[wanabidii] Obama inches ahead in key voter polls

Folks,     Skills for managing business empire is completely different from managing a Government which on the other hand demands integrity with clear judgement authorizing action in spar-of-moment that may call for short notice for resolve and clear-cut direction for action.     Government leadership cannot be run on guess work, flip flopping or in a gamble.......It is too much of a risk to take.......     With the evidential proof we have seen in Romney's flip flopping, Mitt is far from getting it together.......     Whats your say people.....!!! Judy Miriga Diaspora Spokesperson Executive Director Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc., USA http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com       Obama inches ahead in key voter polls As the clock ticks down to Election Day and the number of undecided voters shrinks, President Obama is gaining over Mitt Romney in key polls. But overall, the race remains way too close to call. By Brad Knickerbocker | Christian Science Monitor – 14 hrs ago It's been a rough week for both President Obama and Mitt Romney, Mr. Obama has had to deal with anti-US protests around the Muslim world, including the murder of American diplomats in Libya. Mr. Romney took flak from Republicans as well as Democrats for what critics said were intemperate remarks about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, which seemed obviously aimed to gain political advantage at a time when national unity was called for. Obama has more responsibility than his challenger here – both for what happened in Libya and for how to respond. It could be a defining moment for his re-election bid. But a snapshot of where things stand in the presidential campaign 51 days before the election should bring some cheer to the White House, at least according to the most recent polls. Are you more (or less) conservative than Mitt Romney? Take our quiz! As the Monitor's Liz Marlantes reported Friday, Obama's post-convention bounce apparently endures, most significantly in key battleground states. According to a new set of NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls, Obama is now leading Romney by 7 points in Ohio and 5 points in Florida and Virginia, and the RealClearPolitics polling average right now has Obama up by 4.2 percentage points in Ohio, 1.3 points in Florida, and 0.4 points in Virginia. A Philadelphia Inquirer poll released Saturday has Obama leading Romney in Pennsylvania, 50 percent to 39 percent, reports Politico. "Pennsylvania Democrats are more consolidated behind Obama, with 77 percent in favor of Obama and 13 percent in favor of Romney, while Republicans are 18 percent in favor of Obama and 71 percent in favor of Romney," according to the poll press release. "Following the conventions, Obama's favorability rating has increased by 3 points, while his unfavorable rating has decreased by 6 points. Opinions of Romney have improved slightly following the conventions, but he still has a net negative personal popularity rating among voters in state, with 46 percent favorable/48 percent unfavorable rating." Politico also reports on an internal Republican poll that has Romney behind by 4 points in Ohio, not as bad as his 7-point deficit in the NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls but behind nonetheless. "The numbers underline Romney's longstanding problems in Ohio, where he's taken a beating from Obama's campaign and liberal groups," writes Politico's Jonathan Martin. "But it's actually a sign of the depth of Romney's hole in the state that the results were greeted favorably by Republicans. Polling in Ohio before the conventions last month showed Romney with an even larger deficit, closer to double-digits." The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll of likely voters has Obama widening his advantage to 7 points, a gap that's been increasing since the Democratic convention. "What that really means is that Obama is in good shape," said Ipsos pollster Julia Clark. "Thursday's online poll also found far more registered voters preferred the incumbent's policies and approach on taxes (41 percent picked Obama, 30 percent Romney), healthcare (44 percent Obama, 28 percent Romney) and Social Security (39 percent Obama, 27 percent Romney)," Reuters reported. "Asked which of the candidates had a better plan, policy or approach to the war on terrorism, more registered voters again favored Obama: 39 percent to Romney's 25 percent." (Note that the poll was taken two days after the attack on the US consulate in Libya.) One sleeper poll that may have particular importance given the tension between the US and Israel over drawing a "red line" regarding Iran's nuclear facilities: Obama has extended his lead among registered Jewish voters to 70-25 percent, according to unreleased Gallup daily tracking poll data reported by BuzzFeed. "The data, obtained through a Democratic source, shows Obama up from leading 64-29 in polling this spring – and on par with his 2008 performance at this point when he led 69-25 over John McCain in Gallup polling," reports BuzzFeed. Two daily tracking polls out Saturday show just how close the race is: Gallup had Obama up by a point while Rasmussen gives Romney a 2-point edge. Meanwhile, the number of undecided voters continues to shrink to just 5-6 percent as people become more fully engaged with the campaign now that the conventions are over and Election Day approaches. Stay tuned for regular updates.       Op-Ed Columnist The Foreign Relations Fumbler By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: September 15, 2012 DIPLOMACY is a minefield, and Mitt Romney spent the last week blowing up his foreign policy credentials to be president. He raised doubts about his capacity to deal with global crises, and we were left hoping that if that 3 a.m. call ever went to him, he'd have set up call forwarding. Damon Winter/The New York Times Nicholas D. Kristof On the Ground Share Your Comments About This Column Nicholas Kristof addresses reader feedback and posts short takes from his travels. Go to Columnist Page » The essential problem is that every time Romney touches foreign policy, he breaks things. He went on a friendly trip to Britain — the easiest possible test for a candidate, akin to rolling off a log — and endeared himself by questioning London's readiness to host the Olympic Games. In the resulting firestorm, one newspaper, The Sun, denounced "Mitt the Twit." (Imagine a President Romney making a London trip and helpfully offering off-the-cuff advice on Northern Ireland, or breaking the ice in Parliament by telling jokes about Queen Elizabeth. The War of 1812 would resume, and the British would again be burning down the White House.) Then there was the Romney trip to Israel, where he insulted Palestinians and left some Jews uncomfortable with stereotyping by praising Jewish culture in the context of making money. Hmm. After that trip, you'd have thought that on foreign policy, Romney might remember the adage: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Yet with the Middle East exploding in recent days because of a video insulting the Prophet Muhammad, Romney dived in with a statement that hit a trifecta: it was erroneous, inflammatory and offensive. Still, I was initially in a forgiving mood. Presidential candidates always have microphones in their faces, and it's not surprising that periodically they say inane things. President Obama himself blew it a few days ago by mistakenly asserting that we didn't consider Egypt an ally. But Obama then had the good sense to have the White House clarify that "not an ally" in that context meant "an ally." If Romney had similarly explained that in denouncing Obama he was actually praising the administration, the episode might have blown over. But after a night of sleep, he doubled down and repeated his denunciation of the president. That was just reckless. (Romney also underscored his ignorance by referring to the "embassy" in Benghazi, Libya. Embassies are in capitals, so it was a consulate that was attacked in Benghazi.) Perhaps the Romney campaign should invest in a muzzle for its candidate. It might even be tax-deductible! Foreign policy isn't as glamorous as it seems. Diplomacy mostly consists of managing crazies who are making unreasonable demands in impossible situations with no solutions. And those are just our allies. In the Middle East, the basic dynamic is that extremists on one side empower extremists on the other. Thus anti-Muslim extremists released a video that Salafi Muslim extremists then publicized to provoke grass-roots outrage that would benefit them. It's too bad that Salafis weren't as indignant about the massacre of Syrians and Sudanese as about the trailer of a movie that may not even exist. As a parody Twitter account of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, posted: "Wow! Good thing I just bombed mosques, killed women and children and I didn't make an anti-Muslim video! People would be after me!" The Republican Party is caught in a civil war on foreign policy, and Romney refuses to pick sides. In contrast to his approach on the economy, he just doesn't seem to have thought much about global issues. My hunch is that for secretary of state he would pick a steady hand, like Robert Zoellick, but Romney has also surrounded himself with volatile neocons. With China, Romney seems intent on a trade war. In the Middle East, it appears he'd like to subcontract foreign policy to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu recently tried to push the United States to adopt a nuclear red line that, if Iran crossed it, would lead us to go to war there. Obama was right to resist, and it has been unseemly for Romney to side with a foreign leader in spats with the United States. (For my part, I think Obama should indeed set a red line — warning Netanyahu to stop interfering in American elections.) Most dangerous of all is Romney's policy on Iran, which can't be dismissed as an offhand misstatement. As my colleagues David E. Sanger and Ashley Parker note, Romney muddles his own position on his nuclear red line for Iran. Plenty of candidates don't write their own foreign policy position papers, but Romney is unusual in that he seems not to have even read his. According to clarifications from Romney's campaign, he apparently would order a military strike before Iran even acquired a bomb, simply when it was getting close. For anyone who has actually seen a battlefield, that's a blithe, too-light embrace of a path to yet another war. It's emblematic of a candidate who, on foreign policy, appears an empty shell.   'World News' Political Insights: Mitt Romney's Own Empty-Chair Challenge By Rick Klein | ABC OTUS News – 12 hrs ago Enlarge Photo ABC OTUS News - 'World News' Political Insights: Mitt Romney's Own Empty-Chair Challenge (ABC News) ANALYSIS Things haven't been going Mitt Romney's way since roughly the moment that Clint Eastwood dressed down that empty chair. It isn't simply that the stunt distracted from an otherwise solid Republican National Convention, overshadowing a big introductory moment for the Romney campaign. It's that Romney has struggled to fill the leadership chair himself, despite several high-profile opportunities handed to him by national and international events. Yes, President Obama got a convention bump. Yes, the fact that this race has a frontrunner for the first time basically since it began can change just as quickly in the other direction. But a static campaign is suddenly on the move. That movement is throwing Romney off his main campaign message; a candidate who has long calculated that the only issue that matters is the economy is chasing headlines, with varying degrees of success. The questionable timing of Romney's response to anti-American unrest in the Middle East - violence that would include the death of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya - constituted a missed opportunity for the Republican nominee. The campaign seems conflicted at times on what other opportunities to pursue in taking on Obama. Recent Romney messaging has focused on welfare policy, the administration's stance toward China, and even mentions of "God" on U.S. currency, to mention just a sampling. The loss of focus has a growing number of conservatives concerned that Romney isn't taking advantage of an enormously vulnerable president. The staggering economy, the explosion of debt, unpopular domestic achievements, and new challenges overseas all leave Obama in a tenuous place when it comes to his reelection prospects, or should. Romney's laser-like focus on the economy was supposed to take advantage of all that. But just seven weeks before the election, that strategy doesn't seem to be working. Adding to the urgency is the fact that leading in the polls in September matters this year more than ever. The first battleground-state votes of 2012 will be cast in Iowa just a week from Thursday, and voting begins in all-important Ohio Oct. 2 - the day before the first presidential debate. Meanwhile, Romney has barely picked up his campaign pace. The cancellation of a Colorado event today - in deference to a plane crash that occurred at the airport the campaign plane was scheduled to land at - means the GOP nominee had no public events this weekend. Obama also had a quiet weekend, but he has four public rallies this week, including two Monday in critical Ohio. Romney so far has no public events on his schedule for the week, though the campaign has typically been adding such events only a day or two in advance. When Romney does campaign, he's fighting his own image at times. "Saturday Night Live" made the point in the opening skit of the program's season premiere last night, with the Obama character referring to Romney as his "secret weapon." "There's your choice America," the Obama character says, "stick with what is barely working, or take your chances with that." That wouldn't be quite how the Obama campaign frames what they hope is the choice for this fall. But it may end up being enough, and it will be on Romney to campaign in a way that recasts that equation in the coming weeks. Applying Romney's Business Experience to the Presidency Paul Pillar | December 1, 2011 Mitt Romney's highly profitable career in the private sector forms the basis of much of his appeal. People aspire to wealth; when someone has been conspicuously successful in acquiring it, the belief follows that the person in question must be doing something right. Romney's campaign has played up the idea that the candidate's business acumen is just what the country needs in its chief executive. What it really would mean to transfer to government the skills and approach Romney demonstrated in his private-sector career, however, requires closer consideration not only of the approach itself but also of how the tasks of a government chief executive resemble or differ from the tasks Romney performed while making his fortune. He made the fortune (i.e., the part that was not inherited) as head of Bain Capital, a private-equity firm that bought companies (often mostly with borrowed money) with the hope of reselling them for a profit. His mission was not to build businesses but instead to extract as much profit as possible from temporary ownership of them. The extraction was ruthless, which more than made up for the losses from bets that did not pay off. Although in the current economic climate Romney naturally has talked a lot about job creation and tried to associate that concept with business experience, his own experience had at least as much to do with slashing jobs as with creating them. And although Romney and his associates at Bain added value to the management of firms they bought (if they didn't, it would be hard to resell them for a profit), ultimately the long-term soundness of a company did not matter to them because they did not intend to keep them for the long term. Even acquisitions that could be counted as successes were handled in a way in which Bain Capital's profits always came before the health of the acquired company. A profile of Bain's handling of a medical-equipment company it bought shows all the ruthlessness, including the extracting of fat management fees to Bain, the layoffs, and the penny-pinching treatment of employees who were not laid off. The last act of Bain Capital's ownership of the firm was to squeeze the firm's managers into using borrowed money to buy back Bain's share and much of its partners' shares. The transaction put the company so heavily in debt that it soon went into bankruptcy (although it later recovered). The management of government has several important and fundamental differences from all of this. Government obviously does not have profit as a standard of success and failure. It doesn't have any single standard. Governmental leaders have to deal with multiple and often conflicting domestic interests, reflecting multiple constituencies. In this regard, the kind of private-sector business experience that would be most relevant is not the private-equity game in which everything is reduced to the game-player's profits but instead the management of a company that actually provides a good or service and in which managers have to deal regularly and over the long term with customers, suppliers, creditors, shareholders, local communities and other constituencies. Multiple and conflicting interests, moreover, are not just a matter of multiple constituencies. They also show up in many aspects of foreign and security policy, even if the nation as a whole is considered a single constituency. Another difference is that a head of government cannot pick and choose which lines of business he wants to be in. He cannot buy into lines that look attractive, stay out of ones that don't, and cut losses in ones that he tried but that did not work out. The services that are demanded of government, moreover, are mostly permanent. The only thing permanent about Bain Capital's activities was Bain Capital's financial coffers. In the face of this incongruity, the application of Romney's private-sector experience to politics takes a form that can be seen in some respects in his current campaign. Monetary profit becomes electability, measured not in dollars and cents but instead in poll numbers and votes. Winning an election and taking office becomes the equivalent of closing a deal and taking ownership of a company. In this framework, Romney's notorious flip-flopping is unsurprising. Just as temporarily owned companies are only means to the end of a private-equity artist's profits, so too are policy positions only temporary means to the end of greater electability. Here again, different private-sector experiences would have different implications. The line manager of an operating company may be deeply, even passionately committed to building the best possible widget and offering it at the lowest possible price—and in so doing not just making a fair profit but also providing a needed good or service. The private-equity artist's world is devoid of any such substantive commitment. Some other echoes of Romney's private-sector methods showed up in his tenure as governor of Massachusetts. A profile of that tenure in National Journal describes an episode involving an accident in which four Boston high-school students were struck by a pickup truck after a snowfall. Romney reacted by firing the state's conservation commissioner, whose department was responsible for clearing roads. He took that action even though the commissioner was admired and respected for taking firm control of an agency that previously had been plagued with mismanagement. As the National Journal article notes, the firing "chilled other administration officials, who feared that the governor was far more willing to let the buck stop at their doors than at his." This kind of blame-shifting technique is hardly unique to Romney; we have seen others in Washington use it. But it comes most naturally to someone who does not see organizations under him as anything for which he feels responsibility or to which he feels a lasting commitment. They are again just means to the end of profit/electability. If Romney is elected president, the federal government would be only the latest, albeit the biggest, of the companies that he has temporarily controlled. As with the companies that Bain Capital bought and sold, there is no way of knowing in advance what substantive policies Romney would see most to his advantage. The campaign flip-flopping provides little guidance in this regard. And as with the private businesses, the long-term health of the organization would not be a concern to Romney; he would instead be concerned only with what sells and with what would be profitable for him—however he would choose to define profit in this circumstance. At the end of his period of controlling this latest and largest company, Romney would not need to find a buyer for it. After either four or eight years, he could simply walk away from it and into one of the most comfortable and respected positions anywhere, that of ex-president. He could leave the government, as he left that medical-equipment company, deeply in debt. That's what the most recent president of his party did. Romney Heckled Over Libya Remarks By Emily Friedman | ABC OTUS News – Thu, Sep 13, 2012 FAIRFAX, Va. - Mitt Romney today was drowned out by a protester at a campaign event yelling at him for "politicizing Libya." The protester was so persistent that Romney was unable to hold a moment of silence in honor of those killed in the incident. "I would offer a moment of silence but one gentleman doesn't want to be silent, so we're going to keep on going," Romney said at the very beginning of a rally in Virginia this morning. The man started shouting at Romney just as he began to offer his condolences to the four Americans killed in Libya. Romney said, "We have heavy hearts across America today." The protester interrupted, shouting, "Why are you politicizing Libya? Why are you politicizing Libya?" People in the crowd began to chant "USA! USA!" to drown the man out, and others raised pom-poms and Romney signs in front of him. The man ripped one of the signs before being escorted out of the event. Romney's reaction to the news out of Libya has come under criticism by some who said he shouldn't have made the event fodder for a political attack. Romney himself said that he believes it is never too early for the American government to condemn these kinds of attacks. Romney finally got to speak without interruption at the rally in Fairfax. "As we watch the world today," he said, "sometimes it seems that we're at the mercy of events, instead of shaping events, and a strong America is essential to shape events. "And a strong America, by the way, depends on a strong military. We have to have a military second to none and that's so strong no one would ever think of testing it," said Romney.

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