CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Sometimes in politics it is the little questions that throw you.
That thought came to mind as I watched some of President Barack Obama's allies struggle with what should have been a thoroughly predictable question at the beginning of the Democratic National Convention.
It was the famous question Ronald Reagan raised in speeches on his way to defeating President Jimmy Carter: Are we better off today than we were four years ago?
Amazingly, Team Obama sounded like it wasn't sure. On ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," White House senior adviser David Plouffe tried to dodge the question then allowed that "we've made a lot of progress."
Senior strategist David Axelrod showed similar reluctance on "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace", saying only that we're in a "better position" than we'd be under Republican rule.
On CBS' "Face the Nation," Obama surrogate, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, actually said "no" twice as he blamed the legacy of Obama's Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.
Yikes. Talk about not receiving The Memo. Team Obama's usually efficient messengers sounded like they were caught on the horns of an unfortunate incumbent's dilemma: You don't want to sound too gloomy, because voters will blame the bad news on you. And you don't want to sound too cheery or voters will think you're out of touch with their miserable realities.
Needless to say, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's team pounced. Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, saw his opportunity to mock the Obama campaign and he took it at a North Carolina rally on Labor Day. "The Jimmy Carter years look like the good old days compared to where we are right now," Ryan scoffed.
By then, Team Obama was on the same page again with firm declarations of the answer it should have given in the first place. As Vice President Joe Biden put it most succinctly at a Labor Day rally in Detroit, repeating a catchphrase from his earlier speeches: "Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive."
Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Obama, elaborated on some familiar talking points to journalists at a Bloomberg News breakfast Tuesday in Charlotte. "In the six months before he (Obama) took office, we lost 3.5 million jobs," she said. "Today, (we have since gained) 4.5 million private-sector jobs, three times the number of private-sector jobs that George Bush created in his recovery under his recession, and I think everybody would agree our recession was just a tad worse." Of course, she didn't mention that unfortunately those jobs have not kept up with population growth. Leave that for Team Romney to point out.
Are we better off than we were four years ago? Politically, the exact numbers are less important than how voters feel — and a lot of us are feeling pretty miserable these days. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll taken before last week's Republican National Convention showed 31 percent of Americans believe the country is better off than it was when Obama took office, but 42 percent said it is worse off. Another 27 percent said the country is about the same.
That means, depending on whether you view that glass as half empty or half full, 58 percent think we're doing the same or better — or 69 percent think we are doing the same or worse.
With numbers like that, it is remarkable that Obama and Romney have been running about even for months, with Obama slightly ahead in the battleground states. If Obama were running against a less charismatically challenged candidate, his campaign quite likely would be in much more serious trouble.
As the Democratic convention opened, Romney was not showing much of a bump in the polls after his party's convention. He was running ahead of Obama in public perceptions of his ability to improve the economy but behind on the issues of how well he understands the problems of ordinary Americans.
That's why Team Obama's fumbling response to the "better off" question is a measure of the challenges the president faces in a time of economic uncertainty and government deficits. Four years ago, candidate Obama promoted "hope" and "change." This year Team Obama promotes fear of what change to a Romney administration could bring.
Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/pagespage.
