"It's a beautiful piece of work."
That's Ezra Klein's assessment of Mitt Romney's economic recovery platform that the former Massachusetts governor rolled out last week, two days before President Obama addressed Congress on his demand for Stimulus 2.0.
Klein is the Washington Post's resident smart lefty blogger and an Obama partisan. But he admires production values even as he chides the Romney proposals that would result in higher productivity.
"Put simply, Romney's plan looks like a general-election plan produced by a large, experienced campaign staff," Klein notes.
Romney's 59 points are specific, and those who knocked the plan for its length and detail simply do not grasp either the complexity of the economy or the degree and breadth of the damage done by Obama and his team in just 30 months.
Contrast Romney's Tuesday rollout with the absurd spectacle of the president urging the Congress Thursday night to pass a bill "right now" which hadn't been submitted to the House or Senate and indeed which hadn't been written.
Even Obama acolytes had to cringe at a performance that is as far removed from "presidential" as the Astros are from the World Series. The president's cheering section in the Manhattan-Beltway media elite seems to have had trouble grasping just how off-putting the president's contrived stridency was, but as the negative reviews rolled in, the common denominator was ridicule.
From legislators in the chamber to bloggers and pundits spread across the country, the overwhelming reaction was a mixture of amusement and disdain. There are no examples of a Klein-like grudging admiration from across the aisle for the president's presentation. It was, in a word, awful.
I was in the Fleet Center (now named the TD Garden) on July 27, 2004, when then-Sen. Obama blew the roof off with a great display of rhetorical ability.
That ability to turn a phrase and summon emotions from the crowd is now buried under the reality of a failed presidency, a ruin of plans gone bad and policies that bankrupted the country even as they failed to deliver anything remotely close to what had been promised.
The president's shabby attempt to pre-empt the debate ahead -- by arguing that his GOP opponents had already endorsed much of what he sought -- didn't even elicit anger or even pique from the Republicans. When sighs, chuckles and rolled eyes are all that a president can summon, the point of no-return-to-credibility has been passed.
House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor responded politely, damning the president's ability to move the needle on legislation with the faint praise that is reserved for walk-ons that don't make the team and actors who don't get call-backs.
Every poll tells the same story, and the crosstabs reveal an even bleaker narrative for Democrats. The president has lost the confidence of the country. His response to the situation is unserious. His speech of last Thursday would make a high school debate coach chide his charges for going over the top.
So it is now up to Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry to encourage the international markets with hopes for a renaissance in American fiscal responsibility and a return to the low-tax, high-trade policies that mark periods of robust American growth.
Romney's plan was a much needed message to the country and the world that help is on the way, though it is still 16 months off. Whether the GOP nominee is named Mitt or Rick doesn't matter nearly so much as the fact that both agree a reversal of Obamanomics is needed to recover momentum in the private sector.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/09/time-roll-back-obamanomics#ixzz1XrKUibl6
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