“They want your vote, but they don’t want you to know their plan,” the President explained at the Democratic Convention. He added, “And that’s because all they have to offer is the same prescriptions they’ve had for the last 30 years.”
On a purely logical note, the statements don’t make sense because if we don’t know the plan then we can’t know that the Republican plan offers the same prescriptions they’ve had for the last 30 years, that would imply we did know the plan.
However, we do get the point. First the tax returns and now the plan for the country, can you trust such a secretive candidate? The answer is we don’t know, and that’s the challenge for the Democrats, they have little to go on in terms of talking points to counter Republican policies except for the provisions of the vice presidential candidate’s plan, which we have been assured is not going to represent the future according to Romney.
But instead of guessing what the other guy has to offer, and categorizing it as hypothetically worse than what we’ve got, President Obama might be more persuasive in veering from his “stay the course message,” simply as an acknowledgment of human nature, that when things are bad people are more likely to take a risk on an unknown, it’s at least partially how the President himself got into office.
Such an approach would also indicate the long-haul nature of what he touts as his accomplishment, the passage of the Affordable Care Act which hopefully, everyone by now understands is not a done deal even if the President is reelected since so much of what is necessary to realize the results is unknown as to whether it will occur. Thankfully, I’ve begun seeing a wise insertion of the word “projected” before all the phony numbers that have been thrown around.
While last night’s speech showed a humility that forewarned that the jobs report would continue to disappoint, the President argued to keep going with the same multi-priority policies that show little commitment to addressing a single problem in a dogged fashion and allowing that fix to begin to improve circumstances for citizens of this country.
When everything’s up for grabs, grabbing at everything is usually a bad approach. So instead we’re left discussing ideas of the candidates, themes for their terms as President if they were to win, rather than policies.
This does not detract from the President’s point about the unknown status of Romney’s fix-it plan. Rather than indicating incompetence, together with Democrats’ relentless discussion of his failure to disclose his income taxes, it presents an image of secrecy which feeds into the idea that Mr. Romney will run the government close-to-the-vest excluding the very population whose support he desires. And this is a significant issue in a country reared in the language of President Nixon in connection with Watergate when he said, “It’s not the crime that kills you, it’s the cover-up.”
The spirit of secrecy also plays into worries middle class voters have about Romney’s intentions regarding their welfare, especially when it comes to the very rich with whom he is associated.
For middle class voters, the themes are identifiable and require little rhetoric beyond what relief is being offered that directly will improve their lives and when they can expect to see it. Everything else about projected benefits, possible fixes and what each candidate identifies as values worth pursuing is meaningless if these topics are not addressed.
