One of the hot national topics rolling into this week is whether Barack Obama's campaign, reeling on its heels as it is, needs an intervention.
In his Sunday column, Albert R. Hunt insists it's unprofessional, wrong-minded, fighting the battles it won't win and, yes -- it needs an intervention big-time.
Hunt is executive editor of Bloomberg News, the man who directs the news agency's Washington coverage.
For Democrats, he says, "June has been the cruelest month; there has been discouraging economic news; the re-election candidate has made mistakes and seems out of his comfort zone. The supposedly superior Obama campaign looks amateurish, and complaints about the operations insularity have reached a fever pitch."
Last week Hunt had conversations with half a dozen of the people he calls "the smartest Democatic political thinkers" in America -- none of whom the Obama camp pays the slightest attention to.
Their advice consensus? "Stop trying to tell voters they're doing better, offer an optimistic sense of how, if re-elected, you would lead America to more prosperous times, and challenge Republicans with specifics."
Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, Republican observers have other ideas why the president's re-election campaign looks more and more like a bust.
Many believe the greatest problem for Obama's campaign cropped up last week in his headline-grabbing gaffe, when he declared to the press that the private sector is doing fine. That's a statement that may haunt the president clear up to Election Day.
What it says, claims Randall R. Ferris, political science professor at UCLA, is that the economy suffers because we don't have enough government in our lives.
"Obama revealed his view of what he thinks the way forward is," Ferris explains, "more government spending, more employees on the government payroll. The private sector -- which serves as the ATM for the public sector -- is reluctant to expand because of Obama's way forward. In other words, the private sector is hoarding cash, further depressing the economy because it fears Obama may win -- and along will come the public sector to withdraw more money from the private ATM."
Washington, D.C. political analyst Ellen Martyn Sedgwick agrees. "In a single, five-word gaffe, the president clarified in high definition the difference between himself and Mitt Romney," the Republican who will oppose him.
"The president's egalitarian instincts lead to calls for greater government activism and a leveling of the distribution of wealth, goods and services," she said. "Romney's market instincts lead to calls for less government instrusion, the better to create more opportunity for profit and economic growth. What's happened is that the president's comment about the private sector has drawn attention to the chasm in these two ideologies."
Bloomberg's Hunt points to a longtime Democratic strategist who predicts defeat unless the Obama camp comes up with "some boldness." His idea is for the president to enlist the help of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is as popular as any American figure in politics today. Clinton has said she plans to resign after the election. Said the strategist, Obama should persuade her to leave her post a month or so early and campaign for him. She might add some electricity and she wouldnt be likely to commit the same occasional discipline lapses as her husband, he said.
Some say Obama has only one problem -- but it's a bobbydazzler. His record. On his inauguration day the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent. And it was never that good again.
The rap on Mitt Romney is that he is out of touch with the majority of Americans. Suddenly President Obama finds himself fighting the same criticism as Romney -- that he is out of touch. Obama's resume, his life experience, is top-to-bottom public sector: college, law school, community organizer, law school lecturer, author, state senator, U.S. senator and president.
Obama's election was about hope and change. His re-election is not. His re-election is about whether the American people will trust him with a second chance.
The country's debt rating has been downgraded, entitlement spending is through the roof, recovery from a deep recession is only slightly above stagnant and the national debt has increased more during the Obama administration than during every president from George Washington through George H. W Bush combined.
All of these are realities that face the 44th president as he asks the American people for four more years.
This is an analysis piece. Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
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