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Marco Rubio, "a man in a field of mice"

"I have been in the Senate just long enough to be disgusted by the reality that Washington has too many people who think their personal political careers are more important than our country’s future," says GOP rising star Marco Rubio, upstaging the Democrats and their media fellow travelers in the "MediScare" drama with a virtuoso solo performance that's bringing the twitterspere to their feet in a virtual standing ovation. Listen here.

"THIS is how it's done … a man in a field of mice … take the fight to the Dems," twittered ecstatic Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin this morning, joining the throng of us narrative chasers out here in cyberspace retweeting and blogging about newly-minted Florida Senator Marco Rubio's response to the Democrats' "Mediscare" spin. In "Looking for Medicare Solutions, Not Politics As Usual" the first-generation Cuban American hottie uses the example of his immigrant parents to disarm opponents:

For me, Medicare is not a political talking point. My parents immigrated to the United States in the late 1950s. They worked hard for over 40 years to provide their children the chance to do all the things they themselves could not. But they never made much money.

As a result, they retired with precious little in savings. Medicare was and is the only way they could access healthcare.

Having lured his listeners with emotionally charged personal evocations of the American Dream, he reels us in:

Rep. Paul Ryan has offered a plan that would make no changes whatsoever for anyone age 55 and older. I support it because, right now, it is the only plan out there that helps save Medicare. Democrats oppose it. Fine. But, if they have a better way to save Medicare, what are they waiting for to show us? What is their plan to save Medicare?

Either show us how Medicare survives without any changes or show us what changes you propose we make. Anyone who supports doing nothing is a supporter of bankrupting Medicare.

Paul Ryan noticed and twittered a link to Rubio's speech, with editorial content:

Strong message from strong leader.

"I'm telling you, these two would make an unbeatable ticket," twittered diggrbiii aka RB of The Right Sphere and Big Journalism, linking to Ryan's tweet:

Rubio and Ryan should announce they're running on the same ticket. Today. And then go on a year-long speech tour.

Politico's Ben Smith reports that “American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas said in an interview today that he thinks the eventual Republican nominee would be well advised to offer Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio a slot on the ticket — and that Rubio, if asked, would likely assent.” According to a new Gallup poll, Romney and Palin are leading the field. Palin/Rubio. Rolls right off the tongue.

Related: The Right Sphere's Brandon Kiser has a dream:

This is probably all a pipe dream, but you have to agree with Jonah Goldberg when he says ”politics is about moments, and this one is calling [Ryan]. Unless someone suddenly rises to the challenge, the cries of ‘Help us, Paul Ryan, you’re our only hope!’ will only get louder.”

Looks like someone named Marco just did.

Update: Fun banter with Brendan Loy on twitter, referencing the "man in a field of mice" of our title:

Brendan: He should do something about that. Maybe get a cat.

We: Or maybe a mama grizzly.

Update II: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update III: Doug Ross aka Director Blue links!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Obama unmasked

We and the immediate blogosphere made note of Barack Obama's "creepy, smirky smile" that transmogrified his human face into "a bizarre theatrical comedy mask" every time John McCain mentioned an inconvenient truth about his opponent's words or deeds during last night's debate. Above left, the mask emerges in full at McCain's evocation of "Acorn."

When Senator Blinky (Confederate Yankee's words) met Senator Government (Senator Blinky's words), "Joe [the Plumber] made Senator Government squirm," writes Michelle Malkin re Obama's studied "I'm thoughtful and earnest and I care about you" body language as he exchanged words with John McCain during the third and final presidential debate at Hofstra U. last night. We liked an NRO reader's take:

First time I've seen Obama blushing and looking frustrated in a debate. McCain is getting under his skin.

Yup. As we wrote in a coda to our previous post, "Johnny's got Barry in the [OODA] loop," but:

Will Obamaniacs notice or be unnerved by it? Probably not, but maybe our fellow citizens who haven't yet made up their minds will.

How do you REALLY feel about your opponent?  Obama (from an Instapundit emailer): "Can't I just be president already?" McCain (loved and hated by the usual suspects for his politically incorrect sense of humor): "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Obam." Photoshopped screenshot above is meant to graphically portray the mental states of the two contenders during their two hours and twenty minutes of forced proximity.

"Blinky" McCain is not without a few facial tics of his own, of course — shall we chalk them up to aftereffects of his Vietnam prisoner-of-war years ? — but when it comes down to words, our man gets to the point three times faster than his opponent:

Obama: "I am a person who believes [fill in the blank]" = 6 words

McCain: "I believe [fill in the blank]" = 2 words

'Must be that "nuance" thing the Democrat elites are forever patting themselves on the back about. We ourselves have always been of the brevity-is-the-soul-of-wit school of intelligence assessment.

It's the technologies, stupid

Snow Lion Tiny is the pride of the winter landscape as an overnight dusting of snow retreats in the early afternoon sun.

"These two look like Lincoln and Douglas next to what we see on TV now," emails our Iowa correspondent, referring to a video of the late Bill Buckley debating U.S. foreign policy with Noam Chomsky on Firing Line in 1969:

It makes one somewhat depressed about the intellectual level of our national debates today compared to forty years ago.

"With WFB, I doubt whether it really was a true debate," notes our imail correspondent:

She: Bill knew how to level 'em, in the most gracious way.

We: Totally. The hapless Noam was left gasping for air.

Fun to watch, unlike the national televised yawners of our day. As we blogged a coupla years back in our post "After you, my dear Alphonse" re the 2000 vice-presidential debate between Dick Cheney and Joseph Lieberman:

The issues don't change much from decade to decade, and it's fascinating to watch how arguments pro or con a particular point go back and forth between parties depending upon the current occupant of the White House. One thing that has changed between those halcyon pre-chad, pre-9/11 days and our Fahrenheit 911/527's/MoveOn, campaign-finance-reform-loophole era is the tenor of the debate. C-Span rebroadcast Cheney's and Lieberman's oh-so-civilized and -- in Donald Rumsfeld's term -- helpful debate last night. Low key, measured and rational. Who knew there were such things in this day and age?

"Campaign finance 'reform' has been enormously destructive to civil society, in my opinion," commented Glenn Reynolds at the time -- which it has -- but if "everyone is effected mostly by their enemies," the more alert among the citizenry have moved far beyond getting "their news" from what we used to call the mainstream media. Likewise, candidates are using the airwaves and cyberspace in exciting new workarounds that go over the anchors' heads, leaving three-hour formal debates moderated by Tim and Brian and Chris in the dust. Today, for example, the two frontrunners were taking advantage of cable's 24/7 news maw, thrusting and parrying back and forth from their individual campaign trails with biting, witty soundbites, practically in real time. Lively and informative. That's entertainment:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) accused Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) of making ill-informed comments about Iraq and al-Qaeda in Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate, signaling that a general-election brawl between the colleagues would center in part on who has the foreign policy experience to lead a country at war.

Despite McCain's war-hero status and years of foreign policy experience, Obama made it clear that he will not back down from such a fight, issuing a quick rebuke of McCain that linked him to President Bush and the war in Iraq.

In Honest Abe's day it was a series of three-hour formal debates held at seven sites throughout Illinois -- one in each of the Congressional Districts where the two candidates were competing for a US Senate seat -- that caught the public's imagination. Wikipedia:

The debates in Freeport, Quincy and Alton drew especially large numbers of attendees from neighboring states, as the issue of slavery was of monumental importance to citizens across the nation.  Newspaper coverage of the debates was intense, as major papers from Chicago sent stenographers to create complete texts of each debate. Then newspapers across the nation reprinted the full text of the debates as published by the Chicago papers. Interestingly, newspapers that supported Douglas edited his speeches to remove any errors made by the stenographers and to correct grammatical errors, while they left Lincoln's speeches in the rough form in which they had been transcribed. In the same way, Republican papers edited Lincoln's speeches, but left the Douglas texts as reported.

Human nature hasn't changed a whit. It's the technologies, stupid.

Update: At Modulator's Friday Ark, it's the animals, stupid.

Update II: At Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities, it's the nutcakes, stupid.

Update III: At Momma Grace & Company's Carnival of the Cats #207, it's the cat's meow, stupid.

When a Mormon and a pope think the same things

Tuck (inset) gets caught in the crosshairs of a Boston Globe photographer's lens during Governor Romney's Chelsea visit yesterday. (John Tlumacki / Globe Staff Photo)

Yesterday Chelsea, today New Hampshire, tomorrow the world. Our globe-trotting, wisecracking Governor Mitt heads for Vatican City next Thursday to attend Archbishop Seán O'Malley's elevation to cardinal. How's he doing? The reviews are mixed and may be more about the observer than the observed. "During a political appearance in Tennessee last weekend, he was the only potential presidential candidate not to regularly engage reporters," keens Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory:

He brushed past a few reporters without making eye contact . . .

He can be uncommonly thoughtful and occasionally eloquent, and his earnestness is often refreshing. He will never be corrupt. And yet his personality demands the kind of structure and order that will prove impossible in a presidential campaign, at least not in a successful one. Perhaps overthinking his father's downfall, he seems consumed by panic that he will say the wrong thing.

An incorruptible politician, and the columnist is carping about not getting enough eye contact? Another "Virginia Postrel moment" where style trumps substance? McGrory writes of "the typically tepid applause that [Romney] hears all around Massachusetts," but the Gov seems to be playing considerally better across the state line. Check out the scene at a St. Paddy's Day roast in Nashua this morning:

"Stepping out of the car, I bumped my head and broke my hair."

"When you can poke fun at yourself in a crowd that doesn't know you, I think it bodes well for him," the mayor said. "He's traveled all the highways and byways and now he's working into the towns. He knows how to run for president in New Hampshire."

"I'm at the forefront of some of the toughest issues in the nation that relate to the culture of our land," Romney tells Brian Lamb in a C-Span interview to be aired Sunday night. Will his Mormonism be an obstacle? He says no:

He said he ascribed to the beliefs of Abraham Lincoln, and a ''political religion" in the United States. ''It's our adherence to the laws of the land, to our oath of office". . . Romney said that other politicians perceived to have electability issues due to issues of religion -- such as John F. Kennedy, who was a Catholic, and Ronald Reagan, who was divorced -- had far less of a problem than many pundits had predicted [because] American voters care more about values than individual theologies.

''They get to know candidates. They learn about their positions . . . And they see whether they have the same values or not. And that sweeps away questions about someone's particular religion."

We're reminded of something Oriana Fallaci said re Pope Benedict XVI's recognition of the threat that Islamicism poses to Western civilization:

"I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion."

If a Mormon and a pope think the same things, does the same apply?

A "Postrel moment" in Chelsea

Glamour boy Mitt Romney took the podium this morning in the former Janus Fabrications facility in "The Box District," a defunct industrial area of Chelsea slated for transformation into "a vital residential neighborhood." He's flanked above by Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, left, and Secretary of Environmental Affairs Stephen Pritchard. We were taken with the Governor's reference to the "visual effect" of the cityscape that would result from anti-sprawl, smart-growth development, an example, perhaps, of what An Army of Davids author Glenn Reynolds calls "a Virginia Postrel moment,' illustrating that asthetic values are becoming a major driver of economic activity.

Governor Mitt breezed in and out of Chelsea this morning to officiate at ceremonies celebrating Commonwealth Capital funding of a smart-growth revitalization project  -- retooling existing buildings for new uses, new construction clustered near existing infrastructure -- Tuck's been involved in for years as a board member and treasurer of Chelsea Neighborhood Housing Services. Initiated by CNHS, "The Box District" plan benefitted by having strong support and assistance from the City of Chelsea and the state's Office for Commonwealth Development, the Governor's brainchild that brought together transportation, housing, energy and the environment under one roof.

Governor Romney, Lieuetenant Governor Healey -- our own favored candidate for next Governor of the Commonwealth -- and Douglas Foy, who recently stepped down as the state's first Secretary of the Office for Commonwealth Development.

Environmental advocate Douglas Foy -- who quit his post as Secretary of the Office for Commonwealth Development last month after Romney said he would not run for reelection -- was there. It was smiles and hearty handshakes and congratulations all around, but when the Governor referred to Foy, he hinted at tensions behind the facade -- a little googling later on suggested Foy and his boss didn't always see eye to eye. Those windmills proposed for Teddy Kennedy's "backyard" in Nantucket Sound, for example: Foy was in favor, Romney against. Gesturing towards Foy during this morning's ceremonies, the Gov quipped:

We agree almost 99 per cent of the time, and when we don't agree, I'm probably wrong.

Can you say smooth? Trying for a bit of humor as he was finishing up his own remarks, Secretary Foy ventured "and now I'll exit stage right . . . or is it left?" mock looking for guidance to Romney, who replied with perfect comic timing:

Definitely stage left.

We'd caught our gorgeous Governor during Fox & Friends earlier fielding the inevitable anchorly attempt to get him to come right out and say he's running for president. Steve Doucy had teased, "We need a scoop. Will you announce today to help us out?" Being one of those clowns who will do anything for a laugh, we picked up on that when our turn came to go eyeball to eyeball with the great man:

You wouldn't tell Steve Doucy, so how about me?  I need a scoop for my blog.

And yes, he's every bit as handsome in person. We would have walked a mile (that's about how far the old Janus Fabrications facility is from our doorstep) just to experience the physical beauty, personal charm and perfect grooming up close. Talk about Postrel moments. When it comes to choosing our leaders, aesthetics are right up there with intelligence and shared values and whatever else motivates our polling-booth behavior.

Update: Official announcement from the Governor's Office.