Barack Obama is foreign.
Oh yeah? Mitt Romney is a bully.
Think the U.S. presidential election will be about the economy? Think again.
On the economy, both presidential candidates are marked with indelible vulnerabilities.
President Obama first. He inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He has presided over a weak and fitful recovery.
During the recession of 2008-09, the U.S. lost more than 8 million jobs, net. Since 2009, the U.S. has gained only about 4.5 million jobs, net. Yes, the unemployment rate has improved somewhat since January 2009 -- but largely because so many people have quit searching for work. Among Americans of prime working age --16 to 54 -- the percentage in work today is the lowest since 1983, near the very beginning of the mass entry of married women into the workforce.
So Obama cannot run a "morning in America" campaign for recovery. Too many Americans are still shrouded in the pre-dawn murk.
Yet challenger Mitt Romney finds himself not much better positioned than incumbent Barack Obama.
His own job-creation record as governor of Massachusetts was not especially impressive. As a CEO, he was better known for downsizing purchased companies than for new hiring. And he has been pressed by his party to campaign on a platform that emphasizes radical spending cuts for the young and the poor and another big round of upper-income tax cuts on top of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.
No wonder that both campaigns are looking for something else to talk about.
Over the past couple of weeks, they have found it -- or, more exactly, it's been found for them.
On Thursday, the Washington Post reported an incident that occurred at Mitt Romney's prep school back in 1965. Romney, then an 18-year-old senior, had led a group of students in a hazing of a younger boy who wore his long hair dyed blond. "That's just wrong," Romney supposedly said. The Romney-led group pinned the boy to the ground. As the boy cried and called for help, Romney forcibly clipped his hair.
Stack that story on top of previous stories about Romney "liking to fire people" and caging his dog atop the roof of his car, and a narrative is born! The sober, responsible Romney has been transformed into Biff from Back to the Future to Jack from Lord of the Flies.
The anti-Obama side, meanwhile, has a constructed narrative of its own.
In Obama's long memoir, Dreams From My Father, he mentions that his Indonesian stepfather introduced him to dog meat. That old story was dusted off last month as a new revelation, kicking off an explosion of jokes about #obamadogrecipes and #obamaeatsdog.
Obama had a Kenyan father and an Indonesian stepfather. Raised in Indonesia and then Hawaii, he did not set foot on the American mainland until his freshman year in college. As a student at Columbia, his closest friends were from Pakistan. One of his most admired professors was a militant Palestinian. When he settled in Chicago, he joined a church presided over by a radical black pastor. Now dog meat.
A 2007 memo by Hillary Clinton's message guru, Mark Penn, articulates what this record can be made to mean: "[Obama's] roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his centre fundamentally American in his thinking and values."
The campaigns subtly appeal to these negative images in their messaging.
Mitt Romney's stump speech warns: "President Obama has said he wants to transform America. I don't want to transform America. I want to restore America."
The liberal Super-PAC PrioritiesUSA action meanwhile represents Romney as a super-greedy super-bully in its ad, "If he wins, we lose."
We'd like to imagine that elections are decided on the issues, by voters responding rationally to competing policy proposals. But myth and narrative are stronger than reason -- and strongest of all when, as now in the U.S., times are hard and solutions are lacking.
This blog is cross-posted at the National Post.
Follow David Frum on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@davidfrum
Eight years of Bush & the GOP Congress' excesses are still reaping benefits for the Dems.
Predicting Obama wins with more than 300 electoral votes.(303 to be exact - excluding NC, FL, & MO)
Obama's biggest weakness is his administrations handling of the housing crisis. Back in 2009, he should have moved quickly to use TARP to buy up distressed assets from the banks at pennies on the dollar, modified the loans and keep people in their homes. Instead his programs have been largely ineffectual and have been the wet blanket on this economy. Solving the housing crisis is the key to solving the unemployment problem since most of the millions of unemployed had jobs related - directly and indirectly - to the housing industry. But even that industry is starting to see signs of life.
If you compare 2012 to 1996 election, one of the main differences is back in 1996 you did not have Fox News' propaganda machine stirring up the conservative white base.
1. the U.S. economy is pretty much the same it was in the early 1980's after a couple decades of outsourcing
2. That the recession that ended in 1982 was anything like recent events. Only the Great Depression was an event of the same magnitude.
And we have no way whatsoever of effecting any kind of change. In fact, if you look at where the campaign money is coming from and how it's being channeled (the only true index of a president's course in office), it's apparent that Obama will be more beholden to the banks and the overall finance-insurance-real-estate complex than even Romney is.
The Republicans make an absurd, outlandish claim about the Democratic candidate, such as Obama is a foreign born Muslim.
Then, when the Democrats attack the Republican candidate, the Republicans act as if any legitimate attack by a Democrat - such as a Romney's past history of bullying and dismissive attitude that, along with an extensive history of dismantling companies and firing people to make a bunch of money for himself and a few investors, helps establish a lifelong history of causing others suffering for personal gain - is equivalent to the provably false claims made by Republicans.
These issues are NOT equivalent. Obama was NOT born in a foreign country and is NOT, nor has ever been a Muslim. The bullying incident clearly occurred, since Romney offered a non-apology apology, and it absolutely goes to speak for Romney's character and establishes a clear pattern of behavior that makes him absolutely unqualified to hold the office of president.
Your words, David: Under Obama, we have already recouped more than half the jobs lost due to Bush-Cheney's "Rich folk are God" policies. THEY screwed America over a period of eight entire years. Obama has been President for three years and four months; he is UNscrewing us at a much faster pace.
76% of Americans polled last month think the US in still in a recession.
Longest period of under-4% growth since Carter was President.
Largest food stamp rolls in history . . . in 2012!
Nah, this election won't be about the economy, it will be about gay marriage and abortion rights!
Unfortunately there is no way to actually reach out to those trapped in the right wing media bubble. They don't want to hear the truth, they don't even want to be informed. They want to hear 2 words and 2 words alone: Obama bad. The right wing media is making hundreds of million of dollars giving those 2 words to them in so many ways. the message itself is rooted in one word : hatred.
If you don't like B.M. tell HBO you want him off the air.