivals combined. 

(In case anyone wonders why I refer to him as Bishop, it is because Romney is a Bishop in the Mormon Church, and gives 10% of his income each year to it. This tithe, as well as his missionary work in France for the Mormon Church, shows that he is not a casual member of that church. He has also participated in posthumous baptism, a Mormon ritual  in which people who were never Mormons during their lives are "converted" post-facto. Among these are many of the founding fathers of the US and Anne Frank, who as a Jewish person was killed by the Nazis.)

The problem, increasingly for Bishop Romney will be one of turning his almost entirely negative campaign into a more positive one telling Americans how he can make the country a better place. To date, he has used all his energy to attack others, including the President. His advertising money has been overwhelmingly used to send out negative messages. By one count he has had seven negative advertisements for every positve one. It seems doubtful that this strategy alone will put him in the White House. 

So as Romney moves to later primaries, it will be interesting to see if he has anything equivalent to Ronald Reagan's famous "Morning in America" campaign. What is he for? This is also a challenge for the Republican Party as a whole, which for four years has been a negative force, constantly on the attack, but almost never offering anything new or innovative as a solution to the nation's challenges.

In short, the question now becomes whether Bishop Romney's candidacy can renew the Republican Party, or whether it will remain mired in squabbles between its various factions. Can it articulate a common vision and look forward? Can the Republicans think positively? And will Bishop Romney's religion play a role in whatever does happen?

Election 2012: What Do Alabama Exit Polls Tell Us about the Republicans?

After the American Century

No one really "won" in Alabama. Rather, three candidates split the vote into almost equal segments, with Ron Paul getting only 5 percent. But exit polls also tell us more about how the electorate is divided. Alabama is more interesting than Mississippi here, because the latter is so rural and so poor that it is an extreme case.

So, here are the conclusions one can draw from exit polls. First of all, there are virtually no Black people in the Alabama version of the Republican Party, being less than 2% of the primary voters there, or about 4,000 people. Perhaps these are Black Mormons or Black millionaires? No less than 93% of the Republican voters were white, and of the three main candidates Romney finished last with just 28%.

In terms of gender, Gingrich is the most popular among men (34%), especially those who have never gone to college. Apparently, they are the most impressed by his repeated claims to be the smartest candidate. He was strongest in the suburbs, with 35% there, and fully 40% think he is the candidate best able to deal with an international crisis.  Otherwise, in most categories Gingrich comes in second or third.

Santorum is the most popular among women, especially working women, and he is also the most popular among college graduates. (Remember that college in Alabama is often primarily about football.)  Santorum is also the most popular among younger voters, especially those under 30, where he got 41% of the votes. Apparently his intense moralism appeals to them, as well as to that half the Alabama Republicans who think a candidate's religious beliefs matter a great deal, 48% of whom voted for him. He was the most popular candidate in both rural and urban (but not suburban) Alabama. However, even his supporters think he is the least well prepared to deal with an international crisis.

Romney is not particularly liked by the intensely religious, the rural, the young, men, or women.  The only groups where his attraction rises to above 35% are those over 65 and those who make more than $100,000 a year. The logic seems to be that Romney would win a massive victory among rich, dead people, as, like him, they do not drink and are pretty rigid.  This constituency has little gender left and are almost all over 65. Given Mormon theology, in which the dead can be posthumously made a member of the church, this would seem an incontrovertible result. 

Romney also got 35% of the voters who had studied beyond the BA level. He is clearly understood, even by the Republicans, to be aloof from  ordinary people. Only one in five voters thought Romney best understood the average American's problems. Why is he getting about a third of the support, then? Two factors keep Romney viable in this race. (1) Not less than 59% of the Republican voters perceive the economy as the most important issue (compared to 25% who think it is the federal budget deficit, the 9% who think abortion is, or the 3% who say it is illegal immigration). Romney is generally thought to be the man who can deal with the economy.  (2) Romney is also perceived as the man who can most likely defeat Obama.

There are some curiosities that may not apply elsewhere. For example, it seems surprising that Romney only polled 28% among the Independent voters,  while 33% of them voted for Santorum. To be an "Independent" in Alabama apparently often means that one is further to the Right than the Republican Party, as Ron Paul did twice as well with them (11%) as he did overall. Overall, in Alabama 72% of the Independent voters voted for Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul. This is in contrast to most of the nation, where Independents tend to be moderate, centrist voters.

37% of the Alabama voters made up their minds in the last days before the election, and Romney narrowly won among this thoughtful group who realized that the choice was difficult because quality is missing. In contrast, Santorum won among those who made up their minds during the last few weeks (when he began to surge), while Gingrich won among those who decided long ago. In other words, Romney's heavy spending and massive negative advertising did sway some of the undecided voters during the last days of the campaign. Nevertheless, as predicted several days ago, he was never going to do well in these Southern primaries. 

A Visit to BMW Welt, Munich

After the American Century

As part of the research for my forthcoming book on the assembly line (MIT Press, 2013), I have visited several factories. Here is my account of a visit to one of them.

It costs €8 to see the BMW plant in Munich, and it is necessary to sign up in advance^. There is room for only two groups of 25 people each hour, one with an English guide. In contrast, the magnificent show room where the tours start, a vast building called “BMW Welt,” attracts much larger crowds. It is a temple where enthusiasts can see all the latest models, pose in the driver’s seat, look at exhibits about how (and of what materials) the car is made, sit on a BMW motorcycle, or go into the gift shop to purchase BMW T-shirts, mugs, jackets, key-chains, model cars, and much more. In the bookstore on the mezzanine level they can also buy books about automobiles, design, and the company history. The building is about consumption and pride of ownership. Its sinuous lines and the profusion of displays create the feeling that one is in a high-end shopping complex. A distinguished stream of customers constantly arrives, to be welcomed and ushered  into elevators to higher floors inaccessible to ordinary visitors. Most BMW buyers enjoy a fine lounge and restaurant where they await the arrival of their new car. A select few go to a more exclusive redoubt of luxury, so rarified that most of those who serve the thronging clientele have never seen it. Most tourists are not buyers. But if they ascend to the second level, seven meters about the ground floor, they can look across at the exclusive area where immaculate cars are driven in and delivered to new owners, who drive down a ramp that circles out into the city traffic. 

BMW Welt

The factory tour lasted two hours and covered three kilometers. Most of the time we walked on concrete floors and metal bridges, surfaces that punish the arches, the knees and the lower back. Fifty years ago such a factory tour would have been noisier and grittier, and one would have sympathized with the workers caught up in that environment every day. But today robots do much of the work. Looking a bit like giant orange insects, they move deliberately, pausing with some delicacy near the end of each maneuver, as sensors guide their pincers to just the right position. First, in the stamping plant they guide sheets of steel into a succession of enormous machines that crunch down over sheets of flat steel transforming it into the hood or roof or trunk, or perhaps a left or right door. In each case, before the die slams down on the smooth steel, the metal is sprayed with a mist of oil to lubricate the process. The massive first stamping creates the basic form, which is refined and completed in the smaller stampings that follow, as ends are trimmed or folded, small holes added, and further indentations made. In 1913 several workers were needed to feed blanks into stamping machines, take out the results, and send them on to the next machine. A century later all this work is done by machines, with only a few people keeping an eye on the process. Our guide declares this technological unemployment is just as well, for the work is boring and yet dangerous, given the tremendous force of the stamping machines. It is endlessly repetitive and also hard on the ears. Some skilled workers are needed because the dies in the machines must be changed at times to make spare parts for older models. A model is usually made for seven years, but after that BMW produces parts for another decade. 

The stamped parts are next transported, automatically, to the body assembly, where the left and right door frames are attached to the car’s floor. Then a roof is added, followed by smaller parts and then the doors. In many cases the stamped panels are first fixed in place with a fast-drying glue that also functions as a thin elastic layer that will cushion shocks and improve the car’s ride. The metal parts are then welded together, again by giant orange robots, eight of them working at once in an almost silent, rapid sequence that has been choreographed and fine-tuned. Hardly a worker has touched it yet, but the welded parts have become a car body, still without wheels, windows, seats, or drive train. 

Before these can be added, the bodies pass on to the paint building, where we trudged after our guide over steel bridges through strange smelling passageways. We had glimpses of machinery at times, and heard an occasional hiss or gurgling sound, until we emerged into a large white room with soft seats where we gladly sat for a five-minute lecture on the steps involved in painting a car. One might imagine that the process was like painting the outside of a house, with a primer and one or two coats of good paint, and indeed that is exactly what Ford did in 1913. Each coat then needed  hours to dry before the next one was applied.  But it was hardly so time-consuming in 2011, even though there are more layers. First, all the residual oil and any dirt are zealously washed off the bodies. Then they are baptized in a thick undercoat, through a total immersion of the whole body in a large pool of paint, which is then pulled up by a robot to drip off before passing through a heating shed, where it is first baked in infrared heat at 150 degrees C, driving off all the liquid in the paint, and then furiously blown over by artificial winds. 

This is just the beginning, as four more layers will be applied, including one that is a bit rubbery, to make the surface more resistant to flying gravel or hailstones. The next to last layers are the paint proper that give the car its distinctive color. Ninety percent of all BMW buyers want their vehicle to be black, silver, or white. The other eleven colors are seldom used. New avatars of the same orange robots, made in Augsburg just an hour away from the plant, apply these layers. They spray the paint evenly, and digital cameras record the results. During each new round of coatings the car is given an electrical charge that attracts the tiny droplets to its surface. Not much paint sails wide of the mark, but any waste falls into a continuously rushing stream, a mini-Niagara under each painting station. The paint is extracted from the water, which is reused. Indeed, the water usage of the BMW plant has been reduced 90 percent in recent decades.

Once the BMW bodies have been repeatedly painted and baked, they pass into a room with six levels of shelves on each side where they are carefully stored. In the passageway between the shelves a machine that is both an elevator and a powerful robot lifts one body at a time, lowers it to ground level and sends it on its way to the final assembly plant. More than half of the shelf space is empty, for the factory makes only cars that have been ordered. It produces each body just in time for final assembly.

The guide next takes us to the other great tributary stream to the final assembly, the engine manufacturing plant. Most of the engines made here are powerful 4 cylinder 2.0 liter affairs that get 16 kilometers to the liter (or more than 30 mpg). Half the labor that goes into them is human, half robotic. The V8 engine for larger BMWs is 80% made by human beings, and the top of the line engine for the Rolls Royce is 100% man-made. (To be precise, 95% of the workers at the Munich BMW plant are men, and the few women are clustered in certain jobs.) In the motor plant the guide does not show us the casting of engine blocks or their precision drilling. Once the work of extremely skilled labor, this too has been progressively automated. Already in 1913 Ford had a purpose built machine that simultaneously drilled forty-five holes in an engine block, from four directions. A century later, the early stages of engine production have few workers. We see obviously skilled men building parts into these blocks as they pass down the line. Inspections also are continuous, until motors are complete and they can be harnessed to the drive train. 

At this point the two streams of work come together. The bodies meet the engine and drive trains they are destined to mate with, or “marry” as the workers put it. The bodies gently fall down as the engines rise up, with a brief pause before the last centimeters of drop and the two become one.  Final assembly can then begin. This part of automobile production still attracts the most public attention, as hundreds of parts and pre-assembled units like the dashboard are put in, typically with no more than a minute for each operation. Painting, by comparison, is repetitive and not as interesting to watch, and not even shown on many assembly line tours. Final assembly is much faster. One man unbundles and lays out a car’s electrical wiring and secures it in position, and a moment later another worker is covering the wires and the entire bottom of the car with a perfectly cut felt-like layer. Visitors walk much faster than the crawling line, and to them each task seems to take considerably less than a minute. One man with the help of a robot lifts and puts in the dashboard. The back and front seats, the emergency brake, the headlights and many small details are quickly and expertly installed. The windshield goes in. In half an hour one has traversed much of the line, and the cars are nearing completion. The doors, earlier removed to allow easier access to the interior, are reinstalled. At the end of the line some gasoline is pumped in, and each car is started, tested, and driven out of the factory. 

The BMW tour in Munich is by no means unusual. The industrial tourist can visit similar factories in all parts of the world. The newest are often designed as tourist sites. Visitors have been coming to see such marvels of assembly since Ford's managers first created the line in 1913. For a century, the public has remained enchanted. When I visited BMW the tours were sold out, but the factory's  “romance of production” was less central to the public than the “romance of consumption” in the showroom. In both places the car was treated as an almost enchanted “thing in itself,” an icon of modernity. For many it has become the ultimate consumer product, especially because now the assembly line can produce individualized automobiles, made to the consumer’s specifications. Henry Ford made his cars identical. But today, using the computer to keep track of the entire process from ordering to delivery, the assembly line produces individualized objects. Paradoxically, an assembly line with many robots and far fewer workers than in 1913 makes a more highly differentiated line of automobiles.

See also the blog on America's Assembly Line

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