W’s elevator endorsement trick
The 43rd president is a willing accomplice in the Romney effort to pretend 2008 never happened
Topics: War Room, Politics News
George W. Bush may have established a new world record today for the shortest, most awkward public endorsement statement in presidential campaign history:
“I’m for Mitt Romney,” Bush told ABC News this morning as the doors of an elevator closed on him, after he gave a speech on human rights a block from his old home — the White House.
The reason for this strange scene is obvious: Romney and his fellow Republicans want absolutely nothing to do with the 43rd president, lest voters connect the epic financial meltdown that played out on his watch to the economic anxiety they’re now feeling. As Jamelle Bouie explained today, the case that Romney is making for voting out President Obama depends on the public downplaying (or forgetting altogether) that he inherited an economy that was in the throes of a crisis not seen in generations:
In this narrative, the GOP didn’t mismanage the economy into the deepest downturn since the Great Depression. Rather, the economic crisis simply happened, ex nihilo, and Obama did nothing to stop or mitigate it. What’s more, he made things worse, with government spending and an explosion of debt.
The problem for Obama, as Bouie points out, is that there’s real appeal to this story. The electorate tends to exist perpetually in the present tense, with little collective memory or foresight. Republicans began banking on this the moment Obama was sworn in: Just stand against everything he’s doing, and if the economy remains in rough shape, sooner or later the public will hold him responsible, just because he’s the guy in charge. As it turned out, it took only about nine months for Obama’s approval rating to fall under the 50 percent mark, and it’s hovered around there ever since, putting him in danger of losing this fall.
One way the Obama campaign is attempting to counteract this is by challenging Romney’s own economic and job-creation credentials. The presumptive GOP nominee has been relentlessly touting his business (and not government) experience, hoping that voters will assume he knows how to fix the economy because of his private sector success. Polls suggest voters are buying it, at least to a degree, with Romney generally outpacing the president by several points on which candidate would be better on creating jobs and boosting the economy. This is the reason Obama’s campaign unveiled a brutal two-minute attack ad yesterday on Romney and Bain Capital on Monday; the idea is to convince voters that there’s not necessarily a connection between making money in business and understanding how the economy works.
Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki.
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