Obama: Hope? Hope He Can Throw a Punch

Every once in a while I catch a "Classic Boxing" match on TV.  The fights which really amaze me are the ones where the fighters don't seem to be able to do much at all for the first thirteen rounds and then in the last two rounds there are more flurries and, sometimes, out of nowhere a punch seems to land and it's all over.

I'm hoping President Obama is in that mode.

Since the last election, I've been dismayed at his inability to throw a punch. He blocks some punches reasonably well, or he did when his opponents were Sarah Palin and John McCain, but against this Romney cat, who seems to be channeling Reagan, right  down to his voice, the President has been, as he usually is, pretty quiet.

Now his managers seem to have come up with a strategy of attacking the Mitt with the same invective his Republican opponents used: The guy is a vulture capitalist and what that means is "I got mine. You're on your own." So he makes his money in the US of A, using the internet the government gave him, the roads the government built him, flying around at airports safeguarded  courtesy of the FAA, and then he parks all the money he made in Swiss bank accounts and off shore islands, having used the tools his country's government provided but being unwilling to pay the taxes which would repay, in some small measure, the government which made all this possible.

It's the old idea of his having been born on third base, and thinking he hit a triple: He had all the advantages given him and he winds up believing he earned those advantages through his own efforts, without help from anyone else.

It's what the Republicans have to sell. And the Democrats are finally beginning to voice some tepid disapproval.  But the Democrats still can't throw any big blows. They are still satisfied with a few jabs to keep their opponents from launching any big shots of their own.  

Here's what a good right cross would sound like: 
 "You know, I tried  to find common ground with Republicans since I became President, but haven't had much luck. There just isn't much I can find to agree with,  coming from them. But I finally have found something I can agree with at least some Republicans, those Republicans who described Governor Romney as a 'vulture capitalist.' Now, that's not a phrase I originated; that's their phrase. In fact, I can find no definition of it. But if they mean a man who swoops down on a dying company and starts eating away at it, who takes what he can from it while it's struggling to survive and says, 'I got mine. You're on your own,' well then, I can agree that is what we've seen of Governor Romney. He parks his money, made off the suffering of ordinary working Americans, in Swiss bank accounts and then claims he wasn't responsible for how that money was made. It all happened, he doesn't know how, while he was off managing the Olympics. Well, if he didn't know how, he should have.  And you sure should know how. This is not just politics as usual. I am talking about a man and his values. The saddest part is, he cannot even see what is wrong with what he did.  He thinks the right values are, 'I get mine and you ought to go out and get yours, but we owe nothing to each other or to the collective effort we call the government of the United States of America. We can hide our money from the government which nurtured us, and that's just all in the game. Because that's all it is to us.  As Republicans, we don't see any ethical obligation to give back. We just take all we can.'"