When you have Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) as guests you ger a clear picture of the respective Democratic and Republican collective personalities encapsulated in two individuals. Senator Durbin's stands are more in line with what the American people want but can not argue the case effectively. On the other hand, Congressman Ryan's proposals are actually very unpopular but he sells them well.
For example, when Mr. Ryan says that in his budget plan they would eliminate tax shelters and loop holes in the tax code, which sounds great. However, he never specifies which ones. Additionally, do subsidies have implied inclusion or are they not part of the mix? It doesn't seem so since the Republicans recently defeated a bill that would end subsidies for oil companies. But you see, the Ryan budget isn't actually a 'budget.' Budgets contain numbers outlined specifically as to what they are attributed. Mr. Ryan doesn't do that in his document, and if it is a road map, as he calls it, then we'd be lost if we actually tried to use it to guide us.
Mr. Gregory posed the question of "Can Washington Govern?" According to Mr. Ryan, the Senate under Democratic control has not passed a budget since Mr. Obama took office. We get annoyed at such statements simply for the fact that we now have to go back once again and point out that a simple majority in the Senate gets nothing done, unlike the House where it does. Is this the kind of math that Mr. Ryan ignores? If you need 60 votes and you only ever have 53 (a majority) to try and pass a bill, it will never pass and in knowing that why propose the thing in the first place. To feel good about yourself? That is what the Republicans have been doing in the House with bills they know will not make it through the Senate.
But can Mr. Durbin argue this effectively? No, because simply saying the Mr. Romney, if he were elected President, would return us to Bush-era economic policies is a boogie-man type tact without giving an anecdote that American can relate to. He doesn't explain why we should bring back the Simpson-Bowles recommendations and why they would work. Because there is a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases - means testing for Social Security recipients but increases in education. Mr. Ryan said he didn't vote for Simpson-Bowles because it didn't address health care. There are two points with that. One, he didn't vote for it because it calls for some tax increases - something (stupidly) no Republican can vote for, and two, it does address health care but not to his liking.
Mr. Ryan is mentioned as a Vice-Presidential candidate for Mr. Romney but we'd advise the Governor not to select him. The reason is that no matter where Paul Ryan goes, he can not talk about anything else except for defending his budget, which is only not as controversial as 'Obamacare' because Paul Ryan isn't on a national ticket. However, as Newark Mayor Corey Booker accurately pointed out later in the program that while 'Obamacare' remains controversial with the American people, several components are quick popular. Mr. Ryan's defense is weak, and will remain so if he can not give any specifics. And with Mr. Romney endorsing the Ryan plan, it only helps him with the Republican base - he's one of the guys, but with independents, it doesn't help him at all. Coming onto the national political scene with policy controversy already around you isn't good for the Republican ticket.
Paul Ryan said that we have a narrow window in which to get the debt crisis under control, hence we have to act now. This is just our take on things, and it touches on something we said last week, but the small window he's taking about is more a reflection of being able to pass Republican ideological policy, the narrow window does in fact reflect the debt crisis but when he's discussing it, it also refers to the changing population demographics of this country and the Republican Party's shrinking ability to pass legislation that erodes social programs. And this is why you see tactics such as Mr. Boehner repeat threats of not raising the debt ceiling, hence shutting down the government because their negotiating window is shrinking and they have to employ every threat/tactic they can. Again, playing into the question of whether or not Washington can govern, the answer is not like this. What you have is the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States is engaging in a type policy blackmail. This is poor leadership, so when Mr. Ryan says that the Republicans will have to pass stop gap measures because of poor White House leadership has also has to turn that looking glass on his own party as well. We're sorely missing this function of government and it doesn't help when Vice-President Joe Biden says that if we're re-elected there won't be compromise.
Yet, here we are that in some polls, as Mike Murphy pointed out, Mr. Romney is ahead of Mr. Obama because the economy hasn't bounced back quickly enough. But as Mayor Booker rightly said, the mess that was created, it going to take more than 4 years to correct. Americans can not seem to deal with this fact. But they have to remember that we started 2 wars and didn't put them on the budget, then handing out a tax cut that did little for the middle class (we put our $600 check in the bank, and then paid a credit card bill) to further the deficit spending. At the time, Dick Cheney said that deficits didn't matter, but now they do. With the Ryan plan, deficits will increase sharply at the beginning, but in 40 years, we'll have a balanced budget - just the notion of that doesn't seem realistic.
Given the closeness of the polls, will the election solve anything or get anything done - the question Mr. Gregory posed to the panel. The answers were mixed, amongst which was Ms. Strassel, from the Wall Street Journal, banally saying that if there are majorities throughout there would be changes. However, if you were to strictly listen to this week's panel, and not look at the polls, you come to the conclusion that Mr. Romney's chances are not good. They talked about 'framing' the candidates, but most focused on Mr. Romney. Mr. Obama, even given the resurgence of talk about Jeremiah Wright the controversial minister, remains very likeable to the electorate, and his last three years in office has been a sufficient amount of time to make a judgement. Mr. Romney, on the other hand, is being defined as we go, and not just by the other side, but by every one except by the candidate himself.
Surprisingly, it was CNBC's Jim Cramer that delivered the harshest definition of Mr. Romney saying that the Bain Capital narrative of the candidate will stick and that Mr. Romney is a job destroyer. It's really Mr. Romney's fault that Bain will stick because 1) he doesn't talk about his time at Bain in any detail, 2) he can not talk about his time as Governor of Massachusetts, and 3) on the stump when he speaks about a personal journey, he always talks about his father, not himself. Not to mention that we wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Booker when he assessed that the Super PACs that exist on both side want this campaign to go into the gutter of personal attacks and stay there, an inevitability. Later in the segment, after Mike Murphy weakly tried to mitigate the criticism of Mr. Romney's position with regard to bailing out the auto industry, Mr. Cramer mocked the role he played, saying that he would have only performed triage.
At this stage of the Presidential campaign, it seems like every one is having trouble with triage, no one, media included, can determine what is most important to the American people while the respective camps rip band-aids off the trivial.
Roundtable: Mayor of Newark, NJ, Cory Booker
(D), Republican strategist Mike Murphy, CNBC's Jim Cramer, and the Wall
Street Journal's Kim Strassel
Postscript: The G8 Summit and the economic crisis in the Euro-zone were only briefly mentioned at the end of the program. We didn't touch on it here because it deserves a separate column which is coming. However, Mr. Cramer did say that there would be a run on European banks and we agree simply for the fact that that is exactly what is happening in Greece now.
Postscript 2: The 'Corey Booker/Chris Christie' Ad - Why all the attention beside the fact that it is really funny? Because it shows a Republican and a Democrat of the same state having a laugh together, something so sorely missed in Washington these days - the simple notion that we live here together and are allowed to like each other.
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