What follows has all the trappings of a classic negative campaign ad: Dark and ominous orchestral music, news anchors intoning about various troubles facing the American middle class, quick cuts to stock footage of foreclosure signs, and graphics comparing gas prices and food stamp usage before and after Obama’s term. If one removed Carlson’s introduction and the Fox ticker at the bottom, even the most informed political observer would think it was produced by a Karl Rove attack group or Mitt Romney super PAC — not a “news” organization.

Of course, Fox has long been a sort of hybrid between a real news organization and GOP messaging shop, but the attack ad is a new level of brazenness for an already brazen outfit.

It may, in fact, even be too much for Fox executives, as the video appears to have been removed from the network’s website. It could also potentially violate parent company News Corp’s ethics standards, which prohibit the use of company resources to aid political candidates. “Always keep in mind that ‘contribution’ is defined broadly,” the ethics guide warns. Though it seems highly unlikely that the company would worry about this, as much of what Fox has done could be considered aiding a various candidate in some sense.

A Fox spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some conservatives are also concerned. “Should a news organization produce and publish attack ads like this?” Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey wondered. “We usually criticize that kind of behavior with other news organizations…that shouldn’t be the job of news-reporting organizations, even when we like the message.”

The ad comes just six months after Fox News chief Roger Ailes declared the network was undergoing a “course correction” to get away from the rank partisanship it had come to be known for. The network tried to “distanc[e] itself from the tea party cheerleading that characterized the first two years of President Barack Obama’s presidency” and “ increasingly promoted its straight-news talent,” Politico reported in February. So much for that.

Broadcast in New Hampshire, the swing state that also leads the nation in per capita student debt, the ad highlighted “the fact that the president has not been able to help students deal with this crushing debt,” according to Romney spokesman Ryan Williams. Unfortunately, the ad used footage of New Hampshire students complaining about their loan burden without their permission, and one of them happens to plan to vote for Obama. “Considering I am not a supporter of Mitt Romney, this is not exactly sitting well with me,” said Southern New Hampshire University sophomore Matt Raso. The campaign pulled the footage when a local television station objected, but Ryan Williams told the Associated Press that the campaign plans to run ads blaming the student loan crisis on Obama in other swing states.

That takes a kind of chutzpah Romney rarely exhibits. He won’t stand up to birther bully Donald Trump or the misogynist Rush Limbaugh, but he apparently has the cojones to blame student debt on Obama. We’ll see how it goes. In fact, American student debt is a scandal in which state and national lawmakers in both parties share some blame. But by far the lion’s share of responsibility for the debacle belongs to Republicans. The roots of the crisis go back to California Gov. Ronald Reagan, who imposed the first “fees” on the formerly free University of California system in 1968, declaring “the state should not subsidize intellectual curiosity.” As president, Reagan helped nationalize that disdain for well-funded public higher education in the 80s.

But it took a long roster of Republican governors to turn the problem into a crisis, and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney led the way a decade ago, dramatically slashing public higher education funding and hiking fees during his one term. According to the Boston Globe, fees and tuition jumped 63 percent at Massachusetts’ once-stellar system of public higher education from 2003 to 2007, as Romney slashed state funding year after year, for a total of $140 million, or 14 percent, in four years. Not surprisingly, average student debt in Massachusetts jumped 25 percent while Romney was governor. Between 2001 and 2011, tuition and fees have more than doubled at the state’s community colleges, state university and UMass campuses, but the bulk of the added burden piled up under Romney.

Romney also wanted to spin off the flagship UMass-Amherst, and privatize three other colleges, including the medical school, a harbinger of what he says he’ll do as president. That agenda failed in Massachusetts, but it would be a shame to give him a second chance as president.

It’s tragic that Republicans have become the dismantlers of public universities, since it was Abraham Lincoln who signed the Morrill Act in 1862, creating the system of land-grant colleges that made the U.S. a country of unusually broad opportunity  (of course today’s GOP has betrayed Lincoln in many other ways.) “Abraham Lincoln is weeping today,” university president Graham Spanier told reporters when Pennsylvania’s Republican Gov. Tom Corbett slashed Penn State funding by $182 million last year. It was the aggressive expansion of college education access after World War II that helped create the vast American middle class. In 1946, only one in eight college-aged student got higher education; by 1970, one in three did. And the balance of enrollment shifted to public institutions: In the 40s, most students attended private colleges; by 1970 three quarters were enrolled in public ones.

Presidents from Truman through Eisenhower and Nixon through Carter continued to endorse and enable broad college access, but the tide began to turn in the 60s, as universities became hotbeds of political protest and the new educated generation began to use its college smarts to question society rather than become cogs in the corporate machine. But we can make too much of Reagan’s resentment of Berkeley radicals as a factor in his push to end free UC tuition. He and his backers were anxious to dismantle the public sector and the tax structure that made it possible, and to privatize all sorts of formerly public institutions, creating lucrative new money-making opportunities for their wealthy friends.

The result: University tuition is up 128 percent nationwide since 1980, the year Reagan became president (and coincidentally, I graduated from the University of Wisconsin, when I paid less than $400 a semester.) Public university tuition has tripled since then. In that same period, the middle class has shrunk, the poor have gotten poorer and the rich have gotten richer. Is it all connected to our breaking our promises to our kids about higher education? Not entirely, but it’s not a random coincidence, either.

The Romney-Reagan approach to higher education has a lot in common with their overall approach to the economy. Let’s take jobs as an example. Under Reagan, median wages for the working and middle classes began to stagnate and fall – but household debt began to rise. It was as if the GOP-unleashed private sector figured out how to make money lending families the money that they were no longer making in income. Republicans have the same approach to higher education: They slashed public funding, and then let their banker friends “help” students afford higher tuition by lending them the cash to pay for it. Now, of course, the nation’s student loan debt is larger than its credit card debt, and graduates leave college carrying about $25,000 in loans. It’s like a mortgage, but without the house.

Andrew Leonard wrote a great piece Tuesday about Romney’s ties to the for-profit education industry and his commitment to relax Obama administration regulations on that high-profit, low-student-success sector. That’s the other key to Romney’s higher education agenda: slash public funding, increase the student loan burden and privatize the whole system as much as possible. Leonard explains what’s wrong with Romney’s priorities more succinctly than I could:

The biggest for-profit schools generate 80 to 90 percent of their revenue from federally guaranteed student loans. Only one out of every ten American college students attends a for-profit institution, but these students account for a quarter of all student debt and almost half of all student loan dollars in default. There’s no sugar-coating it: The booming for-profit industry is one of the worst possible examples of the “free market” in action that one can find in the entire U.S. educational sector. For-profits charge higher tuition rates than their public school competitors, graduation rates are lower, and the entire business would not exist without massive government subsidization in the form of cheap student loans.

Romney is also pledging to undo one of Obama’s most progressive reforms: his overhaul of the student loan system, taking banks (and their gouging) out of the middle of the government-guaranteed loan relationship.

It’s against that backdrop that Romney is trying to blame Obama for the student loan crisis. It won’t work. Democrats need to pay much more attention to Romney’s higher education record in Massachusetts. It’s no wonder he doesn’t like to talk about those years.

This week the Irish get to have their say. While the other countries simply need parliamentary approval, in Ireland the decision is being made via a referendum. In February the Attorney General advised the government that a public vote was needed as any significant changes to the constititution in Ireland require a referendum.

Unlike the votes on the Lisbon and Nice Treaties, both of which the Irish rejected on the first go, there is no veto this time. The Fiscal Treaty comes into force when 12 of the 17 euro zone members ratify it.

The latest polls indicate that the Irish are going to vote in favor of austerity, bucking the recent voting trend in Greece, France and even Germany. But that doesn’t mean that the Irish are enthusiastic adherents of Merkel’s belt-tightening fixation.

As much as anything, the Irish referendum could be described as a battle between fear and anger.

“It depends which motivates us more,” says Ben Tonra, professor of international relations at University College Dublin.

Only countries that ratify the Fiscal Treaty will have access to the euro zone’s new permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which comes into force on July 1. Many Irish voters realize that, even if they hate austerity, they may well need access to the ESM.

In November 2010, Ireland obtained 85 billion euros from the troika of creditors — the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

While the government has professed that it will again seek funding directly from the bond markets at some stage in 2013, that is looking increasingly unlikely. With the current level of uncertainty in the euro zone, Dublin could well be forced to look for a second bailout.

As for the referendum, the “yes” campaign argues that without access to the ESM, future austerity could be even harsher. And they say that many of the requirements of the Fiscal Treaty are already being met as part of Ireland’s bailout program.

They also warn that a “no” vote could undermine the country’s credibility, since Ireland is hugely reliant on foreign direct investment. Those advocating in favor of what they call the “Stability Treaty” argue that Ireland’s recovery would be threatened if foreign investors were spooked by a rejection of the treaty and any implications that could have for Ireland’s position in the euro zone.

On Sunday night in a televised speech, Prime Minister Enda Kenny warned that rejecting the treaty would bring “uncertainty at a time Ireland definitely doesn’t need it.”

That sense of uncertainty could persuade many to vote yes, even if they disagree with the wisdom of the treaty itself.

“I think this is a lousy treaty,” says Tonra. “It’s bad economics, it’s bad politics and it’s badly written. But what it does do is it gives us access to cash.”

On the flipside of these fears about the future is a profound anger in Ireland over the country’s current predicament.

Many Irish people are furious at their political elite for getting them into this mess, and at the European Union for forcing them to effectively take on the gambling debts of speculators, bankers and property developers.

The bailout became necessary as a result of the previous government’s ill-fated decision to guarantee all of the country’s banking debts in 2008. Those debts turned out to be astronomical, as a result of reckless lending to property developers, and Ireland bailed out the banks at enormous cost.

As the state took on these liabilities the markets pushed up its borrowing costs, leaving Dublin with little choice but to turn to the troika.

Making matters worse, the state has been overly reliant on real estate transaction taxes. Once the property market crashed, that left a massive hole in public finances. At the same time, there is more demand on the public purse due to soaring unemployment. For 2012 the funding gap is an estimated 13 billion euros.
That deficit comes despite a succession of harsh budgets that have been imposed at the behest of the troika, imposing billions of euros worth of expenditure cuts and new taxes.

At the same time, the bondholders — who had loaned to the reckless Irish banks — have been paid back billions of euros from the state coffers.

The Irish government’s attempts to persuade the ECB of the need to write down this albatross of bank debt have been to no avail so far. As a result, the public anger is directed not just at their own politicians but at Brussels and Frankfurt too.

“The ECB has been utterly dogmatic in terms of protecting not only senior bondholders but junior bondholders,” explains Tonra. “And has basically said all these speculators have to be paid back and they have to be paid back on the shoulders of Irish taxpayers.”

Commentators often point to Ireland as Europe’s austerity success story. Unlike in Spain and Greece, on the surface, Ireland’s economy appears to have returned to growth, albeit modestly, with the EU predicting a rate of just 0.5 percent for 2012. Moreover, official figures show a trade surplus, although this may not be a reliable indicator since it is distorted by the many multinationals based in Ireland who repatriate their profits.

Yet most Irish people don’t feel that things are getting better. The number of those struggling to pay back often-massive mortgages is growing. On Friday the Central Bank announced that one in 10 mortgages are in arrears of more than 90 days. Unemployment remains around 14 percent, up from 4.5 percent just five years ago, and would be even higher if not for high levels of emigration and the return home of many immigrants who contributed to Ireland’s boom.

The party seen to have caused the mess, Fianna Fáil, was booted from office last year. However, members of the current government, particularly the center-left Labour Party, have seen their support decline, with backers angry at them for continuing the same austerity agenda.

Left-wing nationalist party Sinn Féin, the biggest critic of the Fiscal Treaty — which it dubs the “Austerity Treaty” — has seen its support soar, particularly among working-class voters.

Other opponents include businessman Declan Ganley, who helped defeat the Lisbon Treaty first time around, and smaller left-wing groups, including the Socialist Party.

They warn that the treaty institutionalizes an austerity policy that is not working and will not fix Ireland or Europe’s problems, despite promises to tack on some kind of growth element. “Austerity contradicts growth, austerity kills growth,” says Paul Murphy, a member of the European Parliament for the Socialist Party.
He argues that by voting yes, the Irish people would be signing up to even harsher austerity.

The no campaign is calling on voters not to let themselves be persuaded by the warnings of the government about the ESM, arguing that the EU would never allow a member state be in a position where it had no access to funding.

“The yes side has been overwhelmingly dominated by fear, by really scaremongering people,” says Murphy. “They are painting a bleak Armageddon picture of what will happen if people vote no.”

He and the other opponents claim that Ireland has a veto over the ESM, which has yet to be anchored into EU law, something that requires unanimity among all 27 member states. They argue that the government could say that unless the link between the ESM and the Fiscal Treaty is removed, they will block the bailout fund. However, the government says it has already agreed to the ESM.

Murphy says that if the Irish were to vote no it would undermine the treaty across the bloc. “If you had a no vote in the only country that has a popular vote on it, it would have ramifications across Europe” and send “a clear message to Merkel and her friends across Europe.”

Yet critics say the no campaign has failed to convince on the crucial issue of future funding.

“When it comes to this vital question of: Where is the money going to come from? How do we fund our services? How do we bridge the gap between what goes in and what goes out? I think even fair-minded objective people would say that they fail rather dismally,” says John O’Brennan, director of the Centre for the Study of Wider Europe at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, outside of Dublin.

O’Brennan himself is uneasy about the Fiscal Treaty, particularly as it is another sign of a move away from the community model that was a mark of the way the EU operated for so long, whereby institutions such as the European Parliament, Commission and Court of Justice acted as a counterbalance to national interests.

Within the euro zone, the trend has increasingly been for intergovernmental decisions. This allows the bigger countries such as France and Germany to steamroll the smaller peripheral ones. And this, he argues, is leading to an increasing democratic deficit in the EU.

Yet for all that unease and rage, it looks like the great anxiety about how Ireland will pay its way could have the upper hand on Thursday. A number of polls released over the weekend showed that the yes vote was in the lead. However, the large number of people who are still undecided means that there could still be a late swing to the no side.

And turnout could be crucial. While polls ahead of the first Lisbon and Nice referendums showed that those treaties would be approved, the anti-Treaty voters turned out in greater numbers.

O’Brennan predicts that on Thursday fear is still likely to trump anger. “Undoubtedly there is an element there that wants to punish the government,” he says. “But that is tempered by the risks.”

“We are very angry, but we are not angry enough that we can vote no.”

Undermining Romney’s perceived competence as an economic policy-maker is, as Greg Sargent keeps explaining, critical to Obama’s November prospects. The Romney formula depends on economically anxious swing voters simply wanting to throw the incumbent out, a strategy that could well produce a victory in the current climate. Obama’s mission is to embed context about Romney’s own background and values into those same voters’ minds – to give them pause before simply checking off his name as a suitable vehicle for their frustrations.

The question, obviously, is whether voters will buy into the idea that Romney was a lousy governor – and, even if they do, if it will end up affecting their decisions. Two relatively recent campaigns offer some conflicting lessons.

Democrats would ideally like to do to Romney what Republicans did to the last Massachusetts governor to seek the presidency, Michael Dukakis in 1988. About the only attack that anyone remembers from that campaign was the racially inflammatory Willie Horton ad that an “independent” pro-George H.W. Bush group ran.

That spot highlighted a specific incident from Dukakis’ governorship, but what’s often forgotten is the degree to which the Bush campaign made Massachusetts the centerpiece of its efforts. A wave of attack ads in the summer and fall portrayed Dukakis’ gubernatorial tenure as a festival of tax hikes, rampant spending, criminal coddling, environmental pollution and general incompetence, each ending with the tag line: “Michael Dukakis says he wants to do for America what he’s done for Massachusetts. America can’t afford to take that risk.”

(A good compilation of many of the Bush attack ads can be found here.)

Bush himself paid two high-profile visits to the Bay State, one to tour Boston Harbor – then known as the dirtiest harbor in the country – and the other to receive the endorsement of the Boston Police Patrolman’s Association.

”My opponent will say that he will do for America what he’s done for Massachusetts,” Bush said during the harbor swing. “No, that’s why I fear for the country.”

It’s hard to quantify, but the relentless attacks clearly damaged Dukakis, who enjoyed a lead of 17 points just after the July Democratic convention only to find himself trailing by the same amount in the campaign’s closing weeks. The numbers tightened in the final days, but Dukakis still lost by eight points. Exit polls found that nearly half of Bush’s voters said they supported him mainly to stop Dukakis. “The distortion of my record contributed a great deal to my defeat,” Dukakis acknowledged the morning after the election.

Four years later, though, Democrats nominated another governor with a record the Bush team believed was ripe for exploitation: Bill Clinton, whose state of Arkansas ranked near the bottom in a host of important-seeming statistical categories.

Of course, Clinton had other baggage too, mainly involving “character” issues and widespread concerns about his honesty, and the Bush campaign spent plenty of time highlighting it. Bush also tried to play up tax increases that Clinton had signed as governor, but the attack was compromised by his own infamous “Read my lips!” flip-flop.

In the final weeks of the race, though, with polls showing Clinton comfortably ahead, Bush began criticizing Clinton’s gubernatorial record much more aggressively. In an October 19 debate, for instance, Bush replied to Clinton’s vow to solely responsible for his administration’s economic policy by saying:

“That’s what worries me — that he’s going to be responsible. He’s going to do — and he would do for the U.S. what he’s done to Arkansas. He would do for the U.S. what he’s done to Arkansas. We do not want to be the lowest of the low. We are not a nation in decline.”

Clinton soon interrupted with this:

“Jim, you permitted Mr. Bush to break the rules, he said, to defend the honor of the country. What about the honor of my state? We rank first in the country in job growth, we got the lowest spending, state and local, in the country, and the 2nd lowest tax burden. And the difference between Arkansas and the U.S. is that we’re going in the right direction and this country’s going in the wrong direction. And I have to defend the honor of my state.”

The Arkansas attacks never got Bush anywhere in ’92. That Clinton was prepared to counter dire-seeming statistics with happier ones of his own surely helped, as did his salesmanship skills. Perhaps a different candidate wouldn’t have defended himself as ably. On the other hand, it may also be that voters, unnerved by what seemed to be a rotten economy, simply decided to tune Bush out and to regard his attacks as desperate excuse-making and blame-deflection.  That’s exactly what Romney’s campaign is counting on happening this year.