There are two ways to run against Barack Obama: stewardship or ideology. You can run against his record or you can run against his ideas.
The stewardship case is pretty straightforward: the worst recovery in U.S. history, 42 consecutive months of 8-plus percent unemployment, declining economic growth — all achieved at a price of another $5 trillion of accumulated debt.
The ideological case is also simple. Just play in toto (and therefore in context) Obama’s Roanoke riff telling small business owners: “You didn’t build that.” Real credit for your success belongs not to you — you think you did well because of your smarts and sweat? he asked mockingly — but to government that built the infrastructure without which you would have nothing.
Play it. Then ask: Is that the governing philosophy you want for this nation?
Mitt Romney’s preferred argument, however, is stewardship. Are you better off today than you were $5 trillion ago? Look at the wreckage around you. This presidency is a failure. I’m a successful businessman. I know how to fix things. Elect me, etc., etc.
Easy peasy, but highly risky. If you run against Obama’s performance in contrast to your own competence, you stake your case on persona. Is that how you want to compete against an opponent who is not just more likable and immeasurably cooler, but spending millions to paint you as an unfeeling, out-of-touch, job-killing, private-equity plutocrat?
The ideological case, on the other hand, is not just appealing to a center-right country with twice as many conservatives as liberals, it is also explanatory. It underpins the stewardship argument. Obama’s ideology — and the program that followed — explains the failure of these four years.
What program? Obama laid it out boldly early in his presidency. The roots of the nation’s crisis, he declared, were systemic. Fundamental change was required. He had come to deliver it. Hence his signature legislation:
First, the $831 billion stimulus that was going to “reinvest” in America and bring unemployment below 6 percent. We know about the unemployment. And the investment? Obama loves to cite great federal projects such as the Hoover Dam and the interstate highway system. Fine. Name one thing of any note created by Obama’s Niagara of borrowed money. A modernized electric grid? Ports dredged to receive the larger ships soon to traverse a widened Panama Canal? Nothing of the sort. Solyndra, anyone?
Second, radical reform of health care that would reduce its ruinously accelerating cost: “Put simply,” he said, “our health care problem is our deficit problem” — a financial hemorrhage drowning us in debt.
Except that the CBO reports that Obamacare will cost $1.68 trillion of new spending in its first decade. To say nothing of the price of the uncertainty introduced by an impossibly complex remaking of one-sixth of the economy — discouraging hiring and expansion as trillions of investable private-sector dollars remain sidelined.
The third part of Obama’s promised transformation was energy. His cap-and-trade federal takeover was rejected by his own Democratic Senate. So the war on fossil fuels has been conducted unilaterally by bureaucratic fiat. Regulations that will kill coal. A no-brainer pipeline (Keystone) rejected lest Canadian oil sands be burned. (China will burn them instead.) A drilling moratorium in the Gulf that a federal judge severely criticized as illegal.
That was the program — now so unpopular that Obama barely mentions it. Obamacare got exactly two lines in this year’s State of the Union address. Seen any ads touting the stimulus? The drilling moratorium? Keystone?
Ideas matter. The 2010 election, the most ideological since 1980, saw the voters resoundingly reject a Democratic Party that was relentlessly expanding the power, spending, scope and reach of government.
It’s worse now. Those who have struggled to create a family business, a corner restaurant, a medical practice won’t take kindly to being told that their success is a result of government-built roads and bridges.
In 1988, Michael Dukakis famously said, “This election is not about ideology; it’s about competence.” He lost. If Republicans want to win, Obama’s deeply revealing, teleprompter-free you-didn’t-build-that confession of faith needs to be hung around his neck until Election Day. The third consecutive summer-of-recovery-that-never-came is attributable not just to Obama being in over his head but to what’s in his head: a government-centered vision of the economy and society, and the policies that flow from it.
Four years of that and this is what you get.
Make the case and you win the White House.
Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for The Washington Post. Readers can contact him at letters@charleskrauthammer.com.
If the Republicans want the White House, they will have to come up with someone better than Romney. Romney has no international respect. His economic ideals have been tried and failed miserably. It would be insane to put forth an economic agenda that has shown itself to be such a horrendous mistake. Romney’s unwillingness to release his previous tax returns paints him as a person who has something he doesn’t want the voters to know. The suspicion of him being a vulture capitalist is also hard to shake.
You can run against his record of adding jobs to the economy not losing them for almost his whole term in office.
You can run against GM lives, Bin Laden is dead, or the incredible highs the stock market keeps hitting, all achieved with no help from Republicans. You can say, another $5
trillion of debt only if you admit that Four trillion was the off the books Bush war budget.
Since Obama never said that small business owners didn’t build their businesses, but did not build the roads, the schools, you can tell that tired lie….it is the Republican way.
Tell those lies, the American people will ask, ” why don’t the Rs talk about the economy and jobs?”
Mitt Romney’s stewardship is a history of destroying good business and real Americans to get a profit, go ahead run on that. Are they better off today than when they had a job and a pension? Yes, look at the wreckage Blain has left behind. Romney’s claim is that he will fix everything, but he won’t tell you how until he is elected. “Trust me, I am rich”.
If you run against Obama’s performance
in contrast to your own competence, and announcing Paul Ryan as the next president of the U.S. shows his competence.
Is that how you want to compete against an opponent when 63% of the U.S. just does not like you? Obama is far more likable and people really do see you as an unfeeling, out-of-touch, job-killing, selfish etch a sketch you are setting yourself a tough target.
Obama’s ideology and Obamacare contrast well when put up against advice to someone Bain put out of work with a dying wife to “move to Mass. and you would have had health care”
Fundamental change was required. Obama delivered.
First, the stimulus that caused GM to become again, the world’s largest car company. Second, increased hiring month after month, Obama stopped the bleeding.
Name one thing of any note created by Bain capital, Bankrupt factories? Outsourced jobs? Ruined lives? A zero tax rate for Romney? I don’t want to be unfair, he did create low paying jobs in sales and thousands of jobs in China.
While the CBO does report Obamacare will cost $1.68 trillion
of new spending in its first decade it also says that this will be offset by even larger savings. A business man would call that a profit.
Energy. With no help from congress the war on death dealing pollution, fracking and poisoning our water supply has been unilateral. A voice for the people against a voice for profit. A no-brain
pipeline (Keystone) rejected because it put our waters at risk, and was only intended to ship oil our of the U.S. for China to burn while the money goes to the Cayman islands and our tax dollars prop up the most profitable businesses in history.
You have missed the support for banning Keystone and for Obamacare if you ONLY listen to Fox news.
Ideas do matter, the 2012 elections will see the voters reject a Republican party that has no ideas. People like the idea of keeping their children on their health care, not being able to be dropped from a policy if you become sick, and closing the doughnut hole.
It could be worse. Those who have struggled to create a family business, a local restaurant, a medical practice won’t take kindly to being told that their taxes will go up, while Romney’s will go down, and the government has to get out of the business of building roads and bridges and we will have to buy our steel from China just to kill off Union jobs in this country.
This election will focus on competence. When the only thing they have is to misquote our president, to tell you that you are not smart enough to understand Mitty’s tax returns, not smart enough to be told his economic plans and to appoint Paul Ryan (Cat food for Grandmothers) Ryan, as VP all the Dems have to do is hang Ryan around Romney’s neck until Election Day.
A Romney and Ryan ticket is the best gift the Dems could have been given.
Good Democratic Party talking points, you just have to hope the independents will believe all of that……
Your mistake is to call facts talking points. Tell me the details of Romney’s economic plan. He won’t. A talking point is to say you paid your taxes but refuse to show the proof.
Facts? http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/general_motors_corporation/index.html how about a little perspective. Adding jobs? Explain how unenployment increases at the same time. The old saying about statistics applies.
I find it interesting that Pres. Obama’s re-election campaign has not focused on his performance, but runs negative instead. It seems they do not have the same confidence in his term that you do.
And yes, I know that objective thinking is no longer the norm for either side, and I just wasted a few minutes.
look at the ryan budget and what impacts the middle class-republicans don’t mind making the middle class pay more but want to cut taxes for the wealthy