WASHINGTON 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) Obamas Roanoke riff telling small-business owners: You didnt build that." Real credit for your success belongs not to you but to government that built the infrastructure without which you would have nothing.
Play it. Then ask: Is that the governing philosophy you want?
Mitt Romneys 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. Im a successful businessman. I know how to fix things etc. etc.
Easy peasy but highly risky. If you run against Obamas 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. Obamas 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 nations 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. Name one thing of any note created by Obamas 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. Except that the CBO reports 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 investable private-sector dollars remain sidelined.
The third part of Obamas 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. A drilling moratorium in the Gulf that a federal judge severely criticized as illegal.
This is what you get
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. Its worse now. Those who have struggled to create a family business a corner restaurant a medical practice wont take kindly to being told that their success is a result of government-built roads and bridges.
If Republicans want to win Obamas deeply revealing teleprompter-free you-didnt-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 whats 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.
WASHINGTON 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) Obamas Roanoke riff telling small-business owners: You didnt build that." Real credit for your success belongs not to you but to government that built the infrastructure without which you would have nothing.
Play it. Then ask: Is that the governing philosophy you want?
Mitt Romneys 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. Im a successful businessman. I know how to fix things etc. etc.
Easy peasy but highly risky. If you run against Obamas 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. Obamas 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 nations 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. Name one thing of any note created by Obamas 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. Except that the CBO reports 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 investable private-sector dollars remain sidelined.
The third part of Obamas 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. A drilling moratorium in the Gulf that a federal judge severely criticized as illegal.
This is what you get
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. Its worse now. Those who have struggled to create a family business a corner restaurant a medical practice wont take kindly to being told that their success is a result of government-built roads and bridges.
If Republicans want to win Obamas deeply revealing teleprompter-free you-didnt-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 whats 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.
