Opinions

There are lobbyists visiting the White House.  This is a story only because candidate Barack Obama piously pledged during his campaign in 2008 that there wouldn’t be. I don't think he was deceitful then, and I don't think it is a big deal now. It just exemplifies another way we have paid for Obama's on-the-job training on issues both big and small.  Obama was elected not knowing how economic or energy policy worked. How was he supposed to understand how policymakers communicated with the world they shape?

In Washington today, if you are part of an effort to advocate for a  specific policy or government action, for the most part, people in government that you need to see will see you in furtherance of them doing a good job. To be as effective as possible, a policymaker needs to hear from just about anyone who might be affected by a decision. Sometimes the impact is intended, sometimes it's not, but either way, the policymakers need to know about it.

Lobbyists are the representatives of the affected parties and are in the best position to explain all the consequences of a particular action. Giving a fair hearing to all the affected parties before a decision is made, a rule is written or a bill passed is a good way to avoid mistakes. Honest, sincere government employees, even at the White House, are smart enough to discount the biases of one visitor from the next. Being forthright about being fair and keeping an open door are better than pretending that no one talked to you about his take on a particular decision.

In the case of the lobbyist ban, naive campaign rhetoric becomes hypocrisy, leading to furtive actions that a candidate running for reelection seeks to deny or cover up, making a small problem a big one. Obama's so-called ban on lobbyists has created a black market for information, convoluted explanations of why people meet, avoidance of useful facts and, in some instances, probably willful noncompliance with registration laws in order to avoid the scarlet "L" and to proceed with normal meetings.

I'm sure the Obama White House has had to rewrite the definition of the word “lobbyist” several times to be in phony compliance with its rule about not meeting with lobbyists for Solyndra. I joke that I'm not a lobbyist, I'm a “government process engineer."  A GPE, if that makes you feel better!  

In an honest world, a candidate running for office would pledge to meet with anybody who has useful information, whether that person called himself a lobbyist or not. Instead, voters will hear parsing, contorted reasoning and outright lies from Obama and company in a self-defeating effort to keep the president’s halo from sagging even more.  

I would add one other bit of bad news for Mitt Romney to Ed’s analysis of the recent Gallup Poll. Not only does the poll reveal Romney’s “empathy” problem — the sense that he is “not on people’s side” — it also reveals that, on the question of who will do a better job solving the unemployment problem, Romney is tied with Obama.

It is remarkable, given the current economic statistics and the dashed promises of the Obama administration that things would be better by now, that Romney doesn’t enjoy a substantial lead on this metric. After all, the central credential of his candidacy is that he knows how to fix the economy and put people back to work.

While it is early to conclude this message won’t work, it hints that Romney’s bromides about more tax cuts and less regulation may be falling on deaf ears beyond the base, and that his days at Bain make him a great candidate to run a business but not an economy.

For me, the poll came as I was contemplating a basic question on the 2012 race: Is Obama a Jimmy Carter, whose campaign to demonize his opponent failed to overcome his own record of weaknesses? Or is Mitt Romney a Michael Dukakis, who had many advantages over a weak incumbent (in Dukakis’s case, a vice president) but was a mistake-prone and weak candidate? Anyone out there want to weigh in on that question?

While the news is mostly good for Romney these days, good news has a way of taking care of itself.  Bad news is where you need to focus your attention.  In today’s USA Today/Gallup poll, which measures the importance of ten economic issues to voters, there is one piece of clear bad news for Romney: by a margin of 62 to 34, voters believe that Obama cares more than Romney about living standards for the poorest Americans.  This foreshadows that Romney could have a problem with the sector of the electorate who could make or break the election - the “working worried”.  These are people have a job, but realize there is only a thin thread holding them above the abyss of poverty.  And if the worst happens, they wonder who is more likely to make sure they have a safety net.  The contest for the hearts and minds of the working worried comes down to “who is going to strengthen my position” vs. “who is going to take care of me if the worst happens”.  This particular item in this Gallup poll confirms that Americans have a lot more faith in Obama being there for them in their time of need. 

This quandary puts Romney and Republicans in a box.  On the one hand, we decry the dependent society that President Obama and the Democrats are encouraging.  On the other hand, we don’t want to be portrayed as cruel, offering no help to those who lose their livelihood.  The only thing worse than dependency is abject poverty. 

Romney needs to reinforce to the working worried that he is going to make their position stronger.  He needs to build confidence among voters that he can make the economy stronger and their futures brighter and more secure.  Obama benefits when people are frightened and insecure.

This poll is a good reminder to the Romney campaign that their economic plans must be clear and believable so voters will take a chance that things will get better rather than be forced to plan for the worst. 

Ed's morning post contains an assumption with which I disagree. Ed says Obama's team believed they would have a relatively easy spring and summer, continuing to enjoy a comfortable lead over Romney. That may be true of some supporters but not the ones making decisions.

The key Obama strategists have long known that that there is no precedent for an incumbent president winning reelection with an economy like this one. In a sense, any decent Republican candidate — and what is interesting is how few actually made the race — should have been viewed as formidable, if not the favorite.

The talk of panic among Obama supporters is overstated, but the left is scrambling to help him in a suddenly close race with Mitt Romney. Not all of their efforts are particularly clever or even effective. Here is a quick look at some of the contortions that the near-panic has produced.

1) The left meets Orwell: The left has had to create a new vocabulary to accommodate liberal tax-and-spend policies and the ballot-box defeat that could accompany them. The new vocabulary was on vivid display during the recent G-8 and NATO meetings — the phony debate about "growth" vs. "austerity." To liberals, "growth" doesn't mean robust traditional growth policies including low taxes, rational spending and a balanced regulatory touch. "Growth" to them just means more government spending. And "austerity" means nothing more than some budget constraints. Greece, ground zero of this debate, is the best example. There, President Obama and the Democrats hear grave talk of severe "austerity" creating needless suffering and warnings that America must avoid a similar mistake. A look at the facts shows otherwise: Greek spending has gone down relatively little while taxes on individuals and businesses have ballooned. So far, job losses have only occurred in the private sector, which is being strangled by new taxes, while there have been no layoffs among government workers.  Don't be fooled, the only thing that grows under the new "growth" policies is what used to be called debt. Debt that someone has to pay.