Presidential Campaign

The nation’s eyes are on the Gulf Coast region as the Republican Party prepares to nominate Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to oppose the Obama/Biden ticket — and a hurricane threatens to run over New Orleans in the next 48 hours.
 
This single-minded attention might cause voters to miss a story reported in Bloomberg that goes a long way to describing why Americans believe the country is headed in the “wrong direction.”

Somehow it’s fitting that Hurricane Isaac ruined the first day of the Republican convention. After all, this is not the first time Romney’s been forced to play second fiddle to a more exciting character.

In the primaries, remember, Romney was consistently outshone by Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum.

Romney eventually became the Republican nominee only because he was the last man standing, and the most boring, with the most money. So he heads into Tampa with little to offer.

Don't miss the excellent and fair story in The Hill by Jonathan Easley about the exchange between Chris Matthews of MSNBC and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus in which Matthews suggested Republicans are playing the race card.

Chris is right. You bet they are. When I called on President Obama to condemn the Priorities USA ad suggesting Romney bears some responsibility for a woman dying, my piece was posted on the Romney campaign site and quoted on Fox News. I hope they will equally quote this: Mitt Romney should pull off the air his race-baiting and factually fraudulent welfare ad and publicly apologize not to Obama but to the black, Hispanic and poor Americans Romney slandered in that ad, and apologize to President Clinton for misusing his name and his program.

TAMPA, Fla. — The Republican National Convention will be delayed by one day as a result of Tropical Storm Isaac.

This is a wise decision for the safety of all of those involved, and it will even have some fortunate effects. It will keep the convention in the news cycle for an extra day, which, though it might not sound like much, is important.

In my column this week I deplore the fact that Mitt Romney gives a special place to Donald Trump, a visible voice of nut-case birtherism, at the Republican convention. Now, don't miss Justin Sink's story in The Hill, about Mitt Romney's sick joke about President Obama's birth certificate. Perhaps it is the Romney-Trump ticket after all. The great weathervane of American politics pays homage, yet again, to the sick politics of radical hate that has a privileged place at the seat of power of Romney's Republicans.

In November, the presidential election is likely going to come down to a left brain-versus-right brain decision.
 
Obama’s campaign, desperate to change the subject from anything related to his actual job performance, has engaged in a summer ad spending spree attempting to define Mitt Romney as a greedy, out-of-touch, selfish operator who will enrich his friends at the expense of the rest of America.
 
Romney, on the other hand, has successfully tied the economy and American’s general dissatisfaction with the direction of the country to Obama.

The theme for this year’s Republican National Convention in Tampa is We Did Build That!

It’s an interesting choice of a theme. There are a lot of options this year: Mitt Romney is running against a president who simply hasn’t gotten much right. Even the death of Osama bin Laden, it turns out, is something that he bungled, since we saw him “spike the football” about it when his poll numbers started looking scary (incidentally, they haven’t got any better since then).

But it’s a worthy message, one that puts the question of economic freedom front and center, which is appropriate, since it will be front and center in November.

Amos Yadlin, former Israeli military intelligence chief, now the head of its Institute for National Security Studies, suggested in The Washington Post that President Obama should meet with Israeli leaders to assess how the United States should support its ally regarding the Iranian nuclear threat. The wisdom of Yadlin’s suggestion aside, the idea of an Obama Middle East visit soon is a good one.

Candidate Mitt Romney tells Fortune magazine, Politico reports, that he plans to shrink the federal government, and one target of his planned shrinkage will be the arts. Romney says he’ll eliminate PBS and the National Endowments for the Arts, garnering what one columnist called “chump change,” about $590 million, a small drop in the federal bucket.

Two weeks ago, this race was about President Obama. Now this race is about the future of America. Romney is gambling the entire conservative brand on November, and giving America a choice: If they really want Bismarckian statism, then they can have it. Or, if they want prosperity and freedom, they can have that back too. Romney is thinking very long-term, like a true leader should.