Romney's Missing Argument

Tom Rosshirt
Sat, 01 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0700
Opinion

On Thursday night, as Mitt Romney accepted his party's nomination at the Republican National Convention, he gave the best speech I have ever heard him deliver.

His stories about his parents and his family life were authentic and endearing. They cut through the social and economic layers that separate Romney from the voters he wants to win over. When he talked of his mom's views on the role of women and then read the roll call of top female officials at the convention, he clearly was having fun.

He was funny and self-deprecating as he reflected on the early days at Bain and described his reluctance to seek the investment of his church's pension fund. "I figured it was bad enough that I might lose my investors' money, but I didn't want to go to hell, too," he said.
Updated: Thu Aug 30, 2012

On Thursday night, as Mitt Romney accepted his party's nomination at the Republican National Convention, he gave the best speech I have ever heard him deliver.

His stories about his parents and his family life were authentic and endearing. They cut through the social and economic layers that separate Romney from the voters he wants to win over. When he talked of his mom's views on the role of women and then read the roll call of top female officials at the convention, he clearly was having fun.

He was funny and self-deprecating as he reflected on the early days at Bain and described his reluctance to seek the investment of his church's pension fund. "I figured it was bad enough that I might lose my investors' money, but I didn't want to go to hell, too," he said.

The emotional notes were well-done, and the tactics were smart. He articulated the vision of the base while appealing to the political middle, especially to those 2008 Barack Obama supporters whose votes he needs in November. "I wish President Obama had succeeded, because I want America to succeed," he said.

He was shrewd in capitalizing on the unrealistic expectations that accompanied Obama's election. But politics being politics, Romney made the most of those unrealistic expectations by escalating them into the irrational. He said of the past four years: "This is when our nation was supposed to start paying down the national debt."

What?! You can't start paying down the national debt until the budget is in surplus, and Obama was handed a budget in deep deficit with the economy in collapse.

That was an assertion unconnected to any coherent argument, and that was a feature of the speech. Romney offered no arguments, only assertions.

Romney said, "This president cannot tell us that you are better off today than when he took office." Well, maybe Romney doesn't remember how bad it was. On the last day of the George W. Bush presidency, the Standard & Poor's 500 index closed at 831.95. Yesterday, before Romney's speech, it closed at just under 1,400. So someone who had a diversified stock portfolio worth $100,000 under Bush would have stock worth about $168,000 today.

Romney also said, "Unlike the president, I have a plan to create 12 million new jobs."

His plan is energy independence, job skills, trade agreements, reducing the deficit and championing small businesses by reducing taxes and simplifying regulations, cutting health care costs and repealing Obamacare. He didn't try to explain how this would lead to 12 million new jobs. He just said it would.

In this respect, Romney's speech fits a pattern that President Bill Clinton described to some of us years ago. A few years after he left the White House, the former president was talking to some of his writers about campaign speeches and told us that if the presidency is about labels and images, Republicans win. To counter that, Democrats need to explain how we got where we are, with arguments focused on choices and specific examples. We've got to get people to think, he said.

So let's think on this. In 1993, when the budget deficit was at a record high, President Clinton could not get a single Republican vote for his deficit reduction package, because it raised taxes on the top 1 percent. Republican Bill Archer called it "job-killing poison." Newt Gingrich said it would lead to a "job-killing recession." Bob Dole said, "It's going to be terrible for small business."

Seven years later, after the longest economic expansion in history had added 22 million jobs and turned history's biggest deficit into history's biggest surplus, President Clinton said, "Time has not been kind to those predictions."

When President George W. Bush came into office, he applied the Republican philosophy of cutting taxes and regulations. In eight years, we went from the biggest surplus back to the biggest deficit and then plunged into a financial crisis.

Then Obama was elected. He spent stimulus money to bail out some businesses, slow foreclosures, save the auto industry and help stabilize the economy. The stock market came back, and the economy is growing slowly.

Why would we want to go back to Bush?

I suspect we're going to hear some form of this argument from President Clinton when he speaks at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night. It'll be interesting to see how Team Romney responds.