President Barack Obama began to frame the debate for the 2012 elections between himself and his opponent, Mitt Romney, last week. He criticized Romney at a NATO meeting in Chicago, arguing that Romney’s business experience is not the right kind of experience to be president.
This line of argument will help persuade independent voters and will be a central theme in the coming months. It’s not the same argument used against Obama in 2008. John McCain and Sarah Palin argued Obama was an inexperienced leader because of the little time he spent in the Senate, and he lacked major accomplishments.
Obama’s argument acknowledges Romney’s accomplishments as a businessman and instead argues the country cannot be run like a business. Instead, being president is about being able to understand the needs of the country.
Obama was asked about how others have seen his advertisements and arguments as an attack on private equity.
He responded to Romney, ‘If your main argument for how to grow the economy is, ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,’ then you’re missing what this job is about. It doesn’t mean you weren’t good at private equity, but that’s not what my job is as president.  My job is to take into account everybody, not just some.’
This is only a continuation of the arguments Romney’s Republican presidential opponents made throughout the nomination campaign. But Romney has been the governor of Massachusetts, which presents a challenge to Obama’s argument. Romney was able to govern and did not run the state like a business.
While Romney has served four years as governor, he has not made his experience governing a main reason that he should be elected. If he intends to counter Obama’s arguments, he will need to bring up his history as governor. Instead, Romney’s stated numerous times he’s a ‘political outsider’ who worked in business.
Though he might want to appear disassociated from politics, nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps Romney wants voters to forget his record as Massachusetts’s governor. His positions on some issues have drastically changed since his time as governor.
Romney responded to the president’s remarks on his campaign website: ‘What this election is about is the 23 million Americans who are still struggling to find work and the millions who have lost their homes and have fallen into poverty. President Obama refuses to accept moral responsibility for his failed policies.’
The response Romney made is similar to the rest of his arguments against the Obama administration. Romney believes Obama’s policies and regulations have been stifling economic growth. If Romney were elected, implementing a job growth plan would be easier – he knows how to make the United States even better.
There’s little elaboration in Romney’s rhetoric. For example, what specific policies and overregulation are problems and which would he change? How do you prove that it’s Obama’s fault? Meanwhile, economic indicators have gotten better for the United States. The argument that the economy is not performing well has less impact when the news tends to stay positive.
With polls showing Romney and Obama virtually tied, the candidates will expectedly continue to move further apart and become more personal in their arguments. Obama stated, ‘This is what this campaign is going to be about – is what is a strategy for us to move this country forward in a way where everybody can succeed?’
Whether or not Obama’s arguments are persuasive will be seen on Election Day.
Harmen Rockler is a senior newspaper journalism and political science major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at horockle@syr.edu.