“Not So Hidden”: As If Republicans Didn’t Know, President Obama’s Second-Term Agenda Is Pretty Clear
Everywhere you turn, President Obama is accused of not offering a clear second-term agenda. It’s not surprising that Republicans say it, but you also hear it from quarters sympathetic to the president.
But how true is the charge?
The president does lack a crisp, here’s-my-plan set of sound bites. What’s less obvious is whether this should matter to anyone. Mitt Romney’s five-point plan sounds good but is quite vague and, upon inspection, looks rather like five-point plans issued by earlier Republican presidential candidates. Moreover, Romney has been resolutely unspecific about his tax plans, leading to the understandable suspicion that he’s hiding something politically unsavory, either in the popular deductions he’d have to slash or in the programs he’d have to get rid of.
Obama, by contrast, has been far more straightforward about what he would do about the deficit: He wants a budget deal that includes both spending cuts and tax increases. He has put forward rather detailed deficit-reduction proposals. The centerpiece is a plan that, when combined with cuts made in 2011, would reduce the deficit by $3.8 trillion over a decade, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Obama keeps insisting (rightly) that no deal can work without new revenue, and he is upfront that he’d begin by raising taxes on Americans earning over $250,000 a year.
Some deficit hawks argue that Obama’s tax increases are not broad enough. Others are looking for steeper Medicare and Social Security cuts than Obama is willing to endorse. Many progressives, in turn, want fewer cuts and favor additional tax increases on the very wealthy. Before signing off on deeper program reductions, progressives should consider the efforts of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., to counter all the proposals to cut tax rates. She has suggested five new, higher rates on incomes ranging from $1 million to $1 billion or more a year. The capital gains tax also needs to rise. Low levies on capital gains, the reason Romney paid so little tax on his $20.9 million income, raise problems for both fiscal balance and equity.
But these are responses to what Obama has proposed. To disagree with some of Obama’s specifics is to acknowledge that the specifics exist.
Some dismiss what an Obama second term might achieve by claiming that it will be mainly concerned with consolidating his first-term accomplishments. If these had been trivial, that might be a legitimate criticism. But does anyone seriously believe that implementing a massive new health insurance program that will cover an additional 30 million Americans is unimportant? Can anyone argue that translating the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms into workable regulations is a minor undertaking?
The president has also been clear that he wants to take on immigration reform. The question always asked is: Why should we think he’ll do it in a second term when he didn’t do it in the first? The answer is that if Obama is reelected, it will be in no small part because he overwhelms Romney among Latino voters who have stoutly rejected the Republican’s “self-deportation” ideas. It’s possible that Republicans will cooperate on immigration reform simply because they don’t want to keep losing elections by getting clobbered in Latino precincts. And Obama will know that he has an electoral debt to pay.
Republicans have been relentless in attacking the clean-energy projects Obama has financed. If Obama wins, the president will have reason to say that clean energy won, too, and push ahead. And in one of the best articles on what Obama might do in a second term, the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza observed in June that Obama’s campaign statements — to that point, at least — suggested he would like to take another shot at legislation to address climate change.
Obama speaks incessantly about upgrading the country’s infrastructure. He also stresses the urgency of retooling both our education system and the way we train people for well-paying jobs. One can imagine a comprehensive education, jobs and investment program being a high priority in a second Obama term. And you can bet he will join efforts to create a new campaign financing system to check the power billionaires and corporations exercise in the world after Citizens United.
There is every reason to wish that Obama would pull all this together in a more inspiring way. Some of us would like him to be much bolder in addressing income inequality, the huge roadblocks to upward mobility, and the persistence of poverty. But is there is an Obama second-term agenda? Yes, there is.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 21, 2012
“A More Extreme Place”: Mitt Romney Is Not George W. Bush, He’s Worse
Much to Democrats’ chagrin, George W. Bush hasn’t played much of a role in larger 2012 political conversation. His name was rarely uttered during the Republican presidential primaries; the failed former president hid during the party’s national convention; and Mitt Romney did his level best to ignore the news when Bush endorsed him.
It came as a pleasant surprise, then, when a voter broached the subject last night. She noted she’s been “disappointed with the lack of progress” over the last four years, but she’s afraid of going back to Bush-era policies and wanted Romney to explain how they’re different.
Romney responded by answering a previous question about contraception. When he got around to responding, Romney stressed oil drilling and trade as examples of why “President Bush had a very different path for a very different time” — despite the fact that Romney and Bush have the same positions on oil drilling and trade.
What struck me as interesting was Obama making a counter-intuitive point — he said Romney and Bush are different, but Romney is worse:
“You know, there are some things where Governor Romney’s different from George Bush. George Bush didn’t propose turning Medicare into a voucher. George Bush embraced comprehensive immigration reform; he didn’t call for ‘self-deportation.’ George Bush never suggested that we eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood.
“So there are differences between Governor Romney and George Bush, but they’re not on economic policy. In some ways, he’s gone to a more extreme place when it comes to social policy, and I think that’s a mistake.”
Now, when I heard the question, my first thoughts turned to the fact that Romney has surrounded himself with former Bush/Cheney aides who are shaping a Bush/Cheney platform. Obama didn’t mention this.
But in some ways, the president’s response was even more effective: if you loved Bush’s economic policies, but didn’t think he was right-wing enough on Medicare, immigration, and women’s health, then Mitt Romney’s the candidate for you.
I have a hunch the woman in the audience who posed the question wasn’t reassured.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 17, 2012
“Please Proceed, Governor”: A Clear Win For Obama–He Punched Hard, And He Punched With Facts
Not a close call. President Obama won the second presidential debate as clearly and decisively as he lost the first. For anyone who disagrees, three simple words: “Please proceed, Governor.”
This icy invitation to Mitt Romney came amid an exchange about the killings of State Department officials in Libya. Obama noted that in his initial Rose Garden remarks, he classified the attack as an act of terror. Romney, perhaps misinformed by the right-wing propaganda machine, tried to insist that the president waited weeks to call the incident terrorism. “Get the transcript,” Obama said.
Moderator Candy Crowley stepped in and noted that Obama was correct. (Indeed, according to the transcript, Obama classified the attack as among “acts of terror” that would not deter or deflect U.S. foreign policy.) Having embarrassed himself, Romney had the good sense to move on.
It was a moment that encapsulated what Obama accomplished Tuesday night: He punched hard, and he punched with facts.
In these debates, superficialities can be important. Downcast and mopey in the first encounter, this time Obama was sharp and combative throughout. He went after Romney directly and personally; I lost track of the number of times Obama charged that some Romney assertion or another was flatly untrue. He quoted Romney’s past statements that directly contradict what Romney is saying now. All evening, he was in Romney’s face.
It’s not that Romney had an awful night and certainly not that he was some kind of shrinking violet. But in the first debate, Obama’s passivity allowed Romney to interrupt, interject and generally control the flow of the conversation in a way that seemed merely forceful, not obnoxious. Tuesday night, with Obama playing offense, Romney had to dial his own performance up a notch. At times he seemed a little cranky, a little flustered.
The town hall format — and Crowley’s firm hand — ensured that the debate covered quite a lot of ground. Obama got to fight on favorable political terrain. A question about equal pay for women, for example, allowed him to question Romney’s position on women’s reproductive rights and whether health insurance should have to pay for contraception. A question about immigration let Obama note that Romney has vowed to veto the Dream Act for those brought here without papers as children.
Allowing Obama to make direct appeals to women and Latinos was probably not in the Romney game plan.
Romney did get to make his pitch, however. He made clear that the central theme of his candidacy is a promise to create jobs. Given the state of the economy, it would be stunning if people didn’t at least give him a hearing.
“I understand that I can get this country on track again,” Romney said. “We don’t have to settle for what we’re going through. We don’t have to settle for gasoline at four bucks. We don’t have to settle for unemployment at a chronically high level. We don’t have to settle for 47 million people on food stamps. We don’t have to settle for 50 percent of kids coming out of college not able to get work. We don’t have to settle for 23 million people struggling to find a good job. If I become president, I’ll get America working again.”
Obama sought to demonstrate that Romney’s bold words are backed up by nonsensical policies. He wanted to make Romney sound more like a salesman than a statesman. We won’t know until new polls come in whether he succeeded.
But all in all, not Romney’s best outing. Responding to the final question, he said he cared for “100 percent of the American people.” He never should have opened that door, because it invited Obama to give his best speech of the evening:
“I believe Governor Romney is a good man. Loves his family, cares about his faith. But I also believe that when he said behind closed doors that 47 percent of the country considered themselves victims who refuse personal responsibility, think about who he was talking about.
“Folks on Social Security who’ve worked all their lives. Veterans who’ve sacrificed for this country. Students who are out there trying to hopefully advance their own dreams, but also this country’s dreams. Soldiers who are overseas fighting for us right now. People who are working hard every day, paying payroll tax, gas taxes, but don’t make enough income. And I want to fight for them.”
Romney won’t get to respond until the final debate on Monday. The tiebreaker.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 17, 2012
“Mitt Romney The Product”: A New Romney Appears On A Monthly, Weekly And Sometimes Daily Basis
As he tries to engineer a comeback in this week’s presidential debate, President Obama needs to recognize two things. First, when it comes to politics, Mitt Romney treats himself as a product, not a person. Second, Republicans cannot defend their proposals in terms that are acceptable to a majority of voters.
You can imagine Romney someday saying: “Politicians are products, my friend.” There’s no other way to explain why a candidate would seem to believe he can alter what he stands for at will. His campaign has been an exercise in identifying which piece of the electorate he needs at any given moment and adjusting his views, sometimes radically, to suit this requirement.
In that respect, Romney does Richard Nixon one better. When Nixon was looking to revive his career in the 1968 campaign, the terribly scarred veteran of so many political wars realized his old persona wouldn’t sell. And so he created what came to be known as the “New Nixon” — thoughtful, statesmanlike and tempered. The operation worked until Nixon’s old self got him into trouble.
But manufacturing the New Nixon took years of painstaking effort. New Romneys appear on a monthly, weekly and sometimes daily basis. Thus did Romney move far to the right on immigration last year because he needed to dispatch nomination rival Rick Perry, a moderate on that one issue. Since then, Romney has been trying to backtrack to appease Latino voters.
During the same nomination battle, Romney abruptly changed his tax policy to placate the supply-side-Wall-Street-Journal-Grover-Norquist axis in the GOP. Romney’s initial tax proposal was relatively modest. The right wasn’t happy. No problem, said Romney, and out came his new tax plan that included a 20 percent cut in income tax rates, “rate cuts” being a term of near-religious significance to supply-siders.
Romney pointedly asserted (again, in the primaries) that he wanted the tax cut to go to everyone, “including the top 1 percent.” But this doesn’t sell to swing voters now, especially after the leaked video in which Romney wrote off 47 percent of Americans as incorrigibly dependent. So in the first debate, Romney tried to pretend that he didn’t want to cut rich people’s taxes. He reassured us that “I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.” (By the way, he could cut taxes for the rich a lot and still keep their “share” of the government’s overall tax take the same.)
And then there’s abortion, an issue about which you have to wonder if Romney cares at all. Without much effort, you can find video online in which Romney declares with passion and conviction that he is absolutely committed to a woman’s right to choose — and video in which he declares with equal passion and conviction that he is absolutely opposed to abortion and committed to the right to life. Just recently, Romney moved again, offering this shameless gem of obfuscation to the Des Moines Register editorial board: “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.” There is no candidate I am familiar with who has tried to have as many positions on abortion in one lifetime as Mitt Romney.
But there’s an underlying reason for Romney’s shape-shifting. It’s the same reason Rep. Paul Ryan always resorts to impressive-sounding budget speak and mathematical gobbledygook to evade explaining the impact of his budgets on actual human beings.
Romney, Ryan and the entire right know that their most deeply held belief — the one on which they won’t compromise — is rejected by the vast majority of Americans. That’s their faith that every problem in the economy and in society can be solved by throwing more money at rich people through tax cuts.
Vice President Biden kept Ryan on the defensive during most of Thursday night’s debate precisely because he refused to let anything distract him from driving this central point home. Without pause and without mercy, Biden kept bringing viewers back to the obsession of the current Republican Party with “taking care of only the very wealthy.”
Obama doesn’t have to look angry or agitated in this week’s debate. He simply needs to invite voters to see that Romney, the product, will give them no clue as to what Romney, the person, might do as president. Romney keeps changing the packaging because he knows that the policies inside the box are not what voters are looking for.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 14, 2012
“No Greater Sin In Politics”: Mitt Romney’s Biggest Problem Is He Disrespects Most Americans
The reason that Mitt Romney’s condescending comments about the “47 percent” have done such damage to his candidacy is simple. As Republican consultant Alex Castellanos said in Tuesday’s Washington Post: “The only thing in politics that is worse than voters deciding they don’t like you is when voters decide you don’t like them.”
In politics there is no bigger sin than disrespecting voters. It is a sin that is rarely, if ever, forgiven. You can explain your policies and programs. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about how effective you are as a “manager.” It won’t matter.
People don’t want leaders who treat them with disrespect — who believe they are unable to “convince” them to take responsibility for their lives.
Respect is such a core element of voter decision-making because it addresses one of our primary self-interests as human beings. More than most anything else, people want to feel that they have meaning — that their lives make a difference. Meaning in life is our core motivator, and once you tell people that they are, in effect, meaningless pond scum, they are not so inclined to choose you as their leader.
Being disrespected is toxic in just about any human interaction. Nothing engenders more hurt or rage than the feeling that someone thinks you don’t matter. Ask the wife who feels that she is being treated like a piece of furniture by her husband. Ask the employee who can’t stand the high-handed attitude of his boss. Ask any high school kid what he or she fears the most — the disrespect of their classmates.
Great leaders inspire people. That’s just the opposite of communicating disrespect. Inspiration is not something you think, it’s something you feel. When you’re inspired, you feel empowered. You feel that you are part of something bigger than yourself and you can personally play a significant role in attaining that greater goal. When a leader inspires you, he or she does not make you feel that he is important. He makes you feel that you are important — that you matter. Disrespect communicates exactly the opposite.
In the 47 percent video, Mitt Romney did not imply that he disrespected half of the country. He said it directly. He said he didn’t care about “those people” because he could not convince them to take responsibility for their lives. What an arrogant, patronizing, disrespectful thing to say about half of the population.
And it was plain to see that this was not a gaffe. Romney wasn’t awkwardly searching for words. What you saw was the real Romney — the one that his campaign tries to hide — speaking to the home-boys and home-girls from the board rooms and the country club.
The tape by itself would have been bad enough. But its power was magnified because it was one in a long line of Romney comments that showed disrespect for everyday Americans. They have ranged from his contemptuous put-down of the cookies a local person had served him at a drop-by at their back yard, to his patronizing, “I love to fire people,” to his constant reference to “those people.”
And his disrespectful comments extended to his “blooper reel” foreign trip last summer, where he managed to disrespect the people of London and their competency to run the Olympics and the culture of every Palestinian.
Then again, it should not be surprising that disrespect should characterize the Romney foreign policy. He has surrounded himself with a neocon foreign policy team from the Bush years that specialized in showing disrespect for pretty much everyone else in the world. That worked out well.
The 47 percent tape simply served to confirm what most people were already feeling about Mitt Romney — and that’s why it is something that Mitt Romney will find it very hard to escape.
He will try hard in the debates to be respectful and empathetic to the voters. It won’t work, it’s not who he is.
When the Washington Post asked them last month the person they would rather have as the captain of a ship in a storm, the voters were about evenly divided between Obama and Romney. Now they choose Obama 52 percent to 40 percent.
That’s partially because the conventions gave voters a chance to think about where each candidate would lead the country, and which one they believe has the vision and skill to effectively solve the country’s problems.
But it’s also because many voters have become convinced that if Romney were the captain, he might have so little respect for them that he would throw them overboard.
Disrespect correlates very highly with another key parameter that affects voter behavior — the perception of whether a candidate is “on your side.” Of course, it is entirely possible for someone not to be “on your side” and respect you all the same. That happens all the time in sports (or as Romney would say, “sport”). Two teams have conflicting goals and do battle to win, but show the deepest respect for each other’s skill. The same thing happens over negotiating tables in business everyday.
But nothing fires up the members of a football team more than the belief that the other side doesn’t respect them.
And nothing makes for a more inspiring story than when everyday people stand up to those who have disrespected them and refuse to be defeated. That’s exactly what is going to happen November 6th.
Bottom line: you can be a rich guy and win Ohio. But you can’t be a rich guy who disrespects the voters and win Ohio.
BY: Robert Creamer, The Blog, The Huffington Post, October 2, 2012
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