And is he really going to campaign on his economic record?

June 29, 2011
WSJ

By JAMES TARANTO

“With a key test of the GOP presidential field just over a month and a half away, candidates are descending on Iowa this week to sharpen their appeal to voters in the first caucus state,” the Hill reports. “Four announced or potential Republican candidates, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), are visiting the Hawkeye State this week–as is the man they are looking to defeat in 2012: President Obama.”

We suppose the pool of “potential” candidates includes every natural-born citizen over 33½ other than Bill Clinton and George W. Bush–but fine, we’ll give them Palin. What we’re wondering, though, is what was Obama doing there? (He visited yesterday.)

After all, in 2012, unlike in 2008, the Iowa Democratic caucuses are almost certain to be a complete yawn. Nomination challenges to a sitting president are rare, and no significant Democrat has so much as whispered about mounting one against Obama. As the president cruises to his own party’s nomination, blogger Don Surber quips, “maybe he can run in a few Republican primaries. I would love to see him in the debates going against Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann.”

The way things are going, there’s an off chance we’ll get Obama-Bachmann debates in October 2012. In the meantime, the old adage “Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself” suggests that Obama does not think Republicans are in such a process at this time.

The president also may be doing some advance campaigning for the general election in what may well be a swing state. Although Obama carried Iowa fairly handily over John McCain (53.9% to 44.4%), Bush beat John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam, there in 2004. And in 2010 Iowa felt the GOP wave as Republicans took the governor’s mansion and the state House (though Dems maintained a narrow majority in the Senate).

NPR asks if Iowans have “cooled to Obama” and finds that some have, “like 81-year-old retired janitor Dale Collins”:

Collins is a Democrat who says he was glad to vote for candidate Obama. Today, he says he’d take back that vote.

“I don’t think he’s doing that great a job,” he says. Collins wonders where the jobs are.

“Well, they say it’s improving, but I can’t see where it is. They’re spending a lot of money, I know that.”

The Associated Press previewed the presidential visit by suggesting that Obama would try to answer Collins’s question:

President Barack Obama will tout manufacturing as a key to America’s economic success during a trip to Iowa, as he seeks to counter criticism of his policies by Republican presidential candidates who have descended on the state. . . .

The White House insists the stop will be about the economy, not politics, though staffers are emphasizing Obama’s ties with the state that jump-started his presidential bid with a victory in the 2008 caucuses.

“Iowa is clearly a special place for the president,” White House deputy communications director Jen Psaki said. “He spent a significant amount of time there and really got to know a lot of people across the state when he was running.”

The headline read “Obama to Talk Economy, Not Politics, in Iowa,” even though the story pretty clearly refuted that assertion as White House spin. Accountability journalism strikes again. Later the AP reported on the Bettendorf speech:

Obama on Tuesday brought a made-in-America pitch to this politically vital state, saying innovation and adaptation will help the manufacturing sector and the entire U.S. economy rebound with more gusto. He admonished a divided Washington to stop bickering and rally together like a team. . . .

The president, under steady pressure to bolster a sluggish economy, is showering attention on manufacturing as an American story of adaptation. He chose the setting of Alcoa Davenport Works, an aluminum factory whose products are exported around the world and used for such high-tech applications as the wings for the presidential jet Air Force One.

Ah, so there are the jobs! But Dale Collins could be forgiven if he were to reply, “Where else?” As the AP notes, “after last month’s weak unemployment report showed an uptick in the jobless rate to 9.1 percent, the White House is warily eyeing the release of more up-to-date numbers on July 8.”

Time’s Michael Scherer reports that Democratic strategists are beginning to harbor doubts as to whether his record of economic success will be sufficient to get Obama re-elected. Seriously, they’re just now starting:

[Stanley Greenberg] fears President Obama may make a huge mistake by trying to convince voters he saved the economy from a much worse fate. “No one is going to give you much credit for what you have done for this recovery,” says Greenberg, who has been testing messages in focus groups and polls for Democrats to use in the coming election. “Saying the economy is starting to make progress is bad.”

That seems obvious, but it’s hard-won wisdom to Greenberg, who in 2010 “felt the President’s fortunes would be helped by modest economic improvement. ‘I still thought that the economy was going to kick in,’ he said.”

Greenberg’s focus groupies “responded more positively to messages about long-term fixes, like rebuilding the middle class and taking on China, or moving beyond the politics of blame.” But it’s hard to imagine such blather will carry more weight than 9% unemployment.

That’s why, as Scherer reports, “Obama’s strategists . . . hope to make the election a choice between Obama and his Republican challenger, not a referendum on the last three years.” That means we can expect a vicious campaign to discredit the Republicans and their nominee.

Will it work? Last night we chatted at a party with a fellow journalist–not an Obama supporter–who insisted the president is assured of winning re-election by scaring old people about what the Republicans will do to their benefits. No doubt this will be a central message of the 2012 Obama campaign, but we’re not as certain as our friend that it will work. Fear of the unknown can be powerful, but sometimes so can fear of the known.

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