Karl Rove

Romney, Gingrich and the Power of Ideas

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Newt Gingrich had a bad night Tuesday: After framing the Florida primary as the "tea party versus the cocktail party," he lost among tea party supporters, according to the exit polls that cable and broadcast networks sponsor as a consortium.

On the other hand, Mitt Romney had a great evening, rising from a nine-point deficit in the Rasmussen poll just nine days ago to a 14-point victory, sweeping virtually every demographic and picking up all 50 Florida delegates.

This was an important inflection point, but the contest won't end until one candidate starts consistently winning. That may be coming for Mr. Romney, but he must step up his game.

Mr. Romney's campaign has an estimated $20 million to spend while that of Mr. Gingrich has roughly $1 million. The Romney super PAC purportedly has more than $12 million while the Gingrich super PAC by my estimate might have around $4 million in its coffers. This disparity could prove decisive, and the Romney campaign will be tempted to simply rely on firepower and organization to bull through the calendar.

It might work: February has only two primaries (Michigan and Arizona, both on the 28th) and one debate (on the 22nd). Mr. Romney can duplicate his Florida strategy, where his campaign and super PAC outspent the Gingrich forces on ads by a ratio of 5 to 1 during the last three weeks.

But dangers lurk. While traditional news organizations have been balanced or slightly favorable in their coverage of Mr. Romney, the GOP blogosphere has been decidedly negative on him all January, pointing to continuing unease among conservatives.

Then there are this month's caucuses: Nevada (Feb. 4), Maine (held over seven days, Feb. 4-11), and Minnesota and Colorado (both Feb. 7). Mr. Romney swept all four states in 2008. Expectations are that he'll do so again—but low-turnout caucuses are highly volatile. Ron Paul's concession speech on Tuesday, delivered before turbocharged supporters in Henderson, Nev., did not sound like a man dismayed at getting just 7% of the votes in Florida. He's been spending time in Maine and could upset Mr. Romney there, and Mr. Santorum is focusing on the Colorado caucuses.

Also, Missouri has a "beauty contest" primary Feb. 7. Mr. Gingrich didn't file there, arguing that no delegates were at stake. True, but bragging rights are. Rick Santorum will audition in Missouri for the role of Mr. Romney's principal opponent.

After the February lull comes Super Tuesday, with 10 contests on March 6, all with delegates awarded proportionally. Mr. Romney is likely to win primaries in Virginia, Massachusetts, Ohio, North Dakota and Vermont (with a combined 198 delegates) and perhaps Tennessee and Idaho (with 80 total). Mr. Gingrich failed to make the Virginia ballot or field a full Tennessee slate but is likely to win the primaries in Georgia and Oklahoma (with 114 delegates combined) and perhaps Alaska (with 27).

With his substantial war chest, Mr. Romney can easily saturate airwaves, stuff mailboxes, and jam phone lines to win most contests and more delegates. But Mr. Romney should be looking ahead and realize that what worked against an underfunded Mr. Gingrich won't work against the well-funded Barack Obama.

The Romney campaign is tilted too heavily toward biography and not nearly enough toward ideas. It should make its mantra a line from President Ronald Reagan's final address to the nation: "I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things."

Mr. Romney showed he knows how to take an opponent down; now he needs to show the ability to build himself and the rationale for his candidacy up. He should become bolder in his prescriptions, presenting a confident agenda for economic growth and renewed prosperity through reforms of tax, regulatory and energy policies.

There's no reason he can't, or shouldn't do so. While Mr. Gingrich called Congressman Paul Ryan's entitlement reforms "right-wing social engineering," Mr. Romney complimented them last November. He can refresh that speech and give it again. He can also build on his best moments in recent debates, when he unapologetically and passionately defended free enterprise. Far better to best Mr. Gingrich in the weeks ahead by taking the fight to President Obama, challenging the incumbent's unpleasant attempt to appeal to envy and resentment.

If he does these things, Mr. Romney will improve his chances of consolidating Republicans and winning the nomination battle earlier and in better shape for the fall. If not, the GOP contest will go on, the bitterness will linger, and the road ahead could be treacherous.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, February 1, 2012.

Channeling David Axelrod

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In a rare moment of senior-presidential-adviser-to-senior-presidential-adviser telepathy, I overheard the private thoughts of David Axelrod as he prepared to appear on television Tuesday night, following President Barack Obama's State of the Union address:

Well, this is about as pleasant as a dentist appointment. Sure hope we're right that no matter what the question is, all I need to say is, "President Obama believes everyone should get a fair shot, everyone should do their fair share, and everyone should play by the same set of rules." Say it loud, say it proud, say it again and again.

Speaking of which, I love that line about "asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary." Sure, the top 10% pay 70% of federal income taxes, so billionaires already pay more taxes than their secretaries, and no one's really for doubling capital gains taxes. But it sounds so good, and stokes so much anger toward the rich.

I did enjoy how Barack went after Congress. A couple of times it looked like he was going to turn around and slap Boehner for obstructing his agenda. Hope it helps voters forget we Democrats controlled both chambers for two years and got pretty much everything we wanted. Now we have to pretend it never happened.

But do I really have to appear on Chris Matthews again? He's always interrupting me with "It's true" or "I agree." Good lord, he even calls me Barack's "much beloved senior strategist" and says that Obama has "done great things, he's put points on the board." Valerie loves that stuff—soaks it up—but it's too much for me. On the other hand, we have to fire up our true believers—and what better place than on Matthews?

Matthews toadies too much, but Candy Crowley challenges me more than I want—like pointing out that there are 1.7 million fewer jobs since Barack took over and dropping that CNN poll on me that says Romney leads by 13 points on who can best get the economy moving again.

Aw, the Mittster: I know we're not supposed to want him, but truth is I'd like to go after him for being so successful in business. Thank goodness Newt and Perry did the spadework on Bain. What did a New York Times reporter call Newt? Our "useful surrogate"?

I especially want to hit Mitt on the car companies: Repeat after me, over and over, "We would have lost 1.4 million jobs" if we'd let them go bankrupt as Romney urged. As if that many people work for the Big Three and as if going through bankruptcy meant liquidation. Fortunately most voters don't know any better. Hell, if the car companies went through bankruptcy, we couldn't have rewarded the UAW.

And Newt. Like I told reporters, "he's back as the lion in winter. That's L-I-O-N." Called him a liar, but subliminally. Of course, I compared him to a monkey a few weeks ago and the press just laughed along.

Jeez, do I have Stephanopoulos tomorrow morning? Early wake up. He's tougher than most, but heck, George let me get away with saying "I'm not sure Mitt Romney would have made that decision" to kill bin Laden.

The one thing that keeps me up at night is that we're so vulnerable. The economy still sucks—and housing's worse. Barack's approval ratings are underwater. Pollster.com says 37% favor and 50% oppose ObamaCare—er, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Barack is the first Democratic president to have a negative approval rating in Gallup on health care.

Maybe Rahm was right. Go incremental, he said. The rest of us said health reform would be a winning issue in 2012. No wonder Barack gave the subject only 44 words in his address. But that's not as bad as the stimulus and "shovel-ready projects." Zip in the speech on those.

These State of the Union addresses are fine, but I'm glad it's over. In that setting it's hard to use a baseball bat to club Republicans. Now we can and will—for nine straight months. Plouffe was saying it would be nice if we actually had a record we could defend and a positive vision to offer. I told him we don't—and get used to it. Let's make a virtue of simplicity. Our job, as we say around here, is to savage the GOP nominee, grind him to dust, turn him into a freak. I'm ready. After all, it's the Chicago Way.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, January 25, 2012.

Time for Romney to Talk About Bain

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Battered but standing, Mitt Romney emerged from Monday's presidential debate still the front-runner. Newt Gingrich was at the top of his game, likely earning him at least the silver in South Carolina. Ron Paul probably pushed Rick Santorum into third and himself into fourth place by equating Osama bin Laden with a Chinese dissident. In the most volatile Republican primary season in history, Thursday night's CNN debate still looms large.

If Mr. Romney survives the kerfuffle he created about the income taxes he pays and wins South Carolina after taking Iowa and New Hampshire, he will have gone 3 and 0. No Republican has done that in an open presidential race. Ever.

Still, that alone won't make him the presumptive nominee. The gaps between the candidates matter. And here the numbers look good for the former Massachusetts governor. The RealClearPolitics average of recent South Carolina polls has Mr. Romney in front by 10.3 points (at 32.3%), followed by Mr. Gingrich who, in turn, leads Messrs. Paul and Santorum by 7.7 points. If this holds up, Mr. Romney would go into the Jan. 31 Florida primary with a hard-to-dislodge lead.

He's already in great shape in Florida. While voter attention has been focused on the first three contests, Team Romney has been prepping the next battlefield. Since Dec. 12, the Romney Super PAC and campaign have run an astonishing $3 million of unanswered television ads in the Sunshine State.

Florida is where Mr. Romney should do more to prepare for a clash with President Obama by rebutting—in a direct, powerful and unapologetic way—the attacks launched by Winning Our Future, the Gingrich Super PAC. That shouldn't be hard. Its 28-minute film, "King of Bain," is stuffed with hyperbole, half-truths and flat-out lies. Its anticapitalist message has even won praise from the left-wing propagandist Michael Moore.

Mr. Romney, if he wins the nomination, was always going to face withering criticism from the Obama campaign based on his leadership of Bain Capital. Dealing with it now means telling the full Bain story, including putting a human face on his business background.

For example, the film claims that Mr. Romney closed a Florida industrial washing-machine manufacturing plant and features powerful appearances by workers "laid off by Bain." It turns out they actually got promotions and raises, not pink slips, from Bain.

The company was sold six years after Mr. Romney left Bain to take the helm of the Salt Lake Winter Olympics. And while the new owners closed the Florida facility a year later, the jobs were moved to Wisconsin, according to the Washington Post.

"King of Bain" also asserts that Mr. Romney bought KB Toys and saddled it with "millions of debt." But Bain bought KB a year after Mr. Romney's departure—and it failed nine years later, primarily because of competition from big box stores, according to an Associated Press analysis.

There's more. DDi is a California tech company in which Bain invested $46 million in 1997. "King of Bain" alleges that Romney's firm "dumped" all its stock after reaping $103 million in profits and fees and before the company declared bankruptcy, suggesting that too much debt was the cause. However, it was the aftermath of the 2000 dot-com bust that led the firm to enter bankruptcy in 2003—and Mr. Romney left Bain in 1999. DDi has since emerged from Chapter 11 and is thriving today.

Then there's another target of the film: layoffs at an Indiana paper products firm, SCM Office Supplies, that was acquired in 1994 by AmPad, a Bain company. Bain initially made a lot of money from investing in both companies before AmPad was forced into bankruptcy in 1999. This was not because of unsustainable debt as alleged in the film. Instead, as the Washington Post points out, it was "ironically because of price pressure from companies such as Staples, which was started with help from Bain." And contrary to what the film says, the closure of two former SCM plants in Indiana cost 385 jobs, not "tens of thousands" of jobs. AmPad still exists as a division of another firm.

But even AmPad represents a Romney opportunity. Bain invested in struggling or stagnant companies needing both money and management assistance. This was a high risk/high reward strategy. Without entrepreneurs like Bain willing to pony up with cash and expertise, many of these companies would still be struggling, stagnant or dead with all jobs lost.

The temptation for Team Romney will be to avoid this fight now and wait for Mr. Obama to raise it. But Florida is the place, and early February the time, to set the record straight.

Doing so will not only deliver a body blow to Mr. Romney's most aggressive GOP competitor; but it will strengthen him for the coming battle. However nasty the GOP primary has become, it is a stroll in the park compared to what lies ahead.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, January 18, 2012.

Romney Makes History

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In an open race for the GOP nomination, no Republican has won both Iowa and New Hampshire, as Mitt Romney has. No one has come in fourth or fifth in New Hampshire, as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum did, and become the nominee. No one has entirely skipped Iowa, as Jon Huntsman did, and won elsewhere. No one has recovered after grabbing the 1% that Rick Perry received in the Granite State. And no one became the nominee after failing to win one of the first two contests, a position in which Ron Paul finds himself.

All this means history will be made this year, no matter what happens next.

The focus Tuesday was more on the winner's margin than on the victory itself. Mr. Romney won the New Hampshire primary by an impressive 16.4 points. (The state's last five contested GOP primaries have seen an average winning margin of 10.5 points.) True to its tradition, New Hampshire paid little attention to Iowa's big story—Mr. Santorum's impressive second-place finish. He finished fifth. The candidate who camped out in New Hampshire saw that pay off, as Mr. Huntsman did 17 times as well there as he's doing in the Gallup national poll, where he's at 1%.

All six candidates have enough resources to run hard in the next contest, in South Carolina on Jan. 21. Already, five campaigns have placed over $6 million on television in the state, with Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Romney accounting for over $4 million of it.

It's important to understand that South Carolina is not quintessentially Southern in the way that, for example, Mississippi and Alabama are. Social conservatives in the upstate region (including Spartanburg) unfamiliar with Mr. Romney's record might be more willing to support Messrs. Gingrich and Santorum than were their New Hampshire counterparts, who had observed Mr. Romney's unwavering conservative positions on abortion and marriage when he was governor of neighboring Massachusetts.

But economic conservatives dominate South Carolina's so-called Midlands region (including Columbia, the state capital), while the coastal Low Country (including Charleston) is home to many Midwestern retirees. In 2008, Mr. Romney and John McCain ran better in the last two regions than upstate. The presence of national defense conservatives everywhere has negative implications for Mr. Paul, with his heavy emphasis of isolationism. And the state's stubbornly high unemployment rate, today at 9.9%, makes the economy the No. 1 issue.

South Carolina will be the last chance for several candidates. It will be hard to justify going on after being at the back of the pack in three contests—especially with Florida's 10 expensive media markets and four million registered Republican voters for this closed primary looming at month's end.

You wouldn't know this from listening to some Republicans' lamentations. It sounds pretty strange when the former House speaker (Mr. Gingrich), the former No. 3 in the Senate Republican leadership (Mr. Santorum), a past chairman of the Republican Governors Association (Mr. Perry), and a former vice-presidential chief of staff (William Kristol) and others warn against letting "the establishment" choose the Republican nominee. If there is a "GOP establishment," they are surely part of it.

More to the point, a small membership committee does not govern the process. No group of power brokers can pressure others into uniting behind one candidate. Millions of primary voters and caucus-goers will select the GOP's nominee. That's good enough for most of us.

There's a lesson for the front-runner, Mr. Romney, in Mr. Gingrich's complaint that negative ads in Iowa damaged his candidacy there. Because cable TV, the plethora of debates and the Internet have made the entire process so remarkably accessible to all the country, Mr. Gingrich's South Carolina support also dropped 25 points in December, according to the CNN/TIME/OCR poll, as Palmetto State voters reacted to the issue without even seeing the ads. If Mr. Romney emerges as the nominee, he could suffer the same damage when the Obama campaign runs negative ads attacking his leadership of Bain Capital, as it surely would.

His GOP rivals are already doing so. Most Republicans will likely ignore much of the criticism over Bain because they generally approve of successful businessmen. That's not going to be the case in the general election. Mr. Romney can help himself enormously if he uses the weeks ahead to forcefully confront this issue. His words in South Carolina and Florida will be heard by tens of millions of Americans.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, January 11, 2012.

A Big Win for Romney in Iowa

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Not long ago few thought Mitt Romney could win both the very conservative Iowa caucuses and then the quirky, slightly contrarian New Hampshire primary. If he did, most assumed he would have a lock on the Republican nomination. For understandable reasons: No other GOP presidential candidate in an open race has achieved back-to-back victories in these first two contests.

By this time next week, we'll know if Mr. Romney is 2-0. If so, he becomes the prohibitive favorite.

The other big Iowa winner is former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Iowa does winnow the field (as it did with Wednesday's departure of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann). But it also gives unheralded contenders like Mr. Santorum a chance to jump into the spotlight. And in spectacular fashion, he did. He essentially tied the GOP front-runner, leap-frogging the governor of the second-largest state (Rick Perry) and the former speaker of the House (Newt Gingrich).

Mr. Santorum shouldn't kid himself; he faces huge obstacles. He's spent a year making Iowa his second home. Now he's in less friendly, less familiar terrain. He hasn't had to endure withering scrutiny but will shortly. His chief opponent has tremendous organizational and financial advantages and has been through the rigors of a presidential primary race. Still, Mr. Santorum has a shot, and that's all he could have hoped for.

Looking ahead, he has to hope New Hampshire pays attention to what happens in Iowa (it traditionally hasn't) and that he can rapidly cobble together money, organization and a message to compete in January's primaries in South Carolina and Florida, as well as the Granite State. Until yesterday, Mr. Santorum hadn't been in New Hampshire in a month, South Carolina for two, and Florida hardly at all.

Because he has a high floor of support but also a very low ceiling, Texas Congressman Ron Paul is likely to have seen his high-water mark Tuesday. The results provided him little that helps him broaden his support in New Hampshire and subsequent primaries. His manager admitted as much by saying they would focus on caucuses rather than the more numerous primaries, a strategy guaranteed to marginalize Mr. Paul as a candidate and maximize his convention influence.

Despite a deeply disappointing fourth-place finish, Mr. Gingrich—who only a month ago held a double digit lead in Iowa—will go on, driven in part by his obvious bitterness toward Mr. Romney. This puts him dangerously close to looking "enraged, wearing a full hockey mask and carrying a chainsaw," as one Washington observer put it. Mr. Gingrich can recover, but only if he returns to what made him the front-runner a month ago: coming off as the best-informed debater and offering a wide-ranging vision.

Mr. Perry says he'll continue and focus on South Carolina. But if spending $5.5 million in Iowa on television (roughly $430 a vote) didn't work, the $3 million or $4 million he has left in his war chest may not change his fortunes down South. At least it gives him the right to try.

This leaves Mr. Romney facing a two-front war: one in New Hampshire against Messrs. Santorum, Gingrich, Paul and former Amb. Jon Huntsman, and a second one in South Carolina against Messrs. Santorum, Gingrich, Paul and Perry. His deep organization and large treasury are critical to weathering assaults from these gentlemen.

The former Massachusetts governor should prepare to be the piñata at Saturday's debate in Manchester, N.H. It won't be pleasant, but he can solidify his lead if he deflects the attacks in a dignified, confident manner and avoids looking irritated or rattled. As in earlier debates, better to look amused rather than annoyed. Wherever possible, Mr. Romney should focus his fire on substantive disagreements with Mr. Obama while demonstrating his readiness to embrace bold reform (as he did in his entitlement reform speech endorsing the thrust of Rep. Paul Ryan's budget). Easier said than done.

If a year ago you said that Mitt Romney would win Iowa, be heading to New Hampshire with a large lead, and his chief opponent would be a former senator who lost his re-election race in a swing state by 18 points, you would have had to believe Mr. Romney would be on his way to winning the GOP nomination. And you know what? Now we'll see if it plays out that way.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, January 4, 2012.

Political Predictions for 2012

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

As New Year's approaches, here are a baker's dozen predictions for 2012.

• Republicans will keep the U.S. House, albeit with their 25-seat majority slightly reduced. In the 10 presidential re-elections since 1936, the party in control of the White House has added House seats in seven contests and lost them in three. The average gain has been 12 seats. The largest pickup was 24 seats in 1944—but President Barack Obama is no FDR, despite what he said in his recent "60 Minutes" interview.

• Republicans will take the U.S. Senate. Of the 23 Democratic seats up in 2012, there are at least five vulnerable incumbents (Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Pennsylvania): The GOP takes two or three of these. With the announcement on Tuesday that Nebraska's Ben Nelson will retire, there are now seven open Democratic seats (Connecticut, Hawaii, North Dakota, New Mexico, Virginia, Wisconsin): The GOP takes three or four. Even if Republicans lose one of the 10 seats they have up, they will have a net pickup of four to six seats, for a majority of 51 to 53.

• Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Harry Reid or both will leave the Democratic leadership by the end of 2012. Speaker John Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell will continue directing the GOP in their respective chambers.

• This will be the fourth presidential election in a row in which turnout increases. This has happened just once since 1828, from 1928 through 1940.

• In 2008, voters told the Pew Poll that they got more election information from the Internet than from daily newspapers. Next year, that advantage will grow as the Internet closes in on television as America's principal source of campaign news.

• After failing to win the GOP presidential nomination, Ron Paul will not run as a third-party candidate because that would put his son, Rand Paul, in an untenable position: Does the Republican senator from Kentucky support his father and effectively re-elect Mr. Obama, or back his party and defeat him?

• Mr. Obama's signature health-care overhaul, already deeply unpopular, will become even more so by Election Day. Women voters are particularly opposed to ObamaCare, feeling it threatens their family's health.

• Mr. Obama may propose tax reform, attempting to use it to appeal both to his liberal base (a question of fairness) and independents (a reform to spur economic growth). This will fail, but not before boosting Mr. Obama's poll numbers.

• The Obama campaign won't corral high-profile Republican endorsements—as it did in 2008 with former Secretary of State Colin Powell—with the unimportant possible exception of former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel. It will also make a special effort to diminish the GOP's advantage among military families, veterans and evangelicals, with the last a special target if Republicans nominate Mitt Romney.

• Despite an extraordinary amount of presidential time and involvement, Team Obama will fall as much as $200 million short of its $1 billion combined fund-raising target for the campaign and Democratic National Committee. Even so, Mr. Obama and Democrats will outspend the GOP nominee and Republicans. This won't necessarily translate into victory: John Kerry and Democrats outspent President George W. Bush and Republicans in 2004 by $124 million. Groups like American Crossroads (which I helped found) will narrow the Democratic money advantage.

• Scandals surrounding the now-bankrupt Solyndra, Fannie and Freddie, MF Global and administration insider deals still to emerge will metastasize, demolishing the president's image as a political outsider. By the election, the impression will harden that Mr. Obama is a modern Chicago-style patronage politician, using taxpayer dollars to reward political allies (like unions) and contributors (like Obama fund-raiser and Solyndra investor George Kaiser).

• To intimidate critics and provoke higher black turnout, Democrats will play the race card more than in any election since 1948. Witness Attorney General Eric Holder's recent charge that criticism of him and the president was "both due to the nature of our relationship and . . . the fact that we're both African-Americans."

• The economic recovery will continue to be anemic, leaving both unemployment and concerns about whether the president is up to the job high on Election Day. Because of this, Mr. Obama will lose as his margins drop among five groups essential to his 2008 victory—independents, women, Latinos, young people and Jews. While he will win a majority from at least three of these groups, he won't win them by as much as he did last time.

Predicting the future is always dangerous but conservatives believe in accountability, so let's see how well I do a year from now.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, December 28, 2011.

Obama's Strategy—And How to Fight It

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This month, during a speech in Osawatomie, Kan., and in an interview on "60 Minutes," President Barack Obama laid out the broad contours of his re-election strategy. Republicans would be wise to examine his words and prepare accordingly.

Mr. Obama will frame this election as a fight for the middle class. He told his Kansas audience that America was once a place where "hard work paid off, and responsibility was rewarded, and anyone could make it if they tried." Now, as he informed "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft, "the rules are rigged" against "middle-class families."

The president's tack is, in part, a reaction to his precarious standing among voters with high-school education or less. In a Gallup poll of Dec. 18, for example, his job approval with these voters—usually described as blue-collar workers—was 40%, down 26 points from January 2009. He can't win if his numbers in this group stay so low.

Mr. Obama will make "fairness" a major theme. He declared in Kansas that his goal was to "restore balance, restore fairness," and he then told Mr. Kroft that a "balanced approach" to the nation's deficit crisis required "everybody to do their fair share."

But resentment is not an effective political appeal. Americans tolerate unequal outcomes if they believe people have equal opportunity. Crude class warfare like Mr. Obama's has never been successful in presidential campaigns (consider candidates Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry). In fact, a Gallup poll of Nov. 28-Dec. 1 shows that fewer Americans (45%) now believe income inequality "represents a problem that needs to be fixed" than believed that in 1998 (52%).

Republicans have an arsenal jammed with rejoinders: Taxes shouldn't be raised while the economy is fragile, most of those targeted for tax increases are small businesses, and, as to fairness, the top 25% of earners paid 86.3% of all federal income taxes in 2008.

Republicans can argue that Democratic class warfare would penalize achievement and diminish prosperity. That Mr. Obama's goal is redistribution, not success. That over the past three years this approach has resulted in persistently high unemployment, anemic growth and economic hardship.

In Kansas, Mr. Obama's narrative was that greedy bankers, aided by regulators who "looked the other way," were what "plunged our economy and the world into a crisis." But the GOP can easily counterpunch, noting the leading role that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored enterprises, had in bringing about the financial crisis. Republicans can pound Mr. Obama for having (as a senator) filibustered efforts to rein in these government-sponsored enterprises and (as president) giving them an open draw on the Treasury. That bailout has cost $141 billion so far with no end in sight. This argument must be joined with a substantive, serious agenda to attack crony capitalism and corporate welfare. This is the right position on the merits, as well as politically wise.

As he campaigns, Mr. Obama will loudly offer a laundry list of achievements. In his "60 Minutes" interview, for example, he suggested he'd put his accomplishments up "against any president—with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R. and Lincoln."

This claim is not just staggeringly arrogant. The reality is that voters don't like Mr. Obama's signature accomplishments.

His stimulus didn't produce the results he promised: An Ipsos/Reuters poll of Nov. 4, for example, found 62% of Americans believe the stimulus packages have "just created debt" rather than "helped the economy." His health-care plan, signed into law on March 23, 2010, is the only major piece of modern social legislation to become less popular after it passed. According to Huffington Post's Pollster.com, the average disapproval was 52% then; it is 55.5% now.

Lacking a popular record or constructive agenda, Mr. Obama will resort to ad hominem attacks on Republicans. The president, who in 2008 spoke constantly about healing divisions, seems to relish being an attack dog. So he'll say Republicans don't just disagree with him; they want to harm the nation. He'll label any dissent as unpatriotic. He told Mr. Kroft that by opposing tax increases, Republicans refused to "put country ahead of party."

Dividing Americans along class lines and pretending the last three years are someone else's responsibility may be therapeutic for the president and his liberal followers. But it's hard to see it working.

America is not a nation of amnesiacs: Republicans can use the president's own words and actions to constantly remind swing voters (who still like him personally) of his disappointing policies. And like Ronald Reagan, the GOP nominee can reassure voters that, unlike the incumbent, he is up to the job by offering far-reaching reforms to jump-start the economy.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, December 21, 2011.

Donald Trump and Our Debate Mania

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

'Sloppy looking . . . hack . . . bad person . . . so-called pundit."

What sin prompted these classy insults from Donald Trump? I objected to him moderating a televised Republican presidential debate. Originally scheduled for Dec. 27, it has now been canceled (after only Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum had agreed to participate).

When the debate was announced, I suggested Mr. Trump was unlikely to be an impartial questioner. He had already said he would be "probably endorsing somebody right after" the debate and was already "leaning" toward one candidate. He had also threatened to run for president as a third-party candidate. It would be folly, then, for the GOP to lend credibility to a prospective spoiler who, if he entered the race, would split the anti-Obama vote.

I added that it wasn't wise for Republican presidential hopefuls to associate with someone who began his own (aborted) bid for the GOP nomination by declaring Barack Obama ineligible to be president because he wasn't born in the United States—an opinion he still holds today.

Mr. Trump's reaction simply reinforced my points. But this kerfuffle obscures larger questions about the merits and shortcomings of this year's GOP debates. A dozen have been held so far this year, with another being hosted Thursday night by Fox News.

On the plus side, the debates have allowed every potentially serious candidate to be seen by large audiences (an average of 4.5 million people have tuned in to each one). They have helped candidates sharpen sound bites and flesh out images. And they've kept alive candidacies that might have otherwise died due to lack of interest.

For the most part, the debates have been helpful. Before them, the "generic Republican" never led President Barack Obama in any Gallup survey. Since early July, the generic GOPer has often been leading Mr. Obama. The debates likely contributed to this shift.

Still, there can be too much of a good thing. Debates have nearly crippled campaigns, chewing into the precious time each candidate has to organize, raise money, set themes, roll out policy and campaign.

Each debate kills at least three days: one day (and sometimes two) to prepare, the day of the debate, and the day after, spent dealing with the fallout from the night before. This late in the process—there are 19 days until Iowa and 26 days until New Hampshire, with the Christmas and New Year's holidays eliminating crucial campaign days—many candidates might want to chart their own schedules and set their own message priorities. But the debates won't allow for that.

This also needs to be said: What we're watching are not really debates. They are seven- or eight-person news conferences. Their choppy nature makes cogent argument difficult and thoughtful policy discussion almost nonexistent. There's a premium placed on memorable sound bites and snappy comebacks. Those are the clips that are endlessly replayed.

Debates transfer power to the media, draining it from the campaigns. Moderators and their news organizations—through questions they frame or select—have more impact than candidates on what's covered and discussed. Because each debate is a lavish feast of comments and confrontations, the media also decide what aspects are most worthy of post-debate coverage.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus was right when months ago he tried to get control of this unwieldy process—one in which candidates often have no input into a debate's time, place or format. But his efforts to limit the number of debates and space them out came to naught: The campaigns told him to butt out. I suspect many of them now regret rejecting his efforts for a practical and rational way to ensure a sufficient, but not a suffocating, number of debates.

Thursday's Fox News debate is the last time all the candidates will share a stage before the Iowa Caucuses on Jan. 3. What each of the candidates and their campaigns do in the coming three weeks—especially the seven or eight days left before voter attention shifts from primaries to presents—will determine their fate in the Hawkeye State.

For good or ill, this year's record-breaking mass of debates has made the contest the most unpredictable, rapidly shifting, and often downright inexplicable primary race I've ever witnessed. And voting hasn't even begun.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, December 14, 2011.

Gingrich's Organization Deficit Disorder

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

With the Iowa caucuses just 26 days away, the Republican presidential contest is now a two-man race. According to this week's Gallup poll, the two candidates with the broadest appeal to GOP voters are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Asked who would "be an acceptable nominee for president," 62% said Mr. Gingrich and 54% named Mr. Romney. The only way anyone else becomes a serious contender is through a surprising finish in the Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primary.

Mr. Gingrich has become the fourth front-runner in this year's contest, displacing businessman Herman Cain and now leading Mr. Romney in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls, 31% to 20%.

Mr. Gingrich rose as Mr. Cain declined because of charges of sexual harassment and infidelity. He benefited largely on the strength of his debate performances. In the Nov. 30 Des Moines Register poll, 50% of Iowa Republicans said Mr. Gingrich was the best debater. Mr. Romney was a distant second with 14%.

While the race remains fluid (two-thirds of Iowa Republicans told CBS pollsters they could still change their minds), the former House Speaker has the advantage of the calendar. There are roughly two weeks until voters lay aside the campaign to focus on Christmas. Absent something extraordinary, after Dec. 21 the campaign will be influenced less by news stories, ads or debates and more by conversations around the dinner table and at holiday parties.

In the short run, Mr. Gingrich must temper runaway expectations. For example, his lead in the RealClearPolitics average in Iowa is 12 points. But what happens on Jan. 3 if he doesn't win Iowa, or comes in first with a smaller margin than people expect?

That could happen in part because Mr. Gingrich has little or no campaign organization in Iowa and most other states. He didn't file a complete slate of New Hampshire delegates and alternates. He is the only candidate who didn't qualify for the Missouri primary, and on Wednesday he failed to present enough signatures to get on the ballot in Ohio. Redistricting squabbles may lead the legislature to move the primary to a later date and re-open filing, but it's still embarrassing to be so poorly organized.

Organization truly matters, especially in low-turnout caucuses. Four years ago, for example, 118,917 Republicans turned out in Iowa—and only 424 votes separated the third- and fourth-place finishers. The total turnout was considerably less than the 229,732 Iowans who voted in the GOP primary for governor two years later. Being organized in all 99 Iowa counties means more people can be dragged to caucus meetings who might otherwise stay home on a wintery eve, believing their vote doesn't matter.

Mr. Romney's campaign prides itself on being well-organized, and not only in states voting in January and February. His war chest is also bigger than that of any other contender, and his team is ready for the long march.

Still, better organization and resources are not enough. Mr. Gingrich has shown in the debates that the quality of message matters. Mr. Romney will need to step his up if he is to prevail.

His speech on Wednesday to the Republican Jewish Coalition is an encouraging sign for his supporters. He defined the general election as a big choice between President Barack Obama's social democratic radicalism and Mr. Romney's agenda of limited government, economic growth and conservative reform. He offered contrasts with the new front-runner, implicitly endorsing Congressman Paul Ryan's call for bold changes in Medicare that Mr. Gingrich earlier rejected as "right-wing social engineering."

In presidential primaries, as in life in general, we often learn more about people when they face adversity. Voters want candidates to struggle and earn the right to represent their party.

For Mr. Romney right now, seas are choppy. But virtually everyone who has won in an open race for a presidential nomination in either party has endured far more than what Mr. Romney has to date.

On this score, Mr. Gingrich has proven his resilience many times over. Ironically, his test may not be whether he can overcome adversity but whether he can handle success. When a man of his self-confidence begins to feel on top of the world, bad things often happen.

We'll soon know if that proves to be the case. There are about five weeks to see if anyone else joins the two leaders of the pack. And we have more than three months to observe them fight it out until only one is left standing. As intense as the past few months have seemed, that's nothing compared to what's coming.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, December 7, 2011.

Obama's Old-Time Re-Election Strategy

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

According to a recent New York Times article, President Barack Obama and his aides believe he can win re-election mostly by mixing "the combativeness of Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1936 drive" with the "anti-Congress zeal of Harry S. Truman's 1948 campaign."

Mr. Obama will find it easier to invoke these past presidents than to replicate their electoral successes. In many ways, his situation is significantly different than that of his Democratic predecessors.

For one thing, a year out from the 1948 election, Gallup measured Mr. Truman's job approval at 54%, whereas Mr. Obama's is 43%—substantially lower than any president who has won re-election. (Gallup wasn't yet polling job approval in 1935, the year before FDR's landslide re-election win, but it's reasonable to assume he was far more popular than Mr. Obama is at the same point in his presidency.)

For another, Mr. Obama lacks the record on jobs of either Mr. Truman or Mr. Roosevelt. Unemployment was at 7.8% when Mr. Obama took office. It's 9% today and is forecast to remain there through 2012. For FDR, unemployment was 17% in 1936—very high, but down from 20% the year before and 25% at its peak in 1933. In 1948, unemployment was 3.7% when Truman won.

Mr. Obama's record on economic growth also trails that of his two Democratic predecessors. The Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve, and the Office of Management and Budget all suggest growth next year will be lucky to be a smidgen over 2.5%. By contrast, the gross domestic product grew (in current dollars) by more than 10% in 1948. And under Roosevelt, GDP grew (again in current dollars) by over 14% in 1936.

Another issue is talent as a campaigner. Truman, a plainspoken Missourian, could connect with working-class voters in a way Mr. Obama never has and never will. And FDR's "combativeness" was effective in part because he had restored confidence to a Depression-ravaged America.

At the 1936 Democratic Party convention, FDR combatively excoriated "the privileged princes" of a new "economic tyranny." But his Chicago speech addressed a nation far different than the affluent, multi-car, appliance-packed households of today. It's an open question whether Mr. Obama's class warfare will pack the same punch, even given our economic hard times.

There are other dissimilarities. Truman denounced a "do-nothing Congress" both of whose chambers were controlled by Republicans. But the Senate today is Democratic—and "do-nothing" is a label that is better affixed to it than to the Republican-controlled House.

In 1948, Republican congressional leaders preached inactivity, counting on New York Gov. Tom Dewey replacing Truman. But today under House Speaker John Boehner, the GOP has pursued an active agenda, including passing 29 bills aimed at spurring economic growth, 21 of which are now stalled in the Senate.

The House Republicans are tracking their legislative progress for all to see at majorityleader.gov/JobsTracker. That's evidence they plan to aggressively market their efforts to voters. For its part, the Senate hasn't even been able to approve a budget using the normal congressional procedures—committee hearings and markups, amendments, floor debates and the like—in nearly three years.

While there are some turkeys remaining in the GOP field, it is also unlikely that Mr. Obama will face a sacrificial lamb like Kansas Gov. Alf Landon in 1936 or a Republican as overconfident as Dewey was in 1948. Dewey's strategy, he told aides, was "when you're leading, don't talk." There's every sign this year's GOP contenders all understand they won't win the general election simply by showing up, that Americans will (rightly) demand a substantive, positive agenda as the price of admission to the Oval Office.

History can provide presidential campaign planners with valuable lessons. But no two situations are the same—and in this instance, what's most striking about Mr. Obama's circumstances compared to those of Truman and Roosevelt is how different they really are.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, November 30, 2011.

Hunting With SEALs

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

My nine hunting companions last weekend in South Texas didn't look particularly special. Ranging from early-30s to mid-40s, they could be mistaken for the young doctor down the street, the general manager of the car dealership, the guy who builds custom motorcycles.

But they are extraordinary. Among them, they had a Navy Cross, four Silver Stars, 26 Bronze Stars for valor and four Purple Hearts. These were Navy SEALs with a combined 150 years of service and more than 67 overseas deployments in the war against terror.

The men had taken leave time to spend Veterans Day hunting quail and deer with friends of the Navy SEAL Foundation at Loralee and Al West's San Rafael Ranch just north of the Rio Grande River. It was their way of expressing thanks for all the foundation does to support their families and teammates. For the rest of us, it was an extraordinary honor to share the pleasures of their company.

At a Saturday luncheon, a SEAL no longer on active duty spoke to the group about his last mission, which took place in 2007. (I withhold his identity, as SEALS are generally not publicly named.) Seven days before his deployment in Iraq's Anbar province was to end, his unit received intelligence about the presence of 16 to 20 al Qaeda combatants in a remote compound. In the dark of night, helicopters dropped his SEAL team and Iraqi scouts 3.5 kilometers from their target. After surrounding the building, they assaulted it by blowing the main door.

Inside, the SEAL found himself in a foyer with doors leading to two interior rooms. He and another SEAL kicked in one door and were confronted by four al Qaeda, two armed with AK-47s, one with an M4, and the final one with a pistol. In the darkened room, both sides immediately opened fire. The second SEAL and an Iraqi scout were killed almost immediately.

The rifle of the remaining SEAL, our speaker, was shot out of his hand. He drew his pistol and returned fire, killing two al Qaeda fighters. He was then knocked to the ground as a grenade that one of them was preparing to throw instead exploded in the room.

When he regained consciousness, he realized the two remaining al Qaeda had driven off his assault team and were still firing at the retiring Americans and Iraqi scouts. He discarded his momentary impulse to play dead and instead re-engaged, emptying first one pistol magazine and then another as he shot it out with the two terrorists, killing both.

Staggering to his feet, he found his dead SEAL comrade and then two dead Iraqi scouts. He attempted to communicate with his unit before realizing his radio had been shot away. He recovered his dead teammate's radio to communicate with the rest of the assault team, which was about to have the compound pulverized by a C-130 gunship orbiting overhead, assuming since their calls had gone unanswered that none of their comrades in the building was still alive.

Despite grievous wounds, the SEAL explored the rest of the house, collected three Iraqi scouts and two terrorists they detained, and then moved his people outside to link up with the assault team. He refused to be carried to the evacuation chopper: He hurt so badly he felt he'd be further injured. Once on board, an airlift medic cut away all his clothes, stabilizing him as best as he could.

When the chopper landed at base, airfield personnel had difficulty assembling a litter. Spotting a nearby golf cart, the SEAL walked off the chopper and across the strip, wearing only his boots.

Driven to the base hospital, he was found to have 16 gunshot and shrapnel wounds. An additional 11 rounds had slammed into his body armor. Within 48 hours, he was airlifted to Bethesda Naval Hospital and 16 days later he talked his way out and went home to convalesce.

On Veterans Day 2011, in a south Texas pasture, this former SEAL said he'd learned from this experience the importance of empathy. He now works as an advocate for wounded warriors.

Some warn that America's freedom, like all things human, may crumble into dust. The reason it doesn't is because in times of trial our country produces men and women of courage and fortitude, honor and sacrifice. Which is another way of saying America produces self-effacing heroes like last weekend's hunting companions.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, November 16, 2011.

Reading This Week's Political Tea Leaves

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Events of the past week may offer a glimpse of what lies ahead for the GOP and for a beleaguered president and his party. Two Ohio ballot propositions showed the Buckeye State remains a bellwether of American politics. Sixty-one percent of Ohioans overturned Republican Gov. John Kasich's efforts to rein in public-employee unions, handing labor (a vital part of President Obama's political base) an important victory. It was also a significant loss for Mr. Kasich.

A recent Quinnipiac poll suggested why the package went down. True, Ohioans backed making public employees pay at least 15% of health-insurance premiums (60% favor, 33% opposed) and contribute at least 10% of wages for their pensions (by 57%-34%). However, respondents opposed restraints on public-employee unions, including a ban on strikes and limits on collective bargaining over health benefits. As many as one out of every five Republicans opposed Mr. Kasich's reforms, perhaps because police and firemen were covered by them.

On the same day they turned down union reform, however, 66% of Ohioans voted to pass a state constitutional amendment saying citizens can't be forced to purchase health insurance—in other words, to defy the "individual mandate" in Mr. Obama's health reform. The vote, while symbolic, is a strong signal that ObamaCare remains deeply unpopular.

Moreover, Republicans on Tuesday gained control of the state Senate in the critical battleground of Virginia and won the Mississippi House for the first time since Reconstruction. Republicans now dominate 61 of the nation's 99 state legislative chambers. (Nebraska has a unicameral system.)

On the presidential front, Herman Cain's responses to charges of sexual harassment are drawing questions about his sure-footedness. He and his campaign have made several false accusations and had to revise their initial story regarding Mr. Cain's knowledge of the charges. Mr. Cain needs to press the National Restaurant Association to release reports he says will exonerate him of the first two complaints. The controversy is now too big to be resolved by declarations of innocence, no matter how passionate.

Politics was also roiled this week by two "Bills." The first is White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley. He was stripped of some day-to-day management responsibilities and then trashed on background by past and current White House staffers. Many (this writer included) had welcomed Mr. Daley's appointment. His loss of real power is evidence that White House senior adviser and political overlord David Plouffe runs the West Wing—and that class warfare trumped any possibility of a move to the center by Mr. Obama.

Then there's Bill Clinton. In his new book, "Back to Work," he spells out his own jobs plan and then undercuts the president. While Mr. Obama obsessively demands higher taxes, Mr. Clinton says, "Right now, in this fragile economy, I don't favor raising taxes." Mr. Clinton is right on substance but is complicating Mr. Obama's life.

There was also a pair of polls in the battleground states where the 2012 presidential election will be settled, one from Gallup and another from Resurgent Republic (a group I helped bring into existence). Gallup found voters in 12 key swing states (including Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and North Carolina) believe a generic Republican would do better handling the deficit (54%-38%) and unemployment (49%-42%) than Mr. Obama.

Resurgent Republic also found 70% believe the country is on the wrong track and that, compared to when Mr. Obama took office, 61% believe the economy is worse. This suggests the president won't be re-elected unless the economy improves dramatically.

Republicans have a way to go before settling on their presidential nominee, but the past week provided more evidence that most Americans oppose the president's policies.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, November 9, 2011.

The Republicans' Rising Satisfaction Quotient

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

With the Iowa caucuses 62 days away and Election Day 2012 only a year off, President Obama's prospects look perilous. Yet the GOP contest remains volatile. What can we deduce about the race to come—other than that Herman Cain has had a bad week that's far from over?

Since NBC began asking the question in 1989, no president has won re-election with as many Americans—74%—saying a year before the election that the country is "on the wrong track." Nor has any president been re-elected with so few Americans—13%—telling Gallup that they are "satisfied" with how things are going in the country. And no president has been re-elected a year after having a job-approval rating as low as Mr. Obama's is today—43%—since Gallup began asking the question in 1945.

Since 1952, consumer-confidence numbers have been higher at this point even for presidents who failed to win re-election than they are for Mr. Obama today. He is presiding over an economy that registered a 60.9 rating in last month's University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment report.

It's unlikely that positive economic news will alter these numbers dramatically before next November. Through 2012, the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve and even the White House Office of Management and Budget all forecast unemployment around the current level of 9.1% and anemic growth of between 2% and 2.7%.

Still, Mr. Obama cannot be counted out. It is folly to believe that any Republican can beat him. The president and his team lack the ability to run on a positive record but they can run a negative campaign designed to disqualify the GOP nominee. Such a strategy will be ugly, but it could also be successful.

The GOP nomination fight is very much up for grabs. In Tuesday's RealClearPolitics average of recent polls, Herman Cain led with 25%, followed by Mitt Romney with 24.3%, Rick Perry at 10.5%, Newt Gingrich at 9.3%, and Ron Paul at 8.5%. Mr. Cain was at 29% and 30% in two mid-October polls but his numbers plateaued there.

A note of caution: Four years ago today, Rudy Giuliani was in front with 29% support, followed by Fred Thompson with 17%, John McCain with 14.7%, Mitt Romney with 11.2% and Mike Huckabee with 6.7%. But in every cycle, the polls really worth paying attention to are those in early primary and caucus states.

This year's GOP race has a new wrinkle: Some candidates—including Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Cain—are pursuing a novel strategy that exploits the explosion of televised debates with relatively large audiences. The Sept. 22 debate, cosponsored by Fox, Google and the Florida GOP, attracted 6.1 million viewers. As many as 60,000 Iowans, 26,000 Granite Staters, and 91,000 South Carolinians could have tuned in. It would take a candidate a long time to reach that many people through a retail campaign.

So while some candidates are spending almost all their time in states with early contests, others are ranging more broadly around the country or stumping less frenetically, counting on their debate appearances to substitute for retail campaigning and traditional organization. This strategy may work, though my gut tells me that voters in early states feel keenly about their role as vetters and will insist on seeing candidates up close, not just on their televisions.

The GOP contest may go on longer than expected, even if one candidate begins consistently winning. More delegates will be awarded proportionally rather than winner-take-all. This encourages candidates to compete well after it's clear they can't win the nomination. As long as they're getting votes, they're getting more delegates—and with them more prestige, leverage and visibility.

It's also now taken as received wisdom that Republicans are unenthusiastic about their candidates, but evidence suggests otherwise. In the Aug. 18-22 Associated Press poll, 64% of Republicans said they were "satisfied" with the GOP field, up from 52% in June. The Sept. 25-27 Fox News poll found 63% of Republicans "impressed" with their choices, up from 44% in April. By comparison, in a mid-October 1991 CBS/New York Times poll, only 18% of Democrats were "satisfied" with their field and 64% wanted someone else to enter the race. And we know how the 1992 contest turned out.

Bad economic news and GOP enthusiasm mean increasingly that the president's re-election hopes depend on an exceptionally weak Republican running an unusually bad campaign. The warning to Mr. Obama is this: It's always better not to depend on your opponent making big mistakes.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, November 2, 2011.

The President Who Hates to Govern

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

According to Mark Knoller, CBS Radio News White House Correspondent, President Obama has attended 60 campaign fund-raisers this year. That's one every four days since he kicked off his re-election on April 4. By comparison at this point in 2003, President George W. Bush had appeared at only 28 fund-raisers.

Mr. Obama has done more than lap Mr. Bush in raising campaign cash. He's also already eagerly barnstorming critical battleground states via Air Force One or Bus One. His goal is another term, though his ostensible reason for the trips is to push for passage of Stimulus II.

His renewed enthusiasm shows that nothing rejuvenates this president more than leaving Oval Office duties behind to reprise his role as stump speaker. We're even seeing snappy new slogans: the latest is "We can't wait," a clever way to hide Mr. Obama's discomfort with the business of convincing Congress to pass his bills.

This slogan unintentionally showcases an essential truth about the Obama presidency: comfortable on the political hustings, he's uncomfortable doing the job. Energetic at campaigning, he's lethargic at governing. From the start of his administration, he has left the policy details and heavy lifting to others.

Which brings us to this week's campaign appearances. The topic was infrastructure. In Las Vegas on Monday, Mr. Obama called for "funding to rebuild our roads and our bridges and our airports." At a Los Angeles fund-raiser on Tuesday, the president was more expansive, saying "Let's get construction workers . . . and let's put them back on the job rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our hospitals and our schools." By week's end, Mr. Obama could be promising to rebuild corner gas stations and ugly backyard storage sheds in swing states.

The problem with the president's pitch is that it's disconnected from reality. Where exactly has Mr. Obama been the last several years? Washington pays for highway and airport construction through multiyear bills—normally six and four years in length, respectively. This makes it possible for states and highway contractors to know how many dollars will be available for the foreseeable future.

The highway bill lapsed shortly after Mr. Obama took office in 2009. That June, his transportation secretary announced with great fanfare that the administration opposed the renewal being introduced the next day by the Democratic chairman of the House Transportation Committee. Fair enough. There can be disagreements about legislation even among political allies.

But the Obama administration then failed to work with the Democratic Congress to reach an accommodation. Though Democrats had big majorities in both houses, the highway bill renewal has languished since then with only eight temporary extensions keeping the program alive.

There is a price for Mr. Obama's failure in 2009 to get it renewed for six years. State officials would have had the confidence to commit to projects. Contractors would have the incentive to purchase more equipment and hire more people, providing more certainty for one important part of the economy.

Mr. Obama's indifference to governing has led him to outsource the drafting of the key legislation. That happened with both the Stimulus I and ObamaCare, resulting in ineffective, unpopular and unworkable laws. This also explains his diffidence towards the government's incompetence in arenas as different as lending to Solyandra and curing the housing markets. There are exceptions here and there, of course, but the pattern is unmistakable.

It's an odd, even jarring, combination: Mr. Obama embraces hyperkinetic government spending and a powerful and all-intruding federal state while having a hands-off attitude toward its workings. More and more, Mr. Obama looks like a one-trick pony—a man who is good at giving campaign speeches but very little else. He would much rather talk about legislation than have a hand in crafting it. He's much more comfortable attacking political opponents than negotiating with them.

That might be fine if he were the challenger in 2012. But Mr. Obama's problem is he's the incumbent. To paraphrase what Joe Louis said of Billy Conn, he can run from his record but he can't hide from it. Mr. Obama is past the point of being judged mostly on words. This time around, he'll be judged mostly on competence. Americans expect more of their chief executive than a passion for the campaign stump.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, October 27, 2011.

Obama's Political Stimulus Plan

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

After bipartisan Senate opposition stymied President Obama's latest $447 billion attempt to jump-start the economy, he could have led serious negotiations with congressional Republicans and Democrats over measures for job creation. Instead he hit the campaign trail, claiming on this week's bus tour that the GOP economic plan is: "Let's have dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance."

This angry, partisan approach hasn't worked well this year and may have helped deepen the decline in the president's approval ratings. Ironically, the president's re-election hopes and the country's economy would both be strengthened if he understood the reason for opposition to his new stimulus: Unemployment went up after his first stimulus. His lavish pledges of growth and jobs didn't pan out, leaving the program widely (and rightly) seen as a failure. A Sept. 1 ABC/Washington Post poll found that 47% believe Mr. Obama's economic program has had no real effect while 34% said it made the economy worse.

For many Americans, another stimulus looks like more reckless and wasteful spending.

Temporary measures like those in Mr. Obama's Stimulus II won't encourage long-term growth. Its biggest outlay—$175 billion—was a one-year extension of the 2% reduction in the Social Security payroll tax. Besides undermining the retirement program's solvency, it has failed to ignite economic growth since it went into effect last December. People are using their savings to pay down debt, not to invest. It is, after all, a tax holiday—and holidays pass quickly.

Mr. Obama also continues insisting on $35 billion to "put teachers back in the classroom" and "make certain we're not laying off police officers and firefighters." But his own National Center for Educational Statistics forecasts that the number of teachers will rise anyway—from 3.66 million this fall to 3.7 million in the fall of 2012, and to 3.75 million in the fall of 2013.

While some communities may face police and fire layoffs, there is no evidence of a massive wave of firings of first responders. Could this $35 billion be a payoff to state and local public-employee unions? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seemed to imply this was the case with his curious statement Tuesday that "It's very clear that private sector jobs have been doing just fine." No wonder even Democratic senators like Arkansas's Mark Pryor and Montana's Jon Tester are questioning the president's provision.

Meanwhile, the president is pressing for a one-time, $50 billion expenditure on transportation. Why doesn't Mr. Obama instead get the highway bill reauthorized for its normal six-year term? It lapsed in 2009 while big Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress did nothing, and it has since been funded year-to-year. Experts and state officials say this is an inefficient and unworkable approach to improvement of the infrastructure.

The president's proposed new stimulus is also accompanied by $1.5 trillion in new taxes (for example by letting Bush-era tax rates for wealthy earners lapse, and by placing new limits on their deductions)—though he said in August 2009 that "The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession." For once he was right. Even Nebraska's Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson complained, saying "I don't think you increase taxes for new spending." Permanent tax increases simply enable Washington to keep spending at record levels.

The president is increasingly at odds with members of his own party, especially those up for re-election in 2012, like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Voters see what Mr. Obama, the most rigidly ideological modern president, cannot: It's time to limit government's size, scope and reach.

Voters are demanding growth and jobs. Mr. Obama, by contrast, seems most intent on transforming America to fit his liberal worldview. But we can't have growth and jobs if the priority is to transform the country into a European-style social democracy.

Back in 2010, Mr. Obama told ABC's Diane Sawyer, "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." The outcome he didn't mention is that he could turn out to be a really bad one-term president.

This article originally appeared on WSJ.com on Wednesday, October 17, 2011.