As tech savvy and streamlined as the Obama campaign wants to depict itself, its reelection message is remarkably clunky. Take the candidates’ dueling economic speeches today. Romney kept his to a concise 20 minutes. Obama’s dragged on for nearly an entire excruciating hour.
At the beginning of his speech, Obama told us the election would be about the fundamental differences between his economic vision and Romney’s. Then he rephrased this same idea about a dozen different times, just to make sure we all got it. Then he droned on about the origins of the economic crisis, veered off into Bush-blaming, threw in a class warfare interlude and rambled for awhile about how the recovery is moving in the right direction.
Finally — 40 minutes after the cable news stations cut him off and the committed political junkies were forced to switch to C-SPAN — Obama circled back to the original point about his economic vision. I think. In the daze of boredom, it was hard to tell.
We already knew Obama was long-winded. But his overly-complicated reelection message actually necessitates these sort of brutally long, technical, lawyerly speeches — and that’s a big problem when his opponent has what amounts to a straightforward elevator pitch.
Obama’s message requires him to juggle several arguments. First, that his predecessor is solely to blame for the economic problems, and that experts did not realize how extensive the crisis was when Obama first took office. Second, that Obama’s policies put the economy back on the path to recovery, but were not extensive enough. Third, that the recovery is lagging because of Republican obstructionism and global events out of his control. Fourth is that, if reelected, Obama will be able to overcome the gridlock and put policies in place that will speed the recovery.
And he needs to persuade the public to believe all of that.
The fourth argument is the one Obama would be smart to focus on, but as we saw from his speech today, it’s the one he’s giving the least attention to. If Obama is persistent, he may be able to convince the American people that the stalled recovery isn’t due to his own incompetence. But they want to hear what he is going to do about it, and why his second term policies would be more effective than his first term policies.
Romney’s message, in contrast, is straightforward: Obama had his chance and failed. If you give me a chance, I will succeed.
The first part of that is self-evident. The economy has not recovered, and the recovery is lagging. Even top Democrats will admit that. All Romney needs to worry about is convincing voters on the second point. Instead of mocking the GOP for having a message that can “fit in a Tweet,” Obama would be better off taking a lesson from it: Keep it simple.
Today Mr Romney campaigned as himself, and his opponent, the incumbent, campaigned as the contrast to Mr Romney. n
The president actually presents facts and succinctly explains his position, Romney is nothing but a whiny, clueless Etch-A-Sketch candidate who personifies “talk is cheap” with his vacuous rhetoric and empty suit policies.
He's right. This is an election about the fundamental approach to the economy. Obama's way – tax, spend, and regulate, dole out goodies doled out to favored industries and companies and unions, and ignore the looming entitlement crisis – or Romney's. Frankly, without even hearing Romney's vision, I'd vote for him because Obama's way hasn't worked here and it hasn't worked in Europe. As Margaret Thatcher famously said, the problem with Socialism is sooner or later you run out of other people's money.
Just a quick perusal of the MSM headline shows a range of response from "Dueling speeches" to "Not impressive". To be honest, I'd expected a good deal of fawning. n nBut now that I think of it, I'm guessing that pretty much all of the journalists that were going to be rewarded by kissing up have gotten their due. The remaining journalism field is thus a bit more objective.
Maybe they both campaigned as themselves.
I don't think it's going to be that simple with the MSM controlling the message. Of course, there have been hints that some reporters are sometimes asking questions (you know, beside asking Obama how he can control his temper when the Republicans are so evil and selfish, etc. — sure, exagerration, but that's about the effect of what I hear on the news in northern Ohio)!
Obama is not well educated. He lacks the ability to compete against a formidable candidate. Romney is vastly superior next to him. The GOP candidate may even look younger and less haggard.
BHO was always an empty suit. People confused speeches with action. MSM is discovering this "greatest President ever" is basically a small person, petulant, arrogant, narcissistic. A mere child.
“Romney’s message, in contrast, is straightforward: Obama had his chance and failed. If you give me a chance, I will succeed.” n n“And I [Romney] have a track record to back up my claim that I will succeed.” n nObama did not have a track record whatsoever before he took office – except for his management of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which resulted in the complete waste of $150,000,000 studiously ignored by the MSM – and his track record since is lousy. n