Stavros
10-14-2012, 10:29 AM
From today's Guardian
-Perhaps someone could tell Mitt Romney we have a firm here called Rolls-Royce that makes motor cars a lot of people want to buy...
Barack Obama v Mitt Romney: how the presidential candidates compare
You may know their views on the economy and foreign policy but what about the important stuff? Why don't either of the US presidential candidates drink coffee? How tidy are their desks? And where do they stand on Coco Pops? Oliver Burkeman sizes up Obama and Romney ahead of the US election
Movie to which he took his future wife on their first date
Obama: Do The Right Thing
Romney: The Sound of Music
Youthful idea of romantic behaviour
Obama: Writing pretentious love letters. "I haven't read The Waste Land for a year but I will hazard these statements [T S Eliot's] fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter," he wrote to one girlfriend, Alex McNear. "Life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times."
Romney: Drawing an approximately 12ft-high heart in the sand on a beach in France, where he was serving as a Mormon missionary, writing "I LOVE ANN" inside it, stretching out on top, then sending the resulting photograph to his future wife
Secret Service codename
Obama: Renegade
Romney: Javelin
Worst recorded use of bad language
Obama: Obama's memoir Dreams From My Father includes references to a "sorry-ass motherfucker", a "stupid motherfucker", a "punk-ass motherfucker" and (in the only instance in which Obama isn't quoting someone else) "ignorant motherfuckers". The president retained the swearing in the audiobook version, which he recorded himself
Romney: "Bloomin'" (as in "Can you believe those bloomin' Democrats?") Reporters who covered Romney during his time as Massachusetts governor agree with classmates of Romney's at Harvard Business School in the early 1970s that they've never heard him use language any stronger
Closest brush with death
Obama: In 2008, the pilot of the MD-81 campaign plane carrying then-Senator Obama radioed an emergency call after losing control of the aircraft's up-and-down movements
Romney: In 1968, a Mercedes crashed into the Citroen Romney was driving along a French country road, killing a passenger. French police erroneously pronounced Romney dead at the scene, too
Most notable home improvement project
Obama: For almost a year, workers have been "building something deep below the White House", Michael Lewis reported in Vanity Fair, resulting in a large crater. But when he asked for more information, all he was told was that it was "infrastructure"
Romney: The Romneys provoked derision earlier this year when it emerged that they had had a $55,000 car elevator installed at a home they're renovating in La Jolla, California
Early anecdote suggesting that he was destined for great things
Obama: According to his biographer David Maraniss, Obama wrote, in a school essay at the age of 8: "I live near the school. I usually walk to the school with my mom, then go home by myself. Someday I want to be president. I love to visit all the places in Indonesia. Done. The eeeeeeend."
Romney: Douglas Anderson, now a business school professor and Romney friend, was in his first year at Stanford University when a student he barely knew approached him. "Do you know Mitt Romney (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mittromney)?" he asked. Anderson replied that he didn't. "Mitt Romney is the finest person I have ever known!" the student said, then walked away
Handedness
Obama: Left (like Clinton, George HW Bush, Ford, Truman and Hoover)
Romney: Right (like Carter, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and George W Bush)
Preferred reading material
Obama: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, which he carried everywhere for several months as a student; Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending, which was observed on his reading pile at the White House; Moby-Dick, which he once said was his favourite; and the Harry Potter books, all of which he claims to have read
Romney: L Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth, which he called "very fun"; Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, which he has been quoting for at least five years, though Diamond accuses him of misrepresenting his views; the Bible, which he describes as his favourite book
Personal vice
Obama: Smoking, a habit that continued for the first two years of his presidency. One year ago, after a full physical, he was finally declared "tobacco-free"
Romney: Romney's guilty indulgence is a late-night bowl of Coco Pops, or similar sugary cereal a ritual he calls his "Jethro bowl", presumably a reference to The Beverley Hillbillies
Reason for not drinking coffee
Obama: Unknown, but he doesn't. The president's preference for Black Forest Berry Honest Tea briefly became a 2008 campaign issue. "Only celebrities like Barack Obama (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/barack-obama) demand bottles of an organic brew," a McCain spokesman said
Romney: "Hot drinks are not for the body or belly," according to a revelation received by Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, in 1833. The same goes for alcohol and smoking. Romney is said to be fond of caffeine-free Coke
Taxes paid for the year 2011
Obama: $162,074 on income of $789,674, an effective rate of 20.5%
Romney: $1.9m on income of $13.7m, an effective rate of 14.1%
Official position on the crucial matter of how many busts of Winston Churchill there should be in the White House
Obama: On entering the White House, Obama reduced the number of Churchill busts in the White House by 50% (not by 100% or 0%, as his critics and his spokespeople have respectively appeared to claim at various points). There were two, one of which was in the Oval Office. Now there's one, which isn't
Romney: Romney has made a point of explaining that, if elected, he'd return the second (British-loaned) Churchill bust to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Favourite films, according to the campaigns' potentially spurious answers to various pop-culture questionnaires
Obama: Casablanca, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Romney: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Approach to desk tidiness
Obama: Spartan. Photographs of Obama's Oval Office desk show it empty, in stark contrast to Bill Clinton's. The president is, more generally, a declutterer. "I tend to be a spare guy anyway," he has said
Romney: Also spartan. In tune with Romney's famously neat appearance, a reporter who visited his presidential-transition office found it "hyper-organised" with "no piece of paper visible on any desk"
Telling detail illustrating fiercely competitive spirit
Obama: For his regular basketball game, often played at the court inside the FBI's offices in Washington, Obama chooses former professional players or college stars. "If you take it easy on him, you're not invited back," one player, a former Florida State point-guard, was quoted as saying
Romney: Romney family vacations are organised around the 'Romney Olympics', a structured, mandatory and highly competitive sequence of sporting events, including biking, swimming and running
Telling detail illustrating the limits of his fiercely competitive spirit
Obama: In 2010, Rey Decerega, a Washington non-profit employee, accidentally elbowed Obama in the mouth during a basketball game, causing an injury that required at least 12 stitches. He was not invited back
Romney: Concerned that he wasn't winning sufficiently often, Romney reportedly added new contests in which he was better placed to excel including "who can hammer the most nails into a board in two minutes"
Parenting style
Obama: Famously strict. Sasha and Malia are compelled to write reports about their trips, even if their teachers don't require it; Malia can only use a mobile phone on weekends, and neither girl is allowed to watch TV, except for homework purposes, during the week
Romney: The one unbreakable rule, Romney's son Tagg recalls, is that "we were not allowed to say anything negative about my mother". Each night, the family held a "freewheeling discussion" while sitting together in a room with the lights turned out. In darkness, Tagg says, the Romneys felt they could open up
Height
Obama: 1.85m
Romney: 1.88m. (Of the 13 presidential elections since the first televised debate, the taller candidate has won eight. Of the other five, one involved candidates of the same height, and one was Bush v Gore in 2000, in which Gore won the most votes)
Most damaging quote picked up by a 'hot mic'
Obama: "After my election, I have more flexibility" to Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev, on the subject of missile defence negotiations, in South Korea in March
Romney: "[Ann] has Austrian Warmbloods Me, I have a Missouri Fox Trotter. So mine is like a quarter horse, but just a much better gait. It moves very fast, and doesn't tire, and it's easy to ride, meaning it's not boom-boom-boom, it's just smooth. Very smooth" to Sean Hannity, before an interview on Fox News in April
Opinion on the "special relationship" with the United Kingdom
Obama: "We don't have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people." (In 2009, the reported assessment of a state department official was more direct: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment."
Romney: "England is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions" from Romney's book, No Apology
Dog-related outrage
Obama: Ate dog (along with snake and grasshopper) during his childhood in Indonesia, according to Dreams From My Father. "Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth," one pro-Romney blogger wrote
Romney: Tied a crate containing the family dog, Seamus, to the roofrack of his car for the duration of a drive from Boston to Canada. The dog "loved" this form of travel, Ann Romney claims
Healthy-eating trick
Obama: Spurns mayonnaise
Romney: Eats only the tops of muffins, because, he argues, the butter sinks downwards. May also be an attempt to connect with Seinfeld fans
Homes owned
Obama: A six-bedroom mansion in Hyde Park, Chicago
Romney: A beachfront house in La Jolla, California, described as his "main home"; a two-bedroom townhouse in Belmont, Massachusetts; a six-bedroom house on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire
Favourite TV shows, as claimed in interviews
Obama: The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, Homeland, Modern Family
Romney: Modern Family, 30 Rock
Killer productivity tactic
Obama: Limits mundane choices, for example about food, to limit "decision fatigue" the psychological phenomenon whereby making some decisions depletes resources for making more important ones
Romney: At Bain Capital, fined colleagues $20 if they showed up late to meetings. He looked "physically pained", one remembered, when he once had to pay up himself
Clothing philosophy
Obama: Limits his choices to blue and grey suits to forestall decision fatigue (see above)
Romney: Smart to the point that campaign advisers reportedly worry it's a problem. Harvard classmates recall him dressing more formally than most even then. (Though when asked in a TV interview what he wore to bed, Romney said: "As little as possible.") In some photos, his Temple garment "Mormon underwear" has been clearly visible under his well-ironed white shirt
Principal sources
Michael Lewis, Obama's Way (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack-obama), Vanity Fair
Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father
Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, The Dark Side of Mitt Romney (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/02/mitt-romney-201202), Vanity Fair
David Maraniss, Young Barack Obama in Love (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/06/young-barack-obama-in-love-david-maraniss), Vanity Fair
Robert Draper, The Mitt Romney Who Might Have Been (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/magazine/mitt-romney.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), New York Times
Nicholas Lemann, Transaction Man (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/01/121001fa_fact_lemann), The New Yorker
John Miller, Matinee Mitt (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/216252/matinee-mitt/john-j-miller), National Review
Jon Keller, My Dinner With Mitt (http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/2006/05/my-dinner-with-mitt/), Boston Magazine
The Making of Mitt Romney (http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/romney/), Boston Globe series
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/11/barack-obama-versus-mitt-romney
-Perhaps someone could tell Mitt Romney we have a firm here called Rolls-Royce that makes motor cars a lot of people want to buy...
Barack Obama v Mitt Romney: how the presidential candidates compare
You may know their views on the economy and foreign policy but what about the important stuff? Why don't either of the US presidential candidates drink coffee? How tidy are their desks? And where do they stand on Coco Pops? Oliver Burkeman sizes up Obama and Romney ahead of the US election
Movie to which he took his future wife on their first date
Obama: Do The Right Thing
Romney: The Sound of Music
Youthful idea of romantic behaviour
Obama: Writing pretentious love letters. "I haven't read The Waste Land for a year but I will hazard these statements [T S Eliot's] fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter," he wrote to one girlfriend, Alex McNear. "Life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times."
Romney: Drawing an approximately 12ft-high heart in the sand on a beach in France, where he was serving as a Mormon missionary, writing "I LOVE ANN" inside it, stretching out on top, then sending the resulting photograph to his future wife
Secret Service codename
Obama: Renegade
Romney: Javelin
Worst recorded use of bad language
Obama: Obama's memoir Dreams From My Father includes references to a "sorry-ass motherfucker", a "stupid motherfucker", a "punk-ass motherfucker" and (in the only instance in which Obama isn't quoting someone else) "ignorant motherfuckers". The president retained the swearing in the audiobook version, which he recorded himself
Romney: "Bloomin'" (as in "Can you believe those bloomin' Democrats?") Reporters who covered Romney during his time as Massachusetts governor agree with classmates of Romney's at Harvard Business School in the early 1970s that they've never heard him use language any stronger
Closest brush with death
Obama: In 2008, the pilot of the MD-81 campaign plane carrying then-Senator Obama radioed an emergency call after losing control of the aircraft's up-and-down movements
Romney: In 1968, a Mercedes crashed into the Citroen Romney was driving along a French country road, killing a passenger. French police erroneously pronounced Romney dead at the scene, too
Most notable home improvement project
Obama: For almost a year, workers have been "building something deep below the White House", Michael Lewis reported in Vanity Fair, resulting in a large crater. But when he asked for more information, all he was told was that it was "infrastructure"
Romney: The Romneys provoked derision earlier this year when it emerged that they had had a $55,000 car elevator installed at a home they're renovating in La Jolla, California
Early anecdote suggesting that he was destined for great things
Obama: According to his biographer David Maraniss, Obama wrote, in a school essay at the age of 8: "I live near the school. I usually walk to the school with my mom, then go home by myself. Someday I want to be president. I love to visit all the places in Indonesia. Done. The eeeeeeend."
Romney: Douglas Anderson, now a business school professor and Romney friend, was in his first year at Stanford University when a student he barely knew approached him. "Do you know Mitt Romney (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mittromney)?" he asked. Anderson replied that he didn't. "Mitt Romney is the finest person I have ever known!" the student said, then walked away
Handedness
Obama: Left (like Clinton, George HW Bush, Ford, Truman and Hoover)
Romney: Right (like Carter, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and George W Bush)
Preferred reading material
Obama: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, which he carried everywhere for several months as a student; Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending, which was observed on his reading pile at the White House; Moby-Dick, which he once said was his favourite; and the Harry Potter books, all of which he claims to have read
Romney: L Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth, which he called "very fun"; Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, which he has been quoting for at least five years, though Diamond accuses him of misrepresenting his views; the Bible, which he describes as his favourite book
Personal vice
Obama: Smoking, a habit that continued for the first two years of his presidency. One year ago, after a full physical, he was finally declared "tobacco-free"
Romney: Romney's guilty indulgence is a late-night bowl of Coco Pops, or similar sugary cereal a ritual he calls his "Jethro bowl", presumably a reference to The Beverley Hillbillies
Reason for not drinking coffee
Obama: Unknown, but he doesn't. The president's preference for Black Forest Berry Honest Tea briefly became a 2008 campaign issue. "Only celebrities like Barack Obama (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/barack-obama) demand bottles of an organic brew," a McCain spokesman said
Romney: "Hot drinks are not for the body or belly," according to a revelation received by Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, in 1833. The same goes for alcohol and smoking. Romney is said to be fond of caffeine-free Coke
Taxes paid for the year 2011
Obama: $162,074 on income of $789,674, an effective rate of 20.5%
Romney: $1.9m on income of $13.7m, an effective rate of 14.1%
Official position on the crucial matter of how many busts of Winston Churchill there should be in the White House
Obama: On entering the White House, Obama reduced the number of Churchill busts in the White House by 50% (not by 100% or 0%, as his critics and his spokespeople have respectively appeared to claim at various points). There were two, one of which was in the Oval Office. Now there's one, which isn't
Romney: Romney has made a point of explaining that, if elected, he'd return the second (British-loaned) Churchill bust to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Favourite films, according to the campaigns' potentially spurious answers to various pop-culture questionnaires
Obama: Casablanca, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Romney: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Approach to desk tidiness
Obama: Spartan. Photographs of Obama's Oval Office desk show it empty, in stark contrast to Bill Clinton's. The president is, more generally, a declutterer. "I tend to be a spare guy anyway," he has said
Romney: Also spartan. In tune with Romney's famously neat appearance, a reporter who visited his presidential-transition office found it "hyper-organised" with "no piece of paper visible on any desk"
Telling detail illustrating fiercely competitive spirit
Obama: For his regular basketball game, often played at the court inside the FBI's offices in Washington, Obama chooses former professional players or college stars. "If you take it easy on him, you're not invited back," one player, a former Florida State point-guard, was quoted as saying
Romney: Romney family vacations are organised around the 'Romney Olympics', a structured, mandatory and highly competitive sequence of sporting events, including biking, swimming and running
Telling detail illustrating the limits of his fiercely competitive spirit
Obama: In 2010, Rey Decerega, a Washington non-profit employee, accidentally elbowed Obama in the mouth during a basketball game, causing an injury that required at least 12 stitches. He was not invited back
Romney: Concerned that he wasn't winning sufficiently often, Romney reportedly added new contests in which he was better placed to excel including "who can hammer the most nails into a board in two minutes"
Parenting style
Obama: Famously strict. Sasha and Malia are compelled to write reports about their trips, even if their teachers don't require it; Malia can only use a mobile phone on weekends, and neither girl is allowed to watch TV, except for homework purposes, during the week
Romney: The one unbreakable rule, Romney's son Tagg recalls, is that "we were not allowed to say anything negative about my mother". Each night, the family held a "freewheeling discussion" while sitting together in a room with the lights turned out. In darkness, Tagg says, the Romneys felt they could open up
Height
Obama: 1.85m
Romney: 1.88m. (Of the 13 presidential elections since the first televised debate, the taller candidate has won eight. Of the other five, one involved candidates of the same height, and one was Bush v Gore in 2000, in which Gore won the most votes)
Most damaging quote picked up by a 'hot mic'
Obama: "After my election, I have more flexibility" to Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev, on the subject of missile defence negotiations, in South Korea in March
Romney: "[Ann] has Austrian Warmbloods Me, I have a Missouri Fox Trotter. So mine is like a quarter horse, but just a much better gait. It moves very fast, and doesn't tire, and it's easy to ride, meaning it's not boom-boom-boom, it's just smooth. Very smooth" to Sean Hannity, before an interview on Fox News in April
Opinion on the "special relationship" with the United Kingdom
Obama: "We don't have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people." (In 2009, the reported assessment of a state department official was more direct: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment."
Romney: "England is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions" from Romney's book, No Apology
Dog-related outrage
Obama: Ate dog (along with snake and grasshopper) during his childhood in Indonesia, according to Dreams From My Father. "Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth," one pro-Romney blogger wrote
Romney: Tied a crate containing the family dog, Seamus, to the roofrack of his car for the duration of a drive from Boston to Canada. The dog "loved" this form of travel, Ann Romney claims
Healthy-eating trick
Obama: Spurns mayonnaise
Romney: Eats only the tops of muffins, because, he argues, the butter sinks downwards. May also be an attempt to connect with Seinfeld fans
Homes owned
Obama: A six-bedroom mansion in Hyde Park, Chicago
Romney: A beachfront house in La Jolla, California, described as his "main home"; a two-bedroom townhouse in Belmont, Massachusetts; a six-bedroom house on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire
Favourite TV shows, as claimed in interviews
Obama: The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, Homeland, Modern Family
Romney: Modern Family, 30 Rock
Killer productivity tactic
Obama: Limits mundane choices, for example about food, to limit "decision fatigue" the psychological phenomenon whereby making some decisions depletes resources for making more important ones
Romney: At Bain Capital, fined colleagues $20 if they showed up late to meetings. He looked "physically pained", one remembered, when he once had to pay up himself
Clothing philosophy
Obama: Limits his choices to blue and grey suits to forestall decision fatigue (see above)
Romney: Smart to the point that campaign advisers reportedly worry it's a problem. Harvard classmates recall him dressing more formally than most even then. (Though when asked in a TV interview what he wore to bed, Romney said: "As little as possible.") In some photos, his Temple garment "Mormon underwear" has been clearly visible under his well-ironed white shirt
Principal sources
Michael Lewis, Obama's Way (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack-obama), Vanity Fair
Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father
Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, The Dark Side of Mitt Romney (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/02/mitt-romney-201202), Vanity Fair
David Maraniss, Young Barack Obama in Love (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/06/young-barack-obama-in-love-david-maraniss), Vanity Fair
Robert Draper, The Mitt Romney Who Might Have Been (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/magazine/mitt-romney.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), New York Times
Nicholas Lemann, Transaction Man (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/01/121001fa_fact_lemann), The New Yorker
John Miller, Matinee Mitt (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/216252/matinee-mitt/john-j-miller), National Review
Jon Keller, My Dinner With Mitt (http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/2006/05/my-dinner-with-mitt/), Boston Magazine
The Making of Mitt Romney (http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/romney/), Boston Globe series
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/11/barack-obama-versus-mitt-romney