Chuck Todd of NBC wrote a summary piece about the "opening" campaign rally held by president Obama in Ohio the other day. Leaving aside the nonsense that Obama was just starting his campaign after the non-stop campaigning of the last nine months, Todd nevertheless inadvertently hit on the point which I believe will determine the outcome in 2012. Here is what Todd said in a paragraph buried deep in his story:
While his stump speech did copy some pages from past playbooks, one aspect of most presidential re-election pitches was absent from the president’s opening salvo: the introduction of a clear second-term agenda.
Interestingly, Ezra Klein, the uber-left writer at the Washington Post (and frequent spouter of talking points on MSNBC) wrote about prospects for Obama's second term two days ago as well. Klein reported that not only is Obama not telling us what he will do during the second term, but top staffers of the Obama campaign also refuse to speak on the record about what the second term will be.
It seems the the Obama campaign is the embodiment of Nancy Pelosi's famous line that we would have to pass Obamacare to find out what was in the bill. Now, we have to re-elect Obama to find out what he will do with a second term.
What all this means, I believe, is that ultimately the American people will reject Obama in November. We have all spent months and years waiting for a coherent plan from Obama to move the economy forward. We are not looking for a speech at this point; we have heard plenty of them from Obama. Telling the country about the importance of education in getting a job is not enough if there is no real plan to improve the educational system in the USA. Telling us that we need to develop alternative energy is not enough unless there is some plan to do so other than by giving billions of dollars of grants to campaign contributors and then watching the "green" energy companies fail one by one. Obama is actually going to have to produce a plan for the economy.
The same is true regarding taxes, spending, regulation, foreign policy and all the other areas of importance. America does not need to see the details of every plan, but Obama has to produce the actual outline of what he will do, or he is destined to lose. One of the biggest knocks on Obama at the moment is that he has not done anything or at least not done the right thing to accomplish many of the goals of the country. For example, Obama in the 2008 campaign told us that the tax system of the country was unfair, then he and the totally Democrat Congress extended that same tax system for two years in 2010. Obama likes to blame that tax system on the GOP, but he and the Democrat majorities in the House and Senate are the ones who extended it for two additional years. Now Obama is once again railing against the unfairness of the tax code. The very richest 1% who already pay 40% of the income taxes in the country are not doing their "fair share" according to Obama. Of course, he does not mention that he could easily have had these same rich folks paying more had he and the Democrats not extended the tax code for two years in 2010. Nevertheless, Obama is going to have to tell the country exactly what he would like to see in a revised tax code. It will not be enough just to rail against the system. Obama is no longer the challenger; he already is president and he is going to have to explain why he has failed to make changes to date.
Romney, so far, has probably told us all too much about what he plans. He has offered a 57 point economic plan (or maybe I am confusing this with Heinz's 57 varieties and the number is just close to 57). He would be better served to come up with five or six more general, but simple and clear, proposals to revive the economy.
There is an old saying that you can't beat something with nothing. Right now, Obama seems to be trying to disprove that adage. If Romney and the GOP are able to consistently point this out, Obama is doomed to fail.
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