A false choice between hope and fear

Media coverage of political strategy is often about framing false choices. Or rather, about framing either/or choices where a delicate balance is required.

For the Obama campaign, the either/or de jour is hope vs. fear.  A couple of days ago, I put forward my own plea that the Obama campaign quite legitimately scare us by spelling out the consequences of the tax cuts and budget cuts Romney has promised.  Seems I needn't have worried -- at least as regards the degree of aggression, if not its focus: I think it should be mainly economic, as Romney's polling lead as the candidate better able to manage the economy is the chief danger sign for the Obama campaign right now.  But John Heilemann has taken a deep dive into the Obama campaign's thinking, and he reports on plans for a full-scale multi-front attack in the offing:

The Paul Ryan presidency

My prior post argues that Obama's attacks on Romney's perceived economic competence should focus on what Romney has promised to do as president. As a model, I cited Obama's critique of the Ryan budget last month, which detailed the effects of Ryan's proposed spending cuts if they are spread evenly across all programs.

Today, Ezra Klein details the extent to which a Romney presidency would hew to the Ryan blueprint:

We don’t have to pore over every decision Romney made in Massachusetts to discern what he would do in Washington if elected. Romney and the Republicans in Congress have explained exactly what they intend to accomplish -- and their plans are remarkably in sync.

The budget prepared by Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, and the Romney campaign’s general-election platform look quite similar. Both would cut taxes while flattening the tax code. Their Medicare-reform plans look similar; Ryan even modified his original draft to make it look more like Romney’s, which allows seniors to choose between traditional fee-for-service Medicare and private options.

Their plans to increase defense spending are alike, as are their plans to cut domestic spending and to turn Medicaid, food stamps and other safety-net programs over to the states.

Cook little pot, cook!

Don't wake me...if you'd told me two months ago that the Republican presidential candidates would be tearing Mitt Romney apart like this, I would have dismissed it as wishful thinking. A Rolling Thunder Review of early primary season:

You have to live in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and making $20 million for no work, to have some fantasy [Romney's immigration policy] this far from reality” (Gingrich, 1/25).

When Mitt Romney invented government-run healthcare, Romney advisers helped Barack Obama write the disastrous Obamacare...Romneycare sent premiums spiraling out of control, hiking premiums, squeezing household budgets...Now, desperate to save his failing campaign, Romney promises to repeal Obamacare. How can we trust him? Think you know Mitt? Think again. (Winning Our Future, ad, now running).

On leveraged debt bondage

The best articles about Romney, Bain and private equity as it's developed over the last thirty years make it clear that it's very difficult to draw a fair scorecard. Private equity firms can deploy strategic smarts and managerial skill to turn around troubled companies or turbo-charge successful ones; they can also load down their purchased companies with debt, denude them with fees and dividend payouts, and sell them off before chickens come home to roost. Whether PE-owned companies thrive or fail, we never know how they would have done under prior or different ownership. The story of private equity since about 1980 is very much of a piece with the story of American capitalism: impressive growth, but with gains going disproportionately to the very top in a game that seems ever more rigged.

When PE firms (including Bain) do drive a portfolio company into bankruptcy, it's often the result of saddling it with debt.  That highlights a basic fact about private equity that I could never quite wrap my head around: when an investment firm or fund uses mainly borrowed money to buy a company, why should the purchased company own that debt?

Steven Rattner, in a defense of Bain, relays the investor's rationale for high leverage: