PLANK OCTOBER 19, 2012
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The conventional wisdom about Tuesday’s debate has taken shape. President Obama performed better than Mitt Romney, maybe even a lot better. But he failed to describe a governing vision for the future. This has been a persistent weakness of his campaign, the argument goes, and it’s becoming a huge liability.
It makes complete sense. Just imagine what would have happened on Tuesday if Obama had described a series of specific economic proposals—if, say, he had called for tax incentives to bolster manufacturing, investments in community colleges that train people for local jobs, more development of green energy, and a deficit reduction package that blended spending cuts with higher taxes for the wealthy.
Oh, wait. He did—in response to the very first question he got at Hofstra University on Tuesday night. If you don’t believe me, go to the transcript and search for “Number one, I want to build…”
I counted five distinct ideas in that soliloquy—each very brief, for sure, but each referring back to a very specific proposal that Obama has introduced sometime in the past year. Some of them were part of the American Jobs Act, which independent, respected economists said would create a few hundred thousand and maybe more than a million new jobs over the course of a year. Some of them were part of Obama’s latest budget and deficit reduction proposals, which projections show would stop the debt increasing relative to the economy about a year from now and then cause it to decline, slightly, for the next decade.
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These ideas haven’t been a major emphasis for the last few months. They lack the idealistic grandeur of Obama’s first campaign and would represent incomplete progress towards their goals. You can make a perfectly good case, for example, that the economy needs an even larger shot of old-fashioned Keynesian stimulus than it would provide. You can make an even better case that the deficit reduction measures Obama has outlined would not bring the federal budget into long-term balance—that, looking past the next decade, it would take even larger tax increases or spending cuts, including those that hit the middle class. (My strong preference, as you might guess, would be for the former.)
But the idea that Obama hasn’t laid out a specific agenda for the future is just nonsense. And it’s particularly galling to hear it from conservatives, who have been pushing this argument for a while, when the charge happens to apply to their preferred choice for president. Yes, Romney talks constantly about his “five-point plan.” But it’s not really a plan. It’s a set of bullet points, largely bereft of dollar figures and other details. And while the Romney campaign has been touting studies that supposedly show his jobs agenda would create 12 million new jobs, that claim, too, turns out to be false—as the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler pointed out this week.
Romney has been slightly—and I do mean “slightly”—more specific when it comes to his plans for reducing federal spending. He’s said he wants to cap it at 20 percent of gross domestic product, setting aside 4 percent for defense. That would be a devastating cut of historic proportions. Romney hasn’t given too many details about exactly which programs he’d slash, perhaps because voters might not love the idea of major cuts to food safety inspections or the FBI. But Romney has mentioned a few specific cuts—most prominent among them, a plan to dramatically reduce Medicaid spending. That plan would likely force many millions (like up to 27) to lose health insurance and/or leave elderly people with no way to pay nursing home bills.
On the campaign trail, Obama has spent a lot more time talking about these ideas, and why they are so awful, than he has about his own proposals, and why they are so great. But what's wrong with that? Getting people back to work more quickly and addressing our long-term fiscal problems are very important. Protecting Medicare, Medicaid, and essential government programs from the kind of assault Romney has described—an assault that would, in one way or another, affect just about every single American—is even more important. Talking about the future doesn’t have to mean talking about what you’ll do. It can also mean talking about what you won’t.
One final note: To the extent Obama hasn't laid out a "new" vision for the future, it's because his new vision is the same as his old vision. As he's said over and over again, including on Tuesday night, he believes government has a vital role to play in domestic policy—as a watchdog, guardian of economic security, and instigator of growth. The focus of his first term was enacting policies that would allow government to do this. Think financial regulation, universal health care, and the Recovery Act. His second term, necessarily and appropriately, would focus on pursing those same goals—whether by seeing the Affordable Care Act through to implementation or further boosting the economy through the American Jobs Act. In the Washington Post today, Michael Gerson dismisses these things as the "Marginally Greater Society." But making health care available all Americans, creating the foundation for a green energy future, and reorienting the tax code in a more progressive direction represent some pretty bold efforts to change America.
Not everybody approves of that agenda. Fine. Let them criticize it on the merits, instead of pretending that it doesn't exist.
27 comments
I have never heard of any political candidate ever saying, like Ryan and Romney have said, that it is a bad idea to disclose what you intend to do with your tax/jobs/budget plan because it would be considered ramming your proposals down the throat of Congress. And that claim doesn't make any sense in the light of the U.S. Constitution. If Romney is elected, will he have a mandate, like Bush claimed, to say things that don't make any sense?
- Nusholtz
October 19, 2012 at 11:32am
Vicious, but not stupid. The conservatives merely employ, as they have for years now, the rhetorical tactic perfected by Josef Goebbels -- falsely accuse the target of your hatred of committing the very foul deeds that you yourself are engaged in. Thus, in order to impugn the Jews, Goebbels would stand up and fabricate, with tremendous vigor and visible outrage, the lie that the Jews were impugning the German people. To conceal Nazi aspirations of domination, he would accuse the Jews of aspiring to domination.
- roidubouloi
October 19, 2012 at 12:00pm
There's a pattern here. It's becoming standard practice for candidates on the right to attack their opponent most forcefully in the area of their own greatest weakness. Romney won't be specific about much of anything, so Obama is criticized for not having a plan. Romney and Ryan want to turn Medicare into a voucher system, so Obama is criticized for "gutting Medicare". Other examples abound. This is somewhat effective with those who aren't paying attention, It also clouds the issue and plays into journalists' tendencies to reduce questions of fact to "he said, she said". I smell Mr, Rove.
- K_Wilson
October 19, 2012 at 12:12pm
"Thus, in order to impugn the Jews, Goebbels would stand up and fabricate, with tremendous vigor and visible outrage, the lie that the Jews were impugning the German people. To conceal Nazi aspirations of domination, he would accuse the Jews of aspiring to domination." You've got it, roi. The overriding crime that Hitler and the Nazis accused the Jews of was--you guessed it--racism. They used that imagined crime as a justification for their own racism--"they did it, so now we get to do it." The biggest crime that the GOP accuses the Dems of is increasing the deficit to record levels, which is exactly what Republicans do when they take over the government. The fact that Republican voters ignore this is proof that they are just as cynical as their party leaders. A while back I thought Obama was making a mistake by not delineating a vision for the future. But he's accomplished a lot for the American people--most importantly he kept tens of millions, maybe more, of us out of soup lines--and all he has to do is tell us about that and promise to expand on what he's already done. He did that in the second debate. Mission Accomplished (oops, sorry for the reference).
- magboy47.
October 19, 2012 at 1:15pm
Rock-star Candidate. Uncertainty costs jobs. Biden was 'sneering'. He doesn't HAVE a plan. Obama is a failed president with failed policies. Unemployment above 8% for 4 years. Obamacare raises the deficit. Obamacare costs jobs. Obamacare reduces access to healthcare. All are Republican attempts to denigrate Obama and the Democrats on personal and propaganda terms. Meanwhile remaining silent on what really ARE the Republican proposals. Namely Ryan's privatization of Medicare, Romney's 20% tax cut paid for by -- oh, tell you later.
- AllanL5
October 19, 2012 at 2:27pm
The O-Team has set this up nicely. Now, a sprint for the finish line with a better-than-ever gotv effort and it's on to the Fiscal Cliff!
- Robert Powell
October 19, 2012 at 2:50pm
Agreed, BO has offered a vision. He is the stooge of Saul Alinsky/Bill Ayers/Bernadine Dohrn. He spent 20 years in the jumpin/jivin church of Jeremiah Wright. He contemplated his navel at the U of Chicago--no scholarly contact w/other faculty. Oh, my, he be teachin the Constitution. No, he taught civil rights law & had no interest in academic scholarship. Doubt it? Name his contributions to Constitutional scholarship. As an Affirmative Action mediocrity, he coasted through Harvard because he wasn't a thug. Any semi-literate black who didn't come to class w/ Rikers Island pants (down at the knees) got an A. And he rose through Chicago politics, the putrid Daley system. My idol!
- raygun
October 19, 2012 at 2:57pm
He is the stooge of Saul Alinsky/Bill Ayers/Bernadine Dohrn. He spent 20 years in the jumpin/jivin church of Jeremiah Wright. I find this very funny. Romney's team consists Bush's foreign policy advisors (a foreign policy that stunk and still stinks) and some of Bush's economic advisors (2.7 million jobs from tax cuts in his first term and minus 4.5 million in his second). But, instead, we need to worry about the President having been "exposed" to people with so-called dangerous opinions?
- Nusholtz
October 19, 2012 at 3:14pm
"[Obama]My idol!" We welcome your change of heart, raygun. Now, it's off to the polls and victory in November. GO OBAMA!
- magboy47.
October 19, 2012 at 3:27pm
roid, Joseph Goebbels? Nazis? You brought Jews and Holocaust into this? Really? The truth is that both parties have plans, maybe not good plans, but they have some thing they can call a plan, sort of. This is just good old fashioned partisan hypocrisy. Democrats do it in spades as well, although I predict some partisan will quickly assert an unquantifiable comparison like "but they do it less!". Getting kind of ridiculous.
- Nicomachus
October 19, 2012 at 4:43pm
I actually think that running on the platform of "if you elect Mitt, tons of scary stuff will happen" is not a bad idea, and fits with past successful campaigns that evoked fear. (Remember the wolves commercial in 2004, implying Kerry wouldn't keep us safe? And of course the famous daisy ad?) Most people seem to have no understanding of what Romney-Ryanland would look like and a good ad could illustrate it --savage cuts for FEMA rescues from hurricanes; for food inspections; for the CDC and FDA; for air traffic controllers; for the CIA and FBI; crumbling infrastructure; closed national parks. And then show the 1% enjoying their private planes, yachts, fancy hotels, thanks to tax breaks. Either all of that, or more huge deficits. (Of coure there are also the draconian cuts to the safety net but my thought is to put it in terms that won't enable people to say, "Oh, I don't care, that won't affect me.")
- shellski
October 19, 2012 at 4:46pm
Team Obama has come up with a term for Romney's sociopathic flip-flopping: Romnesia. I hope Obama uses it Monday during the debate. Romnesia: perfect.
- magboy47.
October 19, 2012 at 5:25pm
In an odd way, I agree with the Republican criticism. When I look at the various initiatives coming from the Obama administration, they seem to add up to a stronger, more just, and more prosperous society. Yet I feel the burden is on me to fit them into a broader vision.
- brthompson
October 19, 2012 at 5:30pm
raygun = case in point, as per roi. Perhaps he is a satirist?
- Sophia
October 19, 2012 at 7:16pm
We've heard Obama say repeatedly he can't get anything done today because of obstruction from the republicans. But the republicans will be there the next 4 years. They'll likely even be in greater numbers. So, is this foreshadowing that if Obama wins again we'll hear for the next 4 years about how it's impossible to work with republicans? In other words, nothing is getting done? Just him going to parties, golfing, and appearing on the view as "eye candy" is all we can really expect? No thanks. We need more. I've watched every debate and I can't tell you what on earth will be different with the next 4 years. Romney worked with a state congress that was 87% democrat he said in the debate. And he got things done. What a difference.
- seattleeng
October 19, 2012 at 9:49pm
Magboy writes: "Team Obama has come up with a term for Romney's sociopathic flip-flopping: Romnesia. I hope Obama uses it Monday during the debate." I know these things delight the base, but the red meat thrown to the base at the Biden debate has hurt the ticket in the polls. Today, Rasmussen said the first wave of post debate numbers are favoring Romney. Prior to the last debate, Obama lead NH by 6. Kos/PPP now has Romney leading in NH by 1. RCP just tipped the electoral lead to Romney yesterday. And there's likely no question that Romney will win big in the popular vote. If Obama wins, he'll lose the popular vote by a lot, but win the electoral college by a slim margin. But man, I'm starting to feel pretty good about this outcome. Romney is now leading on likability, too. A few weeks ago, Obama lead by double digits. North Carolina. Byebye. FLA. Byebye. Plus the pollsters are still thinking the dems will vote in the same numbers they did in 2008 and are thus oversampling D. Likely that won't happen again.
- seattleeng
October 19, 2012 at 10:04pm
Does anyone doubt for one second that with the cooperation of the Republicans Romney would run up the debt (Bush doubled the debt; Reagan almost tripled it.) Need I say, Clinton?
- Nusholtz
October 19, 2012 at 10:05pm
Deficits: 2004: $413B 2005: $318B 2006: $248B 2007: $161B 2008: $258B: 2009: $1.4T 2010: $1.3T 2011: $1.3T 2012: $1.3T Bush's last years showed $258B (with bailouts) and $161B the year prior to that. Look a the trend under Bush: The $413B was the high water mark. With lower taxes and with war, it was dropping year after year. In 2007, Bush's low water mark of $161B is spitting distance to balanced. And then look at the Obama's 4 years. What a difference. No, I don't believe Romney would do what Obama is doing. For a minute. Romney just bumped another point from yesterday in Rasmussen, which means the debate overall went better for Romney. Swing state tracking has Romney 50 to 46. Ohio polls at a 47/47 tie when dems are overampled 9 points higher than R. So, if you believe Ohio will get the same Dem turnout as 2008, then it's a tie. But if dems fail to turnout in 2008 numbers, then it's a win for Romney. Big. One can hope.
- seattleeng
October 20, 2012 at 12:11pm
I don't doubt for a second that Republicans will start running up the debt again. It'll be Shrub redux; coming out of the gate, they'll slash tax rates and find something to repeal that gives them cover for repealing Obamacare (since they plan to keep many of the things Obamacare implemented, it'll be something tangental like the mandate or contraception coverage), then they'll start having those "bipartisan discussions" and whatever happens to the deficit after that is Democrats fault.
- GSpinks
October 20, 2012 at 12:11pm
Seattle is wrong, as usual. bush's "last year" shows 1.4T. Budgetary effects always trail the administration by 1 year. But thanks for pointing out Obama has been whittling away at that deficit as best he can given the employment situation Bush left him (almost 1 million jobs lost the month before he took office, with millions lost previously, and millions more to be lost before Obama's stimulus could be passed and staunch the bleeding).
- GSpinks
October 20, 2012 at 12:18pm
Anyone who looks at deficit numbers before and after any recession is, of course, going to see larger deficits after the recession, especially when a president inherits two foreign wars and a costly prescription drug benfit. The real question is what happens when you weed out from the budget, how much of the President's policies contributed to the national debt; and that number is, wait for it:
And the winner for rate of growth in the debt in one year was Bush at 15.9%.- Nusholtz
October 20, 2012 at 12:46pm
Bush had TARP, which was $700B. Minus TARP, Bush's last year (not including TARP) was $600B for 2009. Combined this is the $1.4T for 2009. But TARP was largely repaid. Not all, but most. And it's coming back with interest and dividends. In the end, the $700B approved for TARP will cost the taxpayer $34B according to the CBO. And thus, that largely explains 2009. But that doesn't explain 2010, 2011 and 2012 and 2013. www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-incredibly-shrinking-bill-for-tarp/2012/01/26/gIQAMkh8SQ_blog.html Note that on Obama's bailout, the cost for GM bailout alone is alone is sitting at $25B. Nutz writes: "And the winner for rate of growth in the debt in one year was Bush at 15.9%." A one year anomaly related to TARP. Which, as noted above, will cost the taxpayer almost nothing in the end. Same can't be said about Obama's spending. The money spent under Obama isn't coming back. It's gone forever. Think of this: An $85K earner shoulders 13% of the federal income tax liability. And there are 20M of these households. Thus, a $1T deficit means that 20M of the $85K earners will eventually have to pay back $130B via future tax payments. This means each family earning $85K has a $6500 tax bill coming for each year $1T we overspend in any year. A deficit is a promise that future taxes will go up. There is no way around it. It is as certain as can be. Thus, Obama's $6T in debt spending is a promise that the $85K earner will pay $36K in taxes at some point in the future. Under Bush's 8 years, that bill was $3.4T, or $1.7T for 4 years. Or an $11K tax bill. But that's 3X more future tax Obama's spending will require. Night and day difference. Obama's beating of the middle class continues.
- seattleeng
October 20, 2012 at 2:34pm
The deficit under Obama has gone down every year, which means that the President will be more fiscally responsible than Romney, who starts $7 trillion in the hole and can't explain how he is going to get out, despite repeated questions to that effect. The President's balanced approach to deficit reduction is more effective in reducing the deficit and lowering the damage to the economy than Romney's all tax cuts and all spending cuts approach. Romney's wild assumptions about growth that have been disproven by the last 12 years of the Bush Tax Cuts. And still, the amount the President's policies have added to the debt is, wait for it:
- Nusholtz
October 20, 2012 at 3:12pm
seattle is severely data-challenged. Stands to reason therefore that he cannot read or report poll numbers correctly either. The national polls have been tilting back toward Obama and no show a lead for him, not Obama. Naturally, seattle interprets this as a huge popular vote for Romney. Nothing but garbage and nonsense comes out of seattle's mouth. There is no fact he will not falsify on behalf of his wacko libertarian ideology.
- roidubouloi
October 20, 2012 at 7:00pm
"now show a lead for him, not Romney." It is late in the Hague where I am at present.
- roidubouloi
October 20, 2012 at 7:01pm
I certainly disagree, along with you, Jonathan Cohn, with "the conventional wisdom" that Obama has not described his vision to voters, convincingly or with enough detail. In fact, the New York Times news analysis by Peter Baker the morning after, not only promotes personality politics AND false equivalence, to argue this complaint. It's even incoherent, calling Obama's courageous stand on marginal tax rates part of a mere rearguard action to protect accomplishments. These clumsy efforts to pressure Obama into committing to spending cuts as a first priority are becoming as incoherent logically, as they are economically. When the news universally complains of insufficient detail, or unclear vision, is it any less honest than allowing Republican propaganda about fiscal cliffs stand unchallenged? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/us/politics/debates-have-not-clarified-matters-for-voters-news-analysis.html Why are Democrats' efforts, to stand for reasonable tax burden sharing, consistently reported as rear guard action, insufficient vision, not detailed enough, a vague agenda, or mere whittling at debt? And the New York Times is not the worst offender, of course. If spending cuts are the unacknowledged first order of business, for news media, after November, it skews their reporting and editorials (the subtext of all reporting for the past week in the New York Times editorials and analyses). It also precludes reporting on the the bait-and-switch pretend policies of the current Republican party, or on why many voters are receiving expensive propaganda instead of reporting. And ignores Mann and Ornstein advice: that reporting should include questioning all stakeholder goals, and effects. Who is reporting on how reporters are advocating, without acknowleggement, for the goals of influential investors and advertisors, by withholding endorsements and not promoting non-partisan analyses? If Fox News hadn't erred in reporting Ryan's RNC speech dishonesty, and the GOP hadn't erred in pretending to be Clintonian, would voters know that there are holes and inconsistencies in Republican tax and entitlement-reform plans by now, let alone that Romney's are even more radical and destructive? Should we expect The New Republic, Media Matters, bloggers like Krugman or Sargent, or the corporation for Public Broadcasting to pick up the slack? Most voters won't read, much less pay to read, The New Republic, and Jim Lerher and friends are not getting deeper, at least not any time soon. Should we even expect for-profit news to point out that it must keep horse races close, never mind the economic consequences? Voters will never become their own investigative reporters. Also, political influence on news organizations, combined with paywalls, means that fake think tanks, blog post studies, and propaganda in the service of campaign narratives is replacing hard news. How will voters find out how little credibility Republican talking points have, about Obama not proposing a budget? Or how fleeting and theoretical his supermajority was? Most print or broadcast news corporations won't debunk these talking points and fake policies, which they would have to do constantly and repetitively, as their presentation mutates, to stay one step ahead. Alec McGillis has done a good job, without naming media, of showing how we are now dependent upon influential donors like Michael Bloomberg, who may be for gun control, to see media coverage, while not considering the effects of hoping for support from someone who also supports Scott Brown. The problems with news coverage are the same as the problems with campaign finance, but the former seems to be a subject that cannot be named. Real reporters, as well as local reporters, must be starting to understand the impossible rules of the status quo, which has always labeled truth telling minorities, like women, as shrill!
- JCAtwood
October 21, 2012 at 3:06am
Showtime bitches. Everybody find voters and bring them to the polls.
- Robert Powell
October 21, 2012 at 4:25pm