1) SAM ADAMS 2. TETRA FISH FOOD 3. AIR JORDANS 4. GI JOE 5) CHICK-FIL-A

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While some are mourning the loss of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, others are grieving the loss to their balance sheet. One charity in particular has been left “reeling” by the unveiling of the late Baroness’ will.

Allies of Alzheimer’s, a fledgling charity headquartered in Toms River, New Jersey, apparently entered into discussions with Thatcher in 2005, the same year her dementia was revealed to the public. Committed to their cause, Thatcher agreed to offer up to $2 million in posthumous donations.

“We met in her home in Chester Square to discuss being a key beneficiary in her will,” Caroline Klumperton, President of Allies of Alzheimer’s recalls. “And the outcome at the time couldn’t have been better, or clearer. She was enthusiastic about supporting our cause, writing everything we discussed on an embossed pad of paper, alongside a list of food items beginning with D that she thought Dick Cheney should incorporate into his diet. Doritos was top of the list, which seemed rather odd to us.”

But instead, the vast majority of the Iron Lady’s accrued wealth has been left to her two children, Mark and Carol Thatcher, as well as to her alma mater, Somerville College, Oxford.

“Yeah I vaguely remember hearing about a charity meeting,” Mark told us at his country home. “I guess she got busy with other stuff. You know she was planning a female-only triathlon: “The IronLady”, so that was consuming most of her time, along with her long-awaited Twerkin’ with Margaret Thatcher fitness DVD of course.”

So where does that leave Allies of Alzheimer’s?

“We’re deeply upset because we’re a small charity and every dime counts. I wish this happened less often, but we see it all the time,” Ms. Klumperton said. “Fortunately we’ve an affiliate business, Enemies of Alzheimer’s, and we’re using the best lawyers this side of Newark to investigate the whereabouts of that embossed pad. It’s our best hope. She also listed some sex positions that Cheney should try that start with the letter S, and we imagine he’d be quite interested in obtaining that.”

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Ryan’s best line was his rebuttal to Biden’s discussion of Romney’s “47 percent remark,” when he noted that Biden has had his own foot-in-mouth moments. Biden’s best moment during the debate was when he informed the audience that the Congressman had sent him two letters asking for federal aid to stimulate job growth in Wisconsin. Ouch on both counts.

But this debate did not change the dynamics of the race. Independents care more about the top of the ticket, so Obama will still have to come back swinging in the next presidential debate if he wants to regain the lead he had two weeks ago.

The Romney bump from the first debate comes from one thing more than any other: it was the first time since the primaries that he had the freedom to come back to the political center. Before, he was hemmed in and awkward because he was trying to out-flank his competitors on the right. Now, by moving back to the center, Romney was able to tap into the reserve of undecided voters, while his critics on the right have no choice but to bite their tongue when they watch him take new positions, such as accepting parts of Obamacare, because they would rather Romney wins than Obama.

Knowing this, the best way forward for Obama on Tuesday is to draw out the Romney from the primaries. He will try to remind Americans of the Romney who was polling so poorly most of summer while the Obama team was bombarding the airwaves trying to define Romney as the guy with the offshore bank accounts who doesn’t quite get middle America. To remind voters of himself back in 2008, Obama needs to recall the language of community, mutual obligations, and the promise of “a more perfect Union.”

Obama should also be prepared to answer questions about the security situation at Benghazi. The best defense is an offense for him. Even if the administration had beefed up security in Benghazi — and most of the requests were for extending the tours of security guards in Tripoli, 400 miles away — there is no evidence to think that the embassy assault on Sep 11 could have been prevented or repelled.

Polls seem to indicate that the Romney bump from the last debate has tapered out. Both candidates will have to fight harder every day, as the number of persuadable voters decline as we approach November 6. After the second presidential debate, the ground game (as opposed to the air war) is going to become increasingly important — and here is where Romney could be at a disadvantage, which is why he needs to ace this debate more than Obama.

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Like a legislator used to addressing the president of the chamber and not the audience, Obama was too formal last night. Obama was looking down on his notes too often when Romney was speaking. Silent moments matter too — because candidates can still connect with the audience with their eyes. Even when he was not looking down, Obama was looking at Jim Lehrer rather than at the camera most of the time.

Obama’s advisors must have, rightly, warned Obama not to lose his presidential poise. But they forgot to add that in a two-person setup, a basic modicum of aggressiveness was required. Given that Obama’s countenance is naturally already cool, he would have benefitted from a reminder that he’s back on the campaign trail, president or not. Advisors should tailor-make advice for their candidate. Next round, they should tell Obama to forget that he is president. He should look into the camera at every moment, when his talking and when he is silent, pleading for the vote. Obama should also keep an internal clock, knowing that Jim Lehrer did him no favors last debate by allowing him to ramble longer than the pre-allotted two-minute segments.

Obama tried too hard to take Romney to task on the specific numbers of his tax plan. But there are no scorers in presidential debates. It doesn’t actually matter who won the logical argument; but it does matter who passed the plausibility threshold. Mitt Romney did last night. He kept repeating the $716 billion cut from Medicare and in American politics, saying it is so, makes it so. Nobody cares about what the fact-checkers are saying today. Or about Dodd-Frank or Simpson-Bowles. Or whether rebuttals come the day after. Over 10 million tweets were shared as the debate proceeded last night, many about Big Bird, and most declaring Romney victorious.

Obama’s biggest missed opportunity was on the discussion about the role of the federal government, when Obama normally would have excelled. Romney rightly reached to the sacred scripture of the Republican Party, the Declaration of Independence, referring to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Obama failed to counter. The sacred scripture of the Democratic Party is the Preamble of the Constitution. Life, liberty and happiness matter, but so do justice, a more perfect Union, and the general welfare. Bill Clinton knew this when he gave his spectacular speech at the DNC Convention. Obama forgot his roots last night.

In terms of the horse race, this was not a game-changer; it certainly would not change the ground game in the electoral map. There were no forced errors on Obama’s part, just missed opportunities. He should be advised, however, not to go overboard the other way in the next debate, as Al Gore had done in 2000. Obama was wise not to mention the 47 percent comment or offshore bank accounts. That information is already out there and there is no need for the President of the United States to do the dirty work that his surrogates can.

Obama is a quick rebounder. He will be back in the game in the next debate, and we will have a showdown.

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After President Obama’s moving UN General Assembly speech that started with a story of who US Ambassador Christopher Stevens had been in terms of his life’s passion for the Middle East and North Africa, the Romney camp issued a statementfrom former Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky:

In his speech, President Obama listed the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, Syria, and Iran as major challenges facing the international community. But those are three vital issues on which President Obama has unfortunately made no progress. The Peace Process is at a standstill, tens of thousands have been killed in Syria with Assad still in power, and Iran is hurtling toward nuclear weapons capability.

In his 2009 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, President Obama called for progress on the Peace Process and for an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Three years later, he’s failed to deliver. As has too often been the case with President Obama, the rhetoric doesn’t match the policy.

The President and his national security team do deserve criticism for how some of these portfolios have been managed. After all, Israel/Palestine had been the first major national security agenda item the President put his power and credibility behind, appointing former Senator George Mitchell to be his Envoy in seeking to secure real Middle East peace.

In a compelling but bleak New York Times assessment titled “Seven Lean Years of Peacemaking” by my New America Foundation colleague Daniel Levy, the negative results scream out. Levy writes:

One thing is clear: The years from 2005 to 2012 have been seven decidedly lean ones for peacemaking and withdrawal and seven gluttonously fat ones for entrenching Israel’s occupation and settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In these areas, almost 94,000 new settlers have been added since 2005, some settler outposts have been legalized and thousands of Palestinians have been displaced.

Obama should only get the blame for the 2009-2012 part of this portfolio — but the failure to get Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on to a credible peace track with Palestinians has enormous strategic consequences for the country.

Dobriansky tells only part of the story as it was in both 2009 and 2010 that President Obama committed substantial portions of his UN General Assembly addresses to the problems of Palestine and Israel. In 2010, he pointedly criticized the unwillingness of the parties to come together and pushed George Mitchell and others on his team to double down and get a deal done. Obviously, with the resignations of both Senator Mitchell and Dennis Ross who had been Obama’s Middle East wrangler on his National Security Team (both of whom had often worked at cross-purposes), ended Obama’s efforts thus far on securing Middle East peace.

These results deserve both to be highlighted and criticized — so thanks to Ambassador Dobriansky.

That said, would her candidate Mitt Romney do any better?

Yesterday we were given what were perhaps some of the most thoughtful comments yet expressed by Governor Romney on the turmoil in the Middle East and what can be done in response. While his comments were not Palestine-specific and this may be the first time I have heard Romney address foreign policy and not make a single mention of Israel, his broad survey of the Middle East region and his assessment of the youth cover Palestine.

Romney makes the sensible point that jobs matter, that economics is a major driver of both hope and desperation.

Work has to be at the heart of our efforts to help people build economies that can create jobs, young and old alike. Work builds self-esteem. It transforms minds from fantasy and fanaticism to reality and grounding. Work does not long tolerate corruption nor will it quietly endure the brazen theft by government of the product of hard-working men and women. To foster work and enterprise in the Middle East and other developing countries I will initiate something I will call Prosperity Pacts, working with the private sector the program will identify the barriers to investment and trade and entrepreneurship and entrepreneurialism in developing nations. And, in exchange for removing those barriers and opening their markets to U.S. investment and trade, developing nations will receive U.S. assistance packages focused on developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law, and property rights …. The aim of a much larger share of our aid must be the promotion of work, and the fostering of free enterprise. Nothing we can do as a nation will change lives and nations more effectively and permanently than sharing the insight that lies at the foundation of America’s own economy, and that is that free people pursuing happiness in their own ways, build a strong and prosperous nation.

Whether Romney is right or not, his jobs talk and the notion of “Prosperity Pacts” are a step ahead of the rhetoric that typecasts instability in the Middle East as a function of Islamic culture and fanaticism. And the fact is that the Obama administration’s policy towards places like Egypt and Palestine, Tunisia, and Libya is to try to lay groundwork for investment, aid, and jobs.

So, Romney and the Obama administration actually are on similar tracks. But the scale of what is needed in the region is staggering — and small US programs or bland talk about job creation by the GOP presidential challenger doesn’t come near to the level of economic course correction the region needs.

The more disconcerting gap between rhetoric and action is not on Obama’s docket, however, but on Romney’s.

What it not Mitt Romney who said at a fundraiser regarding Israel-Palestine peace, “this is going to remain an unresolved problem.”

As Bill Clinton said during his Democratic National Convention speech, “it takes some brass to criticize the President for something you have done yourself.” In this case, it’s out of place to take Obama down a notch on Israel-Palestine when your own candidate has no intention of trying to resolve the geostrategically significant ulcer.

And even more disconcerting were Romney’s comments in Jerusalem about “culture” being the dividing line between the economic performance of Israel vs. Palestine. As reported by Ashley Parker and Richard A. Oppel Jr., Romney said:

“Culture makes all the difference,” Mr. Romney said. “And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.”

He added, “As you come here and you see the G.D.P. per capita, for instance, in Israel, which is about $21,000, and compare that with the G.D.P. per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality. And that is also between other countries that are near or next to each other. Chile and Ecuador, Mexico and the United States.”

Notwithstanding Romney’s significant errors on the GDP gap between Israel and Palestine, it’s outrageous to assess Palestine’s economic potential without considering that all they have done has been done under Occupation, with barriers to travel and commerce embedded throughout their territory which Israel occupies and dominates, often brutally.

It’s easy to talk about jobs and “Prosperity Pacts”, but tougher to put them into motion in addressing the economic needs of a growing MENA youth bulge that needed a massive number of jobs yesterday.

To make this interesting, I dare Mitt Romney to test his thesis personally in the way that former World Bank President James Wolfensohn did. Wolfensohn invested his own money in an effort to get Palestinian-grown strawberries to markets in Europe and worked out deals with the Israelis and established a greenhouse project and processing infrastructure at Israel’s Karni Crossing. To make a long and sad story short, even the great James Wolfensohn failed to overcome Israeli arbitrariness in what it allowed and didn’t in terms of earnest Palestine commerce with the rest of the world.

Let’s see if Mitt Romney can devote a small bit of his fortune to getting a business up and running in Palestine. Perhaps he could meet with his new employees and hear what they have to do to connect with their families and what humiliations they go through trying to get their kids to school or trying to take products to market.

Perhaps Romney would succeed in ways others in Palestine have not, but until then, it seems that, as Dobriansky framed it, the gap between rhetoric and results on the Romney vision for the region seems insurmountable.

– Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

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Republicans like Karl Rove are saying that the CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac polls are wrong because they are using the turnout model of 2008. But Gallup found similar results. So did Bloomberg. So did the Washington Post. Obama’s numbers are moving up, and it is intellectually dishonest and ultimately self-defeating for some Republicans to spin a story about over-sampling Democrats to deny the plausible reality that a triangulation of polls are pointing to. (And by the way, the over-sampling spin is rather more complicated even than what its wonkish advocates say on tv, if only because no one knows what turnout is going to be.)

So right now, it is not looking good for Romney, who has to wait until October 5 to stand toe-to-toe with Obama, and demonstrate his presidential stature. It may be too late by then, which is why the Romney campaign has finally shifted from a national strategy to a state-by-state strategy, starting in Ohio. Whether or not it was wise to wait this late to start the ground game, we will know in six weeks. The Obama campaign has 96 offices in Ohio, nearly three times as many as Romney does — a strategic bet by the Democrats that the ground game matters more than the battle over the airwaves. The Republicans are expecting, in the post-Citizens United world, that the superPACS will step up to seal the deal for Romney.

Every fumbling campaign has at least one correctable problem — the candidate. Romney and Ryan need to stop complaining about how bad it is, or at least spend as much time telling us how good we could have it in the next four years. Even independent voters don’t want to hire a doomsayer for president, and this is especially important because the alternative, Obama, is a positive, likable guy. Even if Americans do not feel better off today than they were in 2008, the real question is whether they would be better off in 2016 under Obama or under Romney. It is not just about malaise in America, but also about morning in America. What can Americans look forward to with President Romney? For better or for worse, voters need to be flattered, and they don’t want to to be told that the only reason not to vote for a sitting president is the disaster he will bring; they also need to be inspired by someone who would awaken their better angels and lead them to greener pasture.

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What struck me most about the simple-minded and reprehensible statements Mitt Romney made at a May 17th fundraiser, first reported by Mother Jones, about the 47% of Americans who just want hand outs was how familiar it sounded. I don’t just mean that it was a less-coded version of the attack on the lower classes we’ve heard from the Republican party for decades. It sounded like a voice in my head. Eventually I recognized that voice as Cindy Sanders, long-time love interest and short-time girlfriend of Sam Weir in Paul Feig’s ill-fated classic series Freaks and Geeks.

For the uninitiated, Freaks and Geeks documents the trials of two groups of students at McKinley High School in suburban Michigan in 1980. One group is the geeks, which includes the scrawny freshman Sam Weir and his friends Neil Schweiber and Bill Haverchuck (one of the greatest television characters ever created). The other group is the freaks, which is the crowd Sam’s sister Lindsay hangs out with: Daniel Dessario, Ken Miller, Nick Andopolis and Kim Kelly. The show helped launch the careers of James Franco (Daniel), Seth Rogen (Ken) and Jason Segel (Nick), and their roles on the show remain, arguably, their finest performances.

Cindy Sanders is the McKinley cheerleader who, from the inception of the series, Sam Weir has a giant crush on. It appears that this crush is going nowhere when Cindy begins dating the captain of the basketball team, Todd Schellinger. Then Cindy and Todd break up and Cindy confides in Sam, then decides she thinks he’s the nicest boy in school and has a crush on him. Initially elated, Sam soon finds their relationship isn’t everything he thought it would be and Cindy is a shallow, mean-spirited person underneath her sweet persona.

Cindy, who is the head of the McKinley Young Republicans club (and is thus awarded the honor of introducing Vice President George Bush when he speaks at the school), converses with Sam about politics at a screening of The Jerk (which she hates, much to Sam’s dismay). She tells Sam she doesn’t “…believe poor people should be given hand outs. I mean they should get jobs — handouts just make them lazy.” Her ex-boyfriend Todd never understood, she goes on, “He’s a democrat. They like handouts.” Her rudimentary understanding of the politics of aid programs is strikingly similar to that of Mitt Romney. Compare Cindy’s comments with those made by Romney:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right? There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement.

Mitt’s philosophy on tax policy and the role of the government really isn’t any more nuanced or sophisticated than that of Cindy Sanders. They both base their opinions on the myth that every wealthy American earned their wealth and government aid programs use their hard-earned money to bail out lazy poor people who refuse to even try to find a job. The way in which Romney boils down his party’s “Makers and Moochers” ideology is adolescent in both its directness and its clear disdain for such a large group of people. It’s also elementary in its placement of an entire nation into two groups. It’s a statement I’m sure Cindy Sanders could get behind.

So Mitt Romney shares his political ideology with a vindictive, immature, (fictional) Young Republican who was hastily (due to the show’s impending cancellation) turned into a sort of villain. Like Sanders, Romney quickly went from a character we didn’t know much about to one who revealed his true ugliness. Most agree that Romney’s gaffe has ruined his shot at the presidency, but what does it say about our country that he’s even a candidate? One thing is for sure: American politics have not evolved much since the Reagan presidency.

The post What Mitt Romney and Cindy Sanders Share in Common appeared first on The Faster Times.

What is even more perverse is that Romney himself chose to go off message. Instead of hammering Obama on the economy, he decided to come out to call the administration’s alleged failure to deliver a more forceful repudiation of the attacks on four Americans in Benghazi “disgraceful.” The result is that foreign policy will now dominate the airwaves even more than it would have without Romney’s provocation. It also means that foreign policy will figure more in the upcoming debates than it would have, and Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, who know a lot more about economics than war, will have plenty of opportunity to trip up against Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

This is a continuing pattern of a campaign in constant search of an attack strategy that would work, one that willingly goes off message because for whatever reason, the message isn’t working. A merely reactive campaign waiting on the sidelines to jump on a mistake cannot have a coherent message.

The fact, anyway, is that President Obama is far more vulnerable on his economic record than he is on foreign policy. Yet he is not vulnerable enough. And this is the dilemma that the Romney team has not been able to resolve in the last couple of months. Each time they have tried a new message other than the economic declension narrative on the national debt and unemployment, they have had to ease up on the only strategy that has worked, but only to an insufficient degree. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Infusing foreign policy into the campaign, however, is particularly counter-productive for the Romney campaign because foreign policy is a very poor fit with their existing economic message, unlike say healthcare reform / repeal. This is why the RNC convention barely talked about foreign policy. When voters are uncertain about their economic future, they have historically been prepared to take a leap of faith in a challenger candidate; but when voters are uncertain about global unrest, they have tended to stay the course with the incumbent. Further, Obama’s likability numbers translate most easily into his role as Commander-in-Chief. This is not an area on which he could be easily challenged, however loudly the voices of a minority in the Republican Party suggest otherwise.

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Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan has accomplished something quite important. At both conventions, in the corner rooms of Charlotte and Tampa organized by media groups and political activist outfits, serious discussions unfolded about the real state of the economy and the different policy approaches Americans needed to consider.

Paul Ryan is the most ideologically severe vice-presidential candidate in a century, a commentator said at a National Journal/Atlantic economic policy dinner done on a not-for-attribution basis. But nearly everyone credits his selection with igniting a debate about tough choices on the economy that politicians and Presidents have been ducking for decades. The clear consensus emerging out of Tampa’s GOP Convention and the DNC’s in Charlotte is that there is a real choice being offered to Americans. The first option is “rigorous austerity” that could even further gut America’s middle class and take the fallen standard of living to new lows. The second is a limited Keynesian approach that tries to reform while slashing spending.

There are also a couple of themes that aren’t getting much air time but which deserve to be kicked around.

One of these, a charge leveled by Democrats about themselves, is that the Democrats have really screwed up–twice. The argument goes like this: Back in the 90s while the economy was expanding, the IT bubble was bubbling, and capital gains churning was filling federal and state coffers, Clinton–guided primarily by his economic mentor and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin–helped ignite a financial-sector privileged wealth production machine that didn’t take into account the long-term consequences of American manufacturing decamping to foreign shores.

In other words, Clinton pushed the Uruguay Round of GATT, set up China’s membership in the WTO, and removed the important barriers that divided retail banking from securities trading. Clinton was highly influenced by the economic policy practitioners on his team who carried with them all of the biases of neoliberal economics. Those who focused on the importance of manufacturing, of the role of government in seeing to the parts of the economic environment markets would not sustain, the importance of high-wage job creation, were pushed aside.

This is also exactly what happened during the first two years of the Obama administration, where those of a neoliberal persuasion prevailed over those who wanted to concentrate first on a serious jobs and infrastructure program.

That discussion came up frequently in the meetings in Charlotte. Arianna Huffington even held a “shadow convention” (as she also did in Tampa) on the subject of what is really working and what not in job creation in the United States. She believes that the Democrats on the whole are not having a serious debate about the jobs crisis today and have not taken responsibility for their own mistakes in favoring banks’ survival over that of families losing their homes and jobs on a massive scale.

To be fair to President Obama, he inherited skyrocketing unemployment, collapsing global economy when he moved into the White House, and did take steps that stopped further, probably catastrophic implosion. He called on people like Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner in part because the world respected them and Obama needed to stop a global confidence crisis that was aggravating underlying economic instability.

But Obama allowed voices like Austan Goolsbee, Jared Bernstein, and Paul Volcker to be sidelined, while really technical financial and economic geniuses like George Soros never got in the door. Obama allowed the neoliberal, macroeconomic financial-sector-über-alles types to prevail over the micro-economic jobs, housing, and manufacturing voices.

Obama has shifted now and is pushing a jobs and infrastructure program that many Dems I spoke to in Charlotte say he should have led with in his administration. Ironically, the financial sector crowd that Obama bailed out are giving donations in droves to Mitt Romney, while many in the small donor base that previously supported Obama have lost their jobs and their homes and their willingness to send in $3.00 for a chance to play basketball or have dinner with the President.

Another of the issues being kicked around is whether Americans are indeed worse off or are better off than they were four years ago.

At the National Journal/Atlantic dinner mentioned above, a prominent pollster said that there is no doubt Americans are better off. In his view, the global economy was going over a cliff, the mounting job losses were staggering, and America was facing a genuine potential depression. He said that most today, however dissatisfied with the status quo, know that jobs are being slowly created, that the recovery is really happening albeit slowly, and that the economy is heading generally in the right direction.

National Journal’s Jim Tankersley, however, disputes that assessment in a powerful piece that should be read in full. In the opening clip, he writes:

The middle class in America today is not better off than it was four years ago, not better off than it was at the end of the Great Recession in 2009, not even better off than when President Clinton left office in 2001.

This is the truth that Democrats must confront as they anchor their national convention theme in Charlotte on vows of support for American workers: The middle class has been declining for more than a decade, including through the Obama recovery.

Inflation-adjusted median income fell by 2.3 percent in 2010 (the last year for which official statistics are available) and dipped below $50,000 per year for the first time since 1996, the Census Bureau reports. Real median weekly wages last quarter were lower than at the same time in 2002–and down 1.5 percent from the second quarter of 2010.

Ouch. Tanerksley is right. Americans are down and out, and on whole more down and out than when Obama came in, even if the original downward momentum wasn’t the president’s fault.

One of the ironies of the two conventions was to watch wealthy GOP financiers and their representatives pound the table and lecture at the podium in Tampa that America was not better off than it was four years ago — though they were personally much richer. In Charlotte, those who really were worse off were declaring that they weren’t. Bill Clinton had them yelling that they were — after all — much better off than four years ago. Orwellian.

Finally, another topic not much discussed is one that former bank CEO and credit expert Richard Vague and I have been kicking around and which I have previously written about (and was referenced in this interesting Financial Times piece by Edward Luce).

The debate between Paul Ryan & Co. with the Obama/Biden led crowd on the levels of government debt reduction necessary for a healthy economy that will grow is a false one. Vague and I show in this report that the deleveraging in the private sector in the US since the economic collapse of 2008-2009 has been minor and that Americans are re-leveraging again. In other words, private debt loads–which were not on the whole written down to reflect real values–are again piling on debt.

The real culprit therefore is not government spending, but the level of private debt that banks and financial houses should have been writing down to real values. The fact that they have not been writing it down limits the capacity of the US economy to return anytime soon to robust growth.

I wasn’t expecting much in terms of substance from the two conventions, but it needs to be noted that in Charlotte and Tampa, a serious discussion about what constitutes smart economic policy was being had.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan may or may not win in November, but the spark that they initiated about economic policy challenges is healthy for the nation.

– Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons

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Obama’s speech on the other hand was predictable and tired. He seemed not to have recognized that he was in a very different position than four years ago. The language of empathy and hope falls on deaf ears when the speaker’s credibility has been tarnished. What his research team needs is a catalogue of facts, such as those presented by Bill Clinton, for making the case that the administration has made some progress on various fronts ahead of the presidential debates next month. Unlike Romney, Obama must walk a tightrope of appearing presidential while still appealing to his base. Facts, not emotions, are his best allies this time.

In the end, for better or for worse, elections are now about persons, not parties. Candidates make all kinds of promises and voters have to make their judgment calls by triangulating imperfect indices of credibility. This is why negative ads can be so damaging. But so can strategic endorsements. One of the most powerful moments in the Republican convention was when Ann Romney shed light on some of Mitt Romney’s private acts of charity.

The rest of the Democratic convention was uninspiring. The choreography of minorities conspicuously put on display and the overplaying of the abortion issue crowded out precious time that could have been spent on putting a positive spin on Obama’s record and restoring his credibility. The choice of North Carolina as the convention site was possibly also based on hubris. Most polls since May have put NC in Romney’s column. The Democrats may have done better with a more defensive strategy and held their convention in states like Colorado or Virginia.

Looking ahead, the electoral dynamics are likely to change if for one reason alone: now that Romney is the official nominee, he can dip into the RNC’s funds to add to his already formidable war-chest. He may yet be able to make up the advantage Obama enjoys in the electoral college map.

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