Karl Rove writes:
Last Saturday at a West Newton, Mass., fund-raiser, the president said, “facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning … because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared.”
Memo to White House: Calling voters stupid is not a winning strategy.
The economy and jobs are the No. 1 issue in every poll. Yet Mr. Obama of late has talked about immigration reform and weighed in (unprompted) on the Ground Zero mosque. He devoted Labor Day to an ineffective Mideast peace initiative. He demeans large blocs of voters and now is ending his midterm pitch with attacks on nonexistent foreign campaign contributions and weird assertions that “the Empire is striking back.”
Meanwhile, Republicans have talked about little else than the economy—drawing attention to lackluster job growth, the failed stimulus, out-of-control spending, escalating deficits and the dangers of ObamaCare.
To a large degree, this is a reversal of the 2008 election. There Obama let his opponent flail away, appearing reasonable simply by pointing to the lackluster economy and showing himself to be less flighty than the more experienced Republican. Now Obama and his party are on the defensive and desperately trying to change the subject to a host of non-issues. Obama is incoherent because he can’t effectively defend his record.
As Michael Barone notes:
What has struck me this year is that so-called tea party candidates turn out, when you take a look at them, to have considerably more in the way of good political instincts than the usual run of Republican candidates. And some of them who have been derided in mainstream media, like Sherron Angle, manage to beat a 40-year political veteran like Harry Reid in debate. I was somewhat surprised … because candidates who have had a couple of terms in a state legislature representing a small rural district seldom manage to hold their own, much less prevail, in a debate with a major officeholder whose political career spans 40 years.
For some time now, conservative critics (and some candid liberal ones as well) have observed that Obama was great at campaigning but lousy at governing. (Juan Williams declared that you wouldn’t want to rely on Obama in a crisis.) It turns out that being lousy at governing makes for a lousy campaign. It turns out that for an incumbent, campaigning is not some all-purpose talent that can be pulled off the shelf to rescue unpopular policies. You actually have to convince voters that your record deserves their stamp of approval.
That is why Obama is suddenly so ineffective, and why a Sharron Angle can best Harry Reid. You try defending the Dems’ record. It isn’t easy, is it?
