During his interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, David Letterman went off on a passionate defense of President Obama. Letterman concluded by saying, “What more do we want this man to do for us, honest to God?”

For starters, something better than the weakest economic recovery in the modern era, the worst jobs record of any president in the modern era, the highest sustained unemployment rate since the Great Depression, a housing crisis worse than the Great Depression, unprecedented deficits and debt, a standard of living that’s fallen longer and more steeply during the past three years than at any time since the government began recording it five decades ago, a downgrade in the United States’ credit rating for the first time in history, and a record number of people in poverty.

Beyond that, though, it’s worth pointing out that earlier this week PBS’s American Masters series broadcast an excellent two-hour documentary titled, “Johnny Carson: King of Late Night.” Among those paying tribute to Carson was Letterman, who clearly revered Carson. In the course of the program, some of those on “The Tonight Show” staff pointed out with pride that no one ever really knew Carson’s politics – that he was never tendentious and his humor and targets were bi-partisan. It helped explain his appeal during the course of 30 remarkable years.

Carson knew he was a comedian, not a political commentator – and he was able to set his political opinions aside before stepping through the “Tonight Show” curtains.

One is reminded that in this area, as in so many other areas, David Letterman – aging, increasingly brittle, and not terribly funny — is no Johnny Carson.

Post published here

                          

In his appearance on ABC’s “The View,” President Obama was asked how tight he thinks the campaign against Mitt Romney will be. To which the president responded, “When your name is Barack Obama, it’s always tight.”

Actually, that’s not true.

Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 was the most sweeping since 1980. He became the first Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson 44 years earlier to garner more than 50.1 percent of the vote. In the process, he took seven states that had twice voted for George W. Bush, including two (Indiana and Virginia) that had not gone Democratic since 1964.

The implication of Obama’s statement is that there’s residual hostility to him based on his race and background. But if that were the case, how does one explain his smashing victory four years ago?

The reason Obama is struggling this time around is sheer incompetence. He’s not up to the job of being president. Much of the public knows it. And his name has nothing to do with it.

The president’s comments were simply the most recent in a string of never-ending excuses. His problems are never his responsibility; they always lie with something or someone else – whether it’s with the Arab Spring, the Japanese tsunami, Europe, his predecessor, the GOP Congress, the Tea Party, Super PACs, the Supreme Court, Wall Street, millionaires, billionaires, the Chamber of Commerce, Fox News, ATMs, conservative talk radio, or, now, his name.

Obama is in a nearly constant state of whining. That’s an unattractive quality in any individual, but especially in an American president.

He would do himself and all of us a favor if he took at least a pause from the blame game.

Post published here

                          

In a previous post, I offered my thoughts on the outlines of President Obama’s re-election strategy — energizing minorities and others comprising Obama’s liberal base; appealing to college-educated white women; and vaporizing Mitt Romney. Assuming that’s correct, what should be the elements of an effective counter-strategy? I’d argue there are three.

The first is to win The Battle of the Narrative.

Barack Obama’s political fate is similar to that of Robert Frost’s hired man, who had “nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.”

In Obama’s case, he has no record he can defend and no governing vision he can offer. All he has to rely on are diversions and divisions. The president wants to make this campaign about anything except his record on the economy. Team Obama will therefore try to get the Romney campaign to follow them down a half-dozen different rabbit holes each week. We’ve already seen this with the so-called “war on women,” Sandra Fluke v. Rush Limbaugh, the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the Buffett Rule, Bain Capital, Occupy Wall Street, attacks on oil speculators, and more.

                          

May has been a bad month for President Obama’s re-election campaign. Let’s review some of the lowlights.

First, Team Obama politicized the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death on May 2 by releasing a video claiming that Mitt Romney would not have ordered the strike. The video didn’t pay much tribute to the Navy SEALs who actually carried out the perilous mission. The whole thing came across as ungracious and egocentric.

On May 4, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that only 115,000 new jobs were created in April while 342,000 Americans became so discouraged that they dropped out of the workforce. When unemployment creeps down because people are leaving the labor force, it’s evidence of a sick economy, not a robust recovery.

The next day, Mr. Obama formally kicked off his re-election campaign with a rally at Ohio State University. But “there were a lot of empty seats,” according to the Toledo Blade. Vacant chairs and a nearly empty arena floor are not good optics for a political campaign. To add insult to injury, a New York Times reporter described it and a Virginia rally later that day as having at times “the feeling of a concert by an aging rock star.”

On Sunday, May 6, Vice President Joe Biden said on “Meet the Press” that he was “absolutely comfortable with . . . men marrying men, women marrying women.” The White House had to scramble, immediately reaffirming Mr. Obama’s support for traditional marriage. But three days later, he told ABC’s Robin Roberts, “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

Full post here

                          

David Sanger’s provocative recent piece on Romney’s foreign policy is a useful reminder of something I have beaten the drums on for a while: In this campaign cycle, Republicans are more vulnerable to simplistic critiques on foreign policy than are Democrats.

Traditionally, Republicans have issue ownership on foreign policy and national security.  Voters reflexively trust Republicans more than Democrats to do the right thing in that arena.  While Democrats might have more popular positions on an issue or two, in general Republicans have the rhetorical advantage.

This time around, the Democratic candidate has done a comparatively good job positioning himself for maximum political advantage on foreign policy and national security. Obama is not immune to critique — indeed, his record is decidedly mixed — but compared to domestic/economic policy, where the administration’s unpopular record is hard to spin away, foreign policy is somewhat more favorable terrain.

Part of the reason, I believe, is that while it is easy to point out foreign policy mistakes, setbacks, and questionable decisions, collectively they have yet to be summarized into a simple pattern.

Earlier, I suggested one such pattern: Obama’s successes have largely come by following in Republican footsteps, whereas his failures have largely come by following his own instincts, at least the instincts he touted on the 2008 campaign trail. If it was Obama’s idea, it tended not to work; if it worked, it tended not to be Obama’s idea.

Full post here

                          

In his column today, David Brooks asks why President Obama is doing so well in the polls when the fundamentals in the country are so bad. “The key,” according to Brooks, “is his post-boomer leadership style.”

Brooks adds that “the secret to his popularity through hard times is that he is not melodramatic, sensitive, vulnerable and changeable. Instead, he is self-disciplined, traditional and a bit formal.” While declaring that “Obama is a slight underdog this year: the scuffling economy will grind away at voters,” David concludes that Obama’s leadership style “is keeping him afloat. He has defined a version of manliness that is postboomer in policy but preboomer in manners and reticence.”

There’s something to Brooks’s argument. The president, after all, is higher in the approval ratings than objective circumstances would warrant.

On the other hand, the fact the Mitt Romney is ahead of Obama in several polls, even after a bruising primary battle, and that Obama is only drawing 43 percent support against Romney in the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll has to be a source of concern for the president. Many people forget that Jimmy Carter was ahead of Ronald Reagan in the Gallup Poll just a week before the 1980 election–but independents and undecided voters broke in massive numbers toward Reagan in the end. It’s usually the case that a challenger wins most of the late-deciding voters (especially in an economy this weak), and in all likelihood that will be the case in 2012. The polls will be relatively close for the next several months, with some fluctuations, but if Romney heads into the last week of the campaign tied or with a slight lead, he’ll win by a comfortable margin.

This election, like most elections, will be decided on substance, not style; on objective circumstances, not ginned-up attacks. Which is why Mitt Romney is extremely well-positioned to become the next president of the United States.

Post published here

                          

Drudge is pushing poll results that show a surprising tilt in favor of Romney: a 46-44 advantage among women registered voters.

I am puzzled, however, by a different poll that shows something different but equally surprising: a tilt in favor of Obama, but this time among the “veteran vote.” According to Reuters, “If the election were held today, Obama would win the veteran vote by as much as seven points over Romney, higher than his margin in the general population.”

Part of the explanation is the way Reuters defines “veteran vote” to include not only the veteran but also “families.” Adding in the families dilutes a demographic (male) that traditionally trends Republican with demographics (youth and women) that traditionally trend Democratic.

If adding in the family explains the gap, then there is not much of a story here. But if the Obama advantage extends to veterans and the military, that would really be something.

In previous elections, military and veteran (narrowly defined) voters have tended to vote Republican by margins bigger than what is seen in the civilian population. Of course, Democrats have worked very hard to overcome that gap. In 2002, they hugged the more popular Republican commander-in-chief. In 2004, they nominated a Silver Star winner as their standard-bearer who traveled the country with some of his fellow Vietnam vets and made a “reporting for duty” salute as his grand entrance at the national convention. In 2006, they ran on a “support the troops, bring them home from the front” platform. And in 2008, facing a war-hero and POW survivor, they tried to out-bid Republicans on pay and benefits for the troops and their families.

Full post here

                          

President Obama’s recent announcement of his policy change on gay marriage made news, and not just because of the policy, but for the way in which he announced it: In an interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts. As the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi wrote, Obama’s release was “controversial” in that he did not do it in the traditional ways of a press conference or an Oval Office address, but in a daytime television interview on the second-ranking network, and with a reporter who does not typically focus on politics. Politico’s Dylan Byers also noted the oddity of the choice, speculating that the White House may have selected Roberts, who is an African-American and a Christian, to soften the blow of his policy shift in those particular communities.

Regardless of the reason, it seems clear that the Obama administration put some serious thought into how to manage their policy shift. This fits into a pattern of Obama and his team aggressively micro-managing their relationship with TV news. As CNN’s Jonathan Wald told Byers, “The White House is very careful who it picks for which message.” As this story shows, for all the talk about Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, television remains the key medium by which Americans get not only their news, but also their impressions of our political leaders.

The relationship between presidents and TV goes back a long way. For decades, White House and campaign communicators have recognized that a president’s initial appearances on television shape the American people’s views of an entire presidency, and it is difficult for initial impressions, once established, to be overcome. This makes TV a key gatekeeper for determining not only who becomes president, but also how that president will be viewed both during the administration and beyond. As a result, mastering TV has become a crucial skill for presidents and wannabes alike. It also creates challenges for presidents. In order to be successful, they must be acutely aware of how they are portrayed on TV. They must also recognize that how they are portrayed goes beyond news programming. Despite this high-wire act, they cannot be overly reactive to how they are portrayed on a daily basis. These challenging tasks have been faced by every one of our presidents in the TV age–with varying degrees of success.

Full post here

                          

In his January 2011 inaugural address, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared it a “time to honestly assess our financial condition and make the tough choices.” Plainly the choices weren’t tough enough: Mr. Brown has just announced that he faces a state budget deficit of $16 billion—nearly twice the $9.2 billion he predicted in January. In Sacramento Monday, he coupled a new round of spending cuts with a call for some hefty new tax hikes.

In his own inaugural address back in January 2010, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also spoke of making tough choices for the people of his state. For his first full budget, Mr. Christie faced a deficit of $10.7 billion—one-third of projected revenues. Not only did Mr. Christie close that deficit without raising taxes, he is now plumping for a 10% across-the-board tax cut.

It’s not just looks that make Mr. Brown Laurel to Mr. Christie’s Hardy. It’s also their political choices.

When the Obama administration’s Transportation Department called on California to cough up billions for a high-speed bullet train or lose federal dollars, Mr. Brown went along. In sharp contrast, when the feds delivered a similar ultimatum to Mr. Christie over a proposed commuter rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey, he nixed the project, saying his state just couldn’t afford it.

On the “millionaire’s” tax, Mr. Brown says that California desperately needs to approve one if the state is to recover. The one on California’s November ballot kicks in at income of $250,000 and would raise the top rate to 13.3% from 10.3% on incomes above $1 million. Again in sharp contrast, when New Jersey Democrats attempted to embarrass Mr. Christie by sending a millionaire’s tax to his desk, he called their bluff and promptly vetoed it.

On public-employee unions, Mr. Brown can talk a good game—at Monday’s press conference, he announced a 5% pay cut for state workers, and he has proposed pension reform. Yet for all his pull with unions (the last time he was governor, he gave California’s public-sector unions collective-bargaining rights), Gov. Brown, a Democrat, has not been able to accomplish what Republican Gov. Christie has: persuade a Democratic legislature to require government workers to kick in more for their health care and pensions.

Full post here