7.8 Percent

Published in Público
(Portugal) on 5 October 2012
by Rita Siza (link to originallink to original)
Translated from by Nuno Rosalino. Edited by Gillian Palmer.
“What difference a day makes,” is probably what the campaign of Republican Mitt Romney must be thinking. Romney had less than 24 hours to enjoy his convincing performance against Barack Obama in the first televised debate of the American presidential election. His victory in the duel was essential in altering the campaign’s narrative. This morning, disclosure of the drop in the unemployment rate to 7.8 percent, the lowest it has ever been since Obama arrived at the White House, altered it once again: The economy (and, consequently, jobs) are the main issue of this election, which means that today’s numbers will be a much more important story for the media, and will take precedence over coverage of the aftermath of Wednesday’s debate.

Neither campaign rested after Wednesday; both candidates appeared, with renewed energy, at rallies the following day. Romney took the chance to savor some of the first, candid ravings from the conservative faction, which has, since the beginning of the campaign, doubted the Republican candidate’s credentials. Ironically, they came after Mitt Romney made a sharp left turn to the center, and after the ex-governor gave a speech that goes against the ideas espoused by the more extreme faction of the party. But the post-debate headlines energized the base, who went from being in disbelief to considering that it is possible to defeat the president. A definitive sign that there was, once again, trust in the Republican campaign was that Romney took advantage of the moment to atone himself for his remark about the 47 percent of Americans that don’t pay tax at the federal level (and who, in his reasoning, depend on the state and are thus interested in Obama’s reelection) — his timing didn’t go unnoticed.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, tried to use Romney’s rhetorical victory against him:

“When I got onto the stage last night, I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney. But it couldn’t have been Mitt Romney, because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy. The fellow on stage last night said he didn’t know anything about that!”

The Democratic campaign’s new strategy is to turn what Romney said at the debate against what he said in the campaign trail and in his electoral manifesto, and hammer home the idea that, once again, the Republican candidate is telling the Americans what they want to hear to get elected, in true snake oil salesman fashion. After characterizing the Republican as a millionaire that doesn’t care about the middle class and who will rule for the 1 percent, Democrats want to exploit the apparent ideological vacuum and lack of any deep conviction present in Romney, the flip-flopper.

Statistics concerning the drop in unemployment favor the president’s reelection campaign, not only because they divert attention from his disastrous performance in the televised debate, but also because they allow him to counter the Republican argument that his administration’s policies are prolonging the recession and stifling economic growth in the country (and job creation).

The fact that the opposition’s first reaction was questioning the trustworthiness of the Department of Labor, which collects statistics, and accusing the (non-partisan) governmental agency of political manipulation of the numbers is an unmistakable sign of the troubles the Republican campaign faces — yet again haunted by the dissonance and lack of consistency between what it says and reality.


Que difer­ença faz um dia, deve pen­sar hoje a cam­panha do repub­li­cano Mitt Rom­ney, que teve pouco mais de 24 horas para gozar da sua con­vin­cente per­for­mance con­tra Barack Obama no primeiro debate tele­vi­sivo das pres­i­den­ci­ais amer­i­canas. A sua vitória no duelo era essen­cial para mudar a nar­ra­tiva da cam­panha. A divul­gação, esta manhã, da queda da taxa de desem­prego dos Esta­dos Unidos para 7,8%, o valor mais baixo desde que Obama chegou à Casa Branca, mudou-a outra vez: sendo a econo­mia (e con­se­quente­mente o emprego) a questão essen­cial da eleição, os números de hoje serão uma história bem mais impor­tante para os media e sobrepor-se-ão à cober­tura do rescaldo do debate de quarta-feira.

Nen­huma das cam­pan­has des­can­sou depois de quarta-feira, e os dois can­didatos apare­ce­ram com ren­o­vada ener­gia em comí­cios do dia seguinte. Rom­ney aproveitou para saborear uma das primeiras ovações ver­dadeira­mente sen­ti­das da facção con­ser­vadora, que desde o iní­cio da cam­panha descon­fiou das cre­den­ci­ais do can­didato repub­li­cano. Ironi­ca­mente, ela acon­tece depois da acen­tu­ada guinada de Mitt Rom­ney para o cen­tro e depois do ex-governador ter ensa­iado um dis­curso que vai ao arrepio das ideias defen­di­das pela facção mais à dire­ita do par­tido. Mas os títu­los pós-debate ani­maram as bases, que da descrença pas­saram nova­mente a acred­i­tar que será pos­sível bater o Pres­i­dente. Um sinal defin­i­tivo de que a con­fi­ança regres­sou à cam­panha repub­li­cana foi que Rom­ney aproveitou o momento para se pen­i­ten­ciar pelo seu comen­tário sobre os 47% de amer­i­canos que não pagam impos­tos a nível fed­eral (e por isso seriam, no seu raciocínio, depen­dentes do Estado a quem inter­essa a reeleição de Obama) — o seu tim­ing não pas­sou desapercebido.

Já Barack Obama procurou usar a vitória retórica de Rom­ney con­tra ele:

“Quando pisei o palco [em Den­ver] deparei-me com um tipo muito espir­i­tu­oso que dizia chamar-se Mitt Rom­ney. Mas não podia ser ele, porque o ver­dadeiro Mitt Rom­ney anda por todo o país há mais de um ano a prom­e­ter 5 bil­iões de cortes fis­cais a favor dos ricos, e o tipo no palco dizia que não sabia nada sobre disso”.
A nova estraté­gia da cam­panha democ­rata é voltar as palavras de Rom­ney no debate con­tra as palavras de Rom­ney na cam­panha e no seu man­i­festo eleitoral, e matraquear a ideia de que, mais uma vez, o can­didato repub­li­cano — qual vende­dor da banha da cobra — está a dizer o que os amer­i­canos querem ouvir para ser eleito. Depois de car­ac­teri­zar o repub­li­cano como um mil­ionário que não se pre­ocupa com a classe média e gov­ernará para o grupo de 1% de mil­ionários, os democ­ratas querem explo­rar o aparente vazio ide­ológico e a falta de con­vicções pro­fun­das de Rom­ney, o flip-flopper.

As estatís­ti­cas rel­a­ti­vas à queda do desem­prego favore­cem a cam­panha de reeleição do Pres­i­dente não só porque vêm desviar as atenções da sua desas­trosa prestação no debate tele­vi­sivo como per­mitem con­trariar o argu­mento dos repub­li­canos de que são as receitas da sua Admin­is­tração que estão a pro­lon­gar a recessão e a impedir o cresci­mento económico do país (e a cri­ação de emprego).

O facto de a primeira reacção da oposição ter sido pôr em causa a idonei­dade do Depar­ta­mento de Tra­balho, que col­ige as estatís­ti­cas, e acusar a agên­cia gov­er­na­men­tal (que é apartidária) de manip­u­lação política dos números, é um inequívoco sinal das difi­cul­dades da cam­panha repub­li­cana — mais uma vez acos­sada pela incon­sistên­cia e dis­sonân­cia entre o seu dis­curso e a realidade.

Rita Siza
This post appeared on the front page as a direct link to the original article with the above link .

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