Romney v. Obama Debate I

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright Oct. 3, 2012
All Rights Reserved.                                         

         Whatever the outcome of Romney v. Obama’s first presidential at the University of Denver Oct. 3, time is running out on the 65-year-old GOP candidate.  Since picking Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) Aug. 12, Mitt’s poll numbers have headed south, giving President Barack Obama a potentially insurmountable lead with only four weeks before Election Day.  Given that presidential debates rarely turn elections around, Romney’s task is especially daunting given he’s up against the most charismatic presidents since the late President Ronald Reagan—considered a GOP icon.  Whether admitted to or not, Romney possesses no such magnetism with most agreeing that he lacks the pizzazz to pull off the upset.  So bad are Romney’s odds that most reputable election forecasters expect an Obama electoral landslide on Election Day, barring some unforeseen cataclysm.

            Romney’s real task is too not embarrass himself and the GOP.  Since the 2008 election, the GOP brand was badly damaged from the way former President George W. Bush left office, leaving the worst economy since the Great Depression.  While Romney tries to blame the economic mess on Barack, Obama’s job is to remind voters that no president could have fixed the badly damaged economy in four years.  Romney and Ryan’s argument for replacing Barack involves telling voters to take his word that he’d do better.  Romney and Ryan have given almost no specifics of how they intend to add the some 12 million private sector jobs they’ve promised voters.  Obama will press Romney on how he intends to reverse the nation’s sluggish jobs market.  Barack can point to a steady rise in the stock market, now 70% higher than when he took office Jan. 20, 2009.

            Barack will remind voters that Mitt opposed his bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, both now operating on three shifts and turning a profit for the first time in years.  Romney will suggest he supported other ways of helps the struggling auto industry than government bailouts.  Pointing to past Bush administration, Barack will point out that Romney and Ryan have no new plan to fix the economy.  They’re relying on old discredited Supply-Side Economics ideas that left the country broke with whopping budget deficits.  Expect Barack to highlight Romney and Ryan’s devotion to GOP Party boss Grover Norquist’s “No Tax Pledge,” preventing them from raising taxes to reverse deficits and balance the budget.  Romney plans to bash Barack’s signature health care legislation as bad medicine.  He’ll propose his own approach to health care that involves tax cuts and vouchers.

            Simply sticking to his talking points, Barack has plenty of ammunition to attack Romney and Ryan’s plans to privatize Social Security and Medicare.  When Ryan tackled the thorny issue in August, Mitt watched a dead heat turn into what shapes up as an Election Day rout.  With the stock market and economy holding its own, it’s going to be difficult for Romney to ignore positive signs in the economy.  Polling has shown that most voters don’t blame Obama for the sluggish economy.  Judging by voters in the auto industry-rich Midwest, they’re rewarding Barack for bailing out Detroit.  If Romney continues to ignore data from the Fed, Commerce and Labor Departments, he’s going to indict his credibility.  When the National Association of Realtors showed a turnaround in the U.S. housing industry, Romney and Ryan said nothing.  They must convince voters that Barack has mismanaged the economy.

            Romney and Ryan have got no traction from ripping Obama’s foreign policy.  When they blamed Barack for the death of Libyan U.S. Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans, voters lashed out.  They didn’t like Mitt’s political spin on a regrettable foreign policy mishap.  While voters don’t like terror attacks on U.S. embassies or consulates, they also know that Barack isn’t responsible for all the security on every U.S. property.  “I need you to go out and find people and say you know what?  It’s not working.  It’s time to get America going again,” Mitt told a crowd in Colorado where he trails by 5% in the polls.  Mitt’s message certainly doesn’t apply to autoworkers in the Midwest, or, for that matter, everyone that has watched their stock portfolios rise by some 70% in only four years.  Mitt has to look voters in the eye and tell them to ignore the data and believe his negative outlook.

            Voters who watch presidential debates are looking for optimism, not prophecies of doom-and-gloom.  Since throwing his hat into the ring June 2, 2011, Romney has been bashing Obma’s economy and foreign policy.  Mitt doesn’t talk about the way things were under Bush or how far the economy’s come in the last four years.  When Romney and Ryan asked voters whether, paraphrasing Reagan, they’re better off than they were four years ago, voters answered a resounding yes following the Democratic National Convention.  Since then, Barack’s numbers have gone through the roof, putting almost insurmountable distance between himself and Romney.  When Nixon debated Kennedy on TV in 1960, most experts agreed that Nixon won on the radio but Kennedy won on TV.  Sixty-five-year-old Romney faces the same dilemma Oct. 3:  Beating one of the most charismatic presidents in U.S. history.

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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