Just in time for Christmas: Obama releases 'second term agenda'
Obama channels Bullwinkle:
"Hey Rocky, watch me pull a second term agenda out of my hat...
"Nuttin up my sleeve...Presto! (He pulls forth Joe Biden's head from the hat.)
"Sorry - Wrong Hat!"
After weeks of being challenged by Democrats and Republicans to lay out his second-term agenda, President Obama's campaign is releasing a 20-page booklet called "Blueprint for America's Future" on Tuesday and airing a new television ad to support it.
While several of his policy initiatives are not new, laid out in the last State of the Union address and during Obama's convention speech in September, they are likely the basis for his campaign's messaging in the final two weeks of the election.
The 60-second spot, called "Determination," outlines several policy initiatives the president will tackle if he were to get reelected. Calm and poised, speaking over soft music and images of soldiers coming home, farmers in the fields and manufacturing workers in factories, Obama makes a pitch directly to the camera in the ad.
"There's just no quit in America and you're seeing that right now," Obama says, before going on to lay out several first-term accomplishments. He continues, "We're not there yet, but we've made real progress and the last thing we should do is turn back now."
Obama then describes his plan: "Making education and training a national priority; building on our manufacturing boom; boosting American-made energy; reducing the deficits responsibly by cutting where we can, and asking the wealthy to pay a little more. And ending the war in Afghanistan, so we can do some nation-building here at home. That's the right path."
Obama asks viewers to compare his plan with Mitt Romney's, then asks for their vote. Panelists on MSNBC's Morning Joe pointed out that the ad has hints of Ronald Reagan's famous "Morning in America" spot.
There's also that Morgan Freeman ad where he tries the "morning in America" bit. "Factories are humming again," intones Freeman. Twenty-three million Americans unemployed, underemployed, or too discouraged to look for work - but the factories are "humming?"
Obama is bleeding millions of supporters because he is incapable of telling the truth. People see his second term agenda or the Freeman ad and tune it out because no one believes him anymore. Any candidate who waits until 14 days before the election to bother to tell the voter what his plans are for a second term does not deserve serious consideration for the office.
The American people are beginning to see it that way.