Welcome to this week’s Voice Votes, a feature in which we grade the week’s headlines—and poke fun at them. You can join in by suggesting your own #win, #fail, and #meh candidates via Twitter. (Send tweets to @nationaljournal). Need more space? E-mail suggestions to Readers@nationaljournal.com or leave us a comment on Facebook. We’ll publish the best suggestions in this space every week and credit the authors.
Here's how we vote this week:
#Win on the little Colorado girl who burst into tears after hearing one too many mentions of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. The Romney and Obama campaigns initially viewed the girl’s anguish as a chance to show off their empathy skills, before learning she was too young to vote.
#Win on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s turn in the spotlight this week after his take-charge handling of superstorm Sandy’s devastation of his state. If 2016 Republican primary voters don't like his new BFF relationship with Obama, well, as Tony Soprano once said, "All due respect, you got no f------ idea what it's like to be No. 1."
#Win on the revelation that the resignations earlier this year of former Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., and two other congressmen came while all three were subjects of separate ethics investigations. “It wasn’t me,” Cardoza told National Journal, invoking what legal scholars call “the Shaggy Defense.”
#Meh on Romney’s ridicule of Obama’s proposal for a Cabinet-level secretary of Business at a rally in Virginia on Thursday. Romney’s alternate proposal: If you need a secretary for your business, borrow money from your parents.
#Meh on the 100 surrogates who will join Romney and Paul Ryan on the campaign trail between Friday and Election Day. It sounds impressive, but probability tells us that 47 of them will just be dead weight.
#Fail on the new Facebook app that aims to shame people into civic participation by letting their friends know whether they’ve voted. If the most embarrassing thing about you on Facebook is your voting history, you need to get out more.
#Win on the warning from the brother of Michigan 11th District House candidate Kerry Bentvolio that the tea partier is “mentally unbalanced” and that “if he gets elected, he’ll eventually serve time in prison.” Yes, but is there anything that sets him apart from your average House candidate?
#Fail on Katrina-era FEMA Director Michael “Heckuva Job, Brownie” Brown’s criticism of Obama for responding too quickly to the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. Career tip from Brownie: It's all about being behind the curve.
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