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 analysis of political views and beer preference that found that Heineken drinkers are the most left-leaning while Sam Adams drinkers skew the most Republican. Next up, a definitive study of which party is more partial to pork.
#Fail on President Obama’s insistence that recent incidents of unrest in the Middle East amount to “bumps in the road.” Those aren’t “bumps”; they’re blast craters.
#Meh on Republican operatives’ claims that polls favoring Obama are inaccurate because their samples include too many Democrats. If only voter-ID laws could also block Democrats from public-opinion polls.
#Fail on Mitt Romney’s $250,000 overpayment on his tax returns after saying in July, “I don’t pay more than are legally due, and, frankly, if I had paid more than are legally due I don’t think I’d be qualified to become president.” But as Timothy Geithner can attest, paying less than is legally due does qualify you to be Treasury secretary.
#Meh on the video of Sen. Scott Brown’s campaign staffers letting out Indian war whoops and pretending to wield tomahawks at Elizabeth Warren supporters in apparent reference to her Native American heritage. Big deal. One Bostonian's racism is another's patriotic reenactment of the Boston Tea Party.
#Win on Romney’s new ad accusing Obama of waging a “war on coal.” It’s a shortsighted move by Obama, because when it comes time to renew the war on Christmas, he’s going to need that coal to put in children’s stockings.
But #Fail on the latest leaked video of Romney, in which he tells an audience in 1985 that Bain Capital’s model is to “harvest” companies for a profit. On a related note, Romney is now privately angling for an appointment as Agriculture secretary in Obama’s second term.
#Win on Florida Republican Rep. Allen West's Facebook critique of Obama’s address to the United Nations on Tuesday, which reads in part: “My statement to the United Nations would have been, ‘The future does not belong to those who attack our embassies and consulates and kill our ambassadors. The Angel of Death in the form of an American Bald Eagle will visit you and wreak havoc and destruction upon your existence.’" It’s a little undiplomatic in English, but it actually sounds quite poetic in French.
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