I'm picking up on a theme that has run throughout the blogosphere of late, but as a rhetorical critic, I still feel compelled to respond. I am dumbfounded at the inability of the Romney campaign to set the agenda for this election--heck for even a day.
In general, when an incumbent runs for reelection, he is the issue. In 1976, for example, Jimmy Carter focused relentlessly on honesty (Watergate) and economic failures. He coined what he termed the "misery index," a combination of the inflation and unemployment rates. In 1980, Carter, in turn, suffered from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune when Ronald Reagan pinned an even worse misery index on the Georgian. And so it goes.
Except for this year. The economy has improved significantly since its trough in 08-09, but there is still plenty to criticize concerning President Obama's economic management. It should not be hard at all for a challenger to make that the issue of the campaign and, who knows, it may eventually happen.
But it sure hasn't so far, mostly because the former Bain Capital executive and Massachusetts Governor apparently never attended the "How to Win an Election" seminar. Somehow, the challenger has become the issue.
First, Ted Kennedy hammered Romney on his stewardship of Bain Capital in 1994 and defeated him. Bain has played a major role in every Romney run for office since then, including the 2012 primaries. He still has no credible answers for basic questions, such as "When did you work there?" Nor has he developed a stock answer about Bain that relies on his basic beliefs about capitalism to address those issues. He could easily develop something like this: 1) The importance of such venture capital in the economy; 2) The knowledge he gained of practical job creating efforts; 3) A frank acknowledgement that sometimes ventures don't work or don't create jobs, but that's what comes with taking risks, with being, in TR's words, the Man in the Arena, unlike wussy community organizers (pulling a page from the Sarah Palin playbook). This should have been done YEARS ago.
Second, he's faced questions about his wealth and taxes for much of his career. On one level, when he began to have national ambitions around 2004-5 or so, did he not turn to his accountants (hell, probably his accounting firm) and say, "Clean them up. Make them nice, simple and clear. Get rid of the gimmicks. Get rid of controversial stuff." It's not like post-1981 tax rates for the rich did anyone any harm. He could have at least tried to get away with 5 years of returns at that point and they would have showed him paying a healthy amount in taxes. On a second level, don't let anyone talk about the rate he paid, talk about amount he paid. It sounds so much better for the wealthy. On a third level, if you refuse to release them, develop a plausible answer--perhaps modeled on the refusla of candidates, such as George W. Bush, to talk about past drug or alcohol use--privacy, etc.. On a fourth level, especially after Romney gave better than 20 years of returns to McCain, he should have known he couldn't get away with this. So, prepare to release the taxes and come up with a defense for whatever's in there--such as exotic writeoffs or not paying taxes some years or some such. Argue, hey, I played the system as it was just as the president played the campaign finance system as it was in 2008 and shattered public financing. And Romney has argued for reform--lower base rates in exchange for elimination of loopholes. He could even argue that he knows the loopholes better than anyone, so he can change the system!
Third, why in heaven's name is he letting the president define him? The 2012 primaries, esp. Gingrich's ads, should have prepared him for this. But he's completely befuddled. He is neither answering the attacks nor is he trotting out positive bio ads to introduce himself to the American people. He is whining. Americans like winners, not whiners, which accounts for Jay Cutler's "popularity" in Chicago.
Prominent Republicans gnash their teeth about this and urge Romney to hire new staff. But staff is not the problem. The Republicans are about to nominate somebody with a tin ear for politics. He doesn't foresee problems; he can't game-plan solutions. He might win if the economy doesn't improve. But he's showing us that he'll have a very hard time governing because he simply doesn't understand politics.
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