Mitt Romney clearly anticipated that he'd be dancing on the grave of Obamacare. But now that health reform is alive and well, he has to inveigh against it for the rest of the campaign. He launched Plan B yesterday, with his vow to kill the law "on day one."

Memo to Mitt: Knock yourself out.

He's not likely to get much political traction. A new Gallup poll says that only six percent of Americans cite health reform as a top-priority issue; most people are weary of it, or bored with it, or confused about it. And swing voters aren't likely to buy Romney's "repeal and replace" rap anyway, because most of his rhetoric is meaningless. And given his historic status as the first and only governor to champion an insurance purchase mandate, he's a bad messenger for repeal.

It takes roughly two seconds of cognitive thought to spot the fundamental flaw of his "repeal" pitch. Unless the Republicans pull off the impossible in November, and win a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate, a President Romney will never repeal Obamacare - not "on day one," or day 100 or day 200. He'd have to pull it off next year, because Obamacare takes full effect in 2014. Not gonna happen. In the fallback scenario, Romney and the congressional GOP would have to hack away at the reform law in piecemeal fashion, year after year, messing with people's newly-won benefits every step of the way.     

So Romney's "day one" talk is strictly red meat for the conservative voters in 2012, and maybe they'll swallow it. On the other hand, every time he attacks health reform and the purchase mandate, they may well remember that this is the guy who first championed health reform and the purchase mandate.

Here's Romney, as Massachusetts governor, captured on video in 2006: "With regards to the mandate, the individual responsibility program which I proposed, I was very pleased to see that the compromise from the two (legislative chambers) includes the personal responsibility principle. That is essential for bringing health care costs down for everyone and getting everybody the health insurance they deserve and need."

Romney has alternately ignored his own signature achievement - and embraced it by insisting that his reform law was just one state's solution. But his law imposes a tax/penalty on citizens who refused to buy health coverage, as does Obama's law - and Chief Justice John Roberts has blessed that provision as constitutional. Indeed, Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said yesterday that the high court ruling "does bring Romneycare back into play a little bit."

It sure does. How can Romney assail Obama for imposing a "tax increase" (albeit, only on those who refuse to compy) when he himself championed the same thing? Here's Romney in 2009, writing about his Massachusetts reform law in a USA Today guest column: "Using tax penalties, as we did...encourages 'free riders' to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others."

And if Romney he keeps vowing to kill Obamacare, swing voters may well demand to know what he would do to help the uninsured, the seniors, the kids with preexisting health problems, the young adults who can't afford their own coverage, the women who routinely suffer gender discrimination in the insurance marketplace, and the workers who lose coverage when they lose their jobs.

David Frum, the former George W. Bush speechwriter and veteran conservative commentator, said yesterday that, thanks to the high court's ruling on Obamacare, "2012 is now also a referendum on Mitt Romney's health care plans. The president can now plausibly say that a vote for the Republicans is a vote to raise prescription drug costs on senior citizens, and to empower insurance companies to deny coverage to children for preexisting conditions."

In theory, Romney could rebut Obama by detailing his "repeal and replace" agenda, but he's not big on specifics. Aside from his endorsement of the Paul Ryan budget plan (which is very specific about slashing Medicaid, and thus imperiling health coverage for poor people), Romney has almost nothing to say. He vows to give states "the incentive and flexibility to experiment," whatever that means. He won't commit to providing coverage to people with preexisting health woes (one of the most popular features of Obamacare); instead, he's just vowing to protect the "continuously insured" - the people who already have coverage, but who might lose it once they get sick.

Romney refuses to be pinned down on specifics; he'd rather lie about Obamacare. That's a lot easier. Yesterday, for instance, he claimed that the health reform law would add "trillions to our deficits and to our national debt" - whereas, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the law will actually lower the deficit over the next decade. Indeed, last year, the CBO projected that the repeal of Obamacare would increase the deficit by roughly $200 billion over the next decade. Moreover, the CBO has already determined that the cost of Obamacare (namely, the subsidies that will make health insurance affordable for all) will be roughly one-third the cost of Romney's proposed tax cuts - which, naturally, are tilted heavily toward the rich.

So we're stuck with the GOP's last-ditch rhetoric for another four months ("Obamatax," screams the new logo on Fox News). Indeed, as I noted this morning in my newspaper column, Chief Justice Roberts teed up the Republicans even as he upheld the law: "Members of this court...possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our nation's elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices."

But if Obama can finally get it together to tout the features of his own law - an historic boon to roughly 30 million Americans, whose future would be imperiled by Republican hostility - the president might frame that choice to his (marginal) advantage.


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The U.S. Supreme Court's decision today to uphold health care reform is a huge political victory for President Obama, a stunning rebuke to Obama-hating conservatives, and an embarrassing blow to Mitt Romney (who had been readying a noon speech about how the presumed thumbs-down verdict exposed Obama as a failure). But let's not forget what this ruling is really all about.

It's about the 33 million Americans who have gone without health coverage. It's about the 17 million kids with pre-existing health conditions. They're the big winners here, and it's a credit to Chief Justice John Roberts that he didn't want to leave those people high and dry. Nor, frankly, did Roberts want to go down in history as a partisan hack in lockstep with the Republicans who for decades have done squat on the issue of health care reform. More »

The U.S. Supreme Court did some serious business yesterday when it struck down most of Arizona's strict anti-immigrant law, but there were some laughs as well.

Second runner-up, as an inadvertent practitioner of comic relief, was Justice Antonin Scalia, whose ranting dissent was short on case law and long on campaign rhetoric. At times he skipped the legal scholarship and simply attacked President Obama on policy grounds - claiming without evidence, in the manner of a right-wing blogger in mom's basement, that Obama is indulging illegal immigrants because he "desperately wants to avoid upsetting foreign powers." (Presumably, he'll trot out his broccoli argument on Thursday, when the court rules on health reform.) Scalia already has a job for life, so it's a mystery why he feels the need to audition for a gig on Fox News.

First runner-up was Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who somehow claimed that the ruling - which decreed that three of the four Arizona provisions were unconstitutional, thus vindicating President Obama - was actually a "victory" for her. The court majority ruled that Obama was right to insist that the federal government trumps the states on immigration policy; that Arizona can't make it a crime for illegal immigrants to seek employment; that Arizona can't arrest immigrants for failing to carry registration documents; that Arizona can't authorize its cops to arrest someone on the belief that the person may have done something that makes him deportable; and that even though the "show me your papers" provision remains in force, the court will be scrutinizing it closely. Despite all that, Brewer claimed "victory" and said she'd been "vindicated," thus demonstrating that she is in dire need of a course in remedial reading.

But the comic relief winner, hands down, was Mitt Romney.

The list of things that Romney won't talk about is ever lengthening - he won't say what tax loopholes he would close, what federal agencies he would eliminate, whether he would repeal Obama's directive that halts the deportation of illegal immigrants' children, whether he'd support fair pay for women, and much more - and now we have a new one. He refuses to say whether he supports the Arizona ruling.

It's easy to see why he dodged reporters all day yesterday. If he applauds the ruling, he ticks off the intolerant nativists in his conservative base. If he condemns the ruling, he ticks off the Hispanic voters who are crucial in a growing number of swing states. And because the "show me your papers" provision has survived, he risks more trouble with Hispanics if he applauds its survival. (Indeed, he's already trailing Obama among Hispanics by roughly 40 percentage points - as I mentioned in my Sunday newspaper column - in part because he recently hailed the Arizona law as a "model" for the nation, a remark he'd dearly love to Etch a Sketch.)

So what Romney did yesterday was the bare minimum. He released a boilerplate statement about how states should have the right to enact immigration policies (that's not what the U.S. Constitution says, but never mind). The statement did not address the high court ruling at all.

Which brings us to the comedy.

The reporters covering Romney sought clarity yesterday from Romney spokesman Rick Gorka. Here's most of what happened (thanks to Politico for the transcript).

Gorka: "The governor supports the states' rights to craft immigration laws when the federal government has failed to do so..."

Q: So does he think the high court case was wrongly decided?

Gorka: "The governor supports the states' rights to do this. It's a 10th Amendment issue...."

Q: So he thinks the Arizona law was constitutional?

Gorka: "The governor believes the states have the rights to craft their own immigration laws, especially when the federal government has failed to do so."

Q: What does he think about the provisions that were struck down?

Gorka: "...The Supreme Court ruling is a direct response of the president failing to address this issue."

Q: Does Romney support the law as it was drafted in Arizona?

Gorka: "The governor supports the right of states, that's all we're going to say on this issue..."

Q: But does the governor have a position on the Arizona law besides supporting the right of states?

Gorka: "This debate is sprung from the president failing to address this issue, so each state is left and has the power to draft and enact their own immigration policy."

Q: But the Arizona law does very specific things, does the governor support those things that the Arizona law does?

Gorka: "We've addressed this."

Q: What is his position on the actual law in Arizona?

Gorka: "Again, each state has the right within the Constitution to craft their own immigration laws since the federal government has failed..."

Q: You're not answering. What does he think about the policy in Arizona? Is it fair to say he has no opinion? You're refusing to give us an answer.

Gorka: "Arizona, like many other states in this nation, take it upon themselves to craft policies for their own specific states. Governor has said repeatedly that states are a laboratory of democracy, what one state crafts may not work in others but ultimately this, again, goes back to the president failing to deliver on his campaign promises..."

Q: The statement that Mitt Romney released this morning doesn't say one way or another whether he agrees with the Supreme Court decision. Does he have a reaction as to whether he agrees with this decision?

Gorka: "Again, Jim, the states have the right to craft their immigration policy when the federal government has failed to do so."

Q: But the Supreme Court just said that three out of four of those provisions, the states didn't have the right to do that, so how does that square with the governor's statement?

Gorka: "States have the right to craft their own immigration policies..."

Q: So if your statement stands as you expressed it then, you want to remain silent as to whether or not Romney accepts today's decision.

Gorka: "Arizona has the ability under the 10th Amendment to address an issue that the federal government - "

Q: But that wasn’t part of - the judges were not ruling whether or not the 10th Amendment exists today. They were ruling on an Arizona statute...Can states do anything, even if it defies the Constitution?

Gorka: "That's not what I was saying..."

Q: Why isn't the governor up here talking about this? He's not addressed any of this.

Gorka: "The governor has issued a statement..."

The flak finally said, "We have to get going." As do I. I'm supposed to be on vacation - at least until the health reform ruling on Thursday.


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Due to a disturbance in the force - otherwise known as vacation - I'll be mostly off the grid for the next week, returning to my regular schedule on Monday, July 2.

I say "mostly," because duty requires that I breach leisure time to weigh in on the Supreme Court's Obamacare ruling. And maybe the Arizona immigration law ruling. Yeah, some vacation.

Fortunately, the hiatus starts right now. In my absence, I'm recommending the story of the day, courtesy of The Washington Post. Back in February, in swing-state Ohio, Mitt Romney lamented the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries: "They’ve been able to put American businesses out of business and kill American jobs. If I’m president of the United States, that’s going to end." But when he ran Bain Capital, he evinced no disdain for the outsourcing of jobs. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Post reports:

"During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Romney says that his free-market experience is proof that he knows how to create American jobs. But this documented story undercuts his core message.

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The partisan showdown over Fast and Furious is a classic case of Washington dysfunction. The House Republicans think they have the political advantage, the White House thinks it has the political advantage, but the truth is that most 2012 voters - especially independents with scant affinity for either party - will likely roll their eyes and ignore the whole farce and furor.

Rightly so. Most Americans are focused on the economy, not on whether Attorney General Eric Holder is right to withhold some documents (as opposed to the 7,600 documents he has already handed over) which may or may not shed more light on the failings of Fast and Furious, the botched gun sting operation conducted a few years ago by the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. And most Americans aren't likely to debate whether President Obama was right yesterday, legally or politically, when he sought to protect Holder by invoking "executive privilege" for the first time in his tenure, in order to shield those disputed documents from House Republican scrutiny.

Have I lost you yet?

Fast and Furious is a household phrase only in those households that obsessively monitor conservative talk radio and conservative blogs. It's clear, of course, that the program was a disaster. The BATF office, expanding on a sting strategy first used during the Bush administration, allowed U.S.-purchased weapons to pass into the hands of suspected gun smugglers so that the guns could be traced to the Mexican gun cartels. But BATF lost track of roughly 1700 guns, some of which were later found at crime scenes - including the killing of a U.S. border agent in 2010. Holder has already testified about the program on Capitol Hill nine times.

But House Republicans have sought to leverage the program for political gain, conflating Fast and Furious into a metaphor for Obama's supposed incompetence/corruption/duplicity/whatever. That cake was baked from the outset, when the House Oversight chairmanship was handed to Darrell Issa, the car alarm magnate who claimed even before taking the gavel that Obama was leading "one of the most corrupt administrations" in history. (Was this guy asleep during Watergate?)

Yesterday, Issa's committee voted to hold Holder in contempt of Congress, for refusing to hand over the latest batch of documents - the first time a sitting attorney general has ever been found in contempt. (The committee vote was strictly along partisan lines. Natch. The full House will vote next week.) This is a triumphant moment for denizens of the Republican right, who have long hated Holder for all kinds of reasons - but swing voters are surely far less titillated. In terms of the big picture, that's what really matters. Swing voters already view the congressional Republicans with disdain; as the polls have long indicated, Issa and his partisan colleagues are the most unpopular players in Washington.

Forcing a constitutional confrontation with the Obama administration will merely reinforce the perception that the House GOP is insufficiently focused on the kitchen-table economic issues that most voters care about. That doesn't help Mitt Romney. He wants to talk exclusively about our economic ills (albeit with vague or non-existent solutions), and ideally he'd like all the party soldiers to march in sync with his message. Every day that the House GOP obsesses anew on Fast and Furious is a day when the party soldiers are off message.

Which is why the Obama White House seems comfortable fighting the House GOP on this issue. But the political optics for Obama aren't necessarily great, either.

It's true, of course, that presidents have long invoked "executive privilege" to shield material from the legislative branch - George Washington was the first, in 1796 - and that the last 10 presidents, in both parties, have used it as well. But Obama raised the bar for himself, at the outset of his tenure, by promising that his administration would be "the most open and transparent in history." And when he was a candidate, he chided President Bush for tending "to hide behind executive privilege every time there's something a little shaky taking place." (Bush invoked the tradition on four occasions.)

But now that Obama is doing it, we're seeing the usual Washington choreography where both parties switch sides on an issue.

Republicans are banging on Obama for invoking the privilege, claiming that he must surely have something to hide - conveniently forgetting that they defended Bush when he invoked the privilege. And Democrats are standing with Obama on this one, denouncing the Issa probe as a witch-hunting distraction - conveniently forgetting that they attacked Bush when he invoked the privilege.

It's possible that Obama might lose points with swing voters - to the extent that they (and we) are paying attention - simply because "executive privilege" is widely viewed as a pejorative, as shorthand for "hiding something." On the other hand, barring a miracle agreement between the White House and House Republicans, this flap will likely play out in the courts for months or even years, long after the election. The courts have given presidents wide latitude on invocations of executive privilege...would you like me to deconstruct the relevant cases?

I didn't think so.


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Now that the latest manufactured right-wing freakout has been subsumed by reality - no, folks, Obama's environmental agents are not using drones to spy on all-American farmers - let us recount this episode with the bemused disdain that it deserves.

We're well aware of how the conservative "media" gins up and exploits disinformation, for the reasons that need not be spelled out here yet again. Suffice it to say that there is a sizable audience for tall tales of anti-Obama paranoia. The "drone" story is a classic example, which is why it metastasized over a span of several weeks.

By all accounts, the yarn began on May 29, when Nebraska's congressional delegation queried the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of some ticked-off Nebraska farmers. Apparently these farmers didn't like the fact that EPA inspectors flew small planes over the farmland, looking for possible evidence of water pollution.

(By the way, the EPA has been flying these small planes for the past 10 years. The process began under the Bush administration. It's a lot cheaper to scan for water pollution from the air - illegal manure dumping, stuff like that - than it is to dispatch the inspectors on foot.)

The delegation complained to the EPA about the small planes. But within days, thanks to Twitter and a post on a conservative website, the planes had somehow morphed into drones. There was no empirical evidence whatsoever to suggest the use of drones, but, as we know, evidence is a quaint concept of the previous century. If somebody out there simply asserts that Obama's EPA is using drones, then drones it is. Naturally, on June 1, somebody on Fox News said "they're drones."

By June 4, I had logged a dozen emails about these "drones." Here's one classic: "U pal are a disgrace to the 'journalism,' the way U keep ignoring what Barry Hussein is doing, like harassing farmers with his war drones, U should be reporting that," and then he or she went on to invoke the Constitution by misquoting Thomas Paine. I ignored it. But then came Fox News, again, with this breathless story on June 5:

"Republican lawmakers are demanding answers today after learning the Environmental Protection Agency has been using aerial spy drones to spy on cattle ranchers."

Note the way Fox apparatchik Megyn Kelly phrased that sentence, framing it as a given that the drones were real. Then she added: "These are the same drones we use to track down al Qaeda terrorists, flying over Nebraska and Iowa."

Naturally, she didn't bother to cite any source to support her (dis)information. Sources are for sissies. What matters is the assertion. And the lie about the drones was a perfect two-fer: It was a way to taint Obama's overseas successes in the war on terror, by suggesting that he was using drones on real Americans at home; and it was yet another way to paint Obama as a domestic tyrant, by conjuring fresh evidence of socialist overreach.

Kelly's on-air lie was dutifully echoed that same day, in a lie on the Fox News website. The headline: "Why is the EPA Spying on Cattle Ranchers in Neb and Iowa?" The lie was then repeated again on the Fox Business Network, where some in-house talking head called the story "shocking."

Meanwhile, as more conservative websites (including, naturally, The Daily Caller) picked up the drone lie and spun it as truth, more credulous Republicans got into the act. That was a big help to the conservative outlets, which then recycled the (non)story by attributing it to the lawmakers. After all, if lawmakers are complaining about drones, then it must be news. And once something is news, lawmakers can cite "press reports" as the basis for their ire.

Which is what happened in this episode. One Nebraska congressman cited "press reports" about how the EPA was "using military-style drone planes to secretly observe livestock operations." And a Montana chimed in: "The Obama administration has, once again, stepped way over the line."

As recently as last Friday, the Fox News website was still at it: "Republican senator Mike Johanns, who is from Nebraska, has introduced a new bill that would ban the use of aerial drones by the EPA, this after recent revelations that the agency is using unmanned aircraft..." (I love that word "revelations.")

Anyway, lies being more resilient than truth, it took several weeks for the EPA to convince Fox and its disinformation allies that the drone yarn had no basis in factual reality. Fox (to its credit) has since felt compelled several times to correct its reports. Naturally, those viewers and website consumers who are conditioned to think the worst of Obama will continue to believe the lie, but perhaps everyone else will realize that the so-called drones are actually the same small planes that EPA pollution inspectors have been flying since the Bush era.

By the way, here's the item that ran Monday on the Fox website: "Megyn Kelly provided a clarification on this story, saying, 'We identified and discussed the aircraft as being unmanned drones. In fact, the EPA is flying these missions and taking pictures from manned aircraft. We apologize for the confusion."

A "clarification" for the "confusion?"

Worse yet, the "clarification" was dated "July 18."

Keep trying, Fox.


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There's an old saying in politics, borrowed from Justice Louis Brandeis, that "sunlight is the best disinfectant" - in other words, that citizens deserve to know what's going on, that full disclosure is essential to the workings of a healthy democracy.

Accordingly, Senate Democrats have been trying since 2010 to pass a full disclosure bill that would essentially require the rich fat cats and the shadowy special interest groups to come into the sunlight and identify themselves, so that we can find out who's bankrolling our national elections. The high rollers have been unleashed by John Roberts and his fellow Republican brethren, courtesy of the Citizens United ruling, and they're taking full advantage of tax code loopholes that allow them to donate huge secret sums. The least we can do is breach that secrecy. Who, after all, could possibly dispute the notion that we have the right to know the names of these donors?

Take a wild guess who.

Back in the summer of 2010, Senate Republicans, engaging as always in government-by-filibuster, prevented the DISCLOSE Act from even coming up for a vote - despite the fact that as many as 57 senators supported passage. And this year, a similar measure is up for Senate consideration (a vote is slated for next month), yet not a single Republican has signed on to co-sponsor this renewed plea for sunlight.

Indeed, in a speech last Friday, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell attacked the sunlight bill. He contended that "government-compelled disclosure" threatens the "free speech" of those who wish to remain anonymous. He insisted that if the secret donors are forced to reveal themselves, they risk being exposed to "harassment and intimidation" - thereby curbing their free speech, or something like that.

That's basically the new Republican line. It's very different from the old Republican line, as evidenced by the following examples. When it comes to tracking hypocrisy, these folks make it so easy.

The selfsame Mitch McConnell in 2000: "Republicans are in favor of disclosure...The major political players in America (should disclose who they are). Why would a little disclosure be better than a lot of disclosure?" And McConnell in 1997: "Public disclosure of campaign contributions and spending should be expedited so that voters can judge for themselves what is appropriate."

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2001: "The people have a right to know who is contributing t ads that are made in a political campaign."

Sen. John Cornyn in 2010: "I think the system needs more transparency, so people can reach their own conclusions."

Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2010: "I don't like it when a large source of money is out there funding ads and is unaccountable."

House Republican leader John Boehner in 2007 (three years before he voted No on a House full disclosure bill): "We ought to have full disclosure, full disclosure of all the money that we raise and how it is spent. And I think sunlight is the best disinfectant."

There it was again, that Brandeis quote. For many years, it appeared that Republicans really believed it. "Full disclosure" used to be their mantra, their proposed alternative to John McCain's campaign finance reform. Instead of passing a new law that would curb big money in politics, they said, why not just let donors give as much as they want - and let the public know who was giving the money? That way, they said, voters could make informed judgments, because democracy thrives best in the sunlight.

So why have the Republicans flip-flopped so blatantly, moving from sunlight mode to secrecy?

That's an easy one: Because circumstances have changed. Their former convictions have become inconvenient, thus they have been jettisoned.

Post-Citizens United, Republicans are far outpacing the Democrats in secret donations, which is why McConnell and his colleagues now want to sustain the status quo. Crossroads GPS, one of the Karl Rove groups, has reportedly listed 23 unnamed donors who have given a minimum of $1 million apiece; the GOP certainly doesn't want to blow their cover, or scare off future secretive fat cats, by passing a law that would expose them to the light.

So instead, McConnell, in his Friday speech at a conservative think tank, trotted out a bogus argument in favor of secrecy, claiming that rich donors deserve privacy, lest they be exposed to public harassment - a concern that McConnell and his brethren clearly rejected back when they argued for full disclosure.

More importantly, the Supreme Court has never bought the harassment claim; as Justice Scalia wrote in a 2010 case, "Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic coverage." And even in Citizens United, the majority wrote favorably about the importance of full disclosure - which, in their view, helps citizens "make informed choices in the political marketplace," and helps "in providing the electorate with information about the sources of election-related spending."

So there you have it: When it comes to indulging rich donors and powerful special interests, the Senate Republicans are more zealous than even the Roberts court. And barring a miracle return to their jettisoned convictions, they'll block the new sunlight bill this summer and ensure that we all stay in the dark.

I don't like it when a large source of money is out there funding ads and is unaccountable. I've borrowed that sentence from the aforementioned Sen. Sessions. He may no longer believe the words that emanated from his own mouth, but I bet that most of us still do.   


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To appreciate the tactical brilliance of Barack Obama's chess move on immigration - on Friday, the president made it easier for the children of illegal immigrants to stay in this country - just check out Mitt Romney's hapless reaction. More »

In his latest attempt to craft an economic message that will resonate with recession-weary swing voters, President Obama signaled in a speech yesterday that he no longer intends to highlight the slow recovery. He can ill afford to frame the race as a referendum on his own stewardship - Americans are in no mood to be swayed by macroeconomic statistics - so instead he's seeking to frame the race as a stark choice.

In his view, it's not just a choice between Obama and Romney. It's a choice between Obama and Romney - plus Romney's Republican baggage. One theme popped up repeatedly yesterday:

"Governor Romney and his allies in Congress..."

"Gov Romney and his allies..."

"...the economic vision of Mr. Romney and his allies in Congress..."

"Mr. Romney and the current Republican Congress..."

"Governor Romney disagrees with my vision.  His allies in Congress disagree with my vision."

"Governor Romney and the Republicans who run Congress believe..."

Perhaps it's mere coincidence, but Obama yesterday did exactly what Democratic pollsters have been urging him to do. Earlier this week, Stan Greenberg, Erica Seifert, and James Carville - having just conducted focus groups with swing voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania - urged Obama to ditch his campaign pitch about how things are slowly and steadily getting better.

They warned in a public memo, "We will face an impossible headwind in November if we do not more to a new narrative." They said that there should be "minimal discussion of the recovery and jobs created" - because voters aren't buying the stats. Instead, they said that Obama should exude "maximal empathy" for the challenges that middle-class Americans are facing. And he could best do that by drawing a sharp contrast between himself and Romney/GOP. Citing their focus group voters, they wrote: "Romney is very vulnerable. They do not trust him because of who he is for, and because he's out of touch with ordinary people. He is vulnerable on the (House GOP's) Ryan budget and its impact on people. He is vulnerable on the choices over taxes."

Sure enough, Obama spent much of his time yesterday detailing the proposed congressional Republican cuts in popular programs that benefit the middle class - and stressing that Romney is in sync with those Republican priorities, as well as the same Republican priorities (tax cuts for the wealthy, across-the-board deregulation) that helped trigger the great recession in the first place. Therefore: "If you want to give the policies of the last decade another try, then you should vote for Mr. Romney. You should vote for his allies in Congress and take them at their word that they will take America down this (backward) path. And Mr. Romney is qualified to deliver on that plan."

This retooled Obama message is obviously a far cry from the hope-and-change thematics of 2008. This message is all about defining Obama as the lesser of two evils, as the devil you know versus the devil you don't. Granted, there could be some political traction in tying Romney to his fellow Republicans - according to the latest bipartisan NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, only 32 percent of Americans view the GOP favorably, while 43 percent view it unfavorably - but Democrats aren't wildly popular either (their numbers are 39-40), and, on a separate question, a 41 percent plurality of Americans said they are "not at all confident" that Obama "has the right set of goals and policies to improve the economy."

Things might change - it's only June - but right now it appears that Obama is working within narrow parameters. He can't exude too much optimism, because voters don't feel optimistic. (A focus group voter in Ohio: "It's like, how are things getting better? Where? I don't see it. Makes me mad.") On the other hand, if he goes too far with his contrast theme, attacking Romney and the Republicans in tandem, then he risks the charge of being too negative and insufficiently optimistic.

But somehow this debate seems all too familiar. Consider this Obama passage, again framing the race not as a referendum on him, but as a choice between two political philosophies: "Now we have a choice as a nation. We can return to the failed economic policies of the past, or we can keep building a stronger future. We can go backward, or we can keep moving forward."

Obama uttered those lines in a speech two years ago, on June 3, 2010. So his ostensibly new message is somewhat recycled. And we all remember how well that choice-not-a-referendum theme turned out for him in the '10 congressional elections.

He said something else in that June '10 speech, a line that's just as true today: "It's not going to be a real recovery until people can feel it in their own lives." His '12 parameters will remain narrow unless people begin to feel it.

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Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. Granted, for millions of younger Americans, any talk of Watergate is akin to a seminar on ancient Greece, but my Friday newspaper column deals with how little we have learned its lessons. More »

If you want to catch George W. Bush on a bad hair day, check out his head, mounted on a spike, in a split-second scene during the first season of Game of Thrones. More »