Mitt Romney has to win a choice election. If you had to pinpoint the exact moment when Romney’s strategy to make the election largely a referendum on President Barack Obama collapsed, about 10:56 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Sept. 5 would be as good a guess as any. That’s when, roughly 20 minutes into his sprawling oration at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C., former President Bill Clinton said that no president — not even the 42nd — could have done a better job fixing the economy than Obama, given the problems the incumbent inherited.[...] There’s been nothing to match it for the Republicans, which is one reason that Romney is now tied with Obama on the economy in many recent polls. Election Day is nearly six weeks away and there’s still a sense that the Romney campaign has not yet — although it is moving this way — fully begun to make its case on substance.
The problem is that Romney doesn't have much substance. His ideas conspicuously lack specifics so as to avoid scrutiny or criticism. (Seriously, go to the Issues section of his campaign website, if you don't believe me.) Nevertheless, Lowry thinks Romney's got reams of data in his CEO's brain that he hasn't shared with us yet:
[N]o miraculous intervention from the outside is going to save Romney. It all comes down to him. Romney is not a natural ideologue, nor — obviously — a natural backslapper. But he is a data-obsessed salesman. He should be pitching his program with all the zeal and airtight attention to detail of a presentation for a Bain Capital business deal.
Oh my, I truly hope Romney takes Lowry's advice. I'll be looking forward to this: finally, a debate on ideas. I'm really, really curious to learn how Romney plans to return $15.5 trillion in lost wealth, get back 8.8 million lost jobs, and pull 24 percent of all U.S. homeowners out from $690 billion in underwater mortgages -- all a result of Dubya's Great Recession. This is not to mention how Romney plans to deflate the $1 trillion student loan bubble that is just waiting to pop and ruin 22 million young Americans' futures... assuming a) Romney knows about it, and b) he gives a care. And then there are those pesky 50 million Americans without health insurance who Romney thinks already do have medical care... in emergency rooms.
Yeah, I want to see numbers, charts, graphs... everything you'd expect from a "data-obsessed salesman." Let's see what an impressive, experienced "pitchman" Romney really is.
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