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"I' m mot Mit Romney"

By THOMASL. FRIEDMANLast week Politicoreported that, ever since announcing his re-election bid, President Obama’scampaign has been struggling to find a slogan to sum up his reason for running.He’s cycled through “Winning the Future,” “We Can’t Wait,” “An America Built toLast,” “A Fair Shot.” Bruce Newman, Bill Clinton’s message adviser, was quotedas saying of Obama: “He’s all over the place.” So far, the most accurate sloganfor Obama’s campaign would have to be: “I’m not Mitt Romney.” And when youconsider that Romney — a former liberal Republican governor — has spent thewhole campaign disavowing his past, for the first time in history bothcandidates could legitimately run on the same slogan: “I’m not Mitt Romney.”

And that’s our problem. Romney hasembraced the Republican budget drawn up by Representative Paul Ryan thatproposes to shrink our long-term structural deficit in a way that not onlywould make the rich richer and the poor poorer but would deprive the country ofthe very discretionary spending required to do what we need most:nation-building at home. Sure, Ryan makes deep spending cuts to balance thebudget in the long term. If I cut off both my thumbs, I’d also lose weight. ButI’d also have a hard time getting another job.What do we need froma presidential candidate today? We need a credible plan to do three specificthings: cut, tax and invest. As the economy improves, we need to cut spending,including all entitlement programs, to fix our long-term structural deficit. Wealso need to raise revenue through tax reform so we don’t just shred our safetynets and so we still have resources, not only for defense, but to invest in allthe things that have made us great as a country: education, infrastructure,quality government institutions and government-funded research.Finally, the plan hasto win bipartisan support, so the candidate advocating it not only wins theelection but has a mandate to implement his plan afterward.The Ryan-Romneybudget fails that test. As Maya MacGuineas, the president of the nonpartisanCommittee for a Responsible Federal Budget, notes: It does not “protect thetruly disadvantaged,” and it doesn’t put tax increases for the wealthy “on thetable,” so it has zero chance of bipartisan support.Obama has proposedhis own 10-year budget. It is much better than Ryan’s at balancing ournear-term need to revitalize the pillars of American success, by cutting, taxingand investing. But it does not credibly address the country’s long-term fiscalimbalances, which require cuts in Medicare and Social Security.Said the Committeefor a Responsible Federal Budget: “The president’s budget [is] a step in theright direction on deficit reduction, but not nearly sufficient. Thepresident’s budget would stabilize the debt as a share of the economy throughthe second half of the decade, but would do so at too high of a level andwithout the necessary entitlement reforms to bring down the debt over thelong-run. ... It is highly disappointing that the president didn’t go furtherin his proposals and offer a plan that is large enough to deal with thenation’s fiscal challenges in the medium and long term.”Or as TreasurySecretary Tim Geithner testified to Congress: “Even if Congress were to enactthis budget, we would still be left with — in the outer decades as millions ofAmericans retire — what are still unsustainable commitments in Medicare andMedicaid.”So the president, too,lacks a long-term plan to cut, spend and invest at the scale we need in a wayto win enough bipartisan support to make it implementable. This gets to my coredifference with the president’s strategy. I believed he should have acceptedhis own Simpson-Bowles deficit commission because it offered a plan to cut andtax that was at the scale of the problem and enjoyed at least some G.O.P.support, had the overwhelming backing of independents and even Nancy Pelosi,the minority leader, now says she felt “fully ready to vote for that.”If Obama had embracedthe long-term deficit commission, he would have had a chance of combining itwith some near-term stimulus — investments in infrastructure — that would havehelped the economy and grow jobs. Without pairing it with Simpson-Bowles, Obamahad no chance of getting more stimulus.Obama says his planincorporates the best of Simpson-Bowles. Not only is that not true, but itmisses the politics. Republicans will never vote for an “Obama plan.” But hadObama embraced the bipartisan “Simpson-Bowles,” and added his own stimulus, hewould have split the G.O.P., attracted gobs of independents and been able tohonestly look the country in the eye and say he had a plan to fix what needsfixing. He would have angered the Tea Party and his left wing, which would haveshown him as a strong leader ready to make hard choices — and isolatedRomney-Ryan on the fringe.Instead, Obama isrunning on a suboptimal plan — when we absolutely must have optimal — and theslogan “I’m not Mitt Romney.” If he’s lucky, he might win by a whisker. IfObama went big, and dared to lead, he’d win for sure, and so would the country,because he’d have a mandate to do what needs doing.The New York Times liberals10