It was up to President Obama to make the case for another term, with a speech that was every bit as fraught with uncertainty and risk as his 2008 convention address. Just as he did then, he rose to the occasion. Obama didn’t hesitate to go after Mitt Romney. “You might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you can’t visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally,” he said. And he clearly laid out a vision for governing squarely at odds with the one that Romney has, but was hidden from view at last week’s Republican convention. He promised deficit reduction “without sticking it to the middle class”; to enact a reformed tax code that raises rates on income above $250,000 to where it was under President Clinton; to preserve middle-class deductions; to “never turn Medicare into a voucher.” Obama met his challenge in Charlotte. – New York Times
President Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was a prosaic call for support accompanied by some vague plans for action. Convention speeches, we concede, are not policy briefings. Still, there is room for more specifics than Obama provided, or Romney did in his speech. Obama’s greatest missed opportunity may have been his cursory treatment of the federal budget deficit: He reiterated his plan to reduce it by $4 trillion over the next decade. What no one knows – does the president? – is how to get there from here. It would be churlish to criticize Obama too much for vagueness, given the occasion. Yet that was the curious thing about this speech: If it didn’t get down into the details, neither did it soar. – Bloomberg View
