Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney Apparently Thinks that He Can Concede 47 Points of a 100 Point Game to President Obama and Still Win — This Kind of Arithmetic Irrationality May Be the Best Reason to Conclude that He Is Not Competent to become Commander in Chief

© 2012 Peter Free

 

18 September 2012

 

 

Theme — if someone cannot reason intelligently, using the totality of facts already on the table, he or she is not competent to become Commander in Chief

 

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney demonstrated in a comment made in May, and revealed yesterday, that he should not be trusted with leading a Boy Scout troop in friendly urban territory, much less this nation’s combat forces.

 

Here is why.

 

 

First, the background — what Governor Romney contemptuously said about 47 percent of the American public

 

From the Washington Post:

 

“There are 47 percent who are with him,” Romney said of Obama, “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. These are people who pay no income tax.”

 

He said that his job “is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

 

© 2012 Philip Rucker, Leaked videos show Romney dismissing Obama supporters as feeling entitled to handouts, Washington Post (17 September 2012)

  

Citations — to the original sources for the Washington Post story

 

David Corn, SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters, Mother Jones (17 September 2012)

 

David Corn, WATCH: Full Secret Video of Private Romney Fundraiser, Mother Jones (18 September 2012)

 

 

Second — the real world arithmetic (as Bill Clinton calls it) of zero sum games

 

No one in his or her right mind will enter a game, which has a 100 point limit, by giving 47 of those points to his or her adversary at the outset.

 

Why?

 

Given the way the world works, one cannot count on winning enough of the other 53 points while one’s opponent is still on the field.  In order to win the 51 points necessary to win the game outright, one would have to win 96 percent of the 53 points left to be divided.

 

Statistically speaking, and magical thinking aside, how often does such a one-sided distribution occur — especially in a population sample that equates to millions of votes per point?  In statistical sample sizes that large, probabilities tend to skew significantly less wildly, than they do in very small distributions.

 

Governor Romney’s political and game strategies, and his math, are imbecilic.

 

 

I emphatically do not want an apparently magical thinker, like Governor Romney, in charge of America’s national security — or our troops

 

Candidate Romney appears to be too dim-witted to understand the worrisome probabilities that our troops face every day. Much less those that the nation faces in coming up with, and successfully implementing, a full-blown national security strategy. Sun Tzu would not be proud.

 

Governor Romney’s contemptuous treatment of nearly half the American people simply solidifies my estimation of his unworthiness to lead Americans into the future.