Romney, Obama keep voters guessing about 2013

Here is my Sunday column ...

After more than a year of campaigning, after three presidential debates, the voters still do not know – with less than two weeks to go to Election Day – what to expect in 2013 from Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.

What will a Romney presidency bring? Will his foreign policy mirror that of the Obama administration, as his statements in the final debate suggest? What IRS deductions will he cut to make room for his $5 trillion tax cut, and will those changes make home mortgages and college tuition more expensive while hurting charities and disrupting working class families which rely upon the child tax credit?

What will a second Obama term amount to? The president has never specified his agenda for the next four years, except for a more-of-the-same mantra, which is not comforting to the millions of voters who are disappointed in Obama’s first four years. The move last week to produce a booklet with policy specifics was certainly too little, too late.

Several news organizations have pointed out that the issues dominating this campaign – gas prices, immigration, health care, government regulations, taxes and federal spending – don’t fully match up with the maladies facing the nation, particularly unemployment, underemployment and falling wages.

We have witnessed a campaign for the White House that has had its moments when substance prevailed, and yet we have also been subjected to countless misstatements and half-truths by both candidates. Too often, the media has focused their attention on gaffes and gimmicks.

In recent weeks, voters have endured too many shallow campaign moments with an emphasis: on Sesame Street’s Big Bird, “binders full of women,” Donald Trump’s $5 million stunt, silly revelations of Romney’s spray-tanning, and an over-the-top reaction to the Obama camp’s “first time” web ad.

Meanwhile, the number of issues that have not received attention is disturbing: the lingering housing crisis, the “too big to fail” banks that have grown in size, political corruption and cronyism in the campaign finance system, ways to break the political gridlock on Capitol Hill such as filibuster reform, the Pentagon’s growing reliance on drones to fight the war on terror, the crazy weather over the past two years and whether climate change is to blame, racial polarization, homelessness and rising poverty, and the real reasons for our shrinking middle class and how difficult the solutions are.

In addition, the “fiscal cliff” facing the U.S. in the next two months if Congress doesn’t act has been largely brushed aside. By the end of the year, the Bush tax cuts will expire, the Obama payroll tax cut will end, the Alternative Minimum Tax that protects upper middle class will expire, and the harsh “sequestration” budget cuts for the military and numerous social programs will take effect.   

How the two candidates intend to free us from this mess is unclear. With Congress making noises about a temporary fix, followed by a comprehensive solution in 2013, the fiscal cliff questions are equally relevant when posed to Romney.

Business executives are becoming jittery over the entire situation. Those pro-business lawmakers who have repeatedly exclaimed that the business community hates uncertainty are certainly not making any progress on that front as Jan. 1 approaches. In Washington and on the campaign trail, all eyes are on Nov. 6.

The short-sightedness that leaves 2013 and beyond a mystery has cheated the voters of national discussions about the real cause of America’s declining prosperity – the digital revolution and automation, expanded globalization, and the nation’s slipping educational system.

According to the Census Bureau, family income (adjusted for inflation) has fallen by 8 percent since 2000. In contrast, each decade before 2000, going back to World War II, brought increases in median income of nearly 30 percent.

Worse yet, getting back to those vibrant increases in income is not likely because the previous numbers were comparisons to times when the country was poorer, post-war Europe and Japan were still in shambles, strong unions boosted wages and benefits, and women and minorities were coming into their own.

Studies by economists indicate that some of the politicians’ favorite talking points -- illegal immigration, gas prices, taxes and the minimum wage – have little impact on prosperity. While taxes seem to dominate every political discussion in America over the past decade, the federal tax burden is at it’s lowest since the 1950s.

Gas prices will probably be pushed to the back of the line in the final nine days of the campaign because they are rapidly declining. The truth is that oil produced in North America goes on the world market and no president can control those prices.

The lack of discussion about education is particularly disturbing. We all know of the rapidly declining rank that America’s K-12 education system holds in the world. But campaign trail rhetoric seems to encourage the idea that it’s not worth going to college these days. The fact is that college graduates, despite their recent difficulties finding work, have an unemployment rate of 4.1 percent. The connection between learning and earning is still solid.

In addition, the candidates have engaged in some discussion about the cost of college and the back-breaking burden of student loans, but the basic issue of access has been left largely untouched. Consider this: Only 3 percent of the students at the nation’s top 146 colleges and universities are from families in the bottom 25 percent of the income scale. That is a tragedy.

The disconnect between presidential campaigns and economic reality is based in part on candidates’ unwillingness to ever admit that there are some issues and dynamics that the presidency cannot control. Chief among them, globalization. Tough talk about trade barriers and tariffs aimed at China could make matters worse, not better.

Those who dismiss the connection between wages and jobs and technology and automation are missing the mark. This is about more than just ATM machines and online shopping. The American manufacturing sector produces far more than it did in 1979, despite employing almost 40 percent fewer workers. The stars of the business world, the big tech companies, create a tiny fraction of the American jobs that General Motors and General Electric did in the 1960s and 1970s.

Yet, those are numbers voters never hear from Obama or Romney. Instead, figures that amount to spin and “cherry picking” are tossed about. The fact-checkers who study the candidates’ claims have exposed a spiraling number of partisan voters who pick and choose their facts.

The 24-hour cable TV talking heads spout countless figures on polls, sub-sets of polling figures, and voting trends based on demographics and states and even counties. But they claim they cannot offer a comprehensive analysis of Romney’s plans and Obama’s plans because that would put their viewers to sleep. Or, worse yet, encourage them to change the channel.

Mark McKinnon, a founder of No Labels, a centrist group that rejects hyper-partisanship, has said that, by definition, facts shouldn’t be partisan. Referring to a quote from an old Scottish writer, McKinnon says that leaders in Washington “use statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts -- for support rather than for illumination.”

So, those voters who are not knee-jerk partisans sit in the political darkness, hoping to make the right decision on Election Day. But still not knowing what 2013 might bring.