Spoke Larry Kudlow, John McLaughlin, John Taylor, Larry Johnson, re the Obama and the Romney electioneering. There is general dissatisfaction with Mr. Obama's peculiar ineffectiveness with regard the economy, the war-fighting, the Congress, the office of the presidency. There is another kind of discomfort with Mr. Romney's vagueness. Mr. Romney's promise to create 12 million jobs in four years is not convincing unless there are details about the Federal budget, the tax code, the regulations and limitations imposed by Congress. Larry Kudlow writes at NRO that Mr. Romney must be specific about a tax cut for the middle class, an issue that Ronald Reagan spoke of as an increase in "take-home pay." There is time for Mr. Romney to offer details about what a vote for him will mean in January. We know that the second Obama term will be more of the same regulatory regime as Dodd-Frank, the entangling Affordable Care Act, the tax hikes with the automatic expiration of the Bush tax cuts of 2001, and also the some of the Defense cuts imagined with sequestration. With an Obama-Biden re-election, Americans can anticipate income taxes and fees going up, property taxes rising, and healthcare costs growing to pay for the newly insured. What American voters cannot figure is what the Romney-Ryan alternative will look like.
Losers Alive: John Kerry vs. John McCain.
Mr. Ryan (above) mocks the NFL dispute with referees that have made pro games into a comedy of errors: "If you can't get it right, it's time to get out." Mr. Ryan might look first at his own campaign before he mocks incompetence elsewhere. Where are the policy decisions? What tax cuts for us? What advantages for us? What new direction? What growth? A vote for Romney-Ryan has to be something other than a vote against Obama-Biden. If not, the vote will not be cast, or if it is, it won't be enough. Mr. Ryan looks to be depending upon the fact that we know four more years of Obama-Biden will be continued sluggish growth. This is not much different than the NFL figuring the fans will watch regardless of how badly the game is played. Lara Brown of Villanova University tells me that Mr. Obama is polling like John Kerry did in 2004, and Mr. Romney is polling like Mr. McCain did in 2008. Two losers facing off, and we can and might just walk away. Does Ryan understand? Does Romney even listen? We are six weeks away from learning the answer to a question we never asked: What if they held an American presidential election, and no one was able to vote for a winner -- because the only choice was to vote against the other side's loser? There might be an existential puzzle in all this failure: We choose to constrain the losers on Capital Hill with a loser in the White House.