Barlow Herget is a commentator and host on SGR Today. He has been a commentator on UNC public radio and an instructor in continuing education at Duke University. Herget was a Nieman Fellow ('70) at Harvard University, has worked for the Daily Press of Paragould, Ark., the Detroit Free Press, and the News & Observer of Raleigh. His articles have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times and numerous other publications. Have something to say to Barlow? Contact him by email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

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If you’re not happy with the past four years of President Obama’s government, why should you want more of the same for the next four years?

That’s the question that President Obama must answer not only this week at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte but across the country until Election Day, November 6.

It’s a fair question and one posed by Republicans at their national convention last week.  To date, the President has focused, successfully, on Republican Mitt Romney’s record and his vague promises.

The former Massachusetts Governor wants to get the economy going by slashing taxes and cutting entitlement programs such as Medicare.  He will switch them to voucher systems.  (When President Franklin Roosevelt drastically cut government spending in 1937, the Depression returned.  He learned his lesson and Mr. Romney apparently has not.)

While the issue of race is the submerged alligator swimming after the President, he must leave that topic to the press and public to expose and discuss.

But he must answer the question, why four more years.

Belatedly, the President’s campaign is defending his record.  That defense starts by showing with hard figures that the country is far better off than when Mr. Obama was handed a failing, broken, and dispirited economy in 2009.

Unemployment was rising (it topped at 10.2 percent) and our financial system shaking.  Unemployment today is 8.3 percent.  That’s a fact.

It’s also a fact that the New York Stock Market is over 13,000 today.  That figure may mean more for the “one-percent” crowd, but it is also very good news for voters who have retirement and college funds invested in the Stock Market.  Compare that with George Bush’s Panic that sank stocks to 6,547.

And the economy is growing, not shrinking as it was when Mr. Obama took office.  The growth is slow, but it’s growth, not decline.

These are facts that are undisputed, no matter the speeches of the “truth-challenged,” Marathon Man Paul Ryan.

But Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney have on their side the important public perception that the economy is bad and Mr. Obama is to blame.  That’s why Mr. Obama must give a credible and spirited speech that outlines what he will do for the next four years.

He must start by telling the country that he will fight harder for his recovery legislation such as the American Jobs Act.

He can defend and move forward with the Affordable Health Care Act that will save billions of dollars.

If Democrats retain Senate control, he can break GOP Senate filibusters that crippled his recovery legislation with “reconciliation” procedures that require a simple majority vote.  Republicans already are preparing to do just that if they win the Senate.

And the President can use the bully pulpit to tell voters what they already know:  That uncompromising, “do nothing” congressional Republicans cannot stand in the way of recovery.

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North Carolina’s candidates for governor are like the teenager who has been told to cut the grass and then given a pair of scissors.

The number one task facing former Charlotte Mayor and Republican Pat McCrory and Democratic Lt. Governor Walter Dalton is to fix the state’s economy and reduce unemployment.  But neither has the tools to really do that.

They cannot, for example, do anything to affect interest rates to spur investment in capital projects or home building.  That job belongs to the Federal Reserve and, in part, to the global banking system.

As governor, they cannot use deficit spending to finance an economic stimulus as did President Obama in his 2009 successful stimulus package.  North Carolina’s governor, like most governors, is constitutionally required to balance the state budget.

So, what are Mr. McCrory’s and Mr. Dalton’s economic plans?

Mr. McCrory wants to cut taxes and reduce state regulations.  Nothing new there.  He also promises a “business friendly” administration and aggressive natural gas exploration.

Mr. McCrory has been intentionally vague about the details of his tax proposals such as what programs he will eliminate to balance the tax cuts.

The core of Lt. Governor Dalton’s economic plan is his support for public school and university education.  He also believes community colleges are more than vocational schools and he wants more funding for technical training.

To finance his education plans, he is willing to restore three-quarters of the one-cent sales tax, but not for next year.

Mr. Dalton supports the state’s tax incentive plan to attract new jobs, and both men will be enthusiastic salesmen for the state.

None of these proposals will prompt quick job gains.  Tax cuts over time can stir an economy, but an income tax cut and the sales tax cut in 2011 did little to spur the state’s economy.

More cuts in government spending have, so far, increased unemployment.  July’s slight rise in unemployment from 9.4 percent to 9.6 was blamed mostly on public sector job losses.

Reducing regulations can also help, but experience shows that cutting regulations for, say, hog farms, lasts about as long as it takes to get to the next big lagoon spill.

There is merit in making rules less onerous, but the mess from lax government oversight on workers’ compensation is an example of what is at risk.

Mr. Dalton and Mr. McCrory realistically don’t have much to work with, but they and the media should better highlight what they can do.  And for the candidates, spend less time and money on negative ads. 

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“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

That wise observation comes from the great political savant, Groucho Marx.  It describes precisely the Republicans’ current effort to keep people from voting.

North Carolina’s present election record should be commended.  In the past 20 years, the state has made it easier for citizens to register and to vote.

Consider these reforms:
* Multiple locations to register and to vote. Libraries and deputized groups or individuals can register voters, and the number of early voting sites have expanded.  There were 250 early voting sites in 2004 and 368 in 2008.
* Expanding the number of days in which citizens can register.  In 2007, the state was the first in the South to allow registration and voting on the same day.  In times past, a citizen had to register 25 days before Election Day.
*  Expanded early voting, up to 17 days before Election Day.  In the 2008 election, 61 percent of the 2.4 million voters cast absentee or early voting ballots.

The purpose of these reforms is to encourage people to get out and vote.  The state has seen dismal turnouts in times past.  The state and nation hardly match voter participation in other democracies such as France (80 percent), Germany (71 percent) and Great Britain, (66 percent).

 North Carolina recorded a 70 percent turnout in 2008, a record in modern times.  And there were very, very few voter fraud cases.  The election reforms worked.

So why are Republican controlled legislatures here and elsewhere trying to restrict and curtail voting?

Their claim to prevent fraud is bogus.  And they know it.  North Carolina’s voter fraud, like the nation’s, is “extremely rare,” to use a phrase from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law.  Indeed, only one voter impersonation at the polls was found in the last 10 years.

The whole idea of requiring photo identification and other voting obstacles has been pushed for years by conservative organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  Their unspoken agenda is to suppress votes from poor people and minorities who tend to vote Democratic, especially blacks.  It’s no coincidence that these voting restrictions are popular in most Southern states.

Groucho Marx got a laugh with his observation, but the current wave of Republican sponsored voter identification laws is nothing short of unethical and Machiavellian voter suppression.  Shame on them.

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Mitt Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is a predictable yet somewhat risky choice.

Mr. Romney picked a conservative, white male that even looks like he could be a son.  But Mr. Ryan’s conservatism is even more “severe” than Mr. Romney’s, based on Mr. Ryan’s budget and unwillingness to compromise.

Typically, presidential candidates in their primary races aim their words and positions to the more conservative or liberal wings in their parties.  Mr. Romney certainly did that, switching positions on abortion, health care and immigration, among others.

After the candidate wins the nomination, he usually moves back toward the center.  That’s where most Americans see themselves, as moderates.  But Mr. Romney, still not trusted by many GOP purists, genuflected again to the right wing of his party by taking a chance on Mr. Ryan.

Liberal columnist E. J. Dionne said in a radio appearance with former Republican Congresswoman Linda Chavez when asked about the Ryan selection that he and Ms. Chavez were both happy but for different reasons.

Ms. Chavez is pleased with the selection of an ideologically strong conservative, although Mr. Ryan voted to bail out Wall Street and George Bush’s whopping deficits year after year.

Mr. Dionne is happy because he thinks the Democrats now have concrete proof that Mr. Romney is willing to drastically change Medicare and leans toward changing Social Security, both championed by Mr. Ryan.  Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan want to replace these programs with a voucher system that invariably will benefit giant insurance companies and Wall Street more than patients and small investors.

These two programs are considered deadly “third rails” in American politics.  Touch them and you’ll get electrocuted.

Already, the Obama campaign is broadcasting an ad that focuses on the Romney-Ryan ticket’s willingness to toss out Medicare as we know it and love it.  Remember the Tea Party sign that protested Mr. Obama’s health care act, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare?”

The ignorance embodied in that sign points to why the Obama campaign will push hard to educate the public on what’s at stake in this election.  Look for generous spending in states such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia where many older citizens vote.

I believe Mr. Obama’s race remains the deciding, unspoken issue in the campaign along with the very visible and all-important challenge of re-starting the economy.

The Ryan choice certainly has sparked the Republican right wing.  But so did Sarah Palin.

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Agreed.  Economics is still the dismal science.

It is much more entertaining to read about President Obama’s latest, dumb, out-of-context quote such as, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”

Or Mitt Romney’s stupid gaffes about the London Olympics and declaration that “corporations are people, too.”

There also is the media’s fixation on horserace polls.  Who’s ahead, who’s behind?  Who has the most winning personality?  Who do white males like or who do women prefer?

But the biggest concern of the American people is the economy.  Not only do the polls report it time and again, our relatives and friends and business associates tell us they’re worried about where the economy is going.

Americans want Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney to explain how the country can pump out new jobs and put millions of unemployed Americans back to work.

Even though the economy added 163,000 new jobs in July, the unemployment rate rose to 8.3 percent from 8.2 percent in June.  It’s worse here in North Carolina where the jobless rate is stuck at 9.4 percent.

The average hourly wage in 2012 is lower than the average wage in 2011, $23.39 cents to $23.44.  We are stuck.

The public should have an understanding of Mr. Obama’s plan.  He has been trying to move the economy forward since 2009.  But because of threatened Republican filibusters in the U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama’s initial spending stimulus was curtailed.

He has since offered more modest proposals such as his current jobs bill aimed at building roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects.  But no WPA-scale back-to-work program.  His new jobs bill died in the now Republican controlled House.

The stimulus, contrary to Mr. Romney’s and the FOX network’s catcalls, did work.  A recent essay in Bloomberg News reported that 92 percent of the country’s leading economists, conservative and liberal, believe the stimulus lowered the unemployment rate.

Mr. Romney’s plan is less concrete.  Indeed, it’s hardly more than bromides.  He’s for good schools and energy independence and more global trade.  Who isn’t?  He will approve the Keystone oil pipeline and cut environmental rules and lower taxes and kick labor unions and kill national health care.  He will reduce federal spending dramatically.

This plan, he promises, will produce 12 million new jobs over four years.  When President George W. Bush tried many of these things, the country got the current recession.

While the candidates and their surrogates are devoting millions to negative ads, they should heed the revised Bill Clinton slogan.  It’s still the economy, stupid.

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The salt in the gaping wound of the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, is the reality that the country will do nothing about it.

Oh, there have been memorials and there are inspiring stories about heroic acts of both the 12 murdered and the 70 wounded.  These are meaningful responses to such a horror.

But the disgusting truth is that our elected officials, starting with the two presidential candidates, are cowed and frightened of the National Rifle Association, the NRA, and will not even discuss gun controls.

Our political leaders believe the NRA can and will spend thousands and millions of dollars to defeat anyone who proposes restrictions on gun ownership.  And they’re right.

Deny the facts and change the subject is the strategy of elected officials who want to keep the NRA bear at bay.

Remember the Tucson, Arizona, shooting that almost killed Congresswoman Gabby Giffords?  Congressman Ron Barber, who succeeded Giffords, was himself wounded twice at that shooting.  Thus, it was amazing to watch Mr. Barber, who is running for re-election, answer a question this weekend about curbing assault rifle sales.  He changed the subject.

The Colorado shooter, James Holms, carefully planned his Batman movie rampage.  He purchased his four weapons legally, including the AR-15 rifle that shoots an unbelievable 800 rounds a minute.

Mr. Holms also carried a shotgun and two Glock pistols.  No one predicted how he was going to use his guns nor did anyone predict how the Tucson and Virginia Tech shooters planned to use their weapons.  And no one will predict the next shooter’s killing spree.

The country can make it more difficult for other killers to obtain such deadly weapons.  Renew the 1994 gun control law that was repealed in 2004.

If the automobile industry made cars that kept rolling over on steep turns, they would not stop building cars and we wouldn’t want them to.  But we would expect them to correct the design and get the dangerous cars off the street.  The country should expect the same from the gun industry.

To do that, the majority of the public who want such a law will have to battle the NRA at the ballot box.  That means a unified, national effort that can raise millions in campaign monies and air hard-hitting campaign ads to ban assault rifles.

That’s hard, but it’s the only realistic way to return sanity to our law-abiding society.  Otherwise, says Colorado State Senator John Morse, “As long as we let people buy these guns, we will bury our children.”