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Entries for 'Gary Pearce'
Gary Pearce posted on October 04, 2012 10:23
Mitt Romney sliced and diced President Obama last night. Obama looked like he’d rather be celebrating his anniversary with Michelle. If he keeps this up, they won’t spend their next anniversary in the White House, let alone with 40 million people.
See the rule from my blog yesterday (and my ever-so-accurate prediction): “Bugs Bunny always beats Daffy Duck.” That is, the most comfortable person on stage wins. That was Romney.
From the start, he was crisp, commanding and on-message. In his first answer, he talked about real people’s problems. He ticked off his five points. The whole time, he addressed Obama directly and watched him steadily when Obama talked. The President kept “uh’ing” and looking down. Maybe he was making notes to fire his debate-prep team.
Here’s the real question now: Did Romney tell the truth? He seemed to throw Obama off from the start by simply denying he ever wanted a big tax cut. Huh? I thought that was his whole campaign.
Throughout his career, Romney has had a breathtaking ability to deny he did what he just did – or said what he just said. Will it catch up to him now?
As for Obama, he really hasn’t had a strong public performance throughout this campaign. His convention speech was no great shakes. His bounce in the polls came from his campaign ads, the convention and Bill Clinton. For that matter, Obama has had trouble making his own case since he became President – despite a strong record of achievement.
It’s baffling.
But take heart, Democrats. I’ve been through plenty of bad first debates, on both sides. Jim Hunt slapped Jesse Helms around in their first debate in 1984, but Helms recovered in later debates and, of course, won the election. Jim Gardner stunned Hunt with his aggressiveness in 1992, but Hunt came back strong next time and, of course, won the election.
Still, last night changes the story line. The next two weeks, at least, will be about Romney’s comeback.
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Gary Pearce posted on October 03, 2012 09:23
I have a feeling that Mitt Romney will get a bounce out of tonight’s debate. Not because I play the ridiculous expectations game, but because a Romney bounce is due and he can easily do well.
He needs to set aside all the conflicting and confusing advice candidates always get before debates. I spent almost 30 years doing debate prep, and I found one piece of advice that always works: Bugs Bunny always beats Daffy Duck.
This comes from author-pundit Jeff Greenfield. In the cartoons, Daffy Duck was spewing spittle and flying off the handle. Bugs was cool. And Bugs always got the best of things.
In other words, the most comfortable person on the stage is always the debate winner. Think JFK and Nixon.
Now, it’s hard to beat Barack Obama there. He is Mr. Cool.
But if Romney is confident and steady – especially after his unsteady last few weeks – he will get another look from undecided and weakly committed voters.
Plus, as I’ve said before, the media is looking for a new story. They’re getting tired of writing that Obama has it won.
Romney’s risk is that he overpreps, comes out tight, starts firing off odd “zingers” and sounding stiff and out of touch. Think Al Gore and George H.W. Bush.
If he comes across as an approximation of a normal human being, he’ll be back in the thick of it. And momentum will shift.
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Gary Pearce posted on October 02, 2012 17:19
Here is a debate preview from a TAPster who combines the best qualities of Carter and me: namely, hating both parties equally:
“Political dweebs everywhere will gather around their TVs Wednesday night for the much-anticipated debates between the North Carolina gubernatorial candidates and the Obama-Romney showdown.
“The NC debate is meaningless. The two candidates are good guys and essentially philosophic mirror images of each other. Pat McCrory has such big poll numbers that only a catastrophic debate performance will move the needle.
“The presidential debates, however, could make a difference. A smug Obama will glibly deliver his typical platter of pabulum, and try not to screw up. A superficial Romney will try to prove he cares about 100 percent of Americans, and try not to screw up.
“The undecideds and unaffiliated are sitting out there waiting for a reason to vote for somebody. A juicy debate screwup or two could change the election.”
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Gary Pearce posted on October 02, 2012 13:53
Republicans unhappy with Obama-leaning polls are resorting to what one wit called “the time-honored practice of making things up.” Led by Dick Morris, they engage in imaginative re-engineering of poll results to make things look better for Mitt Romney.
I asked a Democratic pollster I trust about the Republican revisionism. His reply:
“I suspect Romney has a few ‘hidden’ votes (as do most challengers, especially challengers opposing incumbents favored by the media), and Romney has an opportunity to quiet some of the doubt about him in the debates. The latter would help him in two ways. Republicans would be somewhat more likely to participate in polls, and he will begin converting some of the ‘undecided’ voters who are not willing to commit to the incumbent.”
But there’s no arguing that leading independent polls – and the averages of reliable polls – show that Obama has opened up a lead. And swing voters just don’t like or trust Romney.
It’s still close. But close isn’t so close in presidential races. Voters already know about all they’re going to know about both Romney and President Obama. That leaves little room for movement.
One national reporter told me last week he’s looking at coming to North Carolina just because it’s one of the few battleground states where Romney is still within the margin of error.
Maybe the debates will change things. Maybe the media will just get tired of writing the same story and see a Romney comeback.
One way or another, Romney can still win. Even if you don’t make stuff up.
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Gary Pearce posted on October 01, 2012 11:09
If you wonder which party is riding a voter registration tide, here’s your answer: Neither. More than half of the new voters in North Carolina are Unaffiliated.
Since December 2011, some 266,000 new voters have registered in the state. Of those, 53.4 percent (142,209) registered as Unaffiliated. Slightly more registered Republican than Democratic - 61,903 to 57,835 - and 4,246 as Libertarian.
This means that fully one-fourth of the state’s voters are now registered Unaffiliated. About 43 percent are Democrats and 31 percent Republicans.
Given the disasters that have befallen North Carolina Democrats this year, maybe they shouldn’t be surprised they lagged behind Republicans. But weren’t a lot of these new registrants turned out by Obama’s campaign?
Somebody better figure out what these new voters are thinking – and what it means for North Carolina politics in the future.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 27, 2012 15:01
The downside of drawing safe districts is that you get unsafe candidates. Like Republican House candidate Debra Conrad, who told a group in Winston-Salem: "Unfortunately, the more money you raise and give to the speaker, the better committee assignment you get."
Green reported: “Conrad’s remark prompted a titter of discomfort at the table. One person suggested: ‘Off the record?’ Another person seated at the table uttered the phrase ‘pay to play’ — a common characterization of how business was once transacted in the NC House under the leadership of now disgraced Democratic Speaker Jim Black.”
Her audience seemed to have more political savvy than she did about what to say – and not say – publicly.
Speaker Tillis’ office quickly denied that what she said was true. But this is the danger of redistricting: You elect candidates who embarrass you and your party.
The coming bumper next crop of new legislators may give investigative reporters a lot to work with.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 26, 2012 17:05
Even strong Democrats believe the Wake school board flunked this test. The board majority may have done the right thing, but they sure did it the wrong way. And Democrats may pay the price.
It was a mistake to fire Tony Tata without first setting out a bill of particulars. You can’t fire a superintendent, then refuse to say why because “it’s a personnel matter.”
Board members finally began explaining themselves today. That was a day late. They gave the public stage over to their Republican critics yesterday. At the start of the evening news broadcasts, no less.
John Tedesco, Paul Coble & Co. were happy to take the stage.
Tedesco may be the big winner here. He may stir up enough votes in Wake County to get elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Coble now has an excuse not to give the schools more money.
And Tata gets a years’ pay so he can start (some critics theorize) running against Senator Kay Hagan in 2014.
But keep one thing in mind. This board didn’t do what Tedesco’s board did. His crowd forced Tata’s predecessor out immediately. This board gave Tata a chance. But Tedesco and his colleagues are shocked, shocked!
As Bill Clinton would say, it takes brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.
Still, the board botched this. They now get blamed for anything bad that happens in the system. They may pay the price next time they run. And the debacle may hurt Democrats in this election – all the way up the line to President Obama, who carried North Carolina in 2008 with the help of a huge majority in Wake County.
This is not acceptable work. See me after class.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 25, 2012 10:40
The worst wounds in politics are self-inflicted. After a week, it’s clear that Mitt Romney inflicted a doozy on himself when he got carried away about the “47 percent” at that high-flying Florida fundraiser.
Voters today are sophisticated consumers of political messages. They know political ads lie. They know that every word a candidate says in a speech, debate or interview is polished and poll-tested.
So their antennae are up for the slightest sign of a candidate showing what he or she is really like – whether it’s under pressure, by mistake or “off the record.”
Romney gave Americans that inadvertent and possibly fatal glimpse of his real self. He cemented the image that Obama’s ads suggested: a rich, callous man who is not only out of touch with most Americans, but actually holds them in contempt.
Even worse for Romney, the camera angle and poor quality of the videotape are even more damning, because they’re real. The waiters in black vests are a special touch.
This campaign has six weeks to go. A lot can happen. But if Romney were a car, he’d be the 2012 version of the Democrat’s 2004 John Kerry model.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 24, 2012 12:14
I’m just back from several days in Northern California: spectacular rocky coastlines, innumerable wineries, gut-wrenching mountain roads, falling-apart expressways, low humidity, bohemian lifestyles – and no presidential election.
That’s an exaggeration. They have an election, too. But no suspense. California’s 55 electoral votes are already counted toward Obama’s goal of 270. He and Mitt Romney go there only to raise money.
There are no candidate visits, no surrogate visits, no get-out-the-vote drives, no grassroots offices, no candidate ads, no superPAC ads, no ads about Romney and the 47 percent (which, the way he’s going, will be the vote he gets in November), no ads attacking Obama, nothing.
We did run into a street-side Romney booth in San Francisco. “We need to get rid of this guy Obama,” one of the young workers said. He didn’t have many takers. It seemed about as productive as hawking anti-Roy Williams petitions on Franklin Street.
Today, we have a system in which only a handful of states – this year, about nine – matter in the presidential race. North Carolina used to be like California: ignored. But now we’re a battleground. Our votes actually will decide who becomes President! What a concept.
It reminded me of a California-based group – National Popular Vote – that devised an ingenious, if somewhat hard to explain, way of making sure the national popular vote decides presidential elections. It still retains the electoral college system, and it avoids the insuperable hurdle of a constitutional amendment.
Their bill got some traction here before 2008. Carter and I worked with them, and we were intrigued. But it was hard to overcome partisan suspicions about who would benefit. The effort fizzled.
You should check out their plan. NPV is about halfway to the goal of making it happen – and fundamentally changing presidential elections in America.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 21, 2012 09:14
Watching the Dalton and McCrory TV ads, you see the opening that Dalton could exploit if he has enough time and money.
McCrory’s ads are content-free. Apparently, he’s going to solve unemployment and $4 gas by drilling everywhere under our feet and off the coast. And he’s responsible for Charlotte’s success. How would he do in a public setting where he’s forced to defend both claims?
A Republican friend had a negative reaction to McCrory’s appearance in the ads: “He looks smug,” like a college frat’s rush chairman. Where McCrory is squinty-eyed and maybe city-slick, Dalton has a down-home openness and sincerity.
Dalton has some jobs ideas that, presented right, would be a strong positive message. And he could raise questions about McCrory’s tax plans just as Obama has with Romney.
Polls show Dalton can pick up votes with Democrats and Independents, and he could draw blood by tying McCrory to an unpopular Republican legislature.
With enough time and money, you can see Dalton’s path to victory. But time and money are the problems. Bottom line: Governor Perdue’s late decision put him in a hole.
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