"The house we hope to build is not for my generation but for yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you are my age, you will be able to say as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a statement, not an apology."


Saturday, October 06, 2012

Kill Big Bird?

A country $15 trillion in debt that is unwilling to cut subsidies for luxuries like public television is a country that is unable to save itself -- a country that is seeing its future through the tear gas haze that covers the streets of Athens.

Thursday, October 04, 2012

Caricatures, Confirmed & Destructed

Few things are more damaging in a debate than coming across true to form with a negative caricature. Conversely, few things are more beneficial than contradicting one.

The president's performance last night was listless, unfocused and ineffective. It was, in other words, a metaphor for his first term. After trillions in stimulus spending, dozens of financial regulations and a complete centralization of health care, growth is still anemic and unemployment/underemployment are high. If there is a defense for this beyond "this is the best we could have done," the president was unable to summon it last night. An absence of solutions was demonstrated by tired meandering.

Worse than that for the president was the energetic, knowledgeable and determined performance of his opponent -- a direct refutation of the out-of-touch, gaffe-prone caricature the president has spent so many months and millions painting.

This is the big takeaway from last night: the president's re-election campaign went all in on a strategy defining Romney a certain way and in an hour and a half he completely destructed that image. With a month to go Romney has now gotten himself back in the game with a largely untapped war chest with which to shape the race on his own terms.

Game on.