- Obama will use a bridge in Boehner’s district to press his stimulus bill.
- A once bullish John Ellis is unimpressed by Perry’s recent performances.
- He hasn’t been consistent on Afghanistan.
- “Ponzi scheme” is a wash among Republicans.
- Florida insiders think Romney’s their best shot in the general election.
- Walter Shapiro watches 50 hours of Fox News and finds this gem: “Mitt Romney is like somebody you hook up with periodically until you get serious and you want to meet somebody serious,” he said. “He [is] friends with benefits. And Perry is marriage material.”
- Ron Suskind’s new book recounts how Tim Geithner’s disobeyed Obama’s orders to consider breaking up Citigroup in early 2009.
- Steve Gandel offers some perspective on Lehman’s crashiversary.
- It’s very difficult to know how much capital banks are sitting on.
- And Obama sticker cracks murder case.
Morning Must Reads: Bridge
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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.
