–Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades, responding to a New York Times report that a Republican super PAC is considering attacking Obama’s history with Jeremiah Wright.
It looks like Iran is going to make a serious proposal at next week’s round of nuclear talks in Baghdad. But the true test for President Obama will be whether he can hold his coalition together to continue economic sanctions until the Iranians agree to the most important item on the agenda–intrusive inspections of Iranian facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency, including inspections of suspect military facilities like Parchin. These talks will be complicated and will take months to resolve, but Iran’s first move will be crucial in determining whether the regime is, finally, serious about talking–and whether our allies in this effort, Russia and China, are serious about demanding a real accounting of Iran’s nuclear program. Details here.
Student debt is completely out of control, right? The more than $1 trillion in outstanding college loans is front-page news and is pretty much the only educational issue the presidential candidates are talking about. Yes, ballooning student debt is causing real hardship for some Americans. But as with many educational flare-ups, the public debate is giving us more noise than signal. So before you decide to skip college based on the hysteria, here are a few things to keep in mind.
Any last hope that this year’s election would be anything but an unprecedented wallow in muck, misstatement and disrespect was lost Wednesday, at a neighborhood spaghetti joint on the border between Ohio and West Virginia.
- The cost of JPMorgan’s blown bet jumps 50% to $3 billion while things get litigious.
- A super PAC weighs going after Jeremiah Wright.
- Scott Walker expedites some convenient jobs numbers.
- Non-white births are now the majority for the first time in the U.S.
Not since the oil shocks that first brought the world’s superpowers together in 1974–back then they called themselves the “Library Group” because they met in the White House library–has the G8 had so much substantive business on a summit agenda.
Joe, the Romney campaign’s control-freakery makes for bad democracy, but I suspect it’s a smart strategy. Consider the way Mitt’s personal approval rating has bounced back over the past several weeks. As the GOP primaries wrapped up, Romney was roughly as unpopular as late-era George W. Bush. Now he’s about even with Barack Obama.
Since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, Romney’s favorable-unfavorable rating has jumped to 50%-41%, his best ever and in the same neighborhood as Obama’s 52%-46% standing.
What changed? Well, for one thing, other Republican rivals are no longer attacking Romney. That helps. But it’s not like he’s had a free ride: the Obama camp has picked up where Rick and Newt left off. An alternate explanation would be that Americans are simply seeing less of Romney, and that makes them like him better.
In a recent piece about the Obama-Romney ad wars, Michael Scherer made the smart point that this election is different from past ones in that the incumbent no longer gets a free hit on his rival during the period immediately following the primary. The reason: super PACs have the cash to cover that gap while the challenger collects enough general election funds to keep pace.
Mitt Romney is clearly a candidate terrified by his own mouth. What other explanation for his campaign’s extreme efforts to prevent reporters from asking him questions? I know that there isn’t much public sympathy for journalistic whining–including my own occasional, stupid laments–about the lack of access. But Romney’s staff has clearly taken this to a new level, preventing reporters from even watching the candidate’s mini-town meeting with middle-class voters at one stop. I don’t know how to improve this situation, but I suspect that reporters shouting questions at Romney when he’s trying to shake hands with citizens on a rope-line isn’t helping any.
You do have to wonder, though, how much skill and confidence Romney will bring to meetings with foreign and Congressional leaders if he can’t figure out how to talk to the press.
