NBC’s Political Director Chuck Todd has just perfectly summarized the two key arguments that will be made in the 2012 campaign election:
Barack Obama will argue that Mitt Romney doesn’t have the values to be President.
Mitt Romney will argue that Obama doesn’t have the skills to be President.
And, yes, there will assuredly be plenty of big issues popping up, manufactured partisan issues, tiresome spinners and talking points (clearly) reciting their talking points list and hurredly trying to fit in as many points no matter what they get is, plus the usual hypocritical partisan outrage that’ll rage on each side on cable and partisan blogs as they decry something the other side does that they already did or will soon do.
But Todd matersfully laid it out: these will be the key, unifying arguments on each side.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.