The Bin Laden Question

The recent one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, coupled with the formal launch of President Obama's 2012 campaign, has produced a great deal of controversy. Many Republican politicians and strategists have suggested that the President is taking too much credit for bin Laden's death and manipulating it for political gain. John McCain went so far as to claim President Obama is "shamelessly turning the one decision he got right into a pathetic political act."

The President and his advisers have responded by questioning whether a Mitt Romney Presidency would have acted in such a decisive manner, citing past Romney statements that bin Laden's capture should not be a dominant foreign policy objective.

Meanwhile, Brian Williams is interviewing the President in a one-year retrospective on the events that led to bin Laden's death.

Clearly, there is much disagreement over whether the bin Laden saga is fair political game in the 2012 campaign. This disagreement falls almost perfectly along partisan lines.

There is little doubt that the President's call to send the Navy Seals in to Pakistan was based on less than perfect intelligence that bin Laden was there. Had things gone wrong, the failed mission would have dealt a crippling political blow and would most probably have cost Obama any chance at reelection in 2012. This position is beyond dispute and is supported by analysts on both sides of the political spectrum. The political costs were, potentially, enormous; it follows that the political rewards are not only great but relevant to 2012 as well.

The Obama team will no doubt continue to use bin Laden as a key feature of their 2012 game plan. They should. Reactions from Republicans like John McCain sound, from my vantage point, like the complaints of a party that knows it is exposed on this issue. I suspect that part of the vehemence of this outcry stems from the Republican party's reluctance to take a backseat on foreign policy. Whatever the hue and cry, Osama bin Laden's capture and death is a political strength for the President in the 2012 campaign. 

Polling

As the Obama/Romney head-to-head match up develops, a new poll (or several new polls) comes out nearly every day. With each new poll articles from political trend watchers and journalists alike appear predicting alternatively good things or trouble for one of the candidates. These articles tend to beget more articles on whatever trend the poll may have identified as well as coverage on the daily television news programs. This generally goes on for the length of the news cycle; that is, until the next poll comes out a day or two later.

The astute political observer, however, must approach these polls with caution and know when and where to recognize an outlier from a poll that may have real relevance. Nate Silver at 538 has a great, in-depth piece on how to watch polls in the months leading up to November. It is recommended reading for anyone with an interest in the 2012 races, particularly the Presidency. What follows is my concise reader's guide to polling analysis.

Polling organizations inherently carry some kind of bias; they poll certain groups of people, sometimes more from one side of the political spectrum than the other. The manner in which the polling questions are posed can also affect the result. A poll that begins with a negative premise built into the questions asked can expect a more negative response than questions parsed more moderately. These inherent biases mean that some polls give results that fluctuate considerably from the established norms of polling on a certain topic.

Therefore, it is critical to look at  averages of several similar polls to get a more accurate reading on what direction the political wind is blowing. Aggregate polling information is easily available from many sources in the internet age, RCP, for example, posts daily numbers that combine information from several polls in several categories (i.e. approval rating; Obama v. Romney; likeability, etc.). Looking carefully at polling information can help identify outliers and tone down excitement over surprising numbers that may, in fact, mean very little.

The VP Game

On Monday Mitt Romney's campiagn announced that Beth Myers, a long time aide very close to Romney personally, will conduct the search for a Vice Presidential nominee. Among the candidates expected to receive consideration are freshman Senator and Tea Party darling Marco Rubio from Florida; Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell; Wisconsin congressman and architect of the eponymous plan, Paul Ryan; New Jersey Governor Chris Christie; and Rob Portman, also a freshman Senator, from Ohio.

There has been and continues to be much speculation about the VP position. It's an appealing theme for the press: the "who will be the nominee" game. It is fairly likely it will come down to one of the above, though a sleeper candidate is always possible.

Please note the lack of any women on the above list. Susana Martinez, Governor of New Mexico, and Kelly Ayotte, Senator from New Hampshire, have been mentioned but appear unlikely for personal and/or political reasons.

My early prediction is Portman, coined the "do no harm candidate" by Larry Sabato. While not as energetic or exciting to the base as Rubio or as blustery as Christie, Portman, if chosen, would bring reliable conservative bona fides from a critical swing state to the ticket. Though the power of a VP nominee to swing his/her state in a national election is probably limited, such influence cannot hurt, particularly if Ohio proves to be a very tight race in November. Portman's fiscal credentials are strong; he was George W. Bush's director of the Office of Management and Budget in 2006 and 2007 and before that U.S. Trade Representative. The Romney campaign knows that the winning narrative for them is to focus above all else on the economy and Portman can play an effective supporting role in that drama as it plays out. Portman represented Ohio in the House for 12 years before going to work in the Bush administration so he brings political experience to the table. By all accounts he is without any disqualifying weaknesses. After the hurly-burly of the primaries, with the nomination all but sewn up, Romney needs the kind of quality and consistency in his Vice Presidential nominee that Portman can provide.

I expect the Romney campaign to hold off on announcing their choice for some time. There is little political advantage to making the choice quickly and giving the Obama reelection team more time to plan and attack. When that time does arrive, however, I believe we will see a Romney/Portman ticket in 2012.

Rosengate

On Wednesday night Hilary Rosen, a strategist at the political consulting and media firm SKD Knickerbocker, appeared on CNN and, while chastising Mitt Romney for relying on his wife Ann for advice about what women voters want, claimed Ann Romney had "never worked a day in her life." Rosen's comments set off a media and social media firestorm that has continued into Thursday's news cycle.

The Romney campaign seized upon Rosen's comments as an opportunity to attack the Democratic Party and the Obama administration on the topic of women. Media outlets and blogs continue to approach this as a significant story and, clearly, the more leverage the Romney team can get out of it the better.

The Obama administration immediately disavowed Rosen's comments and made clear that she is not a part of the campaign. Michelle Obama, herself a stay-at-home mother, encouraged respect for all mothers and women via her Twitter account.

My sense of it is that while Rosen's comments and the Romney campaign's attempts to leverage them may be exciting in the short term, they will have a short shelf life. I agree with Josh Marshall at TPM that the Republican response to Rosen is less an effective change in the narrative than it is an articulation of the concern (not yet desperation) that team Romney has regarding his standing in polls of women voters. Mitt Romney's campaign strategists know perfectly well that he cannot win in November if he does not improve his numbers with women. The narrative that they put forward, that the Democrats have manufactured a "war" on women, disguises their very real concern about their candidate's ability to stay competitive with President Obama in the crucial battle for women's votes.

Update: Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post seems to agree.

More on the March 2012 Jobs Report

An interesting, slightly more optimistic take on the March jobs report from John Cassidy at the New Yorker.

Bill Clinton and the 2012 Election

Josh Lederman has a piece in thehill.com today that engages in cost/benefit analysis on the topic of Bill Clinton actively participating in the Obama 2012 election campaign. Lederman suggests that while Clinton could help Obama with certain demographics, it is possible that the former President could overshadow the current one, leaving the Obama strategists with the question of how, where and when to use Clinton in the campaign.

The answer should be clear: Former President Clinton will play a critical role in the election of 2012. A powerful personality and a gifted politician, Bill Clinton brings enormous cache with the crucial swing vote demographic including, but certainly not limited to, working class white men, a weak point in the Obama reelection strategy. But beyond Clinton's impact with swing voters is that his presence on President Obama's team reminds people of the economic prosperity of the 1990's. This election will be profoundly affected by the state of the economy between now and November, and voters, particularly working class swing voters,  remember, more than anything else about his Presidency, that the economy was pretty good when Bill Clinton was President. Linking his campaign to this memory can only help President Obama in his pursuit of a second term and could, in fact, help him immensely.

The March 2012 Jobs Report

A few thoughts in light of the disappointing (though not surprising) March jobs report out today:

Today's numbers throw cold water on the enthusiasm sparked by the more positive numbers of the last several months. The economy added only 120,000 new jobs in March after adding more than 200,000 in each of the previous three months. Unemployment dipped 1/10% lower, to 8.2%, largely because fewer people sought work. This is not good news for the economy or for the reelection campaign of President Obama.

Lost in the political banter amongst the punditry is the grim reality that the previous three months positive numbers were, really, not so positive. This is in part because the jobs that have been added are, by and large, not good paying jobs. As Robert Reich points out, this is reflected in the very slow increases in consumer spending in the first quarter of 2012. Public sector employment (see The Fiscal Times here) and good middle class private sector jobs are simply not growing or are, in fact, shrinking.

Amid all the back and forth about what today's numbers may or may not mean for the President, as well as what they may or may not mean for Mitt Romney, it is important to remember that real recovery depends on middle class job opportunities. Good paying, permanent middle class jobs are necessary for sustainable economic growth. Put simply, people with good stable jobs spend, and when they spend the economy grows.

WallPol, a blog about politics.