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Still No Straight Answers on Social Security

Oct 12, 2012Tim Price

After two debates, progressives are left with more questions than answers about the fate of one of our most important social programs.

After two debates, progressives are left with more questions than answers about the fate of one of our most important social programs.

It’s been a few decades since then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill first referred to Social Security as “the third rail of American politics,” but judging from the way the candidates in this election have avoided the subject, it still has plenty of juice left. There was a brief dust-up last fall when Rick Perry claimed the program was a Ponzi scheme, but his subsequent flameout in the Republican primaries was so spectacular that the details were quickly forgotten. Since then, most of the focus has understandably been on Paul Ryan’s plan to turn Medicare’s guaranteed benefit into a voucher that grandma and grandpa can add to their coupon clippings. If we’re really lucky, sometimes we even get to debate the wisdom of dismantling Medicaid. But in the last two debates, the candidates have made statements about Social Security that raised more questions than they answered and suggested that the program’s future may be in doubt regardless of the election’s outcome.

Aside from the fact that President Obama seemed to have downed an entire bottle of Nyquil before his first debate with Mitt Romney, one of progressives’ biggest gripes about his performance concerned his decision to take Social Security off the table. “You know, I suspect that, on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position. Social Security is structurally sound,” Obama said last Wednesday, adding that “It’s going to have to be tweaked” but “the basic structure is sound.” That raises two questions: First, do they actually agree, or was Obama overcome by the spirit of compromise that sometimes compels him to give his opponents the benefit of the doubt when they’ve done nothing to earn it? Second, and perhaps even more importantly, exactly what sort of “tweaks” would the candidates support?

Sadly, we didn’t learn the answers to either of these questions, since moderator Jim Lehrer is allergic to follow-ups, but commentators on the left have hazarded a few guesses, and most of them aren’t very optimistic. Writing at The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner makes one of the stronger cases for why we should worry about Obama’s commitment to preserving Social Security benefits. He notes that Romney has pledged no changes to Social Security for those in or near retirement, which carries the unsubtle implication that everyone else is probably screwed. But Kuttner argues that instead of going on the attack, the Bowles-curious Obama “is softening up public opinion to accept very similar cuts” and “giving away what should be one of the clearest differences with Romney.” Dean Baker concurs that “tweak is a code word used by people who want to cut Social Security but lack the courage to say it explicitly.”

While it might be safer to assume the worst, it would be more charitable to read Obama’s comments as an acknowledgment that there are policy tweaks that would genuinely strengthen Social Security. Jeff Madrick provides a good overview of some ways we could extend the program’s solvency without reducing benefits or raising the retirement age. He also notes that Social Security is in no real danger and that fixing its finances is a fairly easy task, even though it’s often lumped in with Medicare and Medicaid as part of an all-encompassing “entitlement crisis.” But raising the cap on payroll taxes doesn’t seem to be the type of tweaking Romney has in mind, and even with no changes the program is projected to pay out full benefits for another 21 years. So why wouldn’t Obama choose to heighten the contrasts instead of conceding the argument before it’s begun?

That question only became more urgent at last night’s vice presidential debate, as Paul Ryan defended his support for privatization. Responding to moderator Martha Raddatz’s comment that “Medicare and Social Security are going broke” (they’re not), Ryan agreed that “these are indisputable facts” (see above) and argued that “if you reform these programs for my generation, people 54 and below, you can guarantee they don't change for people in or near retirement.” Well, that’s great for them, but what does it mean for the rest of us who were sort of planning on growing old one day?

Ryan, who once derided Social Security as a “collectivist system,” is the author of a failed plan that would have transferred some Social Security funds into private investment accounts (more on that in this great piece by Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert). Last night, Ryan again claimed that privatization would “let younger Americans have a voluntary choice of making their money work faster for them,” whatever that means. It’s certainly true that if his plan had come to fruition after he originally proposed it in 2004, their money would have disappeared a lot faster during the financial crisis. Luckily, that proposal became so toxic when President Bush tried to pass it that his own party wouldn’t allow it to come to a vote. That’s probably why Ryan took care to point out that Mitt Romney doesn’t support such a plan. Instead, Romney wants to “slowly raise the retirement age over time,” an extremely regressive policy that would disproportionately hurt the poor people who most depend on Social Security. What a relief.

Biden offered a much stronger contrast on Social Security than Obama did, but he still left some questions unresolved. He stated clearly and firmly that the Obama administration would not privatize Social Security, which is the least we can expect from a Democrat given that the public version is one of his party’s greatest legislative achievements. He also argued that “to cut the benefits for people without taking other action you could do to make it work is absolutely the wrong way,” which is more reassuring but still leaves the administration some wiggle room to accept cuts as part of a Grand Bargain™. It’s certainly a weaker promise than the one he made in August, when he told supporters, “I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security” if President Obama is reelected. Thanks, Mr. Vice President, but is there any chance we can get that in writing?

If Social Security wasn’t so essential -- if it didn’t lift millions of elderly people out of poverty, offer peace of mind to all Americans in their retirement, or provide critical survivors benefits that Ryan acknowledges his own family received – it might be easier for progressives to accept this kind of hedging as part of the vagaries of messaging in an election year. But Social Security really is that important, and it has powerful allies arrayed against it in Washington who make little secret of their desire to take an axe to the program. It deserves to have an equally powerful and committed advocate defending it in the White House. It’s clear that Mitt Romney won’t fill that role, especially after he chose the architect of privatization as his running mate and heir apparent. Barack Obama still could, but progressives will have to convince him that there’s no room for ambiguity.

Tim Price is Deputy Editor of Next New Deal. Follow him on Twitter @txprice.

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Did the Vice Presidential Candidates Have Anything to Say to Millennials?

Oct 12, 2012

The debate was certainly heated, but did it offer any solutions to the next generation? Members and staff from the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and Pipeline weigh in.

Grant Ferowich, Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network, Wake Forest

The debate was certainly heated, but did it offer any solutions to the next generation? Members and staff from the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network and Pipeline weigh in.

Grant Ferowich, Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network, Wake Forest

As Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney stated in consecutive debates, one message is clear: they stand for a strong(er) military. Indeed, Paul Ryan’s supposedly ruthless and draconian Budget Plan actually increases defense spending by 20 percent. The budget-minded Republicans apparently have a tainted perception of foreign policy. Since the end of the Cold War, the percentage of our national budget devoted to security has hardly changed. We are in an arms race with ourselves.

Despite attempts to reassure citizens with promises of security and protection, it seems that the Republican mindset fails to grasp that a bigger military means a bigger government. Furthermore, as the Simpson-Bowles Bipartisan Deficit Reduction plan notes, our nation cannot afford to be the world’s police. Currently, the U.S. spends more money on the military than the next 15 countries combined. This includes China, Russia, and the U.K., and the list goes on. It simply is not coherent for the Millennial Generation to accept a platform that promises to cut Pell Grants in half while increasing the size of a bloated military. And we of course must not forget the warning of General Dwight D. Eisenhower: “The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.”

Dante Barry, Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network Chapter Services and Summer Academy Coordinator

We still got the standard talking points from both Vice President Joe Biden and from Congressman Paul Ryan, and we are still without answers to issues like education, immigration, money in politics, and so forth. I was disheartened to also not hear much for young people, despite Ryan's disconcerting remarks about Social Security. Politically, Vice President Biden did what President Obama should have done last week, though it was an unsuccessful appeal to undecided voters, similarly to last week's presidential debate with an aggressive Romney. I'm glad that we were able to see a well moderated debate that challenged both vice presidential candidates on their actions and their stances. 

David Weinberger, Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline, New York

While it was clear to me that Vice President Biden was able to give the more articulate, level-headed, and progressive vision for America's future last night, he could have been a bit stronger. It's great that both campaigns claim to be fighting for a "fair shot" for the middle class. Indeed, the Obama administration has made some valiant efforts to bring quality education, health care, and other social and economic services to the middle class. But the administration has also made significant progress in ensuring that all Americans, regardless of background or location, have access to the environmental services that underpin public health and economic opportunity. Low- and middle-income Americans don't have a fair shot without clean air, clean water, and access to clean and affordable energy resources. The Obama administration's environmental record is by no means an environmentalist's dream, but the air, water, and climate standards issued under it have been essential--and uncelebrated--components of the recovery. The American economy is nothing without the people who drive it, and that means that we must continue to invest in sustaining healthy communities. Environmental standards and green job investments are not points on the president's record to run away from. The Obama campaign should embrace these accomplishments as linchpins in his recovery effort. By separating the president's environmental record from his economic recovery agenda, the campaign is opening itself up to misguided accusations that the administration has sacrificed economic goals for investments in what Congressman Ryan claims is a failed green jobs program. I'll take a solar installation job and clean water over asthma and a Medicare voucher any day.

Naomi Ahsan, Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network, University of Rochester

My greatest disappointment last night was the lack of detail on Ryan's too-good-to-be-true budget. Twenty-seven days out from an election that everyone says is about the economy, we still don't have any specifics on the proposed tax cuts. Reducing potential revenues is the opposite of paying down a debt. We do know that austerity for our social insurance programs is going to materially increase Americans' suffering. Ryan confirmed tonight that he and Romney don't understand America's struggle. It's not just about saving money and having more to spend. It's also about having a healthy economy with jobs, mobility, and the nurturing of research, education, and entrepreneurship. I do applaud the attention to American foreign policy, which historically and regrettably lacks democratic character in representing American opinions and respecting global humanitarian needs. 

Mawish Raza, Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline, University of Maryland

Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan not only surprised viewers with a gripping, emotional debate, but one that was surprisingly stimulated by substance. Regardless of my personal views, both candidates presented the issues and represented their views through meaningful content. Unlike the enthusiasm, or lack thereof, during the first round of presidential debates last week, both exuded exhilaration throughout the course of the debate, from Vice President Biden’s sarcastic expressions to Congressman Ryan’s searing comebacks. Moderator Martha Raddatz also played the role of an actual moderator by pressing relevant, controversial issues, such as the war in Afghanistan, abortion, and the role of religion in policy. When discussing the tragic loss of Ambassador Stevens and the Obama administration’s reaction to the recent Middle East protests, Congressman Ryan indicated that the appropriate response to a tumultuous minority faction would have been to dismiss the film entirely and only deplore the violence that resulted. With all respect, Mr. Congressman, the glaring problem with this hard power approach -- which would apply to all international affairs -- is that it fails to create a relationship and dialogue with the resentful populations. Mr. Congressman, you probably didn’t notice, but during this misguided "Muslim rage," there were other protests going on in regions such as Cairo -- led by students occupying the American University of Cairo -- for high tuition rates. Following this was a protest by doctors, also in Cairo. This is what the Arab Spring seemed to have missed and what the Romney-Ryan campaign has blatantly ignored. By simply reducing an entire region to the heinous crimes committed by an extremely small, misrepresenting faction, we are encouraging the anti-western sentiment that caused the loss of Ambassador Stevens, continues to influence the ayatollah's negation, and triggers terrorist organizations to keep targeting American civilians. We should not defend these individuals and organizations that jeopardize and endanger our security and react aggressively. At the same time, rather than aggressively imposing our political standards and values on another culture through the presence of our military, we need to create dialogue and conversation that will stabilize a longer-lasting framework. When honoring the loss of a dearly departed diplomat, it is only just to continue the mission and values that he worked so hard to develop in Libya.

 

Tahsin Chowdhury, Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network, CCNY

The vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan was indeed entertaining, and it was pleasant to see my peers who are not usually politically active to engage in a political discussion through social media. Some people were tweeting/writing statuses about Joe Biden’s use of the word “malarkey” and his laughter, and others were focused on more substantive issues. I had some issues with both candidates and their performance in the debate.

While Joe Biden was substantively the stronger candidate, consistently disproving Paul Ryan’s statements and aggressively standing his ground, it should not go unnoticed that he presented a degree of unprofessionalism in the debate. While Paul Ryan was making his arguments, Vice President Biden consistently interrupted with an argument and trying to disprove his opponent. My “left wing New York" peers were the first to criticize Mitt Romney about interrupting President Obama, but were reluctant to disagree with Joe Biden’s same tendencies. The same happened with my Romney supporter peers except vice versa. This double standard and stubborn bias is unproductive for American “political growth” of the youth and it’s sad to see that people’s objective approaches to a political discussion are waning in numbers. Joe Biden was also inaccurate on one of his statements about the fact the U.S. Embassy that was attacked in Libya did not request more diplomatic security personnel. Many journalistic sources claim they have. While I do not believe Joe Biden bluntly lied, I believe he is inaccurate and this was most likely an internal management flaw within the intelligence community. It does take government a lot of clearance to get from one end to the other. Vice President Biden should have cleared this information with his staff before the debate.That was a lack of responsibility from his end.

Paul Ryan had difficulty criticizing the opposition on foreign policy. When asked about how he’ll increase spending on the defense budget, he denied he said that and made the attempt to justify/fabricate what he said. Biden justified reallocation of defense funds elsewhere in the government by saying that America is ending its wars abroad slowly and money may not be well spent if such funding remains. Paul Ryan attempted to justify adding more to the budget by saying “we need more security” when we clearly spend more money on defense than all the other countries combined. He stumbled on the question of “what’s our current national security threat” and displayed utter weakness of his grasp of the topic. With regards to Afghanistan, they both tended to agree. However, Paul Ryan made the attempt to disagree, which showed weakness. Vice President Biden did a powerful job maintaining the argument that U.S. military was successful in training Afghani security forces.

Democrats and Republicans switched places from the first debate in the sense that Vice President Biden was playing offense and Paul Ryan was playing defense with a weak offense. He maintained accuracy of substance -- for the most part, that is -- and that makes him the “winner” in common wisdom. I look forward to the debate on foreign policy. It will be difficult for Mitt Romney to criticize President Obama on the topic, because much was accomplished in Obama’s four-year term as president: Osama Bin Laden was assassinated, Muammar Gadhafi was murdered and Libya “liberated,” Egypt democratized, and American interests in Southeast Asia were reaffirmed. And Obama continued many Bush policies while affirming the Iraq and Afghanistan troop withdrawal.

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Mitt Romney's Guiding Principle is Mitt Romney

Oct 12, 2012Richard Kirsch

Romney keeps shifting his policy positions, but he never loses sight of his self-interest.

Romney keeps shifting his policy positions, but he never loses sight of his self-interest.

There’s a lot of talk these days about the way Mitt Romney is once again shifting his political principles. He’s Etch-a-Sketched himself from the hard-right-winger in the primaries into a reassuring centrist in the debate last week. But for me, Mitt Romney has always had one firm guiding principle: Mitt Romney. I don’t mean this just to be another Romney put-down. It really is what has guided his life in business and in government. More importantly, it provides a devastating way for President Obama to make sense for the American people of what Romney really stands for. If the president tells the story below, he will clinch his reelection.

At Bain Capital, making as much money as possible for Mitt Romney was clearly his guiding principle. Romney didn’t care whether the companies Bain bought hired workers or fired workers; it only mattered whether they made more money for Bain and Romney. And he got very rich.

When he entered politics, running for U.S. senator and then governor of Massachusetts, Romney said whatever he had to say in order to win votes in that liberal state, even on issues with honest and profound moral divides, like abortion. Since he had to be pro-choice to be elected governor, he was pro-choice. The same was true for supporting gun control. And when he negotiated a bipartisan health care plan, he bragged that it would be a model for the nation.

So when it came to staking out his positions as a candidate for the Republican nomination, the only question Romney had to answer was: what do I need to say to win? The answer: become anti-choice, pro-gun control, and virulently anti-immigrant and reject my signature legislative accomplishment. If that’s what it takes to win the nomination, so be it. And with enthusiasm, because the one thing Mitt Romney firmly believes in is Mitt Romney.

We saw that kind of all-out enthusiasm last week in Denver, when Romney once more ardently professed to what Americans most want to hear. And because all great salesmen deeply believe in their product, he came across as a sincere, committed leader, selling the one product he’s always been selling: Mitt Romney.

But within that strength is his Achilles' heel, if President Obama strikes at it. Obama must tell Americans that the only thing Mitt believes in is Mitt. It is a simple story that will get Americans quickly nodding their heads in agreement. In the debate next week, the president will point out that Romney is lying and changing his positions, and Romney will deny that and stand up tall for what he says he now believes. At some point, Obama needs to just cut through it all.

The president should start with: “Mitt, I do know what you believe in. It’s Mitt Romney.” He should then tell the story I laid out above in a few short sentences and clinch the argument with:

"And now you’re doing it again! All of a sudden you’re Etch-a-Sketching the Republican primary, going back on everything you campaigned for around the country over the last year. Because you know you can’t get elected president as the extreme conservative – your words, Mitt – you’ve been bragging about. The problem, Mitt, is that you can’t Etch-a-Sketch your way as president. To serve as president, you have got to stand for more than Mitt Romney. You have to have core values, not just what’s best for you. You need to have a firm, moral foundation for what’s best for America."

From a rhetorical point of view, this argument has two powerful elements. The first is what pollsters call “an obvious truth.” People will immediately get it, as it will makes sense for them of the conflicting stories they are hearing about Romney. The mystery will be solved.

The second rhetorical punch is that there is nothing Romney can say in response that doesn’t reinforce the president’s message.

The fundamental reason that Romney’s debate performance worked so well last week is that in this period of economic struggle – “Middle-income families are being crushed” in Romney’s words – many swing voters are open to voting for another candidate for president if they think he can be trusted and has their values. That’s why the Obama campaign has focused almost entirely on undermining Romney. Obama’s closing argument needs to be this: Mitt Romney doesn’t believe in your family or America. The only thing Mitt Romney believes in is Mitt Romney. 

Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a Senior Adviser to USAction, and the author of Fighting for Our Health. He was National Campaign Manager of Health Care for America Now during the legislative battle to pass reform.

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The Debate You Didn't See: FDR vs. Mitt Romney

Oct 11, 2012

After President Obama's lackluster debate performance last week, Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow David Woolner argued that Obama should take a lesson from FDR, who attacked his opponents' underlying philosophy instead of the obscure details of their plans. The writers of The Daily Show must have had the same thought, because this week they aired footage of Roosevelt in action.

After President Obama's lackluster debate performance last week, Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow David Woolner argued that Obama should take a lesson from FDR, who attacked his opponents' underlying philosophy instead of the obscure details of their plans. The writers of The Daily Show must have had the same thought, because this week they aired footage of Roosevelt in action. In the clip below, watch as FDR lacerates his opponents for the "smooth evasion" of promising everything for nothing. (h/t Upworthy)

 

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What Obama Never Heard Before the Debate: "Mr. President, You're Wrong."

Oct 9, 2012Bo Cutter

The odds are still on the president's side, but he needs to learn how to make a stronger case for himself to win a second term.

The odds are still on the president's side, but he needs to learn how to make a stronger case for himself to win a second term.

The aftermath of the debate in the media was entirely predictable. Democrats were depressed and said as little as possible. The Republican columnists took -- are still taking -- very, very long victory laps. I try to keep a balanced view of all this, but it does seem to me that people like George Will, Charles (the world's sourest writer) Krauthammer, and Peggy Noonan left all thought behind, registered as Republican precinct captains, and simultaneously underwent an ecstatic transfiguration to a wondrous level of enlightenment. This is a lot to load on one debate.

There is no question that President Obama was clobbered in this debate. I've gone back and watched it again and if anything a second watching of this harshens the verdict. I can't remember anything quite like this in all the debates I've seen. But it is useful to ask: what are the consequences and what's the evidence? Are the election odds now completely turned upside down? Should we start practicing to say Secretary of State Bachmann?

The best evidence for this side is the national polls, and the best piece I've seen was this analysis by Nate Silver today. The average of all of the post debate polls suggests that Obama now leads by 1.7 percentage points nationally and Romney gained 2.9 percentage points after the debate -- about what he lost with his "47 percent" comments.

How have these changes affected actual election probabilities? A fair amount. Nate Silver is currently forecasting that President Obama has a 74.8 percent chance of winning, with 302 electoral votes and a national margin of 2.5 percentage points. InTrade bettors give President Obama a 63 percent chance of winning, and the Iowa Election Market gives him a 67 percent chance. Real Clear Politics's "forced choice" map gives Obama 294 electoral votes. All have moved a fair amount toward Romney. As one example, according to Nate Silver's probabilities, Romney's chances moved up from 14 percent to 25 percent -- an 80 percent improvement.

But national polls don't tell you much at this point. We elect presidents on a state by state basis. There are only six states in the country where the odds are less than 80 percent of either an Obama or Romney win. Those states are Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida on the Obama side, with all except Florida suggesting at least a 60 percent chance of an Obama win. The sixth state is North Carolina, with a 69 percent chance of a Romney win. I've yet to see a single statistical analysis that showed the debate changed the voting odds of even one state.

So in my view, we're back to where we were. Not a revolution in probabilities, but a big self-inflicted wound for President Obama. Romney's debate performance moved this election from one in which he was teetering on the brink of disaster to one in which he has an outside chance. The odds remain substantially in the president's favor, but the outcome is a hell of a lot dicier for him than it had to be.

But why did this result happen? On my second watching, four things jumped out to me beyond the fact that Mitt Romney was very good. First, the president was extremely cautious because he knows this race is basically going his way. Second, the president was obviously irritated and set on his heels at being directly challenged. Third, the president did not contend well in the cut and thrust of the political policy arguments. Fourth, the president had no agenda or narrative.

And on the premise that hard lessons, if they don't kill you, can teach you something if you let them, I think the president needs to draw these big lessons: presidential management and self-awareness matter, and agendas or the lack of them matter. And nothing, nothing in politics can be taken for granted.

A lot of the issue comes down to this: White Houses -- all of them -- are mostly royal courts. Everything revolves around the president; the place is mostly filled with courtiers who ask themselves every morning, "How can I get in or stay in the president's good graces?" And this is just as true of the president's pals from home as anyone else. People plot intricately how to be sure the president sees them working themselves into exhaustion just for him. Presidents are very, very, very unlikely to be directly challenged on anything. They think they are; they always see themselves as the kind of person who wants to be challenged. But they aren't challenged. Everything is couched painstakingly politely; any possible disagreement is muted. Presidents never hear the simple declarative statement, "Mr. President, you are wrong." Years before I went into a White House, a senior staff member of the Johnson White House told me, "in the last half hour of his last day in office, the president can still make you or break you." None of this is planned; it all just happens.

Presidents are changed by all of this. (I think the only president of the last 100 years who was not changed was Dwight David Eisenhower.) On being elected, they are prone to deciding their staff was right: this election really is a massive endorsement of "me" and the voters really do believe in all of my ideas. Early-term White Houses are so caught up in the sheer wonder of being them that they easily dismiss challenges, challengers, and disagreements as wrong-think. They see the press as a bunch of disrespectful, unruly, and uncouth folks -- this is true, but beside the point -- whom they try to avoid. (President Obama has had very, very few real press conferences.) As a term progresses and things get hard, the internal forces of White Houses and Cabinets edge reality farther and farther away, and mostly what a president hears is how unreasonable the critics are. If anyone dares to point out that there isn't a narrative and there isn't an agenda, they are buried in talking points and the president is reassured.  

This cycle is as old as the hills and it happens to almost all of them. And it sure looks as though it happened to President Obama.

So what does he do for the next debate, and a second term? First, he can't overreact. Al Gore's mistakes in his first debate led him to be so polite and deferential in the second debate that he made it a non-event. The president can't make the opposite mistake. Second, he has to get better in a hurry at the cut and thrust; he cannot allow his staff to lull him into the impression that it all wasn't so bad after all. Finally, he has to find a way to tell his story and underline his agenda so that normal people beyond the rarified levels of the White House know what he's talking about. (Take as an example Governor Romney's "plan." It is for the good, and against the bad. That's it. It will disappear completely from sight in 30 nanoseconds should he be elected. But it's a "plan" and you don't beat "plan" with "no plan".)

For a second term, President Obama should consider the following. A real transition in which policies and people are rethought. Exposure to more debate, to much more of the uncouth media. A major policy decision very soon after the election so that he determines the debate. A simple, credible story about America's future.

But right now there is less than one month remaining and the second debate is impending. The president is, without question, the single most talented speaker in American politics today. He is ahead today. There is no move Governor Romney can make that President Obama cannot counter. But if he doesn't sprint for the next 27 days, this could end badly.

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bo Cutter is formerly a managing partner of Warburg Pincus, a major global private equity firm. Recently, he served as the leader of President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) transition team. He has also served in senior roles in the White Houses of two Democratic Presidents.

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How the Truth Lost the Debate

Oct 9, 2012

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney went head-to-head last week in Denver, and by all accounts, it didn't go so well for the incumbent. But beyond the debate's impact on the horse race, it was also a bad night for facts and reality-based policy discussion. Read below for our full coverage and analysis.

Roosevelt Reacts: At the Presidential Debate, Mitt Misleads and Obama Omits

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney went head-to-head last week in Denver, and by all accounts, it didn't go so well for the incumbent. But beyond the debate's impact on the horse race, it was also a bad night for facts and reality-based policy discussion. Read below for our full coverage and analysis.

Roosevelt Reacts: At the Presidential Debate, Mitt Misleads and Obama Omits

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow David Woolner, FDR's Debate Lesson for Obama: It's About Capturing Americans' Imaginations

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick, Obama Failed to Defend Government from Romney's Bluster

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bo Cutter, A Painful Debate Proves the Candidates Still Aren't Answering the Real Questions

Roosevelt Institute Fellow Mike Konczal, Worried About TBTF Banks? Ignore Romney's Attacks in the Debate.

NND Deputy Editor Tim Price, New Deal Numerology: Down and Out in Denver

 

And don't miss...

Roosevelt Institute Fellow Matt Stoller, Post-Debate Analysis: The Media Can Now Get the Electoral Horse Race It Wants

NND Editor Bryce Covert, Women Went Missing in Last Night's Presidential Debate

 

Mitt Romney image via Shutterstock.com.

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Price Point

New Deal Numerology: Down and Out in Denver

Oct 5, 2012Tim Price

This week's numbers: 11; 27; 37; 4; 10.3 million

11... is an incurious number. That’s how few questions moderator Jim Lehrer asked during Wednesday’s 90-minute debate, though he posed hard-hitting follow-ups such as “The role of government. Your view?” and “Why is this happening? Is this real life?”

This week's numbers: 11; 27; 37; 4; 10.3 million

11... is an incurious number. That’s how few questions moderator Jim Lehrer asked during Wednesday’s 90-minute debate, though he posed hard-hitting follow-ups such as “The role of government. Your view?” and “Why is this happening? Is this real life?”

27... is a deceptive number. That’s how many misleading statements Mitt Romney made during the 38 minutes he spoke, as calculated by Think Progress. Fact-checkers are still puzzling over how to grade his closing statement, “This statement is a lie.”

37... is a surplus number. That’s how many times the national deficit was mentioned, while issues like climate change and labor rights didn’t come up at all. Apparently the topic of “domestic policy” ranges from Simpson all the way to Bowles.

4... is a genderless number. That’s how many times women were acknowledged during the debate. Half of them bartered for a good swing state anecdote, and the other two got a pass for being related to Barack Obama.

10.3 million... is a chirpy number. That’s how many tweets were sent during the debate, making it the most-tweeted political event ever. And only about half of that came from parody Big Bird accounts.

Tim Price is Deputy Editor of Next New Deal. Follow him on Twitter @txprice.

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A Painful Debate Proves the Candidates Still Aren't Answering the Real Questions

Oct 4, 2012Bo Cutter

Obama laid back, Romney reinvented himself, and neither candidate grappled with our economic future.

The debate was painful to watch. The effects are unclear but can’t be good for President Obama. I didn’t understand it, and I still don’t think the presidential campaign has grappled at all with the real issues of our economic future.

Obama laid back, Romney reinvented himself, and neither candidate grappled with our economic future.

The debate was painful to watch. The effects are unclear but can’t be good for President Obama. I didn’t understand it, and I still don’t think the presidential campaign has grappled at all with the real issues of our economic future.

There is no point in mincing around this. President Obama was nowhere near his best. He both missed an opportunity to effectively end this campaign and inflicted unexpected damage on himself. At the level of theater and tactics, the president seemed diffident and defensive, while Governor Romney came off as more dynamic and in the moment. While the debate wasn’t close to the layup the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page claimed (but then the odds are high the Journal had that editorial written long long ago), no one should kid themselves about viewers’ opinions: CBS’s poll had Romney winning 46 percent to 22.5 percent, CNN had it 67 percent to 25 percent Romney, and Google 48 percent to 25 percent. But the election prediction markets didn’t change much, and Nate Silver at the election site FiveThirtyEight puts the odds of an Obama win at 86.1 percent.

My own guess is that this debate will in the end be seen as having virtually no effect on the actual presidential election. However, that’s only a guess based on past history – these debates rarely have much effect unless someone makes a horrendous mistake. But the debate will energize the Romney campaign, and it was the last-minute emergency resuscitation of a campaign on the verge of a death spiral. And it has to be said that Romney’s remarkable shifts in position and emphasis resulted in his making a better case for himself than he has come close to making in the past. That ought to worry President Obama’s strategists.

Turning now to those Obama strategists, another effect of this debate ought to be to energize them. Their public stance will necessarily combine whistling by the graveyard with denial. That cannot be their actual private conclusions. This campaign will go to the end, and President Obama has to have a better narrative than he had last night. 

There were several aspects of the debate I didn’t understand. First, why did the president appear so laid back? If the actual strategy was Muhammad Ali's rope-a-dope strategy in the "Rumble in the Jungle,” it was the wrong strategy. You cannot possibly decide in the first week of October during a presidential election that playing not to lose is a good idea.

Second, how or why did Mitt Romney get away with such a fundamental restatement of positions he has taken throughout this whole campaign? As one major example, Governor Romney put forward a while ago a tax reduction plan that has been widely criticized as making no arithmetic sense. He flatly denied any such plan at least twice during the debate. But Marty Feldstein wrote an entire op-ed piece defending “Mitt Romney’s plan” published in the Journal on September 28. I disagreed with important aspects of Professor Feldstein’s article, but he is a friend, a major figure in economics in America, and not given to writing long pieces defending imaginary policies. I cannot understand why the president did not forcefully observe that we were all watching Etch-a-Sketch in action.

Finally, why didn’t President Obama have a simple, straightforward economic narrative and story? Debates of this kind are won through clear and compelling stories, not through the recitation of program detail and statistics no one remembers.

As a final thought, neither this debate nor this campaign have come to grips with the future. This doesn’t surprise me: campaigns are rarely about issues and choices anyway. They are more often managed by political consultants and strategists precisely to avoid issues and choices. And so, at the end of this interminable campaign on November 7, the voters will have no clue what comes next. “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bo Cutter is formerly a managing partner of Warburg Pincus, a major global private equity firm. Recently, he served as the leader of President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) transition team. He has also served in senior roles in the White Houses of two Democratic Presidents.

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FDR's Debate Lesson for Obama: It's About Capturing Americans' Imaginations

Oct 4, 2012David Woolner

President Obama spent too much time picking apart the details of his opponent's plans instead of attacking the underlying philosophy as FDR did.

President Obama spent too much time picking apart the details of his opponent's plans instead of attacking the underlying philosophy as FDR did.

Let me warn you and let me warn the Nation against the smooth evasion which says, “Of course we believe all these things; we believe in social security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present Administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them—we will do more of them we will do them better; and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.”

But, my friends, these evaders are banking too heavily on the shortness of our memories. No one will forget that they had their golden opportunity—twelve long years of it.

Remember, too, that the first essential of doing a job well is to want to see the job done. Make no mistake about this: the Republican leadership today is not against the way we have done the job. The Republican leadership is against the job's being done. — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936

From the moment he took office in the New York State Senate until his death as president roughly 35 years later, Franklin D. Roosevelt relished the toss and tumult of the political arena. As he once told a reporter in the midst of his early struggle with New York’s Tammany Hall political machine, “there is nothing I love as much as a good fight” – and FDR was brilliant at it.

This passion for the art of politics—and for the basic principles that underpinned his political philosophy—served FDR extremely well over the course of his public life. In fact, few politicians in the 20th century, with the exception of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and his cousin Theodore Roosevelt, ever came close to FDR’s ability to master the nation’s political discourse.

What fueled FDR was his fundamental belief in the power of government to create a more just and equitable society, and his deep knowledge—from personal experience—of the forces of wealth and privilege that had little if any regard for the plight of millions upon millions of Americans who struggled day by day to provide for their families. FDR never forgot that it was these “malefactors of great wealth,” as his cousin TR labeled them, who brought the country to ruin in 1929, and he spent the better part of his presidency in battle against the forces that wanted to return the United States to the so-called Gilded Age of unfettered capitalism.

The American people understood this, in part because they had lived through the economic collapse that brought on the Great Depression, but also because of the clear and unequivocal message that FDR delivered time and time again about the nature of struggle between those who sought to exploit the free-market system for their own ends, and those who believed, as he did, that the only way to make capitalism work in the long run was to make sure that it provided a basic measure of economic security and opportunity to all Americans, not just those at the top.

It was this conviction that led the Roosevelt administration to initiate Social Security and unemployment insurance, to guarantee bank deposits through the FDIC, or to protect investors—both small and large—through the establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The aim here was not to create “trickle-down government,” or a generation of dependents, as Governor Romney would have us believe, but rather to use government to ensure that the millions who toiled in the nation’s farms and factories might receive a decent wage and a small measure of economic security against what FDR called “the hazards and vicissitudes of life,” such as the loss of a job or poverty-ridden old age.

We now take many of these programs for granted, but in FDR’s day they aroused fierce opposition, particularly from the well-heeled conservative elite, who did everything they could to try to discredit both the president and his ideas. In their view, FDR’s philosophy of government was tantamount to socialism, an un-American attempt to subvert the Constitution and rob the nation of the individual initiative that stood at the core of its—and their—success.

But FDR would have none of this, and in a series of withering attacks on what he called “a generation of self-seekers” he implored the American people to join him in abandoning “our tolerance of the abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life.” Indeed, as he reminded the American people in the summer of 1936, it was critical that the nation reject a system of governance where “for too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality,” where “a small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor—other people's lives.”

For Roosevelt, the great issues of his day were not simply about whose “plan” might deliver more jobs for the American people, or provide a greater chance at reducing the deficit, but about the fundamental moral and economic structure of our society -- a society where government must remain determined “to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and [where] we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous.”

Like FDR in 1936, President Obama now faces the same sort of “powerful influences” that in Roosevelt’s words “strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.” But judging from last night’s debate, one would hardly know it. Instead of attacking the underlying philosophy behind Governor Romney’s call for the restoration of the types of policies that led to the Great Depression and the Great Recession—policies that in Romney’s words would rid the country of what he calls “the web of dependency” among the “47 percent”—the president spent too much time trying to explain the differences between the two men’s various “plans.” Given Governor Romney’s penchant for leaving out the details of his various proposals to reduce the deficit and grow the economy, perhaps this is understandable, but in doing so the president failed to capture the imagination of the American people.

This is unfortunate, for Governor Romney is correct when he says this election is about choosing very different paths for our nation. Will we embrace the type of society that was built in the New Deal? A country where the reforms of the 1930s helped the middle class flourish in the decades after World War II? Or will we embrace the philosophy of government that has become increasingly dominant in the past 30-plus years -- a philosophy of government where, as the Census Bureau recently reported, the average male worker is making the same hourly wage adjusted for inflation that he was making in 1978, while the average CEO’s pay over the same period has sextupled and the income of the people in the top 1 percent has grown by 600 percent?

For Roosevelt, the answer was obvious, and he was not afraid to state it “boldly and plainly.” As he said in his speech to the 1936 Democratic Convention:

The defeats and victories of these years have given to us as a people a new understanding of our government and of ourselves… It has been brought home to us that the only effective guide for the safety of this most worldly of worlds, the greatest guide of all, is moral principle…

We cannot afford to accumulate a deficit in the books of human fortitude.

In the place of the palace of privilege we seek to build a temple out of faith and hope and charity…

Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales.

Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

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Roosevelt Reacts: At the Presidential Debate, Mitt Misleads and Obama Omits

Oct 4, 2012

After the first presidential debate last night, which focused entirely on domestic policy, Fellows and staff from the Four Freedoms Center, Campus Network, and Pipeline weigh in with what was said, what was left out, and what was just an outright fib.

After the first presidential debate last night, which focused entirely on domestic policy, Fellows and staff from the Four Freedoms Center, Campus Network, and Pipeline weigh in with what was said, what was left out, and what was just an outright fib.

Thomas Ferguson, Senior Fellow, Roosevelt Institute; Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Boston; Contributing Editor, AlterNet:

My first reaction is simple: These guys have some nerve talking so cavalierly about teachers. Virtually from their first words, both the president and Governor Romney got lost in a fog of details. They begged questions, frequently argued from different premises, tossed off too many details without context, and rarely held a focus long enough for many in the audience to discern what they were talking about. The effort was a case study in how not to illuminate very much.

So what? I’d guess that Romney’s endless talk about “jobs” may persuade a few of his listeners that somehow his arithmetic actually does add up, but that number probably will not be large. I suspect, too, that the president’s highlighting how Romney’s voucher plans might change Medicare even for Americans now in their fifties probably was widely understood, too, and will work in the opposite direction. Possibly Romney, by not looking wooden, might pick up some tiny increment of public support. But my guess is that this debate changed few minds for all the talk of a Romney “victory.” My own takeaway is that both candidates’ harping on the genius of the American people and the virtues of the market system made it easy to lose sight of virtually all the important points at issue. I’d say the candidates battled to close to a draw, while America lost.

Dorian Warren, Fellow, Roosevelt Institute; Associate Professor of Political Science & School of International & Public Affairs, Columbia University:

Debates are rarely game-changers in presidential elections, and last night's debate was no different. The quick assessments of Romney's more aggressive performance compared to President Obama's weak and sleepy responses are correct, as far as they go. But we should remember that incumbents always do poorly in the first debate. As political scientist Sam Popkin argues, sitting presidents don't have time for debate prep, and they aren't used to being challenged the way Romney challenged Obama last night. Clearly, the Obama team's strategy was for the president to play it safe and not come across as an angry black man. We also know that Obama has never been a good debater -- recall the 2007 Democratic Primary debates where both Hilary Clinton and John Edwards put in consistently better performances. Obviously, we know who won the nomination despite his weak performance relative to his adversaries. What will happen now through the next debate will be fact-checking the claims made by both candidates followed by obsessive poll watching to see if and how the numbers move. In the end, of the small number of voters uncommitted, last night's debate wasn't decisive nor did it sway potential voters one way or the other. 

Joelle Gamble, Deputy National Field Director, Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network:

What was noticeably absent in last night’s debate was the mention of the role of everyday Americans in the economy, health care, and governance. Candidates talked about making strong investments in the future, but they did not elaborate on the role future Americans play in making their promises a reality. The bottom line for both campaigns was essentially this: “Vote for me and everything will be (or continue to be) better. Nothing bad will happen to people who are comfortable with their lives. Those who are unhappy with things will only see immediate benefits because of my policies.”

But this is a quintessential flaw in our current electoral political system. Citizens are simply voters and nothing more. We show up to the polls and mark our calendars for the next major election. For this reasons, political candidates have resigned themselves to only telling us what we want to hear before an election instead of what we need to hear to be invested in their policies afterwards. For either candidate to execute their plan well, a fully engaged citizenry is needed throughout their entire four years in office. Their success is dependent upon our continued participation on November 7th.

This participation requires a shared responsibility for the efficacy of our economic recovery. Some people will have to waste less gas or change their habits if we want to be more energy-efficient in the future. Others will have to adjust to a new system of health care if we want to be healthy as a country in the future and lower costs. The fact of the matter is, in order to keep moving in a positive direction, things will change for everyday Americans. The presidential candidates need to make it clear that we will have to be participants in that change if we want to be a better nation.

Jeanne Tilley, Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline, Greater Boston:
 
Millennials, if you went to bed after the debate feeling disheartened, that’s okay. You weren't alone. That debate was not for us. I love that Dodd-Frank got so much play, but President Obama and Governor Romney each missed the mark on talking to younger generations -- particularly on education.
 
President Obama mentioned twice that he wants funding to hire “100,000 math and science teachers,” and Governor Romney gave schools here in Massachusetts a mostly deserved tip of the hat for being among the best in the country. But while these statements came during a discussion of the role of the federal government, they failed to drill down on the role of education and thus the role of educated citizens in the American social framework.
 
I was disappointed that the candidates avoided discussing two key aspects of education policy last night. First of all, I wish that the DREAM Act had been raised. It’s plausible that this will come up as part of the foreign policy debate in the coming weeks, and I try to maintain hope that eventually we can have a comprehensive immigration reform debate. But the DREAM Act is not really about foreign policy and national security. It is about creating opportunity for young, undocumented Americans to enter the hallowed demographics of “small business owners” and “middle-income families” that everyone courts so strongly during election season. American demographics are changing, and in order to remain competitive on the global stage, we need to embrace the talented, committed young people who are already here and give them every opportunity to succeed.
 
Teachers’ unions were also roundly ignored -- perhaps not surprising given recent controversies, but still unfortunate. (In fact, unions as a whole were not mentioned once, and even the ever-popular auto industry got but one brief line.) Millennials are teaching in droves, typically through structured service programs, before graduate school or entering the broader job market. This teaching bent is mainly temporary, however; most programs last only two to three years. 
 
I think President Obama’s idea to hire 100,000 STEM teachers is a great one. But once schools have recruited and trained all these teachers, the trick is to keep them in the classroom working their magic with American school children and to make sure they feel supported by their parents, schools, and government outside the classroom. The unions may well have a powerful and positive role to play in striking this balance. The time to talk it over and find out is now. American education statistics no longer top the world. For candidates who talk about global competitiveness and making sure small businesses have someone to hire, leaving education out of this debate is a huge oversight.
 

Rahul Rheki, Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network Senior Fellow for Health Care; Senior, Rice University: 

To me, the philosophical difference between the president and Governor Romney -- the visions they put forth for the role of government in America -- could not have been more stark. The barbs traded over healthcare were particularly emblematic of this dichotomy. Whereas Romney lambasted the ACA's "unelected board" for rationing care -- the IPAB is only advisory, mind you -- while distancing himself from his own signature health reform achievements in Massachusetts and proposed Medicare voucherization, President Obama embraced the provisions of the ACA that provided universal coverage, ended pre-existing conditions clauses, and ensured a thriving American social safety net for the coming decades. The competing choice, in my mind, was evident: the challenger's "every man for himself" versus the incumbent's "we're all in this together."

Tim Price, Deputy Editor, Next New Deal:
 

Given how much time the candidates spent talking past each other last night, it’s odd that some of their biggest flubs came in areas where they actually agreed, or at least claimed to. For Romney, it was health care reform – his most significant achievement as governor, and the one he’s barely been able to mention during this campaign for fear of conservative revolt. Though he was able to dodge most of the president’s criticisms throughout the debate by adopting new policy positions on the fly, his hair-splitting about whether Romneycare should be a model for national legislation was the least convincing part of his performance. Pressed to explain why he’d repeal the Affordable Care Act given that it’s essentially a scaled-up version of the plan he adopted in Massachusetts, Romney seemed to argue that Romneycare might be an appropriate model for every state, but not all of them at the same time. If states are the laboratories of democracy, he apparently wants Massachusetts to keep a tight hold on its patents.

As for President Obama, when he wasn’t wandering through a fog of obscure policy details, he was conceding far too much ground to conservatives. One of the most eyebrow-raising moments of the night was when Obama began the discussion of entitlements by declaring that he and Romney share a similar position on Social Security. Do they really? If so, progressives have a lot more to worry about than we thought, since Romney’s running mate is the author of a plan that would privatize it. Then there was the question about the need to cut deficits, where instead of rejecting the premise and making the case that we need a bigger deficit to create jobs, Obama defended his budget plans as Bowles-Simpson with a cherry on top. Instead of articulating a bold progressive vision for the economy and a strong defense of the social safety net, he often sounded like a moderate running in a Republican primary.

Rajiv Narayan, Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline, California:

We bring as much of our own perception to the debates as the presidential candidates add with their responses and rebuttals. Having recently landed my first job out of college, I understand the importance of building a labor force with diverse skills and an economy rich with opportunities. But what I understand to be even more important is the community of support that got me from my diploma to my first paycheck. That means teachers. Tonight I saw one candidate who praised teachers, but was unwilling to keep intact those programs supporting classrooms for political reasons. Likewise, I was disappointed by the political “strategery” at work on health care reform. When we reach a point where Governor Romney is threatening to dismantle the (unspecified, seemingly unpopular) parts of a health program cloned from his health program, in order to reinstate from the states, where "democracy's experiments take place," the most successful version of that program, I'm afraid we've become audience to Dadaist political theater.

Hannah Locke, Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network Senior Fellow for Energy and Environment; Senior, Goucher College:

C-SPAN, Fox News, Twitter, Facebook---tax policy, Big Bird, educational vouchers, zingers. The Internet was alive with puns, expressions of disgust, tired and overused commentary, and the usual spin. Is this what the battle for the soul of our country looks like? Boiled down to cherry-picked numbers, to stuttering sentences of little substance, to talking over the moderator? What does our Millennial generation garner from such a discussion? We laugh and point and tweet and snark, but I’ve started to wonder whether that level of  “political engagement” is worth bragging about.

Meanwhile in Venezuela, the people are taking to the streets, risking their own lives to demand a fair and transparent democracy. The challenger, Henrique Capriles, heads a coalition of opposition groups who contest not only the continuation of Chavez’s isolating economic practices, but the proliferation of violence and fear in Venezuela. What started as state-sanctioned Robin Hood behavior quickly bred into a festering, sprawling disease of chaotic violence where anyone—poor, rich, liberal, conservative—runs the risk of getting in trouble with the street gangs or the military.

So next time we bemoan our elections, let’s take a step back and put things into perspective. We aren’t on a black list for going to an opposition leader’s website. We aren’t risking a bullet in the head every time we step out to a rally, stump speech or fundraiser. We aren’t risking our families’ future on the hope that our country can be something better than one of the most violent nations on this planet.

We go to the polls, and we vote. Sometimes, we should take a moment to recognize how much we’ve got, just as much as we recognize what we don’t have yet.

Kyle Shepherd, Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline:

My favorite passage of the night came from the candidates' back and forth on federal regulation of the economy. "You couldn't have people opening up banks in their garage and making loans," Romney said. "Every free economy has good regulation. At the same time, regulation can become excessive."

I love imagining people loaning money out of their garage. For all the talk of the American people's ingenuity, it seems like someone on the right must think this is a good idea. But this statement also points to the key differences between the two candidates on regulation, albeit in broad strokes. And as a progressive, this is a big deal to me, because Romney wants to eliminate important financial protections that don't have enough teeth to begin with.

Dodd-Frank, like much government oversight of the economy, can be easy to criticize. Detractors say it’s unwieldy, opaque, and brings unintended consequences. It's also not immediately apparent how it has solved the problem of banks being "too big to fail." Romney played on this by saying he wants to repeal and replace it with more intelligent regulation that will create jobs. This was a somewhat new proposal from him, as he has previously stated he just wants to repeal it, but it's also important to note he remains characteristically vague on the subject, making deeper analysis of his policies difficult. It's safe to say, however, that it would probably involve decreases in regulation on derivatives and relaxing the restrictions that have been imposed on the large, systematically important firms. This would debatably result in more jobs, but would certainly result in more banking profits.

Obama didn't do much to advance any new policy initiatives. He instead defended Dodd-Frank, mentioning the "reckless behavior" of Wall Street and touting the capital requirements and bank "living wills" imposed by the legislation he supported. There are some good things in Dodd-Frank, and it's much needed legislation that will hopefully strengthen over time as regulators adapt and enforce its stipulations.

The discussion of the role of government in regulating financial institutions is a vital one. These are important issues that get to the heart of inequality, corporate welfare, and consumer protection in our country. We need people to be able to borrow money with confidence they are not being taken advantage of, and the banks need to understand their risk is real and can't be passed over to someone else along the financial daisy chain. The debate on this issue needs to more fully acknowledge the risks inherent in the economy, who should assume responsibility for those risks, and what policies can make that happen.

Unfortunately, the debate as framed last night presented only two options. Either Dodd-Frank, a bill mercilessly attacked by lobbyists, only supported by key financial interests in order to prevent a stronger bill from passing, and only partially enforced -- or weaker regulations and restrictions as offered up by Romney.

Lydia Austin, Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network Senior Fellow for Economic Development; Senior, University of Michigan:

It seems that the hype surrounding this debate -- the numerous news articles and coverage dedicated to it -- was greater than the actual event. Both candidates held their own, both threw out a lot of facts related to tax policy and Medicare, and both were on the defensive for some amount of time. Romney had the most at stake coming into tonight: he desperately needed to rebrand himself as someone who understands the middle class and is responsive to Americans' frustrations. I think he effectively did that. Not an outstanding performance by either candidate, but in terms of who shifted the public discourse, it was definitely Romney (though now the Internet is blowing up with Big Bird photos).

Ken Lefebvre, Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network member; Senior, University of Massachusetts:

Last night we witnessed two opposing narratives clash, unmitigated in their stances, and mostly unmoderated in their discourse. We saw a president tired from four years of entrenchment in the daily minutiae of national politics, and we saw an ever-eager opponent going into this fight with the gloves off. It could be said that Mitt Romney won this debate through his writers and an ability to look presidential. At the same time, Obama did what he had to to maintain his steady ground and consistent policies. Little was accomplished in this debate, and both candidates made the same talking points together that they had for months before. No new details were offered. You really could take segments of their commercials and edit them as if they were the debate. Emotional responses may tip the polls toward Romney for the time, but voters learned little from either candidate in this display.

Jean-Ann Kubler, Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network member; Senior, Skidmore College:

After sifting through the talking points and empty rhetoric of last night’s debate (we get it, 5 trillion is a big number), the American public is left with very little substance on which to compare the incumbent Obama and challenger Romney. The two candidates made bold attempts, particularly during the economic segment of the debate, to appear as if they were presenting facts and specifics about tax plans, the deficit, and creating jobs. But in the end, what did viewers learn other than that Romney and Obama have starkly different opinions on how theoretical math works? Can Obama decrease the deficit by spending more and taxing more? Romney said no, but demonstrated no evidence other than his lack of faith. Can Romney spend $2 trillion extra on defense without raising taxes on the middle class to pay for it? Obama said no, and the math seems to back him up, but he was unable to present his argument in a manner that would be digestible by a common viewer. What the common viewer could easily discern, however, was that two presidential candidates with four Ivy League degrees between them, who both claim that the key to their governing style is bipartisan leadership, were unable to put aside polarizing, partisan rhetoric long enough to provide the American people enough information to make an educated decision about the future of our country.

Michelle Tham, Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network member; Sophomore, American University:

The presidential debate had a lot more number-crunching than I expected. However, this didn't mean that all the numbers were correct. One ironic rhetorical point Romney has been using throughout his campaign (and continued at the debate) was "disregard the fact-checker and studies." Yet Romney's tax plan is defended by the Heritage Foundation. Furthermore, Romney mentioned clean coal. Since 2009, clean coal has already been identified as more of a misleading political frame than actual clean energy. Currently, there's no economical way to capture and eliminate carbon emissions from coal itself -- dirty or clean. On the same note, as Romney praises the idea of clean coal, he also misunderstands the collapse of the solar company Solyndra. There is no Solyndra scandal. Solyndra was simply a startup solar-power equipment manufacturer that was funded under the Bush administration. Solyndra fell because of the lack of demand and overseas competition. It has nothing to do with Obama's initiative for higher clean energy funds. Finally, the idea of investing in Solyndra itself adheres to Romney's idea of economic growth. 

Mawish Raza, Roosevelt | Institute Campus Network member:

The start of the presidential debates last night had stirred up much more excitement than the debate itself was able to offer. Governor Romney presented an aggressive side that clamored over President Obama’s passiveness, but aside from the candidates' demeanor, the debates didn’t touch on many key issues, including women’s rights or immigration reform. Even during the dialogue on education and health care, neither candidate even mentioned the right for a woman to make her own decisions with her body or education being a right for all individuals. 

Governor Romney repeated his commitment to education several times, along with his plan to allow parents to choose where to send their children. That’s great, but what about kids coming from broken families and being raised in poverty? What about human trafficking victims who are sold to the streets until disposed of? What about the failing education systems in inner cities? Because commitment to the education system doesn’t provide kids in these communities with instantaneous financial support, education often isn’t an answer for them. In these environments, the only plausible option for them may be to turn to drugs or crime. And when we focus on the family, where the emphasis on education will be placed on the parent’s engagement with their child, we are neglecting entire populations of youth around the country. This creates a cyclic culture of poverty for young people.

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