Reframing or Distorting?

Both President Obama and Mitt Romney are in Ohio today to deliver speeches about the economy. According to the advance press reports, Obama wanted to reframe the debate about the economy. So how did he do? The answer is that Obama did not do well; he spent the speech basically repeating things he said before. Indeed, his speech boiled down to the claim that Romney wants to go back to all the policies that led to the 2008 crisis, so the Obama policies are better. It was not much of a reframing, but it was a major distortion of reality.

Romney is not calling for a return to the policies that led to 2008. For example, Romney wants to open federal land to energy exploration, approve the Keystone pipeline and remove the policies that thwart approvals of drilling permits off shore. Actually opening the federal lands to drilling would be new; so would approval of the keystone pipeline. Another example: Romney wants to change the corporate tax structure to lower the marginal rate, remove various loopholes, and to encourage repatriation of foreign earnings. All of this is different from the period prior to 2008. Romney also wants to revamp federal spending including entitlements to guarantee that programs like social security and medicare have the resources necessary to pay out benefits for the foreseable future. Changing entitlements has not been tried since the mid 1980's. Revamping federal spending was also not in vogue since the mid 1990's. The list goes on, but you get the point. When Obama says that Romney wants to go back to the failed policies of George Bush, it is just another lie. Obama is not reframing the debate; he is trying to distort it through lying.