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What the Conventions didn't tell us about November's US election

  • 10 September 2012

The United States finished Act One of its quadrennial orgiastic political kabuki last week with the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Originally these conventions served the function of actually picking the candidates, much as a caucus picks its leader. Today they are instead a total schmozzle means of motivating one’s base and making one’s case to undecided voters. 

If there were ever two candidates that needed the time for these purposes, it might be Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Each finds himself fighting a war on two fronts; their bases are not fully behind them, and they have significant downsides to overcome with undecideds. 

At the RNC, Romney made lots of pitches to family and faith: ‘All the laws and legislation in the world will never heal this world like the loving hearts and arms of mothers and fathers.’ 'Too many lines like that will put you in a diabetic coma (even in the States), but Romney and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan rode them hard, appealing to the faith-and-freedom base of the party that has been at best divided about Romney. 

Ryan’s comment that ‘each one of us was born for a reason, bearing the image and likeness of the Lord of life” had people leaping from their seats in exultation like early church Christians to the lions. 

From the start of his campaign, Romney has had his eye mostly on the swing voters, avoiding slackjawed ‘You Betcha’ Tea Party extremism for the image of a wise and sober father. At the convention, he took careful aim at those voters again, confiding the hope and inspiration that ‘we all had’ when Obama was elected, and following with a left hook to the gut: ‘You know there’s something wrong with his job as president when the best feeling you have is when you voted for him.’ 

It’s a good political point to make. Of course, it’s predicated on ignoring the situation Obama came into as president (a strategy the Coalition in Australia has itself worked to a diamond stud), but no matter. 

The brutal political truth is, it’s hard to get people to vote for you if their lives seem worse. Nobody cares how challenging it’s been for you, or even that you killed Osama bin Laden (a point the Democrats beat so fiercely at the convention they should have worn war paint) if there are no jobs. 

What’s more, Guantanamo Bay remains open, Obama has overseen
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