Obama: The Pamphleteer

All hail the booklet!

After a very solid debate performance, I don’t know how you could offer up a weaker morning-after visual. Oversensitive to the charge he has no plan and clearly anxious over Romney’s megaphone, the Obama campaign, for a news cycle at least, does a convincing job of suggesting Romney is setting the terms. (I mean, didn’t the President just spend a evening saying it’s all there on the website?) And in bending over backward to demonstrate that they do (now) have a plan, another thing the imagery does is question how “forward” they’ve been in the first place.

After drilling Romney so hard on his competence, and having invested so much capital in the closely-scheduled last two debates showcasing Romney on both sides of every issue, brandishing this pamphlet feels like a defensive admission that the race, all this time about who to trust more, is now as much a referendum on the President.

(photo: Mandel Ngan caption: US President Barack Obama shows a copy of his jobs plan as speaks during a campaign rally October 23, 2012 at Triangle Park in Dayton, Ohio.)