Romney Almost Knocked Out

We all know ever since Françoise Giroud’s article that one doesn’t shoot at an ambulance.* But sometimes it is hard to resist the temptation. Poor Romney has uninterruptedly been accumulating disappointments and blunders. The speech he made at the Republican National Convention? It received the lowest approval rating since the polling organization Gallup started measuring responses to nomination acceptance speeches (SEE HERE). On the other hand, the Democratic National Convention was a total success, even if Barack Obama’s speech was average. His speeches are always better than Romney’s.

And what about foreign policy? After the attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya, instead of keeping quiet or supporting the government as is the custom in cases of major crisis, Romney blamed the American government as opposed to the Islamists and didn’t have a word to say about the American ambassador and the three other diplomats who were killed in Benghazi. We were embarrassed for him. Joe Klein, the famous political journalist for Time magazine, spoke this week about the dread he felt when comparing the Mitt Romney of 2005 — intelligent, open and passionate — to the Mitt Romney of 2012.

And now the polls show that Americans have more faith that Obama will put the economy back on track. Romney is reminiscent of Gerald Ford in the way that each of his public appearances has been an occasion for stumbles.

There was a piece of news that made the headlines of The New York Times this morning (SEE HERE), a story that will snowball since all of the TV news broadcasts throughout the day will start with this item: for the very first time, according to a New York Times/CBS survey (SEE HERE), the American people have greater confidence in Barack Obama’s ability to restore the economy and create jobs. It might be a turning point in the campaign. The polls have started to detect a little bit of optimism among the American people, and this optimism always favors the outgoing president. Fifty-one percent of Americans are satisfied with Barack Obama.

For the first time, a majority of Americans prefer the Democrats to the Republicans. They also have greater trust in Barack Obama when it comes to foreign policy and health care. Romney is left only with his offshore bank accounts.

This survey was conducted during a particularly turbulent week that could have (and should have) been damaging for the president. The week included the attack against the consulate in Libya, mediocre employment figures and a tsunami of TV advertisements hostile toward Obama. Nothing worked.

Women, who will swing the election, are largely in favor of the Democrats. Obama leads by 12 points among female voters, while men favor Romney and give him an advantage of eight points.

With just eight weeks until the election, only 5 percent of voters say that they don’t know which candidate they will support.

*Translator’s note: Giroud coined the expression “one doesn’t shoot at an ambulance” in an article describing Jacques Chaban-Delmas during his calamitous 1974 French presidential campaign.