Opinion

Team Obama’s game of dodgeball

N. Scott Jones Contributing Columnist, The Daily Caller
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Things on the playground of presidential campaign politics must seem pretty frustrating for Team Obama right now. While presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney seeks to play major league baseball and run the bases to win the championship, Team Obama seems intent on playing a game of grade-school dodgeball.

Those of us who played dodgeball as children remember the frustration of throwing the ball with all our might and never connecting with the target. As the frustration builds, it can degenerate into name-calling and trash talk. I think this sense of frustration is what the Obama campaign is experiencing right now. Sadly, this is no game — it is an election for president of the United States and the future of our country is on the line.

Team Obama has hurled everything but the kitchen sink — coming soon, no doubt — in an effort to make something stick, with little lasting effect. This approach comes complete with a campaign strategy memo: “Kill Romney.” Nice.

Some highlights from the Obama camp’s volleys:

  • Romney transported the family dog al fresco on a family vacation. City folks apparently don’t realize that dogs love open-air travel.
  • In high school, Romney allegedly clipped some hippie kid’s hair. High school pranks? Really, Mr. President? I can confidently report here that the kid’s hair grew back. Gripping stuff.
  • Romney’s private-sector experience doesn’t qualify him to be president. So Obama being a community organizer and partial-term U.S. senator does? Romney’s mere formation of Bain Capital as an entity created more net jobs than Obama’s entire administration has over the past four years.
  • Romney’s firm, Bain Capital, exported jobs to China. President Obama’s jobs czar’s company, General Electric, has exported more jobs to China than any three companies combined that I can name. The Obama ads purveying the outsourcing claims against Romney have been widely condemned by media and fact-checking organizations as misleading and outright untrue.
  • Romney has an account at a Swiss bank. But it’s his money, and perfectly legal. Mr. Obama is intent on taking and spending your money. Forty cents of every dollar Obama seeks in additional spending is borrowed, and the principal and interest on those loans must be paid back eventually. In other words, Obama is taking your money and giving it to Switzerland. You decide what’s worse.

The list goes on. Tragically, Obama is attacking Romney instead of painting a vision for our country or helping to create jobs. Team Obama is trying to dodge the president’s record of failed leadership and policies by attacking Romney’s character.

The Obama campaign has the help of the mainstream media outlets, which do little to fact-check its claims and in large measure serve as its stenographers. Oh, they feign fairness and balanced reporting. Case in point is MSNBC’s Tuesday morning broadcast where Chuck Todd held court over a panel of liberal gadflies offering Romney the helpful advice that he should just “come clean” and explain his offshore accounts and all other matters in the greatest possible detail. You mean like Obama has on Fast and Furious, Solyndra and the national security leaks? Right.

If there is one take-away from the foregoing, I hope it is this: While it’s still early in the campaign, I believe that Team Obama has reached the point where it’s no longer focused on the real issues of importance that affect everyday Americans. Instead, Team Obama is engaged in a raw, scorched-earth effort to retain power. The Obama campaign’s divisive messages and intense focus on harming Mitt Romney — and his family — bear this out.

I think President Obama’s current campaign strategy of tearing down Romney will fail. As the president, he owes us more — a vision, solutions and job performance that instill confidence and pride in our country. Man up and defend your record, President Obama, and stop seeking to destroy those who disagree with you. The game of dodge ball needs to end. In the real world that is ordinary America, this election is no game. It is for keeps.

N. Scott Jones, a contributing columnist at The Daily Caller, is a Dallas-based, nationally recognized expert in public relations and public affairs and a weekly radio commentator on “The Gary Snyder Show.” He has served as staff, an appointee or adviser to three U.S. presidents and two Texas governors.