Romney Has Conciliatory Remarks on Obama and Health Overhaul

3:09 p.m. | Updated Mitt Romney said Sunday that he would retain elements of President Obama’s health care overhaul, blamed Republicans as much as Democrats for the “mistake” of agreeing to automatic cuts in military spending to avoid a fiscal crisis and acknowledged that Mr. Obama’s national security strategy has made America in “some ways safer.”

The remarks, made in an interview on the NBC News program “Meet The Press,” seemed to mark the emergence of a less openly partisan, more general-election-oriented Republican nominee, who is intent on appealing to middle-of-the-road voters who have not yet made up their minds. At one point, Mr. Romney said that a speech on Thursday by the country’s last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, had “elevated” the party’s convention in Charlotte, N.C.

When the show’s host, David Gregory, asked Mr. Romney what elements of Mr. Obama’s health care program he would maintain, Mr. Romney said he would still require that insurance companies cover those with pre-existing conditions, just as the president’s law has.

“I’m not getting rid of all of health care reform,” Mr. Romney said, while emphasizing that he planned to replace the president’s plan with his own. “There are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place. One is to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get coverage.”

Mr. Romney, whose standing in several national polls improved slightly after the Republican convention in Tampa, said, “I’m in a better spot than I was before the convention.”

“People got to see Ann and hear our story,” Mr. Romney said, referring to this wife. “And the result of that is I’m better known, for better or for worse.”

With the Federal Reserve contemplating actions to stimulate the economy, Mr. Romney registered his disapproval, saying that he did not think that “easing monetary policy is going to make a significant difference in the job market right now.”

Mr. Romney, who has criticized the president over the rising federal debt, said he would seek to balance the budget in 8 to 10 years, perhaps after his own potential presidency would end. Any attempt to do so in a first term, Mr. Romney said, would have “a dramatic impact on the economy — too dramatic.”

Mr. Romney said he disagreed with a compromise made last year by the White House and Congressional Republicans that called for automatic cuts to military spending as a way to force a deal on deficit reduction.

“I thought it was a mistake on the part of the White House to propose it. I think it was a mistake for Republicans to go along with it,” he said.

The interview provided another forum in which Mr. Romney was questioned about the omission in his convention speech of any mention of the war in Afghanistan. Mr. Romney seemed defensive when Mr. Gregory asked him about criticism from the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard — and from others on both sides of the ideological divide — ­ that he did not speak about the conflict in accepting his party’s nomination at the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla.

“The Weekly Standard took you to task in your convention speech for not mentioning the war in Afghanistan one time,” Mr. Gregory asked. “Was that a mistake, with so much sacrifice in two wars over the period of this last decade?”

Mr. Romney answered, “You know, I find it interesting that people are curious about mentioning words in a speech as opposed to policy,” noting that he had discussed the war in Afghanistan just before the convention, in a speech to the American Legion. “I went to the American Legion,” he said, “and spoke with our veterans there and described my policy as it relates to Afghanistan and other foreign policy and our military.”

When Mr. Gregory noted that his American Legion address did not have the same large audience as the convention speech ­ — “tens of millions of people” — Mr. Romney replied: “You know, what I’ve found is that wherever I go, I am speaking to tens of millions of people. Everything I say is picked up by you and by others, and that’s the way it ought to be.”

In leaving the war out of his convention address, Mr. Romney seemed to have left an opening for President Obama, who said in his own speech: “Tonight, we pay tribute to the Americans who still serve in harm’s way. We are forever in debt to a generation whose sacrifice has made this country safer and more respected. We will never forget you.”

Pressed on his social views, Mr. Romney reiterated that he did not think that taxpayers should have to pay for abortions and that he wanted Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Reminded that he had once called himself a “severe” conservative, Mr. Romney seemed to play down that description. “I am as conservative as the Constitution,” he said.

In an appearance in Melborune, Fla., Sunday, President Obama, picking up where former President Bill Clinton left off, said that the budget proposals offered by Mitt Romney and Paul D. Ryan do not add up.

The president was quick to jump on appearances by his Republican rivals on the Sunday morning talk shows, in which they were asked separately what loopholes they would close to pay for their proposed tax cuts. Neither of the men answered the question.

The relationship between Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton started off rocky — Mr. Obama, after all, ran against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2008. But after Mr. Clinton’s ringing endorsement of Mr. Obama in a well-received Democratic convention speech on Thursday, the president mentioned his Democratic predecessor at every stop on a bus tour of Florida over the weekend.

“President Clinton told us the single thing missing from my opponents’ proposal was arithmetic,” Mr. Obama told a rally here, to a burst of applause.

“When my opponents were asked about it today,” Mr. Obama said, “it was like 2 plus 1 equals 5.”

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this post misstated a subject Mitt Romney addressed during his convention speech. He did not mention conflict in Afghanistan.

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Joe Kennedy III Wins Primary for Barney Frank's Congressional Seat

BROOKLINE, Mass. — Days after Joseph P. Kennedy III stood in front of the Democratic National Convention to offer a tribute to his great-uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, he found himself on a smaller platform just outside Boston, shaking hands with commuters at a public transit station here on the first day of his general election campaign in the Fourth Congressional District of Massachusetts.

Mr. Kennedy, 31, handily won his primary election Thursday, taking 90 percent of the vote in a contest with two relatively unknown rivals, Rachel Brown and Herb Robinson, and once again keeping the Kennedy name prominent in Massachusetts politics.

A former assistant district attorney and Peace Corps volunteer, Mr. Kennedy is hoping to take the seat occupied by Barney Frank, who announced last fall that he would retire after representing the district for more than 30 years.

“Those are very, very, very big shoes to fill,” said Bobbi Fox, 58, a software engineer who, like Mr. Frank, lives in Newton, Mass., and was chatting with Mr. Kennedy on Friday evening. She said that she planned to vote for Mr. Kennedy but that he still needed to prove himself to voters who probably knew more about his family than about him.

Mr. Kennedy’s challenger, Sean Bielat, shares the sentiment.

“Based on what I’ve seen from his résumé, it’s pretty thin,” said Mr. Bielat, who defeated Elizabeth Childs, a former state health commissioner, and David Steinhof, a dentist, in the Republican primary.

Mr. Bielat, 37, a businessman and a former Marine, ran an aggressive race against Mr. Frank in 2010.

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Political Impasse Forces Japan to Delay Spending

The cabinet approved a delay, through November, of 5 trillion yen ($63 billion) in public spending, most of that in tax grants for local governments and aid for universities. It was the first time since World War II that the government had delayed scheduled spending in the middle of a fiscal year, government officials said. Spending on health care, social welfare, the police and firefighters and other vital services were not affected.

The ruling Democratic Party had tried to head off a delay by trying to secure support for a bond issuance bill that would finance about 40 percent of its 92 trillion yen ($117 billion) budget for this fiscal year. But a spat with the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party over the timing of the next general election — one in which the Democrats were expected to fare poorly — prevented that bill from passing before the end of Parliament’s current session on Saturday.

The government was expected to seek a fresh compromise at a special parliamentary session, probably in October.

Addressing the nation Friday, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda lashed out at the opposition for holding public services hostage.

“We are being forced to delay spending to the last minute while trying to protect public livelihoods,” Mr. Noda said. “I hope the opposition shares this sense of crisis.”

Japan has been forced to rely more on government bonds to finance its spending as a weak economy depresses tax revenue and social welfare expenditures surge to support a rapidly aging population. Servicing its public debt — which is more than twice the size of its economy — has also pressured Japan’s finances, though the finance ministry says it can meet its debt obligations without the bond issuance bill.

But Japan’s central bank has already been forced to act, pumping about 2 trillion yen ($25 billion) into the market to meet an expected jump in demand as local governments face delays in getting their tax grants.

The delay also cast a shadow over Japan’s economic recovery from its earthquake and tsunami disaster. Some economists warned that the economy could shrink in the third quarter as the slowing global economy took a toll on exports and as subsidies on fuel-efficient vehicles ended.

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Obama’s Changed Hope

CHARLOTTE, N.C.

Perhaps the greatest paradox of American politics is that so many of its practitioners close in on — or reach — the pinnacle of the profession despite a fundamental inaptitude for one or another of its central demands.

George W. Bush was about eight times as comfortable and four times as articulate away from a lectern as at one. But on the path to the presidency, lecterns were no more avoidable than the malapropisms they teased out of him. He suffered and survived both.

Mitt Romney has no visible affinity for the rope line. But that’s where a candidate lives, so Romney makes a borrowed home there, and an uneasy one at that, his body language as stiff as his banter is awkward.

And Barack Obama, the former law professor, prefers to fly at a lofty intellectual altitude and stand at a certain emotional remove. He’s a cool customer. But to get help and to get votes, a politician must make a warm and humble bid for them, maybe even drop to one knee (metaphorically speaking) on occasion. It’s a suitor’s obligation, and it’s a good idea in particular for a suitor who hasn’t been able to keep all of the promises he made the last time he came courting.

On the convention stage here last night, President Obama didn’t have to plead. He didn’t even have to be Bill Clinton, who will not soon cede the title of courter in chief.

Obama and his campaign clearly believe they have the lead and are playing to protect it.

But he did have to collapse the distance between him and a populace that has known better times. More important, he had to collapse the distance between the poetic heights he favors and the prosaic realities of the country’s situation right now: our high unemployment, our damaged economy, our dysfunctional Congress, our partisan acrimony.

Many Americans are exasperated. Many Americans are scared. During his presidency, the country’s recovery from recession has been painful and slow. That demanded some acknowledgment, that called for some humility and that recommended some demystification.

All came in the form of a tweaked definition of the word “hope.” He used his speech last night to say that he himself was never the hope; the American people were. He said that he remained hopeful about the country’s future “not because I think I have all the answers, not because I’m naïve about the magnitude of our challenges.”

“I’m hopeful,” he added, “because of you.”

“You” came to the foreground, while “I” receded. It was striking: the earlier speech by Joe Biden was an extravagant deification of the president that seemed out of synch with the country’s condition.

But it served an interesting purpose. It both permitted Obama to go in a different and less boastful direction and underscored the strains of modesty in some of the president’s words.

The first two-thirds of the speech seemed almost deliberately muted, a considered turn away from the kind of soaring oratory that his critics deride as eloquence without consequence.

Obama’s speech was arresting for other reasons, too. Although he faulted his Republican opponents for a lack of specificity about their policy prescriptions, he didn’t get particularly detailed, either. He and his campaign clearly believe they have the lead and are playing to protect it.

He did bring up a few divisive social issues head-on, mentioning gays in the military, same-sex marriage and reproductive freedom all in one packed stretch, to robust applause from the delegates in the arena.
But what stood out even more was the careful calibration of ego in his presentation. The first two-thirds of his speech seemed almost deliberately muted, a considered turn away from the kind of soaring oratory that his critics deride as eloquence without consequence.

And he scattered his remarks with self-effacing statements.

“The election four years ago wasn’t about me,” Obama said. “It was about you.” He went on to credit the voters who supported him for what he considers the signal accomplishments of the last few years, including an expansion of health insurance to people who didn’t have it.

“You did that,” he said. “You did that.”

“I ask you tonight for your vote.”

“I need you to vote this November.”

Although his voice didn’t reach full thunder until the final stretch, it was never folksy. His style stood in vivid contrast to Clinton’s, a fresh memory because it was such a deeply planted one — it had nearly 50 minutes to take root. That epic speech on Wednesday night was dazzling and undisciplined, generous and needy: the messy man himself in an oratorical nutshell.

“Listen to me,” Clinton said at least four times. Also: “I want you to listen.” “You all got to listen carefully.” “Are you listening in Michigan and Ohio?”

They were listening in Michigan and Ohio — and in Minnesota and Wisconsin and dozens of other states — because it’s pretty hard not to when a politician conveys such an enormous desire for your attention, such a profound interest in your trust and such a fervent hope to be seen as the one who can both explain everything to you and steer you through it. Clinton comes before you not only as your wisest counselor but also as your best buddy, and it’s the latter part of that equation that too often eludes Obama.

His donors complain about it. His fellow Democrats complain about it. David Maraniss noted it in a memorable passage from a story in the Washington Post this week that examined how different Clinton and Obama are.

“Clinton,” Maraniss wrote, “could spend five minutes in a Dunkin’ Donuts in Concord, N.H., and meet a stranger whose face and name and life story he could still recall two decades later. Obama spent four introspective years in New York without making a single lasting friend.”

He floats above. He holds back. And that rankles his allies and even some of his intimates not just because it wounds their vanity (though of course it does) but because it hampers his effectiveness. He loses some good will because of it. He forfeits opportunities. There are arms that go untwisted, egos that go un-stroked, backs that go un-slapped.

And if he wins a second term, the success of it will inarguably depend on his ability to appropriate some of the raw political gusto and nuanced political skills that Clinton has always had. He needs to sell things the way Clinton does: eye to eye, heart to heart.

In Obama’s speech, I was looking for signs that he had come to realize that, and that he had begun to do that. I saw a few, but still hope for many more.

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After a Disappointing Jobs Report, Romney Attacks Obama

Michael Appleton for The New York TimesMitt Romney questioned President Obama’s jobs policies at a campaign event on Friday in Orange City, Iowa.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa – Seizing on a disappointing jobs report, Mitt Romney questioned on Friday whether President Obama “knows what he’s doing” when it came to fixing the economy.

“There’s almost nothing the president has done in the past three and a half, four years that gives the American people confidence that he knows what he’s doing when it comes to jobs and the economy,” Mr. Romney told reporters as he stopped here for a campaign rally.

In Mr. Romney’s first remarks since the Democratic National Convention wrapped up on Thursday night, the Republican nominee said Mr. Obama had offered little more than empty promises. The employment report released on Friday morning showed that the economy added 96,000 jobs in August, down from a revised figure of 141,000 in July and well below the 125,000 level economists had been expecting.

“What is he going to do to get this economy going?” Mr. Romney said. “And all he said last night was the same as what he said four years ago — which, by the way, he made a lot of promises four years ago. Can you think of any of those promises that was met? I mean, he was going to create jobs. We haven’t. Lower unemployment? He hasn’t. Rising take-home pay? It’s gone down.”

His appearance in Iowa came as the Romney campaign was ramping up activity on another front. It announced on Friday a major advertising campaign in eight swing states. The commercials – 15 in all – are specifically tailored to resonate with voters in each of those states.

In Florida, for example, people will see commercials about falling real estate values and high foreclosure rates. In Colorado, where the military and defense contractors are large employers, people will hear how the president’s budget cuts could cost 20,000 military jobs there.

And here in Iowa, they will hear how “excessive government regulations are crushing small businesses and family farms.”

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Ryan Defends His 'Yes' Vote on Automatic Defense Cuts

WASHINGTON – Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Republican nominee for vice president, on Sunday defended his decision to support automatic cuts in defense spending as a way to force a deal on reducing the deficit, an approach that was sharply criticized by his running mate, Mitt Romney.

Mr. Ryan said that he backed the deal, which could result in an automatic 8 percent cut in defense spending in January, in an effort to compromise with Democrats on deficit reduction.

“I worked with President Obama to find common ground to get a down payment on deficit reduction,” Mr. Ryan said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” “It wasn’t a big down payment, but it was a step in the right direction.”

Mr. Ryan emphasized that he and his fellow House Republicans had come up with alternative spending cuts to prevent the automatic reductions from taking effect. He accused Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats of failing to do their part.

“We passed, in the House, a bill to prevent those devastating defense cuts by cutting spending elsewhere,” Mr. Ryan said. “The Senate’s done nothing. President Obama’s done nothing.”

“We wanted to have a bipartisan agreement; we got that,” he added. “And the president hasn’t fulfilled his end of that bipartisan agreement.”

The House bill, which Mr. Ryan wrote and Senate Democrats oppose, would stave off reductions in military spending by cutting safety-net programs for the poor, including food stamps, school lunch subsidies and children’s health insurance.

Mr. Obama said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that any budget deal should require the wealthiest Americans to do their part by paying higher taxes, an approach that has been rejected by Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney.

In a “Face the Nation” interview, Mr. Obama said that he was “willing to do more” to work with Republicans to find additional spending cuts. ”But we’ve also got to ask people like me or Governor Romney who have done better than anybody else over the course of the last decade, and whose taxes are just about lower than they’ve been in the last 50 years, to do a little bit more.”

At the Democratic National Convention, former President Bill Clinton accused Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan of planning to eliminate tax deductions that help the middle class and the poor, including for home mortgages and charitable donations, to cover the costs of their proposed tax cuts.

In a separate appearance on the ABC News program “This Week,” Mr. Ryan declined to say whether that was true.

“Our priorities are high-income earners should not get these kinds of loopholes,” said Mr. Ryan, who repeatedly refused to specify the particular loopholes he had in mind.

“We want to have this debate with Congress,” he said. “And we want to do this with the consent of the elected representatives of the people and figure out what loopholes should stay or go and who should or should not get them.”

On foreign policy, Mr. Ryan told the host of “This Week,” George Stephanopolous, that he and Mr. Romney agreed with Mr. Obama’s plan to leave Afghanistan by 2014. But he said he feared that the troops lacked adequate resources.

“Where we’ve taken issue is making sure that the generals on the ground get the resources they need throughout the entire fighting season so that they can keep our soldiers safe and operating counterinsurgency strategy,” said Mr. Ryan, who described the killing of Osama bin Laden ”a great success.”

Mr. Ryan also defended Mr. Romney, who has been criticized by Democrats for describing Russia as the country’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe.”

On “Face the Nation,” Mr. Ryan said that a nuclear Iran was the United States’ biggest foreign policy threat, and that Mr. Romney meant to say that “among the other powers, China and Russia, that Russia stands as a great threat.”

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Legal Battles on Voting May Prove a Critical Issue in Election

In the last few weeks, nearly a dozen decisions in federal and state courts on early voting, provisional ballots and voter identification requirements have driven the rules in conflicting directions, some favoring Republicans demanding that voters show more identification to guard against fraud and others backing Democrats who want to make voting as easy as possible.

The most closely watched cases — in the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania — will see court arguments again this week, with the Ohio dispute possibly headed for a request for emergency review by the Supreme Court.

In Wisconsin, the home state of the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, the attorney general has just appealed to the State Supreme Court on an emergency basis to review two rulings barring its voter ID law. But even if all such cases are settled before Nov. 6 — there are others in Florida, Iowa and South Carolina — any truly tight race will most likely generate post-election litigation that could delay the final result.

“In any of these states there is the potential for disaster,” said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “You have close elections and the real possibility that people will say their votes were not counted when they should have been. That’s the nightmare scenario for the day after the election.”

In the 2000 presidential election, a deadlock over ballot design and tallying in parts of Florida led the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, to stop a recount of ballots, which led to George W. Bush defeating Al Gore. Since then, both parties have focused on voting procedures.

The Obama campaign, for example, brought suit in Ohio over its reduction of early voting weekends used more by blacks than other groups.

Republicans have expressed concern over what they call voter integrity. They say they fear that registration drives by liberal and community groups have bloated voter rolls with the dead and the undocumented and have created loose monitoring of who votes and low public confidence in the system. They have instituted voter identification rules, cut back on early voting and sought to purge voter lists by comparing them with others, including those of the Department of Homeland Security.

Judicial Watch, a conservative organization aimed at reducing voter fraud, says it has found that voter rolls last year in 12 states seemed to contain an ineligible number of voting-age residents when compared with 2010 census data. It is suing both Indiana and Ohio for failing to clean up their rolls in keeping with their obligations under the National Voter Registration Act.

Democrats worry about what they call voter suppression. They say that voter fraud is largely a myth and that the goal of the Republican-led laws and lawsuits is to reduce voting by minorities, the poor and the young, who tend to vote more for Democrats.

At the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina on Thursday, Representative John Lewis of Georgia expressed his party’s view on voter-related Republican-led laws when he compared them to poll taxes and literacy tests used to prevent blacks from voting in an earlier era.

“Today, it is unbelievable that there are Republican officials still trying to stop some people from voting,” he said. “They are changing the rules, cutting polling hours and imposing requirements intended to suppress the vote.”

Courts have taken a mixed view of the two sides’ claims. Voter ID laws have been both upheld as fair and struck down as discriminatory. In Pennsylvania, a state judge upheld the voter ID law, and the State Supreme Court will hear appeal arguments on Thursday.

Elsewhere recently, Democrats have won more than they have lost, but appeals are forthcoming. A federal court agreed with the Justice Department that Texas’ voter ID law was discriminatory and also struck down the state’s curtailment of voter registration; in Ohio, early voting has been restored and rules restricting voter registration drives have been struck down. The Ohio case is under appeal to the Federal Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit under expedited review. Texas will also appeal but not in time to affect this election. A Justice Department challenge to South Carolina’s voter ID law is in federal court.

In Florida, a federal court ruled last month that a year-old state law that reduced the number of early voting days to 8 from 12 could not be enforced in 5 of the 67 counties that are covered under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. But the court suggested that extending the hours of voting over the eight-day period in those five counties would satisfy the federal requirements. Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, was able to persuade election officials in four of the counties to extend their daily hours, but the supervisor of elections in Monroe County, which includes the Florida Keys, refused, saying that the county would maintain an early voting period of 12 days.

One issue that is likely to lead to lawsuits after Election Day is that of provisional ballots. Under federal law, anyone whose identity or voting precinct is in doubt can ask for a provisional ballot at any polling station and then has a number of days to return with the required documentation to make that vote count.

Lizette Alvarez contributed reporting.

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Protests Continue on Final Night of Democratic Convention

12:01 a.m. | Updated CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Five days of marches at the Democratic National Convention brought confrontation and compromise between protesters and the police, and there was a bit of both on Thursday, the final night of the convention.

As delegates packed Time Warner Cable Arena to hear President Obama’s acceptance speech, a crowd of about 100 protesters marched from their “Occupy the D.N.C.” encampment in a nearby park to the streets a few blocks from the arena, holding signs, chanting and at times sitting down in the middle of intersections.

They never got near the crowds gathered inside the fences that surrounded the arena. And from the moment they left Marshall Park, protesters were buffered on either side by rows of police officers using bicycles as barricades. The police eventually followed them back to the park, but there were no confrontations and no immediate word of any arrests.

A group of protesters later burned copies of the presidential oath of office before returning to the camp.

“It’s been a learning experience,” said John Murdock of New York, a member of the Occupy Wall Street movement who participated in the marches in Charlotte. “We’ve got to evolve.”

“Are we effective at this point? No, we’re outnumbered and easily mocked.”

That’s one of the messages he will deliver when he returns to New York and participates in the Sept. 17 one-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In Charlotte, there was a sense of accomplishment on both sides.

“I’ve been very pleased the entire week,” said Michael Zytkow, an Occupy Charlotte organizer. “The eyes of the political universe are on Charlotte, and regular people stood up and proved the convention is really on the streets.”

The five days of protests resulted in 25 arrests, including 10 on Thursday.

“I think it’s gone very well,’’ said Rodney Monroe, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police chief, as he walked ahead of the protesters. “I think everyone has been doing a great deal of communication and organizing with one another to clearly understand what each’s intent has been throughout the week, and I think we’ve been able to accomplish each of our goals. I’m happy with that.”

The thousands that were projected to come here did not materialize. Still, there were protesters from across the country on site, and enough marches and protests to make a statement, if not a mark, on this convention.

Through the convention, no two companies were targeted more than Bank of America and Duke Energy, which have their headquarters in Charlotte.

Protesters began on Sunday when more than 90 groups combined for the Coalition to March on Wall Street South, the name given to Charlotte because it is the No. 2 financial services center in the country behind New York. The police estimated 800 protesters that day, though organizers said the number was higher. There were two arrests on Sunday, but only one was a protester.

There have been few clashes with the police along the way, though on Tuesday, the first day of the convention, about 200 protesters were blocked from marching for about two hours before being allowed to proceed. There were 13 arrests that day, including 10 undocumented Hispanic immigrants who sat in the middle of an intersection and refused to move.

No arrests were made on Wednesday.

The police confirmed six were arrested on Thursday afternoon and charged with impeding traffic after they sat in an intersection in front of the Duke Energy Center, a few blocks from the convention site. Four more were arrested in two other incidents.

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What Citizenship Means

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – He didn’t deliver a clear second-term agenda, or a speech that thrilled. He didn’t explain how his re-election will spell an end to Washington’s policy stalemate. But President Obama did offer a sort of consolation prize in his convention speech: a new theme to sum up his case against Mitt Romney.

That theme was citizenship, and specifically the obligations that American citizens have to each other and to the society they re-create every day. The president’s description of Republican disdain for those bonds – a government that says “you’re on your own,” in the words of one his former economists, Jared Bernstein – crystallized what is at stake in this election more effectively than most of his previous speeches.

Dispatches and quick takes from Charlotte.

“This country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations,” he said. “We, the people, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which asks only, what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.”

That sense of responsibility is lacking, he noted, when banks trick families into signing mortgages they cannot afford, making the case for financial regulation and a consumer protection agency that Republicans have fought at every turn.

It is lacking when government cuts money for teachers who offer a little girl an escape from poverty, or a Pell grant for college that could make her a scientist or a president – “and it is in our power to give her that chance,” he said, in contrast to a party that favors such cuts.

It is lacking, he said, when a political party systematically makes it harder for poor people and minorities to vote. When lawmakers ridicule providing health coverage to the uninsured. And when retirees are presented with a limited voucher to cover their medical needs,instead of a Medicare program.

And it is particularly lacking when the wealthy are delighted to write $10 million checks to buy elections but are unwilling to pay a few thousand more in taxes to pay for the obligations of citizenship.

“This is what the election comes down to,” he said. “Over and over, we’ve been told by our opponents that bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations are the only way, that since government can’t do everything, it should do almost nothing.” But this isn’t a country, he said, that believes people should not get sick if they don’t have health insurance, or breathe pollution for the sake of industrial progress.

I was one of those who had hoped Mr. Obama would explain how a second term would be different from the first, but instead he had a slightly more grim and purposeful message to convey: government has a significant role to play in keeping society from fraying, and someone has to fight for it against the forces of individualism. That battle, more than any specific policy, is what he wants to continue in another term.

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The Magic Is Gone

It ended, to all intents and purposes, last Thursday night in Charlotte, when a weary-seeming incumbent delivered perhaps the fourth-best major address at his own convention — a plodding, hectoring speech that tacitly acknowledged that this White House is out of ideas, out of options and no longer the master of its fate.

The end of an era does not necessarily mean the end of a presidency. Barack Obama is still beloved by his supporters and regarded sympathetically by many swing voters. His Republican rival is a flawed candidate running an overcautious campaign. The memories of the Bush presidency’s failures are still fresh enough to make even a stumbling Democratic administration seem as if it might be the lesser of two evils.

But a re-elected Obama will be a permanently diminished Obama, with no magic left in his public persona and no mandate save to stay the current economic course. He may win the necessary electoral votes in November, but come February he will already essentially be a lame duck.

This reality has been apparent for some time, but the proceedings in Charlotte were highly clarifying. On Tuesday, Michelle Obama offered a moving apologia for her husband’s character and leadership. On Wednesday, Bill Clinton smoothly defended Obama’s domestic policy, and then sliced and diced the Republican alternative. On Thursday, Joe Biden issued a stinging populist attack on Mitt Romney, and a robust defense of his boss’s decision-making chops.

All of these speeches appeared to set the president up to do more than just defend his own record and define his opponent as extreme and out-of-touch. By taking the fight to Romney, it seemed, they made it possible for Obama himself to advance a more positive agenda. By looking backward, they made it possible for him to look ahead.

But the president’s actual speech did no such thing. The contrasts he drew with the Republicans were effective enough, but his positive agenda was mostly just a laundry list of easy targets — hiring more teachers, increasing natural gas production, modest short-term deficit reduction — rather than anything remotely transformative or new. By the time Obama was finished, Romney’s tissue-thin acceptance speech looked almost rigorous by comparison.

As the president promised, so is he likely to deliver. An Obama second term could feature some sort of early deal on taxes and spending, because the expiration of the Bush tax cuts will give him a temporarily strengthened hand to play. But a comprehensive, Simpson-Bowles-style deficit deal seems even less likely than before — let alone a deal on Medicare reform, where the two parties are now more polarized then ever. Likewise with liberal priorities like climate change legislation and immigration reform, which would require Democratic gains in Congress (and shifts in public opinion) that this campaign seems unlikely to produce.

As for the unemployed, maybe time and Ben Bernanke can help them, but there were no proposals of significance in the president’s speech for how to speed up short-term economic growth. Nothing new about housing, or the payroll tax, or regulatory reform, or monetary policy — nothing save an appeal for patience along what the president, in an almost Carteresque non-flourish, called the “harder” and “longer” road.

As The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein noted after the speech, a vote for the president’s meager agenda is effectively a vote for a kind of “return to normalcy” after the intense perturbations of the last four years. Clinton’s high-profile convention role was appropriate, in a sense, because in the best-case scenario an Obama second term would return us to the legislative landscape of the late 1990s — an era of small ball and incrementalism and modest forms of bipartisanship, in which politicians of both parties took credit for positive developments that they didn’t actually control.

But we are not in the late 1990s anymore. There is nothing remotely “normal” about the unemployment rate we’re enduring, or the long-term deficits we face, or the fact that the American birthrate has dropped below replacement level over the last five years. Or alternatively, if this is the new normal, then it’s a normalcy that both citizens and politicians should aspire to swiftly leave behind.

So far, Mitt Romney has conspicuously failed to persuade voters that his party, which helped lead us into this mess, has learned enough and changed enough to lead us out of it.

But whatever happens in November, the president’s own words have given us fair warning: We face a continuing crisis, and the liberalism of Barack Obama is no longer equal to the task.

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A Sense of Waiting for Godot for Texas Democrats

We continue our Presidential Geography series, a one-by-one examination of the peculiarities that drive the politics in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Here is a look at Texas. FiveThirtyEight spoke with James R. Henson, the director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin; Robert D. Miller, the chairman of the Public Law Group at Locke Lord L.L.P.; and Steve H. Murdock, a professor in the department of sociology at Rice University in Houston.

“It’s only a matter of time.”

For more than a decade, that thought has provided solace to the out-of-power Democrats who dream of turning Texas blue, much like it was before Ronald Reagan won the state in 1980. The appeal for Democrats is obvious. If President Obama, for example, were somehow able to carry Texas and its 38 electoral votes, the electoral math would become very difficult for Mitt Romney.

A Democratic-leaning Texas may seem like a dream, but for years such a shift has appeared almost inevitable. The Hispanic population in Texas (38 percent) is the second largest in the nation, and it is growing quickly. The African-American population (12 percent) has kept pace with the state’s overall growth. And non-Hispanic whites have been shrinking as a share of the population.

In fact, sometime after 2000, non-Hispanic whites became a minority in the state. They now make up just 45 percent of the population, making Texas the only majority minority state that reliably votes Republican.

Yet, for all the talk of a politically competitive state, the Republican grip on Texas has never loosened.

“We’ve had this discussion for 10 years now, and nothing has changed,” Mr. Miller said.

“There’s been a ‘Waiting for Godot’ nature in terms of Democrats and Latinos here,” Mr. Henson said.

All 29 statewide elective offices are held by Republicans, and Texas Democrats have been left with a series of if-onlys. If only the local party were better organized. If only national Democrats invested more money in the state. If only we could get a charismatic Hispanic candidate on the ballot. And, the most fundamental “if only” of them all: if only Hispanic turnout were stronger.

Poor turnout has dulled the impact of the state’s Hispanic population at the ballot box. Hispanics may make up 38 percent of the population, but they have never exceeded 20 percent of the electorate in presidential elections, according to exit polls.

“Latino turnout is even lower here than it is in a lot of other places,” Mr. Henson said.

Hispanic turnout is creeping up incrementally, but the non-Hispanic white vote in Texas has become overwhelmingly Republican.

The political landscape in Texas is relatively straightforward. The Democratic strongholds are limited to the major cities — Austin, El Paso, Dallas and to a lesser extent Houston and San Antonio — and the heavily Hispanic Rio Grande Valley.

Republicans are dominant everywhere else, from suburbs to small towns to ranches and farms.

Each of the main cities has a different feel and contributes something unique to the state’s economy. Houston is a center for health care and energy jobs. Austin, the capital, has a flourishing music scene and is a major center for technology start-ups. Dallas has a large African-American community (25 percent) and a little bit of everything economically.

Outside of the cities, Texas has several distinct regions. East Texas is much like northern Louisiana. It is mostly rural, religious and conservative. The Panhandle is also deeply conservative, but feels more like the Great Plains, Mr. Henson said, and includes a streak of libertarianism.

West Central Texas around Midland and Odessa is the chief oil-producing region. Over all, Texas is among the nation’s top energy-producing states, particularly in oil, natural gas and wind. The state’s booming energy industries have helped its economy weather the Great Recession relatively well.

The Bellwether: Tarrant County

The Dallas-Fort Worth area is home to over six million people, and the two cities are often grouped together. But Tarrant County, which is home to Fort Worth, and Dallas County have separate identities. Dallas is more diverse than Fort Worth, a former cattle town that now revolves around industries like defense.

Non-Hispanic whites are still a slim majority in Tarrant County, which helps make it a much better statewide bellwether than Dallas County. Tarrant County exactly matched the statewide vote in 2008, and was just 1 percentage point more Republican in both 2004 and 2000.

The Bottom Line

There is little doubt that Mr. Romney will carry Texas. He is a 99 percent favorite in the state, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast.

But the long-term trend seems equally clear. Despite poor turnout, the Hispanic share of the electorate has steadily climbed, from 7 percent in 1984 to 20 percent in 2008, according to exit polls.

At the same time, the non-Hispanic white vote has consistently fallen. In 1984 it was 78 percent; by 2008 it was 63 percent.

The larger question is not if Texas will become more competitive, but when, both Mr. Henson and Mr. Miller said. And that largely depends on whether Democrats can improve turnout among Hispanics. They have a few things working against them.

First, the Texas Democratic Party has been out of power for a long time, with few elections to truly contest. “The party in the state has really atrophied,” Mr. Henson said.

Second, Hispanic culture in Texas has so far not placed a high value on participating in the electoral process, Mr. Miller said.

Even if Texas Hispanics do start punching their weight, the Republicans could make efforts to win their support. Partisan allegiances among Hispanics could become more balanced.

Those obstacles notwithstanding, there is no doubt that as the minority population in Texas has grown, so too has the potential for the state to become less firmly Republican. And there are already signs of a possible future: Mayor Julián Castro of San Antonio, a rising star in Democratic politics, gave the keynote address at the national convention in Charlotte, N.C.

But that Democratic comeback — whether led by Mr. Castro or someone else — may still be years away. In the meantime, Democrats will have to continue to wait.

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Obama, Invoking Clinton, Says Romney Budget Doesn't Add Up

MELBOURNE, Fla. — President Obama, picking up where former President Bill Clinton left off, said Sunday that the budget proposals offered by Mitt Romney and Paul D. Ryan do not add up.

The president was quick to jump on appearances by his Republican rivals on the Sunday morning talk shows, in which they were asked separately what loopholes they would close to pay for their proposed tax cuts. Neither of the men answered the question.

The relationship between Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton started off rocky — Mr. Obama, after all, ran against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2008. But after Mr. Clinton’s ringing endorsement of Mr. Obama in a well-received Democratic convention speech on Wednesday, the president mentioned his Democratic predecessor at every stop on a bus tour of Florida over the weekend.

“President Clinton told us the single thing missing from my opponents’ proposal was arithmetic,” Mr. Obama told a rally here, to a burst of applause.

“When my opponents were asked about it today,” Mr. Obama said, “it was like 2 plus 1 equals 5.”

On NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Mr. Romney did not answer several questions from the host, David Gregory, on which tax deductions he would seek to eliminate, saying only that he would target “some of the loopholes and deductions at the high end” while lowering the “burden on middle-income people.”

On the ABC News program “This Week,” Mr. Ryan said that “the best way to do this is to show the framework, show the outlines of these plans, and then to work with Congress.”

Mr. Clinton, at the Democratic National Convention, said the Romney-Ryan plan did not  add up. Since then, Mr. Obama has adopted that line on the stump, and he has reiterated it in almost all of his public remarks.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 9, 2012

An earlier version of this post said incorrectly that former President Bill Clinton addressed the Democratic convention on Thursday. His speech was Wednesday.

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Al Gore Takes a Pass on Charlotte

He came ever so close to capturing the presidency in 2000, and even spoke at the 2008 convention, but this time around, Al Gore was nowhere to be seen as Democrats gathered in Charlotte, N.C., this week.

Instead, the former vice president was doling out commentary for his network, Current TV, at a New York studio, and had particular praise for his former ticketmate, Bill Clinton, with whom he had not always enjoyed the warmest ties.

“I have heard President Bill Clinton give a lot of great speeches,” he said of his former boss’s speech on Wednesday, “and I honestly don’t know of a better one.”

On Thursday, with a Twitter stream to the side of the screen, he said he was “so happy” that Senator John Kerry, another former failed Democratic nominee, mentioned his most-prized issue, climate change.

The panel assembled on his network for Thursday’s speeches addressed him as “Mr. Vice President” and seemed to dance around the issue of his convention absence. During a break in the action, Cenk Uygur, a Current TV host, posed to each member of the panel a hypothetical: would you rather be a senator from a given state, or take a certain cabinet position? Mr. Gore was not asked.

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Cutting the Deficit, Compassionately - Economic View

Thanks to former President George W. Bush — remember the compassionate conservative? — I have a good name for the fundamental principle that should guide the Democratic alternative: compassionate deficit reduction. The essence is to cut the deficit in a way that does as little harm as possible to people, jobs and economic opportunity. This principle was implicit in much of what President Obama proposed in his 2013 budget, and in what he said about the deficit at the Democratic convention on Thursday. But embracing it more explicitly would improve the substance of the president’s plan, and make it easier to explain to voters.

The first tenet is to go slowly. Investors are willing to lend to the United States at the lowest interest rates in our history. That gives us the ability to cut the deficit on our own timetable. We should pass a comprehensive, aggressive deficit reduction plan as soon as possible, but the actual spending cuts and tax increases should be phased in as the economy recovers.

Why is this the compassionate approach? Because immediate, extreme austerity would plunge us back into recession. The Congressional Budget Office set off alarm bells a few weeks ago when it said that going over the fiscal cliff — a reference to the nearly $500 billion of automatic fiscal contraction scheduled for the start of 2013 — would cause a rapid rise in unemployment. Well, duh.

A crude rule of thumb is that every $100 billion of deficit reduction will cost close to a million jobs in the near term. If that isn’t a reason to move gradually, what is? But if you need another, just look at Europe.

A concrete way to adjust gradually is to pair serious long-run deficit reduction measures with equally serious, near-term jobs measures — like a sizable short-run infrastructure program and a one-year continuation of the payroll tax cut for working families first passed in 2010. President Obama advocated both in his proposed American Jobs Act last September.

Even better would be to give businesses increasing employment a tax credit so large they couldn’t help but notice it, and state and local governments a round of aid generous enough to finally stop the hemorrhaging of teacher jobs and essential government services.

A second feature of compassionate deficit reduction is well-designed tax reform that raises at least some additional revenue. Our budget problems are so large that solving them entirely through spending cuts would devastate the social safety net and slash investments essential for long-run growth and economic opportunity. So revenue increases must be part of the package.

President Obama has repeatedly urged Congress to let the Bush tax cuts expire for those earning more than $250,000 a year. Increasing rates on top earners is an obvious way to raise revenue from those who can afford it most.

Many experts also recommend raising revenue by lowering tax expenditures — the roughly $1 trillion of deductions, credits and loopholes in the income tax code. Cutting tax expenditures would probably have fewer undesirable incentive effects than raising marginal tax rates. But it’s important to move carefully. Many tax expenditures, like the mortgage interest deduction and the tuition credit, go to middle-class families. Cutting only those expenditures wouldn’t be compassionate: it would shift tax burdens toward ordinary families already struggling to make ends meet.

One big tax expenditure benefiting the wealthy is the low tax rate on capital gains and dividends. The tax cuts of 2003 lowered the top rate on this income to 15 percent, far below the 35 percent top rate on other income. Compassionate deficit reduction requires a willingness to raise this preferential rate.

Government health care spending is a major cause of our terrifying long-run budget outlook. Any effective deficit plan has to slow that spending growth. But a compassionate plan would minimize risk to people, especially the most vulnerable.

The central question is whether Medicare and Medicaid should remain entitlement programs guaranteeing a certain amount of care, as Democrats believe, or become defined contribution programs in which federal spending is capped, as Republicans suggest.

Democrats have been forceful in explaining that if the federal contribution is limited and competition doesn’t magically slow costs commensurately, individuals and states will have to pay more. With Medicare, if individuals couldn’t pay the extra cost, they’d have to settle for less complete coverage and fewer benefits. With Medicaid, if states weren’t willing to pay the extra cost, they’d have to throw people off the rolls.

But Democrats need to explain their own plans for slowing government health care spending. To start with, they shouldn’t be defensive about having found $716 billion of Medicare savings as part of the health care reform legislation. They should explain, as former President Bill Clinton did in his speech on Wednesday, that these were reasonable changes that reduced overpayments to providers. They should ask Mitt Romney, who has vowed to roll back these reforms, why he wants to waste taxpayers’ money.

Moreover, Democrats should explain that compassionate deficit reduction will involve more such reforms. Fortunately, there is much inefficiency in the current system, so it should be possible to cut costs without lowering benefits. But if we can’t save enough money by reducing waste and finding better ways to provide care, we might have to consider more painful choices.

Making the wealthy pay a larger share of their Medicare costs, through further means-testing of benefits, would be one way to go. Gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age would be another. That may not sound like a winning message until you contrast it with the Republican plan, which trusts private insurers to decide how to cut costs.

Dealing with the deficit will require more than increasing revenue and reforming health care programs. We’ll also have to cut other spending. Compassionate deficit reduction requires that we choose carefully what to trim.

Spending that protects children, such as money for school lunches and vaccinations, must be maintained. So should assistance for workers displaced by international trade and for veterans struggling to recover from combat wounds.

Democrats shouldn’t be ashamed to advocate actually increasing spending that encourages opportunity and long-run growth. Aid for effective public education and Pell grants that help low-income students go to college aren’t luxuries — they are the building blocks of tomorrow’s labor force and the foundation of the American dream. And spending on infrastructure and basic scientific research is essential for the growth of productivity and standards of living.

BUT to make support for good spending credible, compassionate deficit reducers should be specific about what they would cut. Personally, I’d start with agricultural price supports and subsidized crop insurance programs that mainly benefit large commercial farmers. High-speed rail might be next. (Sorry, Mr. Vice President.) And if the defense secretary says that there is $487 billion that can be safely cut from the Pentagon’s budget over the next 10 years, we should listen to him.

Honest talk about the deficit is risky. Voters are more enthusiastic about the abstract notion of deficit reduction than about the painful details of accomplishing it. But deficit reduction is coming, and this election will most likely determine how it’s done. Democrats owe it to the American people to detail their more compassionate approach so that voters can make an informed choice.

Christina D. Romer is an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and was the chairwoman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

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Column: Obama takes aim at Romney

Cal Thomas is a conservative columnist. Bob Beckel is a liberal Democratic strategist. But as longtime friends, they can often find common ground on issues that lawmakers in Washington cannot.

By H. Darr Beiser,, USA TODAY

Head of the Democratic National Committee: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida tests the podium Tuesday in Charlotte, in preparation for the first day of the party's convention.

By H. Darr Beiser,, USA TODAY

Head of the Democratic National Committee: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida tests the podium Tuesday in Charlotte, in preparation for the first day of the party's convention.

Today:Obama takes the stage

Bob: Gallup reports that Mitt Romney had the smallest polling increase from any presidential convention since 1984. Romney's address to the GOP convention in Tampa, according to Gallup, was the least well-received speech since Bob Dole in 1996. Romney wanted this election to be a referendum on Barack Obama, but because Romney failed to close the sale on his own candidacy, he's given Obama an opening to make Romney an issue.

Cal: Nice try at those DNC talking points, Bob. Here in North Carolina, where I am spending the week with your political brethren, the new Elon University/Charlotte Observer Poll shows Romney leading President Obama 47% to 43% in the state. But enough about polls. Last week, we agreed on what Romney needed to say to the GOP convention and those watching on TV. Now, what do you think the president should say in his speech tonight?

Bob: In his acceptance speech, Romney did not harshly attack the president, which I thought was a good strategy. He let others, including Paul Ryan, do his dirty work for him. Speaker after speaker at the Democratic convention has attacked Romney for proposing warmed over policies from "the last century" and his running mate as radical and dangerous. Obama should do something similar, and to the extent he mentions Romney, it should be to compare the president's policies, popular or not, with Romney's lack of a single new idea.

Cal: The "last century" with its economic booms and defeat of communism in Russia and fascism in Germany is looking better all the time. I agree the president has a record. I anticipate the "failure" of the Democratic convention will be that Democrats will offer more of the same failed solutions. The president made some spectacular promises four years ago, few of which he has kept. It's going to be very difficult to defend that record, given the high expectations he generated, especially on unemployment, which he pledged the stimulus would hold to under 8%. Even Maryland Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley admitted to Bob Schieffer last Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation that America is no better off today than it was four years ago.

Bob: My cardinal rule in politics is to effectively manage expectations. The goal of any campaign should be to keep expectations in the right place so the candidate's strengths can exceed expectations and in the process minimize his weaknesses. If any president has ever suffered from high expectations, it's Barack Obama.

Cal: That was not the Republicans' fault. He almost single-handedly created those expectations with all of that lowering of the oceans business and other messianic talk.

Columns

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes a variety of opinions from outside writers. On political and policy matters, we publish opinions from across the political spectrum.

Roughly half of our columns come from our Board of Contributors, a group whose interests range from education to religion to sports to the economy. Their charge is to chronicle American culture by telling the stories, large and small, that collectively make us what we are.

We also publish weekly columns by Al Neuharth, USA TODAY's founder, and DeWayne Wickham, who writes primarily on matters of race but on other subjects as well. That leaves plenty of room for other views from across the nation by well-known and lesser-known names alike.

Bob: I agree. Obama has himself to blame after raising expectations during his extraordinarily effective campaign in 2008. He made promises that were nearly impossible to fulfill, particularly about changing the tone in Washington. He did not expect to be facing a Republican Party that had moved radically to the right and had no interest in working with President Obama.

Cal: Whatever happened to the Democratic Leadership Council, which Bill Clinton headed? These were moderate Democrats who were willing to compromise to move the ball forward. Look at the convention lineup of speakers. There isn't a pro-life, smaller-government, lower-taxes, less-spending, traditional-marriage speaker among the lot. The Democratic Party is now ruled exclusively by the hard left, and yet there are many Democrats who favor some, or all, of these moderate-to-conservative issues. Do you think the president in his speech tonight will have anything to say to these Democrats?

Bob: The DLC was a Clinton-driven organization that left the scene when he did. If you like radical speakers, Tampa was full of them last week. Back to the president's speech. I think Obama must address the expectations issue, and I know some people around him agree. As he told a CBS reporter, he failed "to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism."

Cal: It's a little late for that, don't you think?

Bob: No, I don't. For all his formidable skills as a campaigner and orator, Obama failed to tell the country why he was embarking on new directions in health care and why his stimulus package was necessary. He never sought to downplay the expectations of 2008 when he knew full well that they could not be met. Therefore, I think Obama needs to do a bit of mea culpa in his speech to let the voters know that he knows he hasn't met all their expectations, but that he is making every effort to do so.

Cal: A mea culpa doesn't fit his personality and will seem disingenuous. It would be like Madonna suddenly advocating modest dress. The public is cynical enough about politicians in both parties. The late comedian George Burns is supposed to have said, "Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made." Given the public's growing distrust of government, it is increasingly difficult to "fake sincerity." You've been a strategist. Should he attack Romney, or ignore him?

Bob: As I've mentioned, a little of both. When Obama talks about Romney, he should avoid talking about Bain Capital and Romney's refusal to release more of his tax returns. Those issues have been covered in his advertising and by others. Rather, Obama should point out that Romney is quick to raise all the problems facing America and has yet to offer solutions to solve them.

Cal: That's a fair point. As for Bain, Deroy Murdock wrote last week in the New York Post, "Bain's private-equity executives have enriched dozens of organizations and millions of individuals in the Democratic base — including some who scream most loudly for President Obama's re-election." So lay off Bain, Mr. President, and tell us if we're in for more of the same policies if you are re-elected.

Bob: Speaking of policies, even TheWall Street Journal panned Romney's speech because he offered no new policies beyond cutting taxes, increasing defense and, in a break with his running mate, Romney said he will protect Social Security and Medicare. This adds up to massive deficits and perhaps taxes on the middle class. It's no wonder so many economists laugh at Romney's warmed over trickle-down policies.

Cal: With the national debt climbing past $16 trillion, I'm glad you are suddenly concerned with debt, which is caused by overspending, not under-taxing. More and more voters don't trust either party to do what it says, but I think they'll give Republicans one more chance to rescue us from this financial sinking ship. If they fail, as we have written in a previous column, voters will keep tossing out incumbents until they get leaders who will do the necessary things to repair the economy.

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Elizabeth Warren takes stage in coveted convention slot

CHARLOTTE – Four years ago, at his 14th Democratic National Convention, Sen. Edward Kennedy delivered his last speech. "We have never lost our belief that we are all called to a better country and a better world," he told delegates.

By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

Elizabeth Warren, candidate for Senate from Massachusetts, addresses the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night in Charlotte.

By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

Elizabeth Warren, candidate for Senate from Massachusetts, addresses the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night in Charlotte.

Wednesday night, at her first convention, Elizabeth Warren sought to claim Kennedy's mantle — and his Senate seat — saying she's ready to answer the call.

In her distinctive rhetorical style, the Democratic Senate candidate from Massachusetts twice said the middle class was being "hammered." She said the system is "rigged" three times, and argued for a "level playing field" five times.

Warren is looking to dislodge Sen. Scott Brown from the Senate seat that Brown won after Kennedy's death in 2009. A prime-time speech leading into a former president would be a coveted slot for any first-time Senate candidate, and Warren herself noted that it was her first Democratic convention.

"I sure never dreamed that I'd be the warm-up act for President Bill Clinton— an amazing man who had the good sense to marry one of the coolest women on this planet," she said over chants of "Warren! Warren!"

As Warren led into Clinton, Wednesday night's prime-time speakers bridged two wings of the Democratic Party— Kennedy-like northeastern liberals and Clinton's southern, more moderate "New Democrats."

Warren represents the new liberal wing of the Democratic Party, a champion of gender equity and gay rights, but who is best known for taking on banks and Wall Street. As an expert in bankruptcy law, she fought credit card companies and was the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In her speech, Warren gave President Obama credit for the agency, saying he stood up to an "army of lobbyists" that tried to kill the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. And she noted that the new consumer bureau just had its first major enforcement action, a $210-million settlement with Capital One for what the government said were deceptive practices.

Taking a shot at GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, she said none of the small business owners she has met earned money from "risky Wall Street bets that brought down our economy." And "not one of them — not one — stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes."

Warren herself provided the rhetorical groundwork for Obama's now-famous "You didn't build that" remark more than a year ago. "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody," she said in a viral YouTube video in 2010.

Wednesday, she said Americans "don't resent that someone else makes more money."

"We're Americans," Warren said. "We celebrate success. We just don't want the game to be rigged."

The Massachusetts contest is one of 33 races that will decide control of the Senate, and one of the most hotly contested. Democrats now control 51 seats, though two independents also caucus with them.

Brown, Warren's opponent in the Massachusetts race, noted that Warren's speech failed to give him credit for voting in favor of Dodd-Frank — giving the bill a filibuster-proof margin needed to pass the Senate.

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Analysis: Clinton argues the case for re-election

CHARLOTTE – President Obama and his Republican opponents have fought to a draw for nearly four years over the best way to fix the economy. On Wednesday, Obama turned to the Democratic Party's explainer-in-chief to win the argument: Bill Clinton.

By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY

President Obama joins former president Bill Clinton on stage following Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte on Wednesday.

By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY

President Obama joins former president Bill Clinton on stage following Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte on Wednesday.

The former president did what he does best. He made the case for a Democratic-style economic revival based on investments in individuals and innovation. He stood up for the man who defeated his wife four years ago and stated the case against Mitt Romney better than anyone else has been able to do. For 48 minutes, he delivered a stunning tour de force that had delegates on their feet.

"In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president's re-election was pretty simple: 'We left him a total mess, he hasn't finished cleaning it up yet, so fire him and put us back in,' " Clinton said in nominating Obama for a second term. "I like the argument for President Obama's re-election a lot better."

That Democrats turned to Clinton — whose troubled presidency nevertheless produced a flourishing economy and four years of budget surpluses — reflects their inability to make the case that Americans are better off than they were four years ago. In recent days, top Democrats have stumbled awkwardly over that question.

Clinton, perhaps better than anyone else in the party, knows how to make that case — particularly in a venue that he has mastered as a convention speaker in 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and now 2012.

"He takes over the room," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. "Clinton's … masterful at making the contrast."

Clinton certainly took over the room at precisely 10:34 p.m., to the same Fleetwood Mac song that was the theme of his 1992 campaign: Don't Stop.

"I want to nominate a man who's cool on the outside, but who burns for America on the inside," he said. When he was finished, Obama came out to embrace him.

Clinton's speech was akin to a point-by-point rebuttal of the entire Republican convention in Tampa last week. It was vintage Clinton the educator, explaining to an adoring audience where their party can brag about progress and the other side cannot.

To win the four-years-ago argument, Clinton contrasted Obama's administration and the one it followed under George W. Bush— and asked which one Americans want in 2012.

"The most important question is, what kind of country do you want to live in?" Clinton said. "If you want a you're-on-your-own, winner-take-all society, you should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared prosperity and shared responsibility — a we're-all-in-this-together society — you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden."

Economic 'building blocks'

In an interview on NBC before the speech, Clinton said his task was to make Americans understand that the economy is on the upswing — even if they can't feel it yet. The message is simple: Be patient. "That's the whole election, really," Clinton said. "People have to decide whether something they can't feel is still the right direction for the country because of things that have been done."

So the former president delivered a full-throated, occasionally humorous and extemporaneous defense of Obama's record, from the 2009 economic stimulus to financial regulation, health care and student loan overhauls. He called them "the building blocks of a new American prosperity."

The endorsement of his Democratic successor came in contrast to 2008, when Clinton was a reluctant supporter of the young senator who blocked his wife Hillary's path to the White House. Over the past four years, the two men haven't bonded personally so much, but they have seen eye-to-eye on policy.

Clinton lauded Obama for seeking compromise and conciliation while Republicans have sought to block him at every turn. "One of the main reasons we should re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to constructive cooperation," Clinton said. As evidence, he noted Obama picked Joe Biden as his running mate despite Biden's own campaign for president in 2008 — and picked another presidential contender for secretary of State.

"Heck," Clinton said, "he even appointed Hillary."

He peppered his prepared address with off-the-cuff remarks such as "Y'all better listen carefully to this, this is really important" — then responded point by point to attacks from Mitt Romney's campaign.

Clinton was eager to attack the Republican ticket — not on a personal level, but based on economic and fiscal policies he believes are ill-fated. Some of his toughest language came on issues he said were "personal to me," including GOP claims that Obama wants to dismantle the welfare overhaul Clinton signed in 1996 and his policies are responsible for a national debt that just topped $16 trillion.

"Remember, Republican economic policies quadrupled the debt before I took office and doubled it after I left," he said. "We simply cannot afford to give the reins of government to someone who will double down on trickle-down."

Celebrating progress

Democrats were eager for someone to make the case of Clinton-Obama vs. Bush-Romney. The Time Warner Cable Arena was packed, forcing fire marshals to close the doors.

"It's no accident that Democrats celebrate our past presidents," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., "while Republicans virtually banish theirs."

In some ways, Obama has been Clinton's equal or more. While the then-president tried and failed to overhaul the nation's health care system, Obama succeeded. And while Clinton pushed through a deficit-reduction package in 1993 that helped lead to balanced budgets years later, Obama pushed through an economic stimulus package that many economists say helped prevent another Great Depression.

The task now will be for Obama not to pale by comparison tonight.

"Obama is an outstanding orator," says George Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University. "He can hold up to Clinton."

Contributing: Deirdre Shesgreen, Gannett

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Theft of Romney records probed

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON The Secret Service said Wednesday it is investigating the reported theft of copies of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's federal tax records during a break-in at an accounting office in Franklin, Tenn. Someone claiming responsibility demanded $1 million not to make them public.

An anonymous letter sent to Romney's accounting firm and political offices in Tennessee and published online sought $1million in hard-to-trace Internet currency to prevent the disclosure of his tax filings, which have emerged as a key focus during the 2012 presidential race. Romney released his 2010 tax returns and a 2011 estimate in January, but he has refused to disclose his returns from earlier years.

Romney's accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, said there was no evidence that any Romney tax files were stolen.

Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan confirmed the agency was investigating. The Romney campaign declined to comment.

Franklin police said there were no recent alarms or break-ins reported at the site.

The building does not restrict access during business hours and has no guard. Access to the doors and elevators appear to be controlled by keycard.

The data theft was claimed in letters left with political party offices in Franklin and disclosed in several Tennessee-area newspapers.

Peter Burr, the chairman of the county's Democratic Party, said he received a version of the letter and a thumb drive on Aug. 27.

"I have no way of knowing this is real or not," he said.

An anonymous posting on a file-sharing website said the returns were stolen Aug. 25 from the accounting firm's office.

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Fact check: Bill Clinton at the DNC

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Former president Bill Clinton's stem-winding nomination speech was a fact-checker's nightmare: lots of effort required to run down his many statistics and factual claims, producing little for us to write about.

By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY

Former president Bill Clinton addresses the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte on Thursday.

By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY

Former president Bill Clinton addresses the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte on Thursday.

Republicans will find plenty of Clinton's scorching opinions objectionable. But with few exceptions, we found his stats checked out.

Overselling 'Obamacare'

The worst we could fault him for was a suggestion that President Obama's Affordable Care Act was responsible for bringing down the rate of increase in health care spending, when the fact is that the law's main provisions have yet to take effect.

Clinton said that "for the last two years, health care costs have been under 4% in both years for the first time in 50 years." That's true, as reported by the journal Health Affairs in January of this year. But Clinton went too far when he added: "So let me ask you something. Are we better off because President Obama fought for health care reform? You bet we are."

Actually, the major provisions of the 2010 law — the individual mandate, federal subsidies to help Americans buy insurance, and big reductions in the growth of Medicare spending — haven't yet taken effect. Experts mainly blame the lousy economy for the slowdown in health care spending. As a report by economists and statisticians at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported last year, for example (as quoted in the Washington Post): "Job losses caused many people to lose employer-sponsored health insurance and, in some cases, to forgo health-care services they could not afford."

And this year, the New York Timesalso reported:

New York Times, April 28, 2012: The growth rate mostly slowed as millions of Americans lost insurance coverage along with their jobs. Worried about job security, others may have feared taking time off work for doctor's visits or surgical procedures, or skipped nonurgent care when money was tight.

The Times also quoted experts who said consumers' and physicians' behavior may be changing, and the "anticipation of the health care overhaul" could be a reason. Said the Times: "Many health care experts said they believed that the shift toward publicizing medical error rates and encouraging accountable care seemed to be paying dividends — and that providers were making changes in anticipation of the health care overhaul, which further emphasize accountable care." But that would explain only part of the slowdown, if it's truly a factor at all.

Other exaggerations

Other exaggerations and missteps were minor by comparison.

Clinton claimed Medicare will "go broke in 2016? if Romney is elected and repeals the federal health care law. Medicare will not "go broke," but a part of it — the hospital insurance trust fund — would not be able to pay full benefits for hospital services. Physician and prescription drug benefits, financed separately out of general tax revenues and premiums, wouldn't be affected.

As we explained in our Aug. 22 article, "A Campaign Full of Mediscare," the Medicare hospital trust fund is on pace to be exhausted by 2024 — or by 2016 if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. But Medicare would still collect payroll taxes sufficient to pay most hospital bills that would come due. Medicare trustees estimate the fund could pay 87% of its costs. The funding gap would continue to grow, and by 2050 the fund could cover only 67% of its bills. That's a serious situation to be sure, but it's not as though Medicare itself would suddenly halt all payments.

Clinton also exaggerated when he said Obama's 2009 stimulus bill "cut taxes for 95% of the American people." That's too high. The "Making Work Pay" tax credit cut taxes temporarily for about 95% of workers — those with "earned income." But it didn't benefit pensioners or the unemployed, for example. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated in 2010 that it benefited 76% of all families and single individuals.

Clinton was substantially correct when he said oil imports were at "a near 20-year low." He referred to a recent prediction that U.S. dependence on imported oil would fall this year to 42%, which Bloomberg News reported would be "the lowest level in two decades."

But Clinton's point was that the president's energy policies were "helping" to bring that about. Bloomberg, however, gave credit to "a boom in oil production from the shale formations of North Dakota and Texas," made possible by a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing.

And plenty of other Clinton statistics checked out as accurate. For example, he said that since 1961, when John F. Kennedy took office, 42 million private-sector jobs had been added while Democrats held the White House, compared with 24 million while Republicans were in office. And that's exactly what Bloomberg News reported in a May 8 story.

He also accused Republicans of blocking 1 million potential new jobs, but that checked out, too:

Clinton: Last year the Republicans blocked the president's job plan, costing the economy more than a million new jobs.

Two independent economists — Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics and Joel Prakken of Macroeconomics Advisers — had estimated that Obama's proposed American Jobs Act would add more than 1 million jobs. Zandi claimed it would add 1.9 million jobs; Prakken 1.3 million. Senate Republicans blocked the $447 billion measure, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell denounced it as "a charade that's meant to give Democrats a political edge" in 2012.

Oh yes — technically, Clinton's speech was to nominate Obama. When he finished, convention delegates made it official: President Obama is the Democratic Party's candidate for president in 2012.

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Obama to state his case

President Barack Obama finds himself in a delicate position as Democrats descend on Charlotte, N.C., for their party's national convention.

He must build his case for a second term amid continuing economic anxiety, reminding Americans how bad things were when he took office in January 2009 and arguing that the situation could again deteriorate if he loses the White House.

But even the most effective argument from the president may not immediately be reflected in public-opinion polls despite the extensive media coverage planned for this week's three-day Democratic convention, which begins Tuesday and runs through Thursday.

Such events rarely provide as much of a boost in the polls for presidents as they do for their challengers, simply because Americans already have well-formed opinions of their chief executives after four years in office.

Obama's job-approval rating stood at 45 percent as the Republican National Convention got under way in Tampa on Monday. Only one president -- Republican George W. Bush in 2004 -- has won re-election with an approval number below 50 percent.

Obama cannot rest his case on accomplishments such as the 2011 killing of international terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Historically, the economy has been key in determining a first-term president's fate, and the slow post-recession progress is a challenge for him.

In Charlotte, Democrats are expected to keep the heat on Obama's Republican opponents, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and his vice- presidential running mate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a ticket that Democrats have tried to paint as extreme on issues such as Medicare reform and immigration. And, in an attempt to change the conversation from the economy, Democrats likely will highlight contrasts with the GOP platform on social issues such as abortion rights, which Republicans oppose.

"Remember, President Obama inherited the largest set of problems at once of any president since FDR," said Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman and a Florida congresswoman. "The economy was hemorrhaging 750,000 jobs a month when he took office. And now, after almost four years of his policies, including the recovery act, which saved those teacher and first-responder jobs and created new green-energy jobs, we've had 29 straight months of job growth in the private sector. We've begun to turn things around."

The Romney-Ryan ticket offers a return to "the snake oil that never worked when the Republicans tried it," Wasserman Schultz told The Arizona Republic, as well as to policies that Democrats blame for bringing about "the worst economic crisis that any of us living today have ever faced."

So far, voters are not convinced. National polls released ahead of last week's GOP convention showed the presidential race deadlocked. Some had Romney with leads within the surveys' margins of error.

"The economy isn't good enough for the president to break out, but it's not bad enough for Romney to seize the lead," said John J. "Jack" Pitney Jr., a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. "So it's not surprising that they are running roughly even. It's unlikely that there will be such a big (economic) surge that the president will be able to coast."

The late-summer political conventions, where the major parties' candidates are officially nominated, and Labor Day mark the traditional point at which many undecided and independent voters start paying attention to the presidential race. Romney accepted the GOP nomination last week at a convention featuring themes such as "We Can Do Better" and "We Can Change It."

This week's Democratic convention in North Carolina, a swing state that Obama carried in 2008, "will be the most open and accessible and inclusive national convention that's ever been held in history" and will provide clear contrasts with the Republicans on diversity and other issues, Wasserman Schultz said.

Obama will deliver his nomination acceptance speech Thursday in front of an anticipated crowd of thousands at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.

San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro will become the first Hispanic to deliver the keynote address at a Democratic convention. Other featured speakers include former President Bill Clinton, actress Eva Longoria, convention chairman and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, 2004 presidential nominee and U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law School graduate whose advocacy for contraception coverage earned her scorn -- and an apology -- from conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.

Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican turned independent who endorsed Obama last month, also is expected to appear.

Charlotte is expecting 35,000 visitors, including Arizona Democrats such as U.S. Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Ed Pastor; Arizona Corporation Commissioner Sandra Kennedy; Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton; Phoenix City Councilmen Michael Johnson and Michael Nowakowski; Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox; state Sen. David Schapira; state Reps. Ruben Gallego and Anna Tovar; and Tohono O'odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris.

There also has been speculation that former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords might show up. Mark Kelly, Giffords' retired astronaut husband, said in April that an appearance was possible if her rehabilitation regimen allowed for the trip to North Carolina. Giffords resigned Jan. 25 to focus on her recovery from a gunshot wound to the head that she suffered in a 2011 assassination attempt.

Richard Carmona, the former U.S. surgeon general who is running against U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., for Arizona's open U.S. Senate seat, is campaigning in Arizona this week and will not attend the convention. Carmona, a former independent, entered the Senate race as a Democrat at the urging of Obama and other senior national Democrats.

Acknowledging that the economy is a concern, Grijalva said he hopes the convention conveys a tone and message that Obama and Democrats are serious about issues facing the nation. He said it's unfair for Republicans to blame the last few years on Obama and Vice President Joe Biden when Congress failed to take more aggressive action on the recovery. Republicans regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections.

"The fingers are being pointed at Democrats. This is an opportunity to point them back," Grijalva said.

Pastor, the senior member of Arizona's U.S. House delegation, also said he believes Obama can ultimately sway voters on the economy.

"He's arguing that the hole that he inherited in terms of the economy was pretty deep, but that we're slowly getting out of it," Pastor said. "He's holding his own."

But Pastor also said he hopes the Democrats will use the convention to continue to press Republicans on social issues such as abortion and gay rights following the furor over comments about rape made by U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, an anti-abortion Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri. Akin sparked outrage by claiming that "legitimate rape" rarely causes pregnancy because women's bodies respond in a way that stops it.

"Keep Todd Akin on TV," Pastor said. "What's happening in Missouri sure as hell isn't going to endear a lot of women to their cause. And their (tough-on- illegal-immigration) platform isn't going to endear a lot of Hispanics to the Republican ticket. Medicare is still going to play, and we'll just keep pounding away."

However, one political observer said the Democratic convention runs the risk of coming across as "boring," given that the party is so solidly behind Obama and there is no trace of party infighting or conflict. In addition to continuing to define Romney in a way that drives up the Republican's negative numbers and lay out a plan for his second term, Obama also needs to keep his troops fired up for the battle ahead, said Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of NDN, a left-of-center think tank in Washington, D.C. The Republican convention, against the backdrop of a hurricane, provided more drama.

"The question is whether the boringness and the togetherness of the Democratic Party right now, which is not a typical situation, is going to be a problem in itself," Rosenberg said. "Where's the excitement going to come from in this convention? ? You could make the argument that Obama has done a good job at keeping this diverse coalition together."

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