Mitt Romney for president. Sort of.

The Iowa caucuses are around the corner. In this week's Scripps Howard column, Ben and I try to weigh which candidate would be best for America. My take:

Asking a liberal which Republican they favor in 2012 is like choosing one's favorite flavor of arsenic: You have options, but none will go down very well. Nobody in the field seems likely to attract many Democratic votes in November.

As an American, though, I want to see the GOP put its best and most-qualified candidate forward to challenge President Barack Obama. And that candidate is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas might be appealing on civil liberties, but he also appeals too much to racists and conspiracy-mongers. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann are so retrograde on social issues they don't deserve consideration. Texas Gov. Rick Perry isn't bright, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is Newt Gingrich. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is Romney without the electoral support. So that leaves us with Romney.

Understand: Liberals aren't -- and shouldn't be -- happy with the way that Romney has distorted Obama's record on the issues. The former Massachusetts governor has suggested the president has been on an "apology tour," asking forgiveness for the country's sins. Romney has shifted right on issues like gay civil liberties and abortion rights, in a transparent act of pandering to the GOP base. As a politician, there's not much to like.

But the presidency isn't merely politics. It's governance. Romney probably wouldn't govern the country in a manner that liberals like, but his record suggests that -- unlike the Tea Party Movement activists who comprise much of the Republican base -- Romney actually believes that government can occasionally solve problems. More broadly, his own history suggests that he is a problem solver.

That's how he passed Massachusetts' health care law -- once a model for conservatives, until Obama emulated it. And it's an approach likely to produce better results for the American people than all the "government is the problem" bumper stickers the rest of the GOP field can supply. Romney, then, is the least-bad choice.

Ben weighs in for Rick Perry. Which, honestly, I find too disappointing for words.

Thank you, readers

Sometime overnight, December 2011 became the highest-trafficked month in the history of this blog. That's even though the last week of the month has been a holiday period, in which my writing and your readership inevitably decline. I'll skip numbers: Suffice it to say the blog is still small—I'm not doing Andrew Sullivan numbers, clearly—but that it's not tiny anymore. And it continues to grow.

I'll keep doing what I do in 2012: Read, try to learn, and occasionally embarrass myself with wrongheaded opining. Thanks for reading.

Gay rights, Catholic rights, and adoption

Big battle brewing in Illinois:

Roman Catholic bishops in Illinois have shuttered most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in the state rather than comply with a new requirement that says they must consider same-sex couples as potential foster-care and adoptive parents if they want to receive state money. The charities have served for more than 40 years as a major link in the state’s social service network for poor and neglected children.

Catholic bishops say they're fighting for their religious rights. “It’s true that the church doesn’t have a First Amendment right to have a government contract,” said one official, “but it does have a First Amendment right not to be excluded from a contract based on its religious beliefs.”

And if it were just about beliefs, I'd agree. But this is about practices. And the Catholic Church doesn't believe it can offer services in accordance with the rules and practices of the state that it ostensibly serves in providing adoption services. So Iowa is left with two choices: Adapt state policy to serve the Catholic Church's beliefs. Or let the Catholic Church withdraw and preserve its conscience.

That's a legitimate choice for the Catholic Church: It shouldn't do anything it considers evil. But I do find it sad that the church apparently believes that the lesser evil is to let a young child be without loving parents if those parents are gay. In the long run, maybe it's better that the church withdraw from this arena.

Why aren't men going back to school?

The New York Times has an interesting story this morning about how women are using the recession* to leave work, go back to school, and bulk up their credentials for the job market. Men, on the other hand, are working lousy jobs. (Probably, the story suggests, because men still feel a need to be familial breadwinners in ways that women don't.) Once the recession lifts, though, the newly educated women are going to have an advantage over their grind-it-out male counterparts for new jobs.

When I lost my job, nearly two years ago, I thought ever-so-briefly about going back to school. Time off from career seemed attractive, as did the opportunity to formally upgrade my skills. It was a short consideration, though. I was stopped by two thoughts:

• Debt. Going to school would've cost a lot of money I didn't have. I couldn't see adding graduate-level debt to my financial burdens unless there was a likelihood of employment—improved employment, financially—on the other side of that degree.

• And I couldn't necessarily see that. A master's degree in journalism (for example) would've been useless—those degrees are mostly for people who spent their undergrad years majoring in philosophy, and who wanted to pick up some useful skills for the job market after all. Besides, job opportunities in the field aren't exactly expanding: I felt—and feel—my resumé is strong enough that I don't need to add an academic degree to bulk it up.

Anything else I would've felt suited for or interested in—English, American Studies, political science—all seemed to be on a path to academia. A doctorate would've been required. Assuming I even had the patience and time for that kind of work, the sad truth is that finding a job in academia after earning a doctorate is still terrifically difficult: It's like being drafted by the NBA after playing college ball—you can be very, very good at something and still not be good enough to make the pros.

The Times gets at this glancingly, in the last couple of paragraphs of the piece:

Those attending more expensive private schools, like Ms. Baker, will have an even tougher time guaranteeing that their educational investment pays off. Including the loans that financed her undergraduate education at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, she will complete her master’s program next year owing about $200,000 in debt.

“I have to have faith that I will eventually get a good job that pays enough to pay my living expenses and pay back my loans,” she said, “and hopefully make me happy in the process.”

I didn't have that faith. That made graduate school a losing proposition.

* I know: Technically the recession is over. It doesn't feel like it.

A quick note about e-reading "The Federalist Papers"

I didn't plan to take a year-and-a-half to read "The Federalist Papers," but I got distracted along the way. But I finished them tonight on my brand-new Kindle. In fact, I read the entirety of them using the Kindle app on a variety of machines. For the record, these are the devices upon which I read the book:

• An HP netbook.
• An iMac desktop computer.
• My iPhone.
• An iPad 1.
• An iPad 2.
• The Kindle.

Remember when we used to pick up a book and just read the book? I love today's flexibility, though, and I use it.

What kind of president would Ron Paul be?

This year, for instance, Paul has sponsored 47 bills, including measures to withdraw from the United Nations, repeal the federal law banning guns in school zones and let private groups coin their own money.
None has moved, and 32 have failed to attract a single co-sponsor.
“He’s somewhat of an introvert [and] a little quirky, so he doesn’t work the legislative process like most do,” said former congressman Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), who served with Paul from 1997 to 2010. But Wamp said Paul, as president, might succeed where Paul the legislator had not.
“When you’re president, they can’t just ignore you,” Wamp said. “Because you have a mandate.”

via washingtonpost.com

I had a period of about four hours a few weeks ago in which I considered whether supporting Ron Paul was the right way to go: The performance of the president on civil liberties issues has frustrated me that much.

But Paul has too easily lent his name—if not his mind—to racist sentiments and crank conspiracy theorizing. And as the above article suggests, he's wholly ineffectual at operating within the system. And that's probably for the best! But the president *runs the system.* He's not quite Lyndon LaRouche with a portfolio, but he's not far off that mark either.

UPDATE: My Philly Post column is about Ron Paul's appeal to racist voters.

Congress is getting wealthier, faster than you

Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House more than doubled, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home ­equity.

Over the same period, the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the comparable median figure sliding from $20,600 to $20,500, according to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan.

via washingtonpost.com