Upcoming John Locke Foundation election preview panelist Byron York devotes his latest Washington Examiner column to a discussion of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s need to focus on the sluggish American economy.
Everyone knows Romney is a rich man who doesn’t have to worry about a job. But he sees the terrible effects of unemployment all the time. For a while, he held off-the-record meetings with jobless and struggling workers wherever he traveled. Now, after events he sometimes tells aides what people told him as he greeted them on the rope line. There was the miner in Ohio who just wanted Romney to protect his job. The others who came up with tears in their eyes, telling him they hope he can make things better. The ones who tell him they have a job but at such low pay that they have to take on more work.
It’s an ongoing calamity, but one from which the political conversation is easily distracted. For example, at Romney’s press conference in South Carolina on Thursday, reporters asked one question about the tone of the presidential race, three questions about Medicare, one question about running mate Paul Ryan’s background and one question about Romney’s tax returns. There were no questions about unemployment.
A couple of hours later, some top Obama officials held a press conference call, and the questions focused on Romney’s taxes and Medicare. There were none about unemployment.
Voters are not so easily sidetracked. In its August poll asking Americans what they think is the most important problem facing the country, Gallup found 54 percent said jobs and the economy. A grand total of seven percent named the federal deficit.
