With Obama's gaffes, Romney has a choice

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

This post originally appeared on Slate.

(CBS News) On June 8, 2012, President Obama declared "The private sector is doing just fine"--and the Chaos Muppets were released. Every Republican official and piece of the GOP firmament issued a press release saying this proved the president was out of touch. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell asked if the president was living on another planet, Speaker John Boehner and Eric Cantor held a special press conference, Chris Christie was undone, and of course Mitt Romney had a say. GOP Archers for Less Regulation may have even sent out a Tweet.

The political fallout was predictable in a campaign where each side rolls out emergency fainting couches and commits synchronized jaw-dropping at the latest perceived outrage. Barack Obama is never allowed to say the economy is "doing just fine," just as sure as Mitt Romney is never allowed to say he's "not concerned about the very poor." Democrats clobbered Romney for his remark back in February. Now it was time for Republicans to make the president suffer. Some were even paying Obama back for his attacks on John McCain in the last campaign for a similar remark about the economy's fundamentals. (The RNC video making use of Obama's remark is almost identical to the 2008 Obama ad about McCain.).

Will this election be a choice between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney or a referendum on Barack Obama's handing of the economy? President Obama would like it to be a choice, but he is stuck with the reality that it's likely to be a referendum. That is how he found himself in the position of saying what he did about the private sector--which is not without basis in fact. He wanted to explain the current economic slowdown, where private sector employment has been improving while the public sector has been contracting, so that he could blame Republicans for not supporting his solutions. He also explained that if the economy gets worse it's Europe's fault.

For Mitt Romney, the president's remarks no doubt seemed like a gift, but they also presented him with a choice over how to approach this election. In the wake of the Scott Walker victory in Wisconsin, conservatives from Charles Krauthammer to Bill Kristol to Walker himself have called on Romney to make the campaign about more than Obama's economic record. They would like him to make his campaign an affirmative case for conservative policies. Obama's Great Private Sector Is Fine Declaration of June 2012 is likely to hurt their argument and encourage Romney to continue along his cautious path.

Why would Mitt Romney change course when the president is making these kinds of self-inflicted wounds? Political gifts like this will keep rolling in as the president tries to wriggle out of catching blame for the economy. Why say anything provocative that might take the focus away from the president? Also, the president's "gaffe" points out something Romney knows well: The modern campaign news cycle doesn't allow candidates to say complex or risky things. Bold policies--even boldy conservative policies--have to be explained; and explaining requires a sympathetic audience willing to at least consider the meaning of adjoining sentences, not merely judge you for what you say in a single sentence.

The point of such a campaign, Romney's supporters rebut, is not simply to win the election but to have an election that is worth winning--to build a mandate for conservative government without which you'll never be able to govern as a conservative. Scott Walker, in addition to calling for more boldness from Romney, said a key lesson that he learned was that he needed to educate voters before going forward with big solutions. "My problem was I was so eager to fix it I didn't talk about it. I just fixed it," Walker told Jonathan Karl of ABC News. "We have learned from this. We are going to both talk about, get people engaged, work on solutions together and then fix it."

This, you may remember, is almost the exact sentiment that got Newt Gingrich into trouble when he claimed that Paul Ryan's Medicare proposal was "right-wing social engineering." Gingrich's point was that radical change requires educating and convincing voters.

If Mitt Romney decides to stay on the cautious path--giving speeches about free enterprise and keeping the focus on President Obama--it may win him the election. Then he'll just have to figure out what to do with a country that has not been prepared for the kind of sweeping changes he plans to make. If he doesn't win, this will be the moment conservatives will remember. Romney will be the candidate who talked forcefully about creating an environment where businesses can take risks again--and never took one himself.

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[dpenn88]

The right wingers in Congress are blocking the jobs plan. They're holding this economy hostage to make it look like Obama is not creating jobs. To me that sounds like Treason. Where is the outrage from the American people about that. There could be more jobs created if Congress would just sign the jobs plan bill and quit sitting on it. But in the meantime they are making $84.00 dollars an hour for their families. They all have the Government Health Insurance that they don't want us Americans to have. But it seems to be good enough for them but not good enough for the American public. When will we the American people demand that they get something done instead of blocking and sitting on their behinds trying to get all their Tea Party people in so that they can rule the country. Heaven help us if they succeed.

[moretruthnow]

Romney is the gaffers. He is the one with foot in mouth syndrome. President Obama speaks what he thinks and when he said the private sector was fine he meant they are doing so much better than the public sector in this job climate. All Americans in the middle class and working poor are well aware of the harm that the republicans are doing with everything they stand against. The GOP agenda for deregulation, for anti-regulation and for every benefit for the wealthy only is against this country surviving as a democracy.

[rpiny82]

I did look at that website and you apparently read it wrong... January 2009 - 142,099,000. I didn't bother to check the rest as the first data point miss by 12,000,000 proved you are in error or intentionally mistating facts....

by ad_iudicium June 10, 2012 11:02 PM EDT

=========================================

Not a chance, Bub.

Try it again.

Have another source..


http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost

Request this form:

Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey

Also @ 7-luckyseven, you're looking at the labor participation rate, not total employment. People with your comprehension level should not be allowed to have an opinion much less vote.

[all77]

Cruel and brutal capitalism is what keeps all of us here in the Home of the Brave, Stienbeck is art and your interpretation to literalize is your own problem, what i see with you is you have to be the smartest person in the room and you are not happy, will you ever be happy. You pipe off on the 1% and possibility of some pseudo utopia you or your minions could create if you could just get past the capitlistic oliarchs when maybe we could get to utopia with the thinking and crusade of "you." Communism is not the peace loving summer camp chorus you make it out to be and when someone like yourself takes everything you have in the name of the other it will be you who cry foul, I would say to you don't go crawling back to your hideout hole, but comeout of it and try to make a peaceful difference. I'm not a war monger as you may think and don't have vacation dinner's with Laura and George, but I have seen, read, met and felt the likes of you all through out my life and I don't see Steinbeck's interpretation in you, i see Lenin and Mao, they are the ones that have us fighting against each other, also. You spought the ills of the a mormom coming door-to-door but it is you that would come door-to-door to take what you like and force your will. Platitudes are no different than greetings, these platitudes are in all of us and unless you can marginalize everyone or corner, pigeon hole them with Bush or Limbaugh your stones can't hit any glass. Which part of history has the rich not been crooked, what is it you hope to achieve, greatness or riches, for if it was justice you sought I would yield to you with a smile and adoration. I don't think you will ever be happy, so whatever takes you away from reality embrace it and do more of it, beg steal or borrow. I will continue my sabbatical, oh, have a nice day and God Bless America.

[phwilkins]

Writer of this article: Can you at least feign objectivity? Are you in fact on Obama's payroll or just heavily in favor of him?

[RCRawlings]

You bet Romney has his choice of Obama gaffes and lies to exploit.
Both Joe Biden and Obama are the gaffe meisters the left was claiming Bush was. Without his Teleprompter Obama is just an empty suit with nothing relevant to say.
The left and Dems are now victims of what goes around comes around and they can't deal with it.

[hillzhavays]

by jonnyooh June 11, 2012 2:04 AM EDT
We are speaking of the second great depression. The first one, beginning in 1929, followed two Republican presidents, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert hoover. This one followed George W Bush. The first one lasted throughout the 1930's and into WWI. They were both worldwide, [as in the European crisis now with Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Italy doing a European imitation of Lehman Brothers]. The worst parts of it were off and on for about five years.
______________________________________

I love these incoherent posts. Someone reads a high school level book on the Great Depression and all of sudden they're an expert LMAO!

There were multiple reasons for the Great Depression, with blame to be laid on many players, one of which would the Republican sponsored Smoot-Hawley tariff bill. Regarding the mass exodus out of the mid-west and The Grapes of Wrath - you're right, those pesky Republicans conjured up the Dust Bowl just of eff with Americans struggling in the Mississippi Valley, using a monoculture of cotton farming without crop rotation, causing the soil to die, a general collapse of that economy and a population movement to the west, where other people already struggling from the Depression were struggling to find work. Darn republicans.

[jonnyooh]

hillzhavays - Why do you Fox News yo-yos keep coming over here pestering the grown-ups? Here is a reading assignment for you:
http://www.inquisitr.com/241677/study-fox-news-viewers-less-informed-than-those-who-watch-no-news-at-all/

[steigejh]

My goodness. Mr. Dickerson has found religion! When Obama states something blatantly false, and Republicans and Romney call him on it, Dickerson sees this as a failed opportunity on Romney's part!

For 8 years, Democrats called Bush "the Chimp", "Bushitler," and among other things called for his assassination. CBS was nowhere to be found in terms of asking for Democrats to "take the opportunity" to take "the high road."

In fact, CBS's own Dan Rather produced a fraudulent story at a key point in the election!!

We haven't forgotten. This article is offensive and pitiful at the same time.

[moretruthnow]

I have always called him Bush myself, but with all the contempt I have for him and his war mongering, tax cuts for the rich and harmful policies that brought the country to despair.

[UForgotPoland]

The President does not run the show anymore people! Obama has kept many of Bush's policies and Romney will keep many of Obama's if he gets elected. The policy that makes the most money wins, not the ones that help the American people.

[jonnyooh]

We are speaking of the second great depression. The first one, beginning in 1929, followed two Republican presidents, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert hoover. This one followed George W Bush. The first one lasted throughout the 1930's and into WWI. They were both worldwide, [as in the European crisis now with Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Italy doing a European imitation of Lehman Brothers]. The worst parts of it were off and on for about five years. Food lines were longer that masses of the feeble minded lining the streets to see Spiderman 2. Families were loaded onto T-Models with all their possessions and 10 people, some riding running boards, some standing on bumpers, to each vehicle heading to California to find work picking grapes, which is now relegated to illegal aliens. These families then were also treated like illegal aliens. Steinbeck wrote a book about it called "Grapes of Wrath". I recommend that you and the sleezebuckets criticizing Obama for his gaffe read it and if that isn't enough to give you a good picture, read a book on the history around the Great Depression, and until you get this reading assignment under your belt, I suggest you zip your pie holes about how Obama is running the economy, because if America's moron demographic saddles us with another one of their own, like in the name of Mitt Romney, your grandchildren will be doing their business on your grave - just as soon ass the sane people finish.

[all77]

What is sad all throughout the country is the violent division of ideology and partisan politics, and when dissenting or opposing voices rise up both side are ready to strike, " sleezebuckets criticizing Obama for his gaffe ." People are not living widespread in their Chevy Lumina's, and there is some social justice in this nation, we are not in the Great Depression, and Steinbeck's movie adaption had a great line, " no force can destroy the will of people who are determined to live." Peace be with you and all of us, and let freedom ring.

[abbe91]

"The first one, beginning in 1929, followed two Republican presidents, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert hoover."

Actually three if you count Harding ...