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:
#Meh on President Obama’s professed confidence, in an interview with The Des Moines Register, that he will be able negotiate a “grand bargain” on fiscal issues with congressional Republicans. We believe him, if by “grand bargain” he means they’ll be able to reduce the deficit by about a grand.
#Meh on the release of e-mails showing that the White House had been informed on the day of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that Islamic militants had claimed responsibility for the attack on social media, though the administration did not frame it as a planned terrorist strike for several days. To be fair to the White House, an Ansar al-Sharia announcement on Twitter is about as credible as a Donald Trump announcement on YouTube.
#Fail on the comparison made by Mark Clayton, the Democratic challenger in Tennessee’s Senate race, between himself and Jesus, in which he said, ”Jesus did not have a campaign staff. And he had the most successful campaign in human history.” It’s an interesting point, but Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, whereas Clayton is going to get crucified on Election Day.
#Win on vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s labeling of the Obama campaign’s pamphlet outlining a second-term agenda as a “comic book” at a rally in Virginia on Thursday. Ryan still looks like a teenager, so we guess he’s qualified to make that assessment.
#Win on the prominent role makers of a film about Osama bin Laden have given Obama by editing him into the film at several points. It’s nice to see the president finally embracing the “celebrity” tag his opponents keep sticking him with.
#Fail on Vice President’s Joe Biden’s somewhat-puzzling response to Mitt Romney’s comment on 60 Minutes that he feels his 14 percent income tax rate is fair. “Joey, if it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck!’” Biden quoted his mother as telling him at a rally in Ohio Wednesday, adding “Man, this is one quackin’ duck!” We don’t know much about ducks, but we do think we spot a quack.
#Win on a Massachusetts judge’s decision to unseal Romney’s 1991 testimony in the divorce case of campaign surrogate and Staples founder Tom Stemberg, which is expected to yield insight into Romney’s business appraisal of the Bain Capital-funded office supply chain. Our prediction: Romney used Staples to get a great price on binders full of women.
#Fail on Mitt Romney supporter John Sununu's suggestion on CNN Thursday that former secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Obama because the two men are of the same race. Wait, could that be why Sununu endorsed Romney?
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