Presidential Campaign

Belligerence isn’t a strategy for the Middle East. Neither is defeatism or political distraction. But that’s what Governor Mitt Romney offers. 

In his recent speech at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), the governor used antagonistic language that left many wondering if the Republican nominee for president wants to take us right back to the neocon policies of the last administration that caused our country to invade Iraq and take our eye off al-Qaeda and Afghanistan. 

Harsh rhetoric was leveled at Iran, but from a policy perspective the governor gave no specifics other than saying he would do the same things President Obama is already doing.

Where is the guy who pulled our car out of the ditch?

Remember? In May of 2010 when President Obama encapsulated a ton of economic jargon for the average American in one succinct metaphor: “After they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. No!  You can’t drive. We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch.”

It was a result that might predictably raise skeptical eyebrows among many Americans. The recent reelection of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez came amidst a polarized political atmosphere and resulted in a victory for a man whose relationship with the United States has been contentious, to say the least.
 
Americans need only remember their own systemic misadventures in Florida in 2000 to reflect on how vulnerable the election process can be to either intentional manipulation or chaotic breakdown.

When voters mark their ballots on November 6th, there will be 68,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. In spite of a long campaign, it's still unclear what each candidate believes should happen with those soldiers after Election Day.

Nothing captures the ambiguity better than Tuesday's news from the State Department about the formal opening of negotiations to extend the US troop presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014. This follows on the heels of Vice President Biden's much-noted statements in the vice presidential debate that, "We are leaving in 2014, period." President Obama has also been trumpeting the coming end of the war, with a partial withdrawal completed this summer. But the U.S.-Afghan strategic partnership agreement he signed this year, along with statements from the Pentagon, leave the door wide open to a large troop presence as far out as 2024.

One of this election cycle’s most controversial issues is voter ID laws. Depending on your point of view, these laws are either essential for a functioning democracy, or the modern-day equivalent of a “poll tax” designed to depress minority voter turnout.

While I’m sympathetic to both points of view, neither captures the crux of the issue: A well-designed ID law — applied with ample guidance in communities where it could dampen turnout — can actually create a positive economic and civil benefit for exactly those voters about whom proponents are worried.

Republicans make much of Mitt Romney's experience as a businessman and tell us it predicts success as president. But is there a precedent for this, a track record of business success correlating with presidential success? In a word, no. Historically, the relationship between business success and presidential success is zero, perhaps even inverse.
 
Many surveys have ranked our presidents in terms of their achievements and success or failure in office, assessing such qualities as leadership, political skill, character and integrity, including many surveys of presidential scholars - academic historians and political scientists. by the Wall Street Journal in 2000 and 2005 emphasized a balance between liberal leaning and conservative leaning scholars.

In his recent speech at the Virginia Military Institute, Mitt Romney laid out a foreign policy vision that represents a clear break from President Obama’s approach.

Sometimes foreign policy is viewed as being completely distinct from domestic policy. But in his speech, Romney underscored the crucial connection between the two realms, highlighting the need “to revive our stagnant economy, to roll back our unsustainable debt, to reform our government, [and] to reverse the catastrophic cuts now threatening our national defense. . . ”

Indeed, no matter how wise our foreign policy may be, our scope for action is curtailed if our domestic finances are in disarray. Throughout the Cold War, the United States largely defended much of the free world while incurring a drastically lower debt than we have today. With our $16 trillion debt now rising by a trillion dollars a year, even if we manage to avoid the severe defense cuts in the sequestration, we are still confronted with unsustainable debt levels that are even more alarming when you factor in the tens of trillions of dollars unfunded liabilities from our entitlement programs.

With his performance in the second presidential debate, Barack Obama allowed his supporters to exhale. Not only did the president show up; from the opening question he executed his debate strategy against Governor Romney almost flawlessly. Each two-minute response was framed in all the necessary ways I laid out after the first debate: Obama succinctly took credit for his accomplishments, made clear contrasts between his policies and positions and Romney’s, and defended himself when Romney went on the attack. The only apparent hiccup on the part of the president was his meandering response to a question about gun violence and the lapsed weapons assault ban legislation. But Obama recovered quickly by paraphrasing (of all people) George W. Bush, when he accused the former Massachusetts governor of being “for the assault weapons ban before he was against it.”

That moment crystallizes the retooled strategy of the Obama campaign that will in all likelihood take us through Election Day. It’s not necessarily the economy, stupid – it’s character. If Massachusetts Mitt is going to show up for the rest of the campaign, then expect him to be painted, in the words of Jon Huntsman, as a “perfectly lubricated weathervane.” 

Never mind the usual boxing-style debate roundups or overblown tactical analysis. That’s all well and good – and what a lot of reporters specialize in – but it doesn’t tell us what we really need to know. What’s important to take away from last night’s debate, and every debate, is what it tells us about policy. Last night told us a lot.
 
The big takeaway is that Mitt Romney doesn’t have an economic plan. You can sugarcoat it, wave your arms around to create a distraction, and dress it up with a hundred right-wing studies, but there’s nothing really there. When he told moderator Candy Crowley with an annoyed smirk, “Of course my numbers add up,” tens of millions of Americans saw the bluster of an executive who didn’t prepare for a board meeting and didn’t expect to be called on it.

The killing of four American patriots in Benghazi, Libya last month was an act of terror. Those four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, represented the best of our country. They put their lives on the line to advance American interests in a volatile region. They deserved the support of their government back home.