Keller @ Large: Are You Better Off Now Than 4 Years Ago?
BOSTON (CBS) - Four years ago, candidate Barack Obama cashed in at the polls on his fresh face and public dismay with the status quo by framing the election this way:
"The real question is will this country be better off four years from now?"
Listen to Jon's commentary:
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Four years later, if that's the question on voters' minds as they enter the polling place, we're likely to have a new president.
So the Obama re-election campaign has a new, somewhat different message, formally unveiled in a reportedly lackluster rally in Ohio over the weekend.
Let's quote CBS News political analyst John Dickerson writing on the website Slate:
"While his message still contains the old… optimism of a brighter tomorrow, the force of the president's new argument is not so much that Americans could achieve greatness but that they must lock arms to keep Mitt Romney from dragging the country back to a dark past. Hope and change are still alive, said the president, referring to his 2008 election themes. But this time fear is also his running mate."
Perhaps that will work.
My guess is, it won't work very well.
For starters, even if they could turn the race into a referendum on the challenger instead of the incumbent, it's going to be hard to spin Romney into a fearsome figure.
It seems the worst anyone can say about Romney is that his political positions are flexible, subject to revision – you know, like an Etch-A-Sketch.
That may turn off some, but it makes it hard to also then paint him as a dangerous ideologue bent on imposing a hard-right agenda.
The two images are mutually exclusive.
And I'm not sure too many swing voters will be moved by a campaign that tries to mix the rhetoric of hope and change with blame, negativity, class warfare, and fearmongering.
If that sort of thing sold, McCain and Palin would be in the White House.
It's going to be a long, nasty campaign.
And the president's lame launch party didn't exactly get things off to an encouraging start.
You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. and 12:25 p.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.
