Nattering Nabob of Negativism

This delightful phrase was coined by Spiro Agnew, Nixon's first vice President.  I am old enough to remember Spiro.  My impression of him at the time was he was one of those big jovial guys who build their career around networking and platitudes while avoiding actual hard work.  As Vice President he seemed to spend all his time playing golf and conjuring up clever phrases.  Of course history remembers Agnew as the only vice President in history forced to resign for taking bribes.

Agnew coined the phrase "Nattering Nabobs of Negativism" to refer to the media who dared to criticize the administrations policies, particularly in regard to the Viet-nam war.  In one of those odd reversals that happen in history, now the person most deserving of being called a Nattering Nabob of Negativism is - Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for President.

Romney has not had much positive to say about anything, probably because he tends to insert foot in mouth when he does.  His economic plan has never consisted of anything more than vague generalities designed to sound good without actually risking offending anyone with facts.  To show off his wise approach to foreign policy  he took a trip a month or two ago in which he managed to insult the Brits by (wrongly) informing them they were disorganized and their Olympic's were going to have major problems, he said our number one enemy was Russia (evidently forgetting about folks like Al-Queda, North Korea and Iran) and irritated most of the middle east by placing the blame for the Palestinians plight entirely on the shoulders of the Palestinians.  (He seems to particularly like to pick on the Palestinians)

So his campaign has come to consist entirely of sitting back, waiting for Obama to do something, or say something, then criticizing him vociferously.  I am beginning to think if a video of Obama tying his shoelace made its way onto U-Tube within hours sound bites from Romney would be on all the networks passionately explaining why the way Obama ties his shoelace is wrong and puts the United States at risk.