Faltan aún varias semanas para las elecciones presidenciales en Estados Unidos, pero ya se perfilan las tendencias que determinarán su desenlace. La cuestión de mayor relieve que se ventila entre los estadounidenses es la economía. Y será la percepción que los ciudadanos tengan el factor de incidencia final. Según una encuesta de The New York Times-CBS, el presidente Barack Obama va consolidando su ventaja sobre el republicano Mitt Romney. Éste, como hombre de negocios, se definió como la persona indicada para reactivar la economía, pero entre la gente viene manifestándose mayor fe y confianza en las propuestas del Presidente. O sea, que comienza a verse la luz en el túnel. Según el Times, "un modesto optimismo permite suponer que las políticas de la Casa Blanca están teniendo éxito".
As I listened to President Obama on stage in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday night, I thought back to the days more than four years ago, when he spoke at a Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa, or on the night he won the caucuses of that state. There was his romantic vision, the possibility of transformational change.
I don’t know if we are worse off now than we were back then, but we were certainly worse off then than we knew. The financial crisis of the past years has exposed debilitating flaws in our way of life. It’s exposed the crushing burden of debt and the unsustainability of our entitlement system. It’s exposed flaws in our style of capitalism — the overreliance on finance, the concentration of power. It exposed a widening education gap; the educated have recovered from the recession while the unskilled fall further behind. It exposed even deeper dysfunctions in our political system.
Mitt Romney greets a supporter after addressing the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles on Sept. 17. (Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty Images)
Sure it was a dumb move for Romney to denounce half of America. But he was just channeling today’s GOP. Plus, find out who the 47 percent are, and Robert Shrum on the coming GOP civil war.
Let’s cut right to the chase. Is Mitt Romney’s caught-on-video denunciation of half of America worse than Barack Obama’s infamous "cling" comments of 2008, when he was similarly caught in flagrante? You bet it is. Not even close. The Romney video, brought to light by David Corn of Mother Jones, shows the candidate at his smug worst, while Obama was at least trying to express some empathy in his remarks. And while you never know with Romney whether he really believes something he says or is just trying to placate the audience before him, in this case it almost doesn’t matter. He’s made himself the avatar of the forces that do believe it.
Ex-Bush aide Mark McKinnon keeps waiting for Romney to turn his campaign around and show the right stuff. After the 47 percent tape, he’s not sure that moment will ever come.
Mitt Romney is running out of time, and voters like me are running out of patience. I’ve been giving Romney the benefit of the doubt, assuming that at some point during this campaign he would reveal some things about himself that would give me some insight into who he really is and what drives him. And that I would be compelled to support him.
President Barack Obama takes the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012. (Jae C. Hong / AP Photo)
The president’s more subdued rhetoric is being derided by pundits—but it was carefully vetted with groups of voters. Howard Kurtz reports exclusively on the Obama team’s decision not to swing for the fences in Charlotte.
Barack Obama’s team wanted an earthbound speech, and they got it.
While the pundits are generally calling the president’s Thursday night address mediocre, Obama and his advisers had taken great pains to avoid soaring rhetoric that might have been derided as empty.
EL EX presidente Bill Clinton habla sobre la elección y el presidente Obama en la Universidad Internacional de la Florida. CHARLES TRAINOR JR / The Miami Herald
El "Secretario de Asuntos para Explicar" vino a Miami el martes, y estuvo a la altura del nuevo sobrenombre que le ha dado el presidente Barack Obama.
Desde el Medicare y la política de educación hasta la deuda nacional, el ex presidente Bill Clinton disertó durante 40 minutos en la Universidad Internacional de la Florida (FIU), prodigando elogios a Obama y condenando la política republicana.
"La prueba no es si usted piensa que todo está bien — si esa fuera la prueba, el presidente votaría contra sí mismo", dijo Clinton. "El sabe que no todo está bien. El sabe cuán mal está alguna gente… La prueba es si él nos está llevando en la dirección correcta: y la respuesta, entonces, es sí".
"Creo con todo mi corazón que una sociedad que dice, fundamentalmente, "ocúpate de ti mismo", nunca va a ser tan exitosa en un mundo altamente competitivo e interdependiente como una sociedad que dice: "no podemos desechar a nadie", dijo. "Todos estamos juntos en esto".
Foro Internacional 
