Daschle: Obama can win without 'ratification'
By ALEXANDER BURNS |
9/18/12 5:24 PM EDT
I have a story on the homepage this afternoon, "Mitt Romney, man of constant sorrow," about the seemingly endless tribulations of the Republican presidential nominee -- the stream of woes inflicted on Romney by himself, his staff, the media and even the weather, and their cumulative effect on his campaign.
One of the folks I tried to get for the story was former Democratic Governors Association executive director (and Ruck.us co-founder) Nathan Daschle, who weighed in with these thoughts just now via email:
There is a minimum threshold candidates need to meet in order to be seen as viable chief executives. It’s not a terrifically high bar, but as only an epically flawed candidate could do, Romney is failing that test.
He’s politically clumsy (to be generous), far too reactive, and seems to lack a basic inner compass - none of which we want in a president. The hidden camera episode is a perfect example of what is wrong with his campaign. It’s not that he's unqualified to be president because of his ideas; he's unqualified to be president because he's utterly clueless about how to lead and inspire people.
The president doesn't have a competent challenger. While this is a bit theoretical, it means is that this isn't really an election at all because Obama could get re-elected without voters sending a signal of ratification.
We are going to keep getting poor choices in the general until we reform our nominating process. If it’s not already, it will soon be impossible for candidates to both win a primary and be attractive in a general election.
There's a tendency among some in the press -- and within any given campaign that's taking heat -- to dismiss criticism of a candidate's raw political ability as a cosmetic concern. But politics and public communication is hardly incidental to the presidency, and Democrats have hoped for some time that voters would eventually decide they just don't want Mitt Romney in their living rooms for four years. As Daschle says, for Romney to hit that threshold (and we don't know if he's there) would lower the bar that Obama needs to clear on the issue side of the 2012 race.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/?hp=bh
DO SOMETHING!
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