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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Column: Christie's tough guy act shows lack of civility

Chris Christie, New Jersey's nattering nabob of negativism, seems to have taken a page out of Spiro Agnew's playbook in hoisting himself onto the list of potential running mates for Mitt Romney, the Republican Party's presumptive presidential candidate.

AP

Gov. Chris Christie

DeWayne Wickham USATODAY columnist

Christie, the Garden State's rough-talking governor, has been auditioning for the GOP's vice presidential slot with a tough guy act that seems to play well with the Republican base. His supporters see combativeness as a blue-collar virtue that Romney lacks — and his centrist leanings as a magnet for independent voters. Christie's backers delight when he talks of kicking the butts of Democratic lawmakers, calls a reporter who challenged him during a news conference an "idiot," and labels an openly gay legislator a "numbnuts" for comparing Christie to segregationist governors for his position on same-sex marriage.

Agnew is the Maryland governor who catapulted himself onto the 1968 presidential ticket of Richard Nixon with tough talk of a different kind. He called a meeting of his state's moderate, black leaders following rioting that broke out in the wake of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and accused them of not doing enough to stop the violence.

Memories of Agnew

These black leaders didn't act because they were "stung by insinuations (they) were Mr. Charlie's boy" and "by epithets like 'Uncle Tom'," Agnew said as television cameras rolled. That dressing down of Maryland's black leaders got Agnew national media attention and an invitation to be Nixon's running mate.

Christie is a bully of another sort. He was caught on video recently menacingly berating a man who voiced some objection to his education policy while the governor strolled along a Seaside Heights, N.J., boardwalk with an ice cream cone in hand. "You're a real big shot, shooting your mouth off. Keep walking away. … Keep walking," Christie can be heard calling out to the man, whom the governor pursued briefly before being gently nudged into another direction by a member of his entourage. But to actually think Christie is a real tough guy is to believe The Sopranos was a real-life documentary, not an HBO fictional drama.

Baiting for attention

Like James Gandolfini, the show's star, Christie is an actor. He baits interest in his potential candidacy with the kind of tough talk that only true bad guys, and people with a security detail, get away with. His reckless speech might play well in a state besmirched by the false imagery of The Sopranos and Jersey Shore, an MTV series that negatively stereotypes the very neighborhood where Christie had his boardwalk blowup. But it won't pass on the world stage where vice presidents play an increasingly important role. In a recent interview on the ABC News show Nightline, Christie said coyly that he'd answer the phone if Romney called to ask him to be his running mate.

Let's hope that doesn't happen.

What this nation needs from both sides of the political aisle are serious men and women who will take a constructive — not a chest-beating — approach to leadership and governing. We need politicians who can proffer their ideas and defend their ideological ground without resorting to brutish behavior. This nation needs elected officials who will answer reporters' questions, or — when they choose not to — will do so with the good reasoning and civility public trust demands.

As with Agnew, Christie's selection as a vice presidential candidate would be great theater. But to put someone who delights in using fighting words so close to the Oval Office would place a blustering bully a heartbeat away from the presidency.

DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.

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Column: Artur Davis shows hypocrisy in switching parties

Every time the political pendulum makes a big shift, there are politicians who go over to the other side.

AP

Davis: Ex-congressman of Alabama.

AP

Davis: Ex-congressman of Alabama.

DeWayne Wickham USATODAY columnist

Back in the 1960s, after President Johnson signed a series of civil rights laws into effect that ended the Jim Crow era, a legion of Southern Democrats switched to the Republican Party. When the 2008 election gave Democrats control of the White House and veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress, then-Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate Pennsylvania Republican, returned to the Democratic Party that he had deserted in 1966.

So, it came as no surprise to me when Artur Davis, a former Democratic congressman from Alabama, announced that he was switching to the GOP. His decision comes as Republicans enjoy a sizable majority in the House and threaten to seize control of the Senate and the Oval Office in November.

Davis' stroll over to the GOP side was a pretty short trip, given the position he has occupied along this nation's ideological spectrum. He was a right-of-center Democrat who, for example, voted against the Affordable Care Act, which the Supreme Court upheld last Thursday.

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.

Failed race for governor

In his 2010 bid to become Alabama's first black governor, Davis refused to openly court the state's top African-American political organizations and ended up losing the Democratic primary in a landslide to Ron Sparks, the state's agriculture secretary. Sparks, who is white, even won the overwhelmingly black 7th congressional district that Davis represented at the time.

So when Davis — who attended Harvard Law School with Barack Obama and seconded his nomination at the 2008 Democratic convention — announced that he was cutting his ties to the Democratic Party, it was not a surprising move for someone who had rolled the political dice — and lost badly.

But the thing that distinguishes Davis from so many others who have changed party labels is the level of his hypocrisy.

Criticized a colleague

Back in 2009, when Rep. Parker Griffith, D-Ala., defected to the Republican Party, Davis could hardly contain his contempt for his old colleague.

"He leaves a party where differences of opinion are tolerated and respected to join a party that in Washington, marches in lockstep, demands the most rigid unity, and articulates no governing philosophy beyond the forceful use of the word 'no,' " Davis said.

Instead of bolting, Davis said, Griffith should have remained in the Democratic Party, just as Sen. Howell Heflin and Rep. Bud Cramer, two of Alabama's more prominent conservative Democrats, had done. (Heflin retired in 1997, and Cramer stepped down in 2009.)

At the time, Davis said those two Democrats understood that "fiscal conservatism, robust advocacy for our fighting forces, and a defense of our best national values are not partisan principles."

But now, after the folly of his gubernatorial campaign, Davis sees a different political landscape. "Wearing a Democratic label no longer matches what I know about my country and its possibilities," he said.

Davis talks of resurrecting his political career by moving to Virginia and possibly running as a Republican for the state senate, or competing for one of the Old Dominion's seats in the House.

"If that sounds imprecise, it's a function of how uncertain political opportunities can be," he wrote in a May blog posting.

What it sounds like to me is the double talk of a man who's trying to convince himself that he has made the right decision.

DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.

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Column: Where are the doctors?

Women's reproductive rights were hard-won decades ago, and while there have been encroachments and threats to them over the years, they have generally been supported by the law. And women have availed themselves of those rights in large numbers.

By Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images

Abortion legislation: Five states require doctors to tell women that a link might exist between abortion and breast cancer, though studies have not found any such link.

By Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images

Abortion legislation: Five states require doctors to tell women that a link might exist between abortion and breast cancer, though studies have not found any such link.

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.

Since the choice to terminate an unwanted pregnancy was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 in Roe v. Wade, almost one in three women have had abortions. The legality of contraception was established even earlier, in 1965, in Griswold v. Connecticut, and tens of millions of women use some form of artificial contraception.

But there is now an unprecedented and sweeping legal assault on women's reproductive rights. New legislation is being introduced, and sometimes passed, in state after state that would roll back access to abortion and contraception, mainly by intruding on the relationship between doctor and patient.

Women have reacted strongly, as evidenced by a growing disaffection among female voters with the Republican Party and its candidates; there is now a double-digit "gender gap." But where are the doctors? They have been strangely silent about this legal assault, even though it directly interferes with medical practice.

A lengthening list

Consider some of the new laws:

•Nine states require doctors to perform ultrasound examinations on women seeking an abortion, and to encourage women to view the images. (This requirement was justified by Alabama Sen. Clay Scofield in his deeply patronizing comment, "This bill just allows them to see the child inside of them, so it's not just out of sight, out of mind.") Three of these states also require women to listen to a description of the fetus.

•Counseling is now mandated in 35 states to dissuade women from having abortions.

•Five states require doctors to tell women that a link might exist between abortion and breast cancer, despite the fact that careful studies have not found any such link.

•Similarly, eight states require doctors to tell women that abortion could cause psychological problems, despite evidence to the contrary.

•Arizona is considering a bill that would hold doctors harmless from lawsuits if they intentionally withhold information from a woman, such as the presence of major fetal abnormalities, because they believe the information might cause the woman to seek an abortion.

In short, legislatures are ordering doctors to lie about the medical evidence, the patient's condition and their own medical judgment.

Even more regressive than obstructing the right to abortion is the recent effort to block access to contraception. The current attempt to turn the clock back nearly a half-century is cloaked in high-flown rhetoric about the rights of employers and insurers to deny coverage for contraception if it violates their conscience (it also saves them money).

But employers and insurers are not doctors, and should not be permitted to decline to pay for a category of medical services that they disapprove of. Appealing to conscience does not change the fact that employers and insurers, regardless of their own beliefs, do not belong in decisions about what constitutes good medical care.

Legislators vs. physicians

The unspoken assumption by state legislators seems to be that doctors will, of course, acquiesce with these new laws, that they are simply neutral agents who will comply with whatever the state orders. Physicians, however, have ethical commitments to patients that they cannot and should not be required by state law to set aside.

Prominent among them is the responsibility to place the welfare of their patients above all other considerations. In light of this, requiring doctors to perform procedures that are not medically indicated, or to provide false information about medical evidence, doesn't just violate women's rights. It also leaves doctors with an untenable dilemma: Violate state law, or betray their professional obligations to patients.

Physicians, both as individuals and as a profession, should stand with their patients. They should make it clear that they will not perform procedures, such as ultrasound examinations, unless they are medically indicated and desired by their patients. And they should refuse to provide inaccurate information about the consequences of abortion, or to follow any other prepared script in counseling their patients, particularly when it involves treating women like children.

Such acts of civil disobedience by individual doctors should be only the starting point. The profession as a whole, as represented by its professional organizations, needs to become involved, so that physicians are not left to fend for themselves.

It is time for the American Medical Association and, particularly, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to take a public position on behalf of the patients they are pledged to serve, and to support their members in doing so.

Marcia Angell, MD, is senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and a former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. Michael Greene, MD, is professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School and chief of obstetrics at Massachusetts General Hospital.

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Column: New form of Christian civic engagement

Three decades ago, the evangelical faithful was galvanized by public debates over abortion, the size of the federal government, the future of the traditional family, and religious liberty. Many responded by following divisive leaders into the culture wars with the promise that voting for "moral" leadership would end abortion, protect traditional marriage and put our country on the right track.

By Guy Lyons

The new wave: Students pray together at a conference in New Mexico.

By Guy Lyons

The new wave: Students pray together at a conference in New Mexico.

On Religion
Faith. Religion. Spirituality. Meaning. In our ever-shrinking world, the tentacles of religion touch everything from governmental policy to individual morality to our basic social constructs. It affects the lives of people of great faith — or no faith at all. This series of weekly columns — launched in 2005 — seeks to illuminate the national conversation.

How did that work? Not so well, it turns out. Today, abortion remains legal, divisions over same sex rights linger and we're still debating religious liberty. The federal government continues to expand, the economy is struggling and millions of Americans divorce each year. Christian Millennials are now coming of age and recognizing the flawed strategies and broken agendas embraced by their forebears. They've seen how the religious right (and the religious left, for that matter) has used the Bible as a tool to gain political power and reduced the Christian community to little more than a voting bloc — and they are forging a different path.

"We are seeing head-snapping generational change," notes conservative columnist Michael Gerson. "The model of social engagement of the religious right is increasingly exhausted."

Thank God. A distinctive way of being Christian in the public square — a softer, less partisan way — is emerging. And this cultural change could be the very thing our faith needs to survive.

Shifting priorities

Three primary shifts are occurring:

•From partisan to independent. Christians of yesteryear saw the two-party political system as an indispensable mechanism for promoting their values, but young Christians recognize the limitations and pitfalls of partisan politics.

For example, a 2001 study of young evangelicals by Pew Research Center found that 55% were self-described Republicans. When the study was repeated in 2007, only 40% remained in that category. Only one-fifth of the group who left the Republican Party migrated to the Democratic Party. The rest now describe themselves as "independents" or "unaffiliated."

Last month, at the Q Conference, a gathering of more than 700 young Christian leaders in Washington, a participant survey found that 61% of participants claim they don't affiliate with either the right or left.

•From a narrow agenda to a broader one. An earmark of the culture wars was a tightly defined agenda, focused almost exclusively on issues such as abortion, gay marriage and, occasionally, religious liberty. There is no longer a strict hierarchy of arrangement in the minds of the emerging faithful, but rather a broad range of issues to which Christians must attend.

I've spoken with hundreds of young Christians, and one of the common denominators I encountered was the wide array of issues that enlivened them — caring for the environment, protecting the poor, waging peace, advocating for immigrants and, yes, protecting the unborn.

•From divisive rhetoric to civil dialogue. Americans in general are weary of the reactionary, angry, polemical language that stymies progress and the common good. Two-thirds of Americans believe we have a major problem with civility. More than seven in 10 agree that social behaviors are ruder than in the past.

Abandoning coarseness

Christians are awakening to the ways in which our cultural coarseness has affected their own community. They've heard their leaders resort to extreme rhetoric, insults and name-calling, whereby those who disagree with Christians are accused of being unpatriotic, pagans, baby-killers and anti-God. They recognize that this trend has led to 70% of non-Christians ages 16 to 29 saying Christians are "insensitive to others," according to the Barna Institute.

So Christians increasingly long for a substantive change in tone. This desire has led to efforts such as conservative Christian and Romney adviser Mark DeMoss' Civility Project and liberal Christian Jim Wallis' Civility Covenant, which was signed by more than 100 Christian leaders and denominational heads. Today's Christians are not seeking ways to "divide and conquer" but to "partner and achieve." Unafraid to collaborate with those they may disagree with on other issues, young Christians and their leaders are showing up throughout the public square and working on common-ground agendas.

One can only imagine how Christian culture warriors such as Richard Land, Tony Perkins and James Dobson must feel as these shifts gain traction and their power wanes. In response, some have decried the shift while others deny it is even occurring.

As Andrew Sullivan noted in a recent Newsweek cover story, organized religion is in decline, and Christians exercise far less influence over society than even a decade ago. As Sullivan and others rightly argue, this trend is due, in part, to Christians' partisan, divisive and uncivil engagement in the public square. So I say bring on this new brand of political engagement. Because crucifying the culture war model could be the only hope for resurrecting American Christianity in a new century.

Jonathan Merritt is author of A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars. He has published more than 350 articles in outlets such as USA TODAY, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Postand CNN.com.

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