SILENCE OF THE CANDIDATES
EDITORIAL
WASHINGTON POST
Now that the campaign has reached its first debate and, possibly, its final pivotal moment, we hope the candidates will devote more attention to the future: specifically, to what they hope to accomplish over the next four years. ... Both candidates portray this election as a stark choice between radically different governing philosophies, and we tend to think that is true. But each has been more eager to scare voters about his opponent’s worldview than to explain how his own could cope with 21st-century problems. Slow economic growth, rising inequality, uncapped entitlement spending, suffocating debt: None of these is inevitable for the nation. But they are the endpoint of our current path. Voters have a right to hear how their leaders would avert these outcomes.
THE ZINGER CANDIDATE
DANA MILBANK
WASHINGTON POST
At a time when even his fondest supporters are pleading for more substance, Mitt Romney is giving them the political equivalent of junk food. His has been the Zinger candidacy — all sugary platitudes, no protein. ... Wednesday night’s debate offers Romney his best chance to change the trajectory of a race that seems to be favoring the incumbent. But Romney’s inclination was to stick with the zing thing. ...A well-landed zinger can be memorable, such as Reagan’s promise not to exploit Walter Mondale’s “youth and inexperience,” Mondale’s “Where’s the beef?” or Lloyd Bentsen’s “You’re no Jack Kennedy” to Dan Quayle. But for each of those, there are many failed attempts in which a candidate’s line sounds forced and canned — a risk increased by Romney memorizing zingers fed to him by aides.
