Can Charlotte
Change Equation of a U.S. Campaign Bereft of Ideas? (La Stampa,
Italy)
"America is
in the limbo of an election campaign where political conflict conceals a
scarcity of ideas and weak leadership. For Obama, this means failing to 'change
Washington,' as he promised to do in 2008; while in Romney’s case, it suggests a
belief that he cannot win based on putting forward a new idea of America, but
only on discontent over the shortcomings of his rival."
Translated by Kate Townsend
September 3, 2012
Italy
- La Stampa - Original Article (Italian)
The Democratic Convention in Charlotte
opens tomorrow under the banner of publicly-defaming Mitt Romney, now that the
Republican Convention in Tampa,
which ended Thursday, portrayed Barack Obama as a president guilty of so many
errors that he deserves to be fired. On both fronts, the electoral strategy is
based on exaggerating the adversary's defects.
In the 12 swing states, team Obama has already spent over
$100 million on TV ads depicting Romney as a tax evader and unscrupulous
speculator - the face of crony capitalism. Similarly, Team Romney underwrote a convention
at which accusations that Obama caused “23 million Americans to be out of work”
played like a broken record, propelling dozens of speakers to deliver
ghostwritten harangues, and leaving the memory of September 11th to Condoleezza
Rice alone.
Posted by Worldmeets.US
Behind this convergence of approaches is that the two
teams read the challenge similarly: Democrat David Plouffe
and Republican Stuart Stevens believe that the race will remain tied into the
final weeks, and that therefore, whoever manages to mobilize more voters from the
"base" will prevail. Polls confirm this interpretation: the
candidates: the candidates have been almost tied since February, and the
pro-Romney effect of the Tampa Convention doesn't seem to have altered the
situation much, even taking account of the fact that the number of undecided
voters has dropped to 5 percent.
For Grover
Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax
Reform, a movement that inspired Ronald Reagan, this means that “Romney is
the favorite, because undecided voters always tend to go for the challenger in
the end.” Alternatively, presidential historian Larry Sabato
brings up the possibility of a “repetition of Florida 2000,” when the White
House was decided based on a difference of 537 votes, and Bill Schneider,
conservative political scientist on liberal CNN,
talks of a “stalemate, due to the fact that America is polarized over Obama and
no one seems willing to change their mind.” The impasse damages the discussion
on programs and proposals because strategists, pollsters, and TV ads are instead
concentrated on the attacks.
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Obama promises to change the tone starting Thursday night,
when in his nomination acceptance speech he will announce his intention to “set
the course of the next four years” with concrete proposals for measures and
reforms capable of boosting economic growth. Meanwhile, Romney and his running
mate Paul Ryan, touring the swing states, will argue that they will soon reveal
details of their plan to "create 12 million jobs" which they spoke of
on stage in Tampa.
While awaiting the respective moves of the candidates, America
is in
the limbo of an election campaign where political conflict conceals a
scarcity of ideas and weak leadership. For Obama, this means failing to “change
Washington,” as he promised to do in 2008; while in Romney’s case, it suggests a
belief that he cannot win based on putting forward a new idea of America, but
only on discontent over the shortcomings of his rival. We will soon know
whether the conclave in
Charlotte
will be able to change the equation.
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