Wednesday night’s presidential debate is Mitt Romney’s best
chance to demonstrate the clear choice America will have to make on
November 6. The television audience will be huge, maybe as many as
50 million people.
Lagging in the polls, the debate won’t be Romney’s last
opportunity to win the election, but — unlike past elections in
which most debates had little effect — this debate will either
give Romney the momentum he needs to overtake Obama or it will
result in Romney being so desperate to score a win in the following
two debates that the pressure will produce even worse results.
Romney, by all reports, is taking the debate very seriously.
Practicing against Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), maybe practicing his
key attack lines with staff, Romney is going to be prepared. Obama
is also preparing despite what the media are doing to lower
expectations. He’s too busy to practice, we’re told, because he’s
too busy running the nation and the world to take even a little
time to prepare for Romney.
Nonsense. Obama isn’t too busy to skip meetings with heads of
state — most conspicuously evading a meeting with Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu — to take time to dish with the girls on
The View. He is spending more time and energy on the
campaign than on anything else, so he’s certainly spending whatever
time he and his handlers think he needs to get ready for Wednesday
night.
When they take the stage Wednesday night, both men will be
thoroughly prepared. They will have a strategy in mind,
well-practiced zingers their speechwriters have come up with. Most
importantly, each will bring to the stage his own vulnerabilities
and strengths.
For Obama, his biggest weaknesses are his record and his
thin-skinned personality. He’s unable to take criticism and is
notoriously self-indulgent. He blames congressional Republicans for
everything that’s wrong, and never takes responsibility for
anything that goes wrong. (Al Qaeda is still alive, and GM is still
dying. ) In 2010, as several others have reported, Obama said,
“Let’s face it: this has been the toughest year and a half since
any year and a half since the 1930s.” Really? Don’t the years
1941-1945 stack up to 2009-2010?
For Romney, his biggest weaknesses are his supposedly cold
personality and his political reflexes. When Obama led with his
chin — as he did in ordering his administration not to deport many
illegal aliens — Romney acquiesced. When Obama’s Labor Department
was considering a ban on kids working on their parents’ farms for
pay, Romney was silent. His reflexes need on the attack and sharper
in the debate.
Romney’s campaign has spent too much time on the defensive.
Obama’s campaign — and his media allies — have made sure of that
by promoting Romney’s gaffes. The “47%” remark was inept, but the
media made it a huge story and it’s now the feature of an Obama
campaign ad. It will certainly come up in the debate, either from
moderator Jim Lehrer or from Obama.
You can’t win a campaign by defending yourself. As in football,
the best defense is a good offense. On Wednesday night, Romney
needs to go on the attack and not worry about how likeable he may
seem to the liberal media. But Obama and his advisors know that. To
counter it, Obama will do his best to turn the debate away from his
record and put Romney on the defensive. The success or failure of
that strategy will determine each candidate’s success on Wednesday
night.
We’ve already seen hints on how Obama will try to put Romney on
his back foot. Four days ago, the New York Times’ Andrew
Rosenthal wrote about a draft memo written by Romney advisors last
year that denounced Obama’s executive order on terrorist
interrogation which limited intelligence agents to techniques in
the Army Field Manual. Last December, Romney said he supported the
“enhanced interrogation techniques” used so effectively by the CIA
under George Bush. Romney has said he favored the return of
waterboarding which, under the change to U.S. law authored by Sen.
John McCain, is almost certainly illegal. What other Romney
campaign gaffes — the “etch as sketch” remark by a Romney staffer?
— will Obama pull out in the debate?
Romney’s biggest vulnerability is, obviously, on health care.
Romneycare was the progenitor of Obamacare, complete with its
individual mandate.
Romney can expect Obama to hammer the fact that Romney’s
Massachusetts staff had helped draft Obamacare. If Romney is put on
the defensive — and if his desire to appear likeable overcomes his
need to strike back — he will lose the debate. But that need not
happen. If Romney goes on the attack from the beginning, and
doesn’t retreat, Obama’s thin-skinned personality can win the
debate for Romney.
Aside from Romneycare, Obama’s vulnerabilities are more
important, and more numerous, than Romney’s. Begin with his
arrogance.
Obama’s big promise of 2008 was that he was not party partisan
and would create a new tone of cooperation in Washington. That
promise, among so many others Obama made, was utterly false. When
he first met with the House Republican Caucus in 2009, congressmen
asked him if he’d compromise on big issues such as the idea of a
government stimulus for the economy and on healthcare. His answer
was, “I won.” Obama left no room for compromise, and there was none
on the stimulus, on Obamacare and so much more. Partisanship has
never been so adamant and complete as it has been under Obama.
If Romney challenges Obama on this ideological partisanship, he
can get under Obama’s thin skin. He can do that less effectively on
other issues, because Romney has compromised his positions to match
Obama’s.
On Afghanistan, Romney’s policy is essentially the same as
Obama’s. On Iran, though Romney is much closer to Israel than Obama
will ever be, Romney hasn’t yet come out for a clear “red line”
beyond which Iran cannot go in pursuit of nuclear weapons. If
Romney comes out clearly on the “red line” issue — paralleling
what Netanyahu said to the UN last week — he can put Obama on the
defensive and gain ground.
Romney should begin the debate by stating the contrast between
conservative beliefs and Obama’s liberalism, and stick to them
throughout the debate. Obama’s policies, his speeches and his
actions — on domestic issues and foreign policy — are all
consistent with radical liberal ideology. The only things Obama has
grown are the government and our national debt. Obama has shrunk
America from a superpower to an also-ran unable to affect
everything from the results of the so-called “Arab spring” to the
not-so-trivial revived dispute between England and Argentina over
the Falkland Islands (on which Obama has declared American
neutrality). Romney needs to hang the liberal label on Obama and
come back to it in every statement he makes in the debate. The
media will hate it, but the voters will love it.
Romney should make it a “conservative vs. liberal” debate. On
the economy, Romney has good conservative points to make on Social
Security, the failed stimulus, and on Obama’s new “economic
patriotism” theme.
Obama is running an ad promising one million new manufacturing
jobs, 100,000 more math and science teachers, to cut college
tuition in half, and to expand American energy access. But how will
there be one million new jobs unless companies can create them in
an environment that encourages them rather than punishing them with
Obama’s taxation and regulation? How will we get more American
energy when Obama’s administration is forcing coal-fired electric
plants to close? How will the economy grow while Obama is leading
us off a fiscal cliff in January? Huge tax increases — including
the imposition of the Obamacare taxes — are coming and are sure to
push the economy down into another deep recession.
Romney has run as a technocrat, someone who has the expertise
and experience to reverse the economy’s slide. But the last guy to
say that the race wasn’t about ideology but rather about competence
was Mike Dukakis. It’s not too late for Romney to make this an
ideological race, but that chance won’t appear again after
Wednesday night.
