Posted by Shyam Moondra
Both Republicans and Democrats just finished their back-to-back conventions that seem to give President Barack Obama an edge over the Republican challenger Gov. Mitt Romney. The political party conventions provide a staged platform for introducing their respective candidates, highlighting their visions, and energizing their respective party faithfuls. The Republican Convention was held in Tampa, Florida followed by the Democratic Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2008, Obama narrowly won both of these states when he ran against Republican candidate Sen. John McCain; this time, Florida is a must-win state for Obama to prevail in November.
The Republican convention, partially disrupted by the tropical storm Isaac, turned out to be a missed opportunity for Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan. The convention organizers used most of the convention time focusing on reasons for not re-electing Obama as opposed to articulating why people should vote for Romney. The convention was a perfect setting for Republicans to present what the undecided voters were craving for – Romney/Ryan’s vision for the future, especially how they would speed up the economic recovery and create lots of jobs. Romney and his wife, Ann Romney, did a good job in telling the audience who they are, what values they live by, and what role their Mormon faith plays in their lives. However, Romney said nothing about his core convictions and his positions on various issues that seem to have evolved over time. Ryan, supposedly an “idea man,” turned into an “attack dog.” Ryan used up all of his speech to criticize Obama; since then there has been extensive reporting on many of the things he said that turned out to be untrue (more recently, Ryan even lied about his time of marathon that he ran when he was younger).
The Republican convention was the least forward looking convention in recent history. Basically, Romney’s message was “elect me first and then I will tell you what I would do.” This was an important opportunity for Romney and Ryan, with tens of millions of people watching on televisions at homes, to clearly explain what they would do to create jobs or what their policies would be on Medicare, tax cuts, and spending cuts. Given that the U.S. armed forces are still fighting a war in Afghanistan, it was stunning that both Romney and Ryan neglected to acknowledge the sacrifices of men and women in uniform (very odd for Republican Party known to be strong on defense and security). And then there was Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood who gave a bizarre stand-up comedy performance that seemed so out of place at a serious forum. After the convention ended, people were still talking about the Eastwood episode and Romney’s message got lost in the noise.
Recent polls have shown that Romney is running behind Obama among female voters; therefore, most convention speakers talked about women issues. However, that focus seemed kind of forced and unauthentic. Several speakers talked about repealing Obamacare but without explaining what they would replace it with. The speakers aroused the enthusiasm of the delegates by repeating President Ronald Reagan’s line “Are you better off today than four years ago?” which he used against then Democratic incumbent President Jimmy Carter. Judging from the response of the audience, the convention appeared to have succeeded in energizing the Republican base. However, to win the election, they needed to impress the independents and moderates; it appears that they utterly failed to do so. Republicans made the case why people shouldn’t vote for Obama but they didn’t make the case why they should vote for Romney. Given the lackluster Republican convention, it’s not surprising that Romney got no lift in the polls from the convention, as is normally the case. Romney’s flip-flopping and Ryan’s tendency to lie make Romney and Ryan as the least trustworthy candidates of modern times.
In a recent post-convention speech, Romney used the word “God” several times, suggesting that he doesn’t believe he solidified the support of conservative Republican evangelicals, as yet. Also, Romney conceded that certain parts of Obamacare are desirable and he would like to keep them in his new health care plan that would replace Obamacare. Romney also said that Congressional Republicans made a mistake by agreeing to mandatory $1.5 trillion worth of across-the-board spending cuts. Romney's recent comments seem to suggest that he is trying to move to the center to gain support of the independents and moderates.
Democrats, on the other hand, did a much better job in putting up a good show at their convention. They had several good speakers, notably First Lady Michelle Obama, who delivered one of the most effective convention speeches ever, and former President Bill Clinton, who delivered another remarkable speech in which he explained complicated policy issues in a way that people could easily understand. Clinton said that the relevant question is “are you better off today than two-and-a-half years ago?” (and not “are you better off today than four years ago”). The reason being, as Clinton argued, Obama’s first one-and-a-half years were used up to deal with the worsening recession caused by the severe financial crisis left behind by Obama’s predecessor, President George W. Bush. During the Bush’s final year, we lost 2.6 million jobs. In the last two-and-a-half years, Obama has created 4.5 million new jobs. In recent months, the data seems to suggest that the housing market has finally started to recover and the average housing prices are beginning to rise. So the Democrats’ message was that we are on the right track and Obama should be given four more years to finish the job.
Bill Clinton has been at odds with Obama since Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primary elections of 2008. Recently, Bill Clinton made some comments that seemed to support Romney (Romney campaign even used Bill Clinton in their political ads); although later Bill Clinton backtracked on those comments. The theory behind Bill Clinton’s strong support for Obama at the convention seems to be that Hillary Clinton would fare better in the presidential election in 2016 against a new Republican candidate rather than running against incumbent President Romney; so Bill Clinton is doing everything he can to get Obama re-elected.
Sen. John Kerry, in one of the best speeches he has ever delivered, outlined Obama’s foreign policy successes and he painted Romney as utterly inexperienced and naive in foreign affairs. Romney’s following statements were cited as examples to show that he is not ready for the job he is seeking: On Day 1 he will declare China as the currency manipulator, Russia is our enemy number one, he will order the U.S. military involvement in Syria and Iran (the American people have no appetite to get involved in more large scale wars and by the way how would Romney pay for these new wars?), and that on Day 1 he will move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Obama’s speech was good but not as effective and inspiring as in 2008. To his credit, he touched upon his vision going forward that Romney neglected to do. Vice President Joe Biden stayed out of trouble which is good enough for him; although he did come up with a catchy sound bite “Osama bin Laden is dead and GM is alive.” Democrats did a good job in pointing out that Romney has a record of his constantly changing positions on issues, so it is hard to pinpoint his core beliefs, if he has any. Obama’s main problem is economy and the recent jobs report, which showed that only 96,000 new jobs were created last month (although unemployment rate went down from 8.3% to 8.1%), crystallizes that problem.
Democrats had many more interesting and effective speakers than Republicans did. All in all, Democrats won and Obama came out of the convention season with a slight edge over Romney.
The next critical phase of the 2012 presidential election consists of a series of one-on-one debates in October, the first of which is scheduled for Oct 3rd in Denver, Colorado to be moderated by PBS’ Jim Lehrer. Obama is currently ahead in the polls by a few points in terms of popular votes and comfortably ahead in terms of electoral votes; therefore, the burden is on Romney to demonstrate in the first debate that he is ready for the highest office in the land. If Romney stumbles in the Denver debate, it would be awfully hard for him to recover.
