- Obama will send “American Jobs Act” legislation to Congress tonight along with rhetorical push from the Rose Garden.
- Congressional Republicans handle Obama’s stimulus proposal with caution.
- Some 31 million Americans watched the President’s jobs speech. For comparison: 27 million watched the Saints-Packers game right after, and 5.4 million watched the GOP debate the night before.
- Pawlenty throws an early endorsement to Romney.
- Mitt papers Florida with a flier attacking Perry on Social Security.
- Bachmann is beginning to follow suit.
- No damage to primary voters’ faith in Perry’s electability yet.
- What Ron Paul learned from Rand’s 2010 campaign.
- “Authenticity” is an affectation. Still, Romney’s bad at it.
- Britain moves toward totally separating its commercial banking and investment banking (a la Glass Steagall). Meanwhile in the U.S.: Proprietary trading ban faces further delay.
- Republicans head for an upset in Anthony Weiner’s district.
- And politicians can’t dance.
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The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy
More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.
