The extraordinary agitation in the press and in both
presidential campaigns over every economic and polling indicator and every
campaign utterance and PAC commercial—five months before the election—is
undermining Obama’s re-election.
Obama and the Democrats want a choice election. They have an
articulate messenger for just that kind of election. However, Obama is beginning
to wear out his advantage with too much campaigning and too much effort
explaining in what Mitt Romney thinks.
The problem isn’t that Obama’s demeaning the presidency by
being in Cleveland explaining yet again what his audiences will have to decide
in November. Nor has he lost his winning style. He runs the risk, however, of
becoming a bore well before the public is truly roused to make its historic
choice.
Furthermore, he’s making it easier for Romney to talk about
Obama and talk less about his own proposals.
Obama’s campaign would be well served if he took a vacation
and spent more time in Washington. It’s not important that the vacation refresh
or that he secure a breakthrough with Congress. What he ought to dare do is (1) raise expectations that big decisions
are approaching in Washington and (2) give Romney and his resurgent Republican
Party more space to really express themselves.
To be a choice election, Obama should give his opponents
every opportunity to get people exercised about who they are as well as comfortable with what he’s trying to do.
Let the Republicans spend fortunes saying Republican things
about Obama and America. Essentially,
until the fall, Mr. President, why not leave it to others and that reasonable voter out there to decide
whether what they hear from Republicans is
reasonable and in their interests?
Many Democrats and Bill Clinton can be counted on to suggest
Obama only fight harder and try to be more dramatic, empathetic, and
comprehensive in outlining his multi-year master plan for the next US budget—but for five months making speeches that are more complex,
consistent, and yet more newsworthy than the hour-long addresses he’s making
now?
Jimmy Carter didn’t lose to Ronald Reagan because there were
gaps in his case for re-election. He lost, in large part, because the gaps in
Reagan’s resurgent Republicanism didn’t matter.
This polling comment in John Cassidy’s column in the New Yorker today gets to the heart of
the matter:
“The key difference between Romney and
Bloomberg is that Romney hasn’t used his money to create an independent
platform; he’s thrown in his lot with the G.O.P., which many independent voters
view with suspicion. According to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal
poll, fewer than a third of Americans have a positive view
of the Republican Party, and just nine per cent of them have a “very positive”
view. That, rather than his own record as a businessman and a governor, is
Romney’s Achilles heel.”
Romney isn’t a Tea Partier, a closet red-Tory, a one-note
billionaire, a religious crank, or a shady businessman. He isn’t an outsider or
larger than the Republican Party, as were Eisenhower the life-long public servant,
Nixon the striving neurotic, and Reagan the Hollywood (and after-dinner) performer.
Obama doesn’t have to spend his energy connecting the dots.
Romney, Paul Ryan, and the rest are bread-in-the-bone Republicans.
They’re in perfect sync. Nevertheless, a Republican Congress, Senate, and presidency in troubled times is a bracing proposition. Obama ought to let the
idea sink in for a while.
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