Maybe it’s a question you haven’t devoted much thought about. But the journalists at the Dutch paper De Volkskrant are on it:

Wat gaat #Romney nu doen? – http://t.co/Hk72QCkD

November 8, 2012 11:12 am via bitlyReplyRetweetFavorite

@volkskrant

De Volkskrant

“What does Romney do now?

Indeed: What do you do with yourself when you’ve basically spent the last six years running for president, but came up short at the finish line? “Spend more time with my family” – OK, of course, but once that starts to wear thin there aren’t really many firm answers about what comes next. Apparently wife Ann doesn’t want any more presidential campaigning, yet according to this piece “In the US there is a general consensus that the 65-year-old ex-governor will not disappear from the public eye.” There may nonetheless well be another attempt at the presidency; in any case, some future active role in the Republican Party seems likely.

BTW the Volkskrant web-editors have not been kind to Romney with their choice of picture to head this piece. Check it out: it’s Mitt smooching with Ann on-stage after he delivered his concession speech, but considering her expression it’s probably better described as an oscular assault!

You can now add the Netherlands to the Cayman Islands and Switzerland in the Mitt Romney tax-avoidance Hall of Fame:

#Romney ontwijkt belasting door sluipweg via Nederland http://t.co/S1w4WKy2

November 5, 2012 6:03 am via bitlyReplyRetweetFavorite

@volkskrant

De Volkskrant

“[S]luipweg via nederland” – you can translate that as “Dutch dodge,” through which Bain Capital managed to avoid €80 million in taxation on dividends in 2004 by channeling an investment in the Irish pharmaceutical company Warner Chilcott through a Dutch holding company that held the shares. He also avoided that way a substantial sum in Irish wealth tax.

Note that this is in the period after 1999 when Romney claimed to have cut connections with Bain. This tax-trick was uncovered through cooperative research undertaken by Gawker and a Dutch independent financial investigation website called Follow the Money, using public SEC filings, once-confidential documents made public by Bain, and data from the Dutch Chamber of Commerce. Note that it was apparently perfectly legal.

So the presidential debates are finally over! The third and last one – it was supposed to be about foreign policy – just happened, and now the candidates are back on the campaign trail for the home stretch.

As usual, there has been a flood of analysis about this third debate, domestically but also in the international press. But at EuroSavant we’re always on the look-out for the unusual angle, and I believe we’ve found it: Beer-mugs for Obama from Der Spiegel, by that magazine’s lady correspondent in New York, Wlada Kolosowa.

Yes, that’s a very Polish name (given name should be pronounced VWA-da), although Wlada turns out to be a quite pretty 25-year-old Russian (pictures here) who has moved to New York City to study “Creative Writing” at NYU and who while there apparently is Der Spiegel’s local stringer.

A 25-year-old foreigner, just arrived in-country, as a debate analyst? you might exclaim. Well, how about if Wlada investigates the drinking-game perspective? That’s what she does here, heading for a popular bar for NYU’ers in Brooklyn called “Galapagos” on Monday night.

That explains the article’s title, and Wanda does a pretty thorough job, despite actually going on-location to but one bar. Did you know that for many Americans “Where are you going to watch the debate?” is just as common a question as “Where will you watch the World Cup Final?” is in Germany? Or that there is an endless variety of presidential debate drinking-game regimes, each according to taste? Many newspapers publish them, she reports, and universities all have their own. These amount to lists linking key words with associated drinks: sort of like bingo, if you hear these words, then you’re supposed to take the associated drink. Or sometimes something else: the drinking game rules published by the feminist website Jezebel, for example, prescribe that upon hearing a candidate mention his mother, players should then promptly send their own mothers a “drunk SMS” either thanking them for the good times or else cursing them for the way they screwed up their daughter’s life. Or there’s the list from what Kolosowa calls the “macho site” BroBible that even prescribes smoking a joint if/when either candidate starts talking about “green jobs.”

All in all, pretty light-hearted stuff. But Wlada also takes the trouble to gauge the mood towards President Obama among her sample of young NYU’ers. As you can imagine, the euphoria of back in 2008 is by now truly well and gone, especially since all of these young people have major anxieties about landing jobs after graduation. (And have no doubt about it, NYU is an expensive school, meaning that most of them will leave there with significant debts to their names.) On the other hand, most are willing to give Obama a pass on the situation, recognizing that in reality there is little the president can do about employment.

So tonight we have coming up the second debate between the two American presidential candidates. There is already great anticipation, since the first one reminded us all that these can indeed materially effect presidential races, as seen in the recovery of Mitt Romney’s poll numbers over the past two weeks. All the Obama fans out there will be desperate for the President to perform rather better this time.

But how about a reality check from the leading Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende?

Amerikanske seere vil ikke have saglig information, men en klar vinder i præsident-debatterne http://t.co/91hMGb0k

October 16, 2012 5:42 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@berlingske

Berlingske

Yes, it’s Danish, let me give you a translation of the piece’s lede:

[TV] Viewers don’t want to have factual information in this sort of a debate, they want to have a winner, and the post-debate talk of TV commentators means more for the outcome than the debate itself.

C’mon, admit it! It’s true! The writer of this piece, Poul Høi (who was Berlingske’s US correspondent for a long time, and whom this blog has covered before), likens this to what people generally tell pollsters they prefer to eat – wholesome, organic food, of course! – versus the fast food a World Health Organization study has shown they consistently chow down instead. We’re all just fooling ourselves.

But the real problem is that Obama would definitely win re-election if the decision was up to Danish voters, and certainly if up to the Danish press. Høi makes no secret that he was terrified by Obama’s performance last time, and the related prospect that Mitt Romney could actually win the presidency. From the latter’s demeanor – reinforced by Joe Biden’s subsequent forceful performance in the VP debate – it’s clear to him that it doesn’t matter what one says, victory instead goes to whomever is perceived as the bigger “Alpha male.” That is what Barack Obama has to make himself into tonight.

Word on the ‘Nets is that that infamous “47%” video might well have been the coup de grâce that will ultimately ensure that Mitt Romney loses the 2012 presidential race. However, it never rains, but it pours: now another embarrassing Romney video has surfaced, and France’s Le Monde is all over it:

Une nouvelle vidéo embarrassante pour Romney http://t.co/TN2jw7ts

September 27, 2012 2:54 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@lemondefr

Le Monde

This one shows Romney back in 1985, addressing employees of Bain & Co. at the time of the creation of Bain Capital, the Bain “private equity” subsidiary of which Romney was placed in charge.

Hopefully you’re curious, and you can simply click through to be able to check out this 1:21-minute-long clip yourself – helpfully, with a full English (not French) transcription appearing simultaneously along the bottom. (more…)

How do you know when your foreign campaign trip is not going well? When there are headlines like Today Romney visits Poland. Will there be further gaffes?, to be found today atop a piece by Mariusz Zawadzki in Poland’s most preeminent national daily, Gazeta Wyborcza.

In truth, the Poles already have something to gripe about when it comes to Romney, who likes to lambast President Obama for wanting to make America more “European,” which is supposed to mean “where everybody lives off the government,” and the like. Or in Zawadzki’s formulation of Romney’s message: “Obama draws insipiration from the capitals of Europe, [while] we belong to small-town America!”

Warsaw is, of course, among those “capitals of Europe.” Sigh. Once, he recalls, Europe was America’s most important ally, even for Republicans. But that was mainly during the Cold War; now we have international economic crisis instead, with what is now depicted as a decadent, decaying “social Europe” with its scandalous levels of government debt financing health care for all.

None of this past baggage bodes well for Romney’s visit, even as it is his “last hope” for achieving some sort of positive PR accomplishment out of his foreign junket. We’ve already had a furore about “Polish death camps” during WWII, not that long ago and out of the mouth of the President – surely Romney can at least avoid making that same mistake? Then again, he will be meeting in Warsaw with Lech Wałęsa, a figure as prickly as he is historical and world-renowned. That encounter could turn out to be a minefield, even as Wałęsa speaks no English – let’s hope that the translators will be skillful not just in language but in protocol! And that Romney at least remembers the old Solidariność leader’s name, something he failed to do when meeting with British Labour Party leader Ed Milliband!

UPDATE: I’m now made aware that Romney traveled initially to Gdańsk on Monday, 30 July and continued on to Warsaw the following day.

John McCain has made his choice – and a surprising one it was, too, namely Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his vice-presidential nominee. As observers and interested parties made their way to Dayton, OH yesterday to witness her official presentation as Republican running-mate, even the most-experienced journalists were scrambling to find background material on someone who previously had been a peripheral candidate, at best, to join McCain on the ticket.

If those American journalists had that problem catching up with information on Palin, you can guess the problem was even more acute for the foreign press. Still, European coverage has risen to the challenge with an assortment of treatments of the Alaska governor’s naming – even if I nowhere saw any mention of the budding Alaska state trooper firing scandal that could bring some heavy rain on her parade later on. Anyway, let’s go check that coverage out – starting this time in Poland. (more…)