Those of you who want to read my thoughts on all the
candidates’ performances in last night’s Bloomberg/Washington
Post Republican presidential debate (transcript)
can find them at this
link. For now, however, I’d like to focus on the three
front-running candidates:
Rick Perry needed a great performance and didn’t have one.
Between mismatching verbs and nouns, stumbling in his speech
(though less than last time), and returning time after time after
time to his plan to expand domestic energy exploration, he seemed
like a man with few ideas and not a very good grasp of those. For a
guy who needed a home run, Perry didn’t even get on
base.
Herman Cain was energetic and charismatic, but is
beginning to fall into the “one trick pony” category. No matter
what the question was about, Cain kept returning to his 9-9-9 plan.
It’s one thing to focus, but another thing for that focus to keep a
candidate from demonstrating understanding of a wider range of
issues. Cain showed that he could hold his own, but his signature
plan was almost the only thing he talked about and that plan
finally came under some substantive attack, with Rick Santorum
effectively asking the audience for a show of hands to show a lack
of enthusiasm for a national sales tax and a lack of belief that
the tax rates would be kept at 9 percent. While Mr. Cain certainly
benefited from receiving more air time and attention than any other
candidate, I would venture that the net impact of the debate was
fairly neutral for him.
Mitt Romney was, as usual, well prepared and presidential.
And as usual, I think he won the debate on style points while
leaving me cold on a couple of big policy issues.
First, his aggressiveness versus China is, in my view,
populist economic nonsense designed for little more than
to get the votes of Midwest “Reagan Democrats” and taking serious
risk to do so. While Romney is right that China would not relish a
trade war, that doesn’t mean that they won’t participate in one if
pushed. Furthermore, Romney’s bluster betrays a serious
misunderstanding of Asian politics generally, in which “face” is
extremely important. Dealing with the Chinese is not like dealing
with the Russians or western Europeans; negotiating with tough
language in public is a recipe for failure. Romney’s position is
probably a political winner, but it’s economically
insane.
Second, I hated his answer to Gingrich’s question about
offering capital gains relief only to those earning below $200,000
a year. In short, Romney argued that those people
are the ones most hurt by the current economic downturn, adding
that “I’m not worried about rich people”…again more pandering, far
too similar to something Obama would say. However, as Gingrich
pointed out, “you actually lose economic effectiveness if you limit
capital gains tax cuts only to people who don’t get capital gains.”
Romney’s position here is unwise economically, and probably not as
good politically as he believes. The Republican Party and economic
realists in general desperately need a political leader who
understands economics and isn’t afraid to champion smart policies
even if the explanation to the economically uneducated public is
not easy. The point of capital gains tax cuts is not simply tax
relief. It is that the pro-growth follow-on effects of the cuts
benefit everyone, as proven during the second half of the Clinton
presidency following that president’s reluctant approval of capital
gains tax cuts. Again, Romney is choosing populism over both
principle and sound economics.
Other than these issues, Romney did a very good job,
particularly in explaining how Romneycare is not like Obamacare.
(I’ll leave it to you to decide whether you believe him; my point
is that he’s become quite proficient at distancing himself from
Obamacare, including reiterating his intent to repeal
Obamacare.)
Romney also did a good job reminding people that he has
been a job creator and a leader, and has worked most of his life in
the real economy. He was effective in explaining how the Obama
administration’s regulations are choking off credit to small
business via community banks, showing a level of real-world
understanding that Cain’s focus on 9-9-9 missed.
Romney was less clear when it came to the issue of TARP
and bank bailouts. Basically he said (and Herman Cain agreed) that
the bank bailout was necessary to save our entire financial system
and the currency, arguing that it was the plan’s implementation and
bailout of particular institutions which was the problem. However,
it’s hard to understand what the difference is between bailing out
banks and bailing out “a bank.” For the average viewer who hasn’t
spent much time thinking about these issues, Romney’s answer was
probably convincing. For me, not so much.
One other interesting point: During the time when the
candidates were allowed to question each other, Romney asked
Michele Bachmann a complete softball question, unlike the pointed
questions asked by every other candidate of someone else at the
table. Again makes me think they’ve talked about her being his
running mate.
Romney also routinely shows a sense of humor, something
voters certainly like to see — particularly in comparison to our
famously “cool” and humorless current president.
Overall, Mitt Romney won yet another debate. He comes
across as presidential and electable, as well as likeable, and yet
I still struggle greatly with some of his major policy positions
which strike me as so political to not even have considered
principle or good economics. Unfortunately, Romney will not back
away from any of these, not least because he knows that
“flip-flopper” is already a charge that will come at him during a
general election and he’d rather stick with an unsound position
than add fuel to that fire.
Romney’s performances continue to make me wish Newt
Gingrich were electable. If we put Gingrich’s brain with Romney’s
more affable personality (and great hair), we’d have someone who
not only could win, but would truly deserve to be
president.
********
In political betting at Intrade.com, Rick Perry has
dropped from about 19 percent to 12 percent since the debate. Mitt
Romney jumped from 61 percent to 68 percent. And despite all the
media attention to him, political bettors are not convinced that
Herman Cain can go the distance: he is trading just over 9 percent,
up less than one percent from before the debate.
