Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Two speeches, one big lie

Visual source: Newseum

President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney both gave speeches yesterday on the economy. Pundits are having a field day analyzing both speeches. Some pundits understand that Romney's claim that we can cut our way of this economic crisis is, in fact, one big fat lie (see, e.g., the great video analysis from Martin Bashir at the end of this post). Others, not so much.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank has a major debt fetish and analyzes the president's speech in Ohio yesterday through Republican-tinted glasses:

Nothing in Obama's speech came close to a proposal to fix the debt problem; he dealt with that only at the end of the speech ' largely by complaining about Republicans' refusal to consider higher taxes on the wealthy.

Obama alleged, correctly, that Republicans' refusal to countenance tax increases scuttled the Bowles-Simpson plan and the Senate's Gang of Six plan. He argued, also correctly, that Republicans' refusal to budge on taxes is 'the biggest source of gridlock in Washington today.' He's on solid ground, too, in saying Republicans would end Medicare as we know it.

But none of that is going to help Obama, because he hasn't come up with a viable alternative. It isn't enough to claim that the other guys have a bad plan (though they do). As Democratic strategists Stan Greenberg and James Carville wrote in a memo widely discussed this week, Obama needs a 'new narrative' that 'focuses on what we will do to make a better future for the middle class.'

That reference to the Greenberg-Carville memo is a major non-sequitur, Mr. Milbank. Do American voters really want a "new narrative" about debt reduction? Seriously? No, they want jobs. And the entire canon of American history demonstrates that focusing on debt reduction over growth during a recession or depression is both absolutely idiotic and incredibly ill-advised.

The Bloomberg editors, meanwhile, get it half right. They stress the need for more stimulus spending and growth:

It's not that Obama's proposals -- a mix of tax credits for small businesses and clean energy, and spending on infrastructure and education -- are bad. It's just that they're shopworn and too timid to break the political stalemate in Washington.  [...] The rationale for additional government spending at this moment is compelling: Interest rates are near a historic low, and long-term unemployment is threatening the future of millions. More than 5 million of the 12.7 million people who are unemployed have been jobless for 27 weeks or more, a higher portion than at any time over the past 60 years. A new paper by former Obama economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Berkeley economist J. Bradford Delong suggests that under current conditions stimulus could ultimately be self-financing; it would put people back to work and increase the tax base, thus reducing the long-run debt burden. [...]

... and then at the end they endorse the horrible Simpson-Bowles plan. Bleh.

Greg Sargent at The Washington Post:

The central idea in the speech ' that Washington is in a 'stalemate' about how to move forward that only the American people can break ' was the answer to a clear strategic dilemma. Obama needs to figure out how to highlight GOP obstructionism of his policies in a way that will matter to the American people. The risk has always been that swing voters won't care why Obama can't get jobs policies passed, and will simply conclude that he's been too weak and ineffective to fix the economy, even if they agree with his basic values and priorities, leading them to pick someone who can just get something done already.

By casting the current situation as a 'stalemate' that the American people need to break, Obama is implicitly arguing that if people do agree with his overall sense of where the country needs to go, they can cast a vote that amounts to more than a protest against gridlock, dysfunction and inaction, which can easily get held against the incumbent. Obama was essentially telling the American people that they have to make their choice clear ' hopefully driving home that this election is a choice that will determine the future direction of the country, rather than just an occasion for people to register disgust with the status quo.

Justin Sink at The Hill:

Mitt Romney is stepping out of his comfort zone ' giving a Sunday morning interview to a network that is not Fox News and conducting a travel-intensive bus tour.

It's a move of considerable risk and reward for Romney, who, since effectively clinching the nomination in April, has run an increasingly conservative campaign, rarely deviating from his standard stump speech or offering more than cursory access to the press.

Also at The Hill, Alexander Bolton brings us the story of Democrats who want President Obama to switch strategies:

Senate Democrats say criticizing Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper is an effective message for the 2012 campaign and President Obama should not discard it as a line of attack.

In a move to appeal to independents, the Obama campaign in April shifted its emphasis away from attacks portraying Romney is a centrist flip-flopper without core principles.

Instead, its attacks have cast the former Massachusetts governor as a hard-core conservative even though many voters are not inclined to view him that way.
But Democratic lawmakers like the flip-flopper charge. After all, Romney is more known as the Etch A Sketch candidate than a Tea Party ideologue.

Finally, Martin Barshir at MSNBC factchecks Mitt Romney's speech:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

"Romney isn't one to let facts get in the way of a good narrative."

Indeed.