July 11, 2012 4:00 A.M.
About half the country disapproves of the job the
president is doing. Most Americans think he has not handled the economy well.
Yet a majority also believe that the tough times are still George W. Bush’s
legacy, and, further, that Mitt Romney would not necessarily do any better a
job than has Obama. In brilliant fashion, Obama has convinced the American
people that he took office on or about September 20, 2008, right in the midst
of a national panic, which he alone calmed. You would never know that Inauguration
Day was four months later, when most of the life-saving remedies were already
in place and had been working for 16 weeks. This ploy is analogous to Obama’s
both trashing and claiming credit for his inheritance of the Bush
national-security protocols and near quiet in Iraq.
Republicans keep pointing to Obama’s weak approval
ratings, as if November were a yes/no vote on his performance. But that is not
quite the case, as we see from the unpopular Obama’s slight lead over Romney in
head-to-head polls. Romney’s problem for now is twofold: One, Americans want to
vote out Obama, but are not convinced yet that Romney has any better plans;
and, two, they still buy into the idea that George Bush — not corruption in
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with Washington-insider collusion with Wall
Street speculators — caused the September 2008 meltdown. Obama blames
everything from the Japanese tsunami to ATM machines for his dismal economic
performance, but the public does not so much disagree as wish he would just stick
to the old canard “Bush did it.”
Note that April, May, and June of this year were the
worst months of the Obama presidency so far: the Wisconsin repudiation of
blue-state unionism; the problems in fundraising; the Eric Holder contempt
charge; the GSA, Secret Service, and Fast and Furious scandals; Obama’s verbal
gaffes, like saying the private sector is doing “fine”; the rebukes on Bain
Capital from Cory Booker and Bill Clinton; the public putdowns from Vladimir
Putin — and always the bad job news, and more sluggish growth. Incumbent
presidents, after all, usually are not reelected after presiding over 41 months
of 8 percent–plus unemployment and four serial $1 trillion–plus budget
deficits.
Yet again, Obama has either stayed about the same in the polls
or has inched slightly ahead of Romney. If these were especially bad months,
what would good news bring Obama?
All sorts of explanations abound for the paradox, and
many of them are in part convincing. The most telling, perhaps, is that Romney
has not adequately countered Obama’s caricature of him as an out-of-touch rich
guy with John Kerry–like tastes for plutocratic playthings, who outsourced jobs
and stashed his millions in Swiss bank accounts. It is not enough to scoff that
the prep-schooled Obama, who has set a presidential record for time out on the
golf links, is hardly a populist working man. Instead, Romney has to
demonstrate why his undeniably successful business experience is an asset, not
a liability, in a moribund economy.
Also, Obama has adroitly used his incumbency to divert
attention from the economy to foreign affairs. In “the man who shot Liberty
Valance” fashion, Obama reminds us 24/7 of bin Laden’s demise. He envisions
forging a 51 percent constituency by a sudden burst of pandering to
special-interest groups (Keystone cancellation for greens, flip-flopping on de
facto amnesty for Latinos, gay-marriage reversal for homosexuals, condemning
the trumped-up “war on women” for feminists, interest-rate reductions for
students, thinly disguised racial fear-mongering by surrogates for blacks,
etc.).
Yet campaigns are two-sided affairs. The fact that Obama
has cleverly done the above does not mean that he is not still running on a
European-style record of 8 percent unemployment and less than 2 percent GDP
growth, with massive increases in the unemployment, food-stamp, and disability
rolls. But Romney cannot just remind the American people how awful the economy
has been the last three and a half years, with boilerplate generalities about cutting
taxes, repealing Obamacare, and getting America “back to work.” Everyone wants
that, but Romney has not clearly explained how it is to be done. Worse, too
many voters might rejoin, “But I pay no federal income taxes, so why should I
care about tax cuts?” Or, “Hey, wait a minute: My 25-year-old kid is now on my
employer’s health plan, so I don’t need to worry about his medical care,” or
“My cousin likes the extra year of unemployment insurance followed by more food
stamps.” Details are supposed to be the death of a candidate, but this year I
think banalities are — especially given the fact that half the population now
counts on ever-expanding food stamps, unemployment and disability insurance,
and exemption from all federal income taxes.
Instead, Romney should offer — and soon — a sort of
Contract with America that gives short, concise agendas on fiscal policy,
energy, the tax code, and health care that really would be shovel-ready in
January 2013 — a contract that shows Americans how they could be wealthier
working than stuck in the growing Obama dependent class. Romney could present,
even if only in outline, a blueprint for balancing the budget (stating when and
exactly how: an across-the-board hiring and spending freeze? phasing out farm
subsidies?), targets for vastly increased oil and gas production (getting 2, 3,
or 4 million additional barrels by opening up new federal lands for leasing?),
simplified taxes that would raise more revenue (with an explanation of how
exactly lowering rates can produce more federal revenue), and a private-sector
solution for health care. If Romney offers brief but detailed solutions, then
the focus turns to Obama to refute them, which makes his preferred
Chicago-style personal attacks seem all the more extraneous and mean-spirited.
It is hard to keep harping that Romney is too rich when he has outlined a
precise way to lessen the need for imported oil, reduce the trade deficit, and
make America less prone to strategic blackmail.
In other words, if Romney allows himself to be demagogued
as a richer-white-guy version of George W. Bush, while he trots out generalized
talking points about cutting taxes, getting American back to work, and ending
Obamacare, he will lose the election, buried under slurs about his new “mansion,”
his Swiss bank account, and more of Bush’s September 2008 economics. If Romney
doesn’t define a plan, then Obama will define him. Handlers who argue that the
fewer details, the better — given unforeseen circumstances ahead that always
risk making specific targets impossible to achieve — may have it right most
years, but not this one.
In short, Romney needs to forget about how he ran against
Ted Kennedy for Senate in 1994 and instead remember how exactly he saved the
Utah Olympics.
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