Obama's Big DNC Speech

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright Sept 9, 2012
All Rights Reserved.                                         

                Taking the podium to deliver the speech of his life, President Barack Obama must confront pernicious GOP propaganda that has raised voter doubts about his fitness to serve another term.  Since taking office Jan. 20, 2012, the GOP has laid the entire U.S. economic mess at his feet.  They’ve blamed him for everything wrong with the country, including wrecking the banking industry, destroying the health care system, bankrupting Social Security and Medicare and trying to ruin the American way of life.  Former President Bill Clinton tried to rehab Barack last night, telling voters that Republican presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney’s math doesn’t add up.  Romney says he’ll add 12 million private sector jobs, cut taxes for the rich and balance the budget.  When President Ronald Reagan promised to balance the budget in 1980, he quadrupled the deficit before leaving office Jan. 20, 1989.

            Romney and his VP House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) economic plan calls for more tax cuts for the wealthy.  They both subscribe to GOP Party boss Grover Norquist’s “No Tax Pledge,” preventing them from raising more tax revenue.  Their only way of balancing the government’s $1.2 trillion federal budget deficit is by slashing the federal workforce and popular entitlement programs, like Medicare, Social Security and aid to education.  Obama must let voters know Romney and Ryan’s secret plan to reverse the size and influence of the federal government.  Both are committed to government subsidies and contracts to corporations but not to individuals with economic and health care needs.  Barack’s speech, that was moved from the 74,000-seat outdoor Bank of America stadium to the 20,000-seat DNC’s Time Warner Center, must answer GOP charges.

            Undecided voters have heard years worth of Obama-bashing from popular conservative Internet sites and radio and TV talk shows.  Romney and Ryan’s attacks come right out of the most vicious right wing propaganda on the Internet, TV and public airwaves.  Obama must answer Reagan’s old question he asked voters while debating former President Jimmy Carter in 1980:  “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”  Clinton tried yesterday to answer the question but got bogged down with stats and policy wonking.  Obama must answer the question in plain English.  With the Dow Jones Industrial Average rocketing up today 244 points to 13, 292, Barack must remind voters where the Dow stood when he took office.  Climbing over 5,000 points from 8,000 when he took his oath, the Dow has gained over 70%, disproving Romney and Ryan’s charge that the country’s worse off.

            Romney made his fortune at Bain Capital on Wall Street.  Whether he admits it or not, the Dow doesn’t lie.  If the president’s policies weren’t working, the markets wouldn’t have rallied back over 70% since Inauguration Day.  Menaced by Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, Barack has every right to remind voters he ordered the mission that got Bin Laden May 1, 2011.  While Romney and Ryan would like to ignore this fact, the president deserves at least some of the credit for defending America by relentlessly pursuing terrorists.  When you consider the real bright spots during the economic recovery begun March 2010, Clinton pointed to the some 4.5 million jobs added since the recession bottomed out.  He also told voters that Obama had the wisdom to bail out General Motors and Chrysler, both now thriving again.  Romney and Ryan preferred to let Detroit go bankrupt.

                        Romney and Ryan often talk of how they’d do things differently, including rescinding Barack’s $1 trillion health care reform legislation.  They call Obamacare a budget buster but never mention how the legislation fuels the largest expansion in the U.S. health care system ever seen.  Accommodating 30 million new insured citizens, thousands—if not millions—of new jobs will be created.  More employment to expand the health care business involves all sorts of jobs including, doctors, nurses, accountants, food service workers, secretaries, etc.  Clinton echoed the views of former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan that digging out of former President George W. Bush’s economic hole would take time.  “Listen to me now.  No president, no president—not me, not any of my predecessors—no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years,” said Clinton.

                Obama’s speech tonight will highlight whether the country is better off today than it was four years ago.  Clinton pointed out that the economic fix doesn’t involve going back to the same policies that brought about the worst recession since the Great Depression.  Romney and Ryan have a secret economic plan that they won’t spell out to voters.  They don’t expect much support from the federal workforce.  Clinton didn’t speculate what Romney and Ryan planned to do to fix the economy.  Given their commitment to cutting more taxes for the rich, they’ll have no choice but to slash the federal work force and popular entitlement programs.  Clinton highlighted the stakes last night.  Barack needs to tell voters what life would be like under Romney and Ryan.  He needs to take off the gloves, stop pulling punches and warn voters what they’d face in a Romney and Romney presidency.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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