CHARLOTTE — There is always one big question at the opening of a political convention, different for each time and place, but something that consumes most of the discussion. In Tampa, it was whether Mitt Romney could warm up his image. In Charlotte, it is whether President Obama will outline a second-term agenda with any more clarity than he has done.
The theme of Obama’s campaign is “forward,” chosen to convey the impression that the country is moving in the right direction. A majority of Americans think otherwise. There is a strong quotient of policy status quo in what Obama has talked about. He has suggested that the policies he has pursued are working and that, given time, they will lay the foundation for a strong recovery in the future.
He has never really acknowledged that he made mistakes — other than saying he didn’t do an adequate job of talking about his accomplishments. Nor has he explained very well why his policies haven’t wrenched the economy out of its current state any faster, other than to remind people of the severity of the recession he inherited and the domestic and global uncertainty that has kept growth low and the unemployment rate high.
Not that there are easy answers to a way out of this economic situation. Romney’s agenda is a combination of old Republican orthodoxy — tax cuts for all that would give the wealthy another big reduction — with an embrace of running mate Paul Ryan’s budget blueprint of spending cuts and entitlement changes. Romney passed up an opportunity at the Republican convention to talk in anything other than generalities about what he would do.
The president has spent a year framing the choice as one of going forward or going back. He began that process last fall, then started his campaign with so-called framing speeches in Ohio and Virginia. A month later, he felt the need to give another (which drew generally weak reviews). He has talked about the issue all summer, and his campaign is running two commercials, one with him and another featuring Bill Clinton, that do the same thing.
That message is more negative than positive, a way for Obama to cast Romney and the GOP as pursuing a backward-looking agenda that would reward the rich at the expense of the middle class, free banks and corporations from regulations, put safety-net programs at risk, and take money away from education and vital domestic programs. Those points will be reinforced by many speakers this week.
Romney’s nomination acceptance speech in Tampa was largely devoid of ideology or big choices. He spent more time trying to give people permission to abandon Obama than to sell an agenda that could mean pain for many. Nor did he fill in the blanks of a tax plan that has described the goodies — across-the-board tax cuts — but not the deductions he would have to eliminate to make his numbers add up.
Will Obama do any better when he addresses the Democratic convention Thursday night? His advisers offer an unqualified yes, without details. At a breakfast with reporters hosted by Bloomberg News on Tuesday, deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said Obama will outline a second-term agenda. “A big difference between what Romney did and what the president will do Thursday night is that he will actually lay out a tangible plan going forward with concrete, achievable things that we can do” to rebuild the economy, she said.
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