“Passing And Punting On The Trail”: Mr. Thirteen Percent’s “Just Trust Me Campaign”
Mitt Romney, returning to New Hampshire on Monday with his new running mate, lasted only about 30 seconds before stumbling right into the issue that has dogged his candidacy like no other.
“Gosh, I feel like I’m almost a New Hampshire resident,” the winner of the state’s Republican primary told the crowd at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. “It would save me some tax dollars, I think.”
D’oh! Does Mr. Thirteen Percent really want to remind everybody how determined he is to keep his tax returns private?
Maybe so. The Republican standard-bearer seems to take a stubborn pride in his refusal to cough up details. My colleague Greg Sargent argues that Romney seems to be running a “just trust me” campaign that extends beyond 1040s and into the policy realm. It’s an intriguing observation, and so I kept an ear out for specifics as I listened to Romney and Paul Ryan hold their joint town hall meeting at Saint Anselm. Sure enough, they spoke and fielded questions for about an hour but deftly avoided detail.
“I’m going to do five things when I’m in Washington,” Romney announced. This was a promising start.
“Number one, we’re going to take advantage of our energy resources,” he offered. Excellent! Drilling? Pipelines? Nuclear? Romney did not say: Just trust him.
“Number two, I’m going to make sure that our schools are second to none,” Romney said. “We need our kids to have the skills to succeed. That’s number two,” he went on. Thus ended the education-policy segment of the program.
“Number three, I want trade that works for America,” Romney said. The closest he got to specifics here was to say he would “crack down on cheaters like China when they play on an unfair basis.”
“Go, Mitt!” somebody shouted.
Mitt did go — right to No. 4, to “show America that this team can put America on track to a balanced budget and stop the deficit spending.”
“Mitt, Mitt, Mitt, Mitt, Mitt!” the audience chanted.
He moved on to No. 5: reducing regulations. And here he had a specific, sort of: “I want to make sure that we get Obamacare out of the way and replace it with something which will help encourage job growth in this country.”
Replace it with . . . something?
Of course, Romney is hardly the first presidential candidate to avoid specific commitments and promises. His opponent, President Obama, was caught on a hot mike telling Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev to wait until after the election for a new Russia policy.
The difference with Obama, though, is he has already established a track record in office. By declining to put meat on the bones of his policy proposals, Romney wouldn’t have any mandate from the voters if he does defeat Obama. In policy speeches, he’s somewhat more specific than he is at typical campaign stops, but even then there’s nothing resembling a comprehensive plan for budget balancing, job creation or tax reform.
Romney and Ryan, in rolled-up sleeves and open collars, took the stage at Saint Anselm to the orchestral tune “Tryouts,” from the college-football film “Rudy.” This was appropriate, because the two men were about to pass and punt on issue after issue.
Ryan, the policy wonk of the pair, teased the crowd with the prospect of specific proposals (“We’re going to win this debate about Medicare!”) but then floated the idea of letting younger Americans, when they retire, “have a choice of guaranteed coverage options, including traditional Medicare.” That is a specific policy — but it hasn’t consistently been Ryan’s; he got the House last year to approve his plan phasing out traditional Medicare.
Still, that was apparently enough detail for one day. “I won’t go into all the things that we’re proposing to do to get jobs back, because I want to leave something for Mitt to talk about,” Ryan said. “The point is, we’re offering you solutions.”
Just trust them.
In fact, Romney didn’t furnish the promised proposals, and his foreign policy didn’t get much more elaborate than “American strength is critical.”
The audience members were friendly, but they wanted more details. His plan to reduce the debt?
“We want to grow this economy and cut federal spending.”
His tax plan? “I will not raise taxes on the American people.”
His Afghanistan plan? “Bring our men and women home, and do so in a way consistent with our mission.”
His plan to reduce student costs? “Make sure that when you graduate, you can get a job.”
Just trust him.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, August 20, 2012
“Why Mitt Romney Ducks Issues”: There’s No Way To Square The Circle With Conservatives
So why doesn’t Mitt Romney advance any policy ideas, anyway? In particular, why doesn’t he advance some ideas — on the economy preferably, but any issue would do — to shield himself from the obvious attack that he’s a more-of-the-same return to the still-unpopular George W. Bush?
It’s no surprise that he doesn’t want a lot of focus on his own proposals; as with most challengers, his best bet is to win all of the votes of people unhappy with the incumbent, and so being as much a generic opponent as possible is a logical strategy. But that doesn’t quite explain his frequent — and sometimes comical — refusal to have any policy positions at all on numerous issues. In particular, Barack Obama has already begun to attack him as a return to Bush; one would think that a few (bland, unthreatening) policy proposals could convince many in the press to at least not amplify that message.
So why doesn’t Romney differentiate himself from Bush? It’s pretty simple, and it gets back to what drives much of the Romney program: fear of conservatives. Or to put it another way: party constraints. After all, while most voters may think of Bush as a typical conservative Republican, many Tea Partiers and other conservative activists see Bush as one step (if that) removed from the dreaded RINO label. And so for Romney, who still must worry about keeping activists happy, there’s no way to square the circle. If Bush was dangerously moderate, then deviating even a bit to the center would put Romney in dangerous territory for activists. But of course a move to the right to separate himself from Bush, and Romney would be courting a reputation for extremism that could be trouble for him with swing voters.
Granted, Romney might have found ways of moving on to new issues that were perceived as neither left nor right. But that’s apparently not his strength as a politician, and it’s not as if the other Republican candidates, Ron Paul excepted, were generating interesting and untried policies of their own. At any rate it would have been too risky during the nomination process, given how easily conservatives have turned on seemingly (and formerly) safe conservative positions. Better, in the primaries, to use attitude (all that stuff about bowing and apologizing, for example) as a substitute for issues for appealing to conservatives.
And for general election swing voters, Romney is following the same path: substituting attitude such as a vague support for jobs for issues — and taking the hits from the occasional reporter who cares about such things — and hoping that it’s enough. It has a down side; it’s getting him a reputation in the press for ducking issues, and it makes it easier to paint him as Mitt W. Romney — but given his constraints, it’s a rational strategy. Expect plenty more of it.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, The Washington Post, June 26, 2012
“Are You That Stupid?”: Vote For Romney, He Loves America
On Tuesday, Mitt Romney gave a speech billed as his big general-election pitch. It was a perfectly serviceable piece of work: competently written and competently delivered. But it didn’t contain an ounce of actual policy. If this speech was all you knew of Mitt Romney — if it was your one guide to his presidential campaign — you’d sum his message up as, “vote for me: I think America is great.”
Don’t believe me? The full speech is here. The first nine paragraphs are biography. The next eight are attack lines on President Obama (“It’s still about the economy …and we’re not stupid”). Then we get into Romney’s vision.
“I have a very different vision for America, and of our future,” Romney said. “It is an America driven by freedom, where free people, pursuing happiness in their own unique ways, create free enterprises that employ more and more Americans. Because there are so many enterprises that are succeeding, the competition for hard-working, educated and skilled employees is intense, and so wages and salaries rise.”
Sign me up! So how is Romney going to make sure so many enterprises are succeeding that competition for workers drives wages and salaries skyward? Well, here’s the very next paragraph: “I see an America with a growing middle class, with rising standards of living. I see children even more successful than their parents – some successful even beyond their wildest dreams – and others congratulating them for their achievement, not attacking them for it.”
And then: “In the America I see, character and choices matter. And education, hard work, and living within our means are valued and rewarded. And poverty will be defeated, not with a government check, but with respect and achievement that is taught by parents, learned in school, and practiced in the workplace.”
So on, and so forth. Romney never makes the turn to how he would achieve this America. Believing in it is apparently enough. The end result isn’t so much a preview of how Romney would govern the country as a game of “I Spy: America the Beautiful” edition.
I’m not a pollster. I don’t know if the American people want to hear about policy. Perhaps they prefer gauzy generalities. Perhaps they’re more interested in what candidates think of America than what they want to do for America. But if this is what the general election is going to be like, then it’s not going to be a clash of visions. It’s going to be a clash of adjectives. And in that case, it really will be the economy, stupid, as the American people will have nothing in particular to vote for.
By: Ezra Klein, The Washington Post Wonkblog, April 24, 2012
Romney’s Decision-Making Algorithm: “It Seems To Me, He Lives His Life With A Finger In The Wind”
Byron York had an interesting report the other day on the process Mitt Romney went through before running for the Senate. He noted, for example, that the Massachusetts Republican traveled to Salt Lake City in 1993 in order to brief several leaders of his church about the policy positions he intended to take.
That in itself may prove controversial, and raise questions about Romney’s appreciation for the church-state line.
But before he did even that, Romney took a poll.
How Romney handled that dilemma is described in a new book, “Mitt Romney: An Inside Look at the Man and His Politics,” by Boston journalist Ronald Scott. A Mormon who admires Romney but has had his share of disagreements with him, Scott knew Romney from local church matters in the late 1980s.
Scott had worked for Time Inc., and in the fall of 1993, he says, Romney asked him for advice on how to handle various issues the media might pursue in a Senate campaign. Scott gave his advice in a couple of phone conversations and a memo. In the course of the conversations, Scott says, Romney outlined his views on the abortion problem.
According to Scott, Romney revealed that polling from Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagan’s former pollster whom Romney had hired for the ‘94 campaign, showed it would be impossible for a pro-life candidate to win statewide office in Massachusetts. In light of that, Romney decided to run as a pro-choice candidate, pledging to support Roe v. Wade, while remaining personally pro-life. [emphasis added]
So, let me get this straight. Mitt Romney was pro-choice because a poll told him it was the easiest way to advance his political ambitions? And then he decided he wasn’t pro-choice anymore, when that was the easiest way to advance other political ambitions?
There’s going to be a point later this year when voters will be asked, “How can you trust Mitt Romney?” and the answer, even for Republicans, will be far from clear.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 2, 2012
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