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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

President Obama FINAL Campaign Rally in Iowa Nov. 5, 2012


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White House Travel | Domestic Trip Obama Presidential Campaign
President Obama held his final rally of the 2012 presidential campaign in the East Village in Des Moines, Iowa. Bruce Springsteen performed, including a song he wrote for President Obama, and he introduced first lady Michelle Obama introduced the president.




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Exit polls: Florida too close to call, but Obama leads Romney 50-49

By Marc Caputo and Scott Hiaasen
Posted on Tue, Nov. 06, 2012
Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File / AP Photo
In this Oct. 22, 2012 file photo, Mitt Romney and President Obama walk past each other on stage at the end of the last debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla.

With thousands of Floridians still lined up to vote, the presidential race in the nation’s largest battleground state is as close as can be, according to exit polls showing that President Obama might have an edge.The president leads Republican Mitt Romney 50 to 49 percent in Florida, according to Edison Research’s exit poll of 4,172 voters. The poll results are tentative and will be updated later in the evening.

Early vote returns for the state seesawed between Obama and Romney ever since the polls closed at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Obama’s strength: Liberal Southeast Florida, where early vote returns show the president nursing a double-digit lead, according to exit polls and early votes. For the first time ever, a Democratic presidential candidate won absentee ballots — typically a Republican strength — in Miami-Dade County, with Obama eking out a 382-vote margin.

But Obama’s position isn’t solid. His lead in the exit polls is well within the error margin of the poll. And precincts in the Panhandle, a heavily conservative area, closed at 8 p.m. EST, around the time the initial exit polls were released.

Also, the exit polls and the early returns indicate that Obama isn’t doing as well as he did in 2008 in Florida, which he won by fewer than 3 percentage points.

If Romney loses Florida, he likely loses his chance of unseating Obama.

Romney’s strength: The economy — the top issue for more than 60 percent of the Florida electorate, according to exit polling. Of these economy-first voters, Romney beats Obama by 10 percentage points.

Romney also persuaded some voters that, like Obama four years ago, he is the candidate who can bring about change.

“We need a better change,” said Samantha Gentile, a 20-year-old independent who voted Tuesday at St. Gregory’s Church in Boca Raton.

“We need an economic change,” Gentile said. “We need jobs.”

Gentile’s remarks stood out, in part, because of the T-shirt she wore that openly advertised her support of gay marriage — which Romney opposes. Gentile said she also favors abortion rights, while Romney is opposed.

The exit polls indicated that Gentile was in the minority for those in her age group. Obama carried young voters, while he lost older voters to Romney, the exit polls showed.

Obama draws strong support among Hispanic voters, beating Romney 60-39 percent, the poll showed. Romney, meanwhile, is ahead with non-Hispanic white voters.

It will take hours for a final winner to be clear — and it could even take days.

In Miami-Dade, voters will remain in line in some precincts until well past midnight.
A conversation with The Miami Herald's Sergio Bustos & Editorial Page Editor Myriam Marquez about the very long lines at several Miami-Dade polling stations, the #1 issue for Florida voters, and pets.
MIAMI HERALD STUDIOS
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/06/3085117/exit-polls-florida-too-close-to.html#morer#storylink=cpy


The close race could easily trigger a recount under Florida law, which automatically kicks in when any race is decided by a margin of one-half of one percent or less.

If 9 million people vote in Florida — a plausible figure, given reports of heavy turnout around the state — that means there could be a recount if the presidential vote is decided by 45,000 votes or less.

In a recount, all ballots are submitted again into the tabulating machines to recount the votes. If the recount yields a margin of one-quarter of one percent or less, the local canvassing boards must then perform a manual recount to examine so-called “undervotes” and “overvotes” — ballots that recorded no vote for president, or multiple votes for president.

Any recount must be completed within nine days from the day it is ordered by the Secretary of State. However, state law also says any recounts must be completed within 12 days of Election Day.

But, just as in the 2000 recount, there are tensions between the state and federal law: Elections officials still must collect absentee ballots cast overseas for some 10 days after Election Day. So overseas ballots could trickle in through Nov. 16, with a recount deadline of Nov. 18.

In 2008, more than 97,000 absentee ballots were cast by overseas Florida voters.

For those who have blotted it from their memories: The 2000 contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore was decided by just 537 votes in Florida.

Tuesday night, at the Stanley Axlrod UTD Towers, nearly 500 people stood in a line that snaked off the property, onto Brickell Avenue and back onto the property.

For some Brickell voters, it was deja vu all over again. The two precincts that vote there, 569 and 995, were among the last to close in Miami-Dade County in 2008.

Alex Trench, 27, waited nearly four hours to get his ballot. He arrived at the polling place at 6:45 a.m., only to find 200 people already in line.

“I’ve never been more excited to get to work,” said Trench, who works in construction, after casting his vote for Obama.

Obama’s campaign has also succeeded in bringing out new voters, like Diana Del Castillo, 31, a native of Colombia who recently became a U.S. citizen.

An independent, she said she voted for Obama not because of immigration but because of news reports about how Romney, years ago, strapped the family dog Seamus in his carrier to the roof of the family car on a vacation.

“If he doesn’t care about animals, will he care about people?” she asked.

Miami Herald staff writers Amy Sherman and Kathleen McGrory contributed to this story.

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Election season: The final hours
By: James Hohmann and Jonathan Allen
November 5, 2012 12:37 PM EST
MANCHESTER, N.H. — The endless months of campaigning finally dwindled into hours and minutes late Monday as President Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and their surrogates barnstormed across electoral battlegrounds for one final day, and both sides expressed confidence in a Tuesday victory.

While 11th-hour polls gave Obama a slight edge, the race was perceived as so close that neither campaign was ceding any ground anywhere. Obama and Romney both appeared here in Columbus, Romney and Vice President Joe Biden stumped about 165 miles apart in Virginia, and Obama and Rep. Paul Ryan both campaigned in Wisconsin and Des Moines, Iowa. All together, the presidential and vice presidential candidates made stops in Florida, Nevada, Colorado, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia and New Hampshire. Romney, according to a campaign official, will keep campaigning on Election Day, adding stops in Democratic-heavy Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and Ryan will join him in Cleveland.

(PHOTOS: Final countdown to Election Day)

“I’m going to be flying with Bruce Springsteen on the last day that I’ll ever campaign,” Obama said in Columbus of the legendary blue-collar rocker who was part of his presidential entourage. “That’s not a bad way to bring it home.”

“Together we must lead America to a better place,” Romney said Monday night in Manchester, N.H. “We’re one day away from fresh start, one day away from the first day of a new beginning. My conviction is that better days are ahead and that’s not based on promises and hollow rhetoric but on solid plans and proven results, and on an unshakeable believe in the greatness of the American spirit.”

“Are you gonna help us win this thing Nevada?” Ryan asked at a 1,000-person morning rally in Reno. “We’re doing a barn burner today. We are crisscrossing the country Mitt and I are because we are asking you to work with us, to stand with us to get our country back on the right track. We know the kind of choice that’s facing us.”

After a stop in Lynchburg, Va. to court evangelical Christians - Jonathan and Jerry Falwell Jr., sons of the evangelist who founded nearby Liberty University were at his rally - Romney made his final foray into the Commonwealth in Fairfax. Romney drew a crowd of 11,500 to George Mason University’s Patriot Center in this D.C. suburb; he addressed 8,500 who made it inside and then went out to talk with an overflow of 3,000 more..

(Also on POLITICO: The best stories of 2012)

Ann Romney rejoined her husband after missing the first two stops of the day, asking the cheering crowd rhetorically: “Are we gonna be neighbors soon?”

“It’s so exciting to have walked into a room like this and get greeted like that,” she said. “But the thing you don’t know: There’s as many of you outside as inside right now. And that’s the momentum we have been feeling. It’s not just in Virginia. It’s all across this country. And that’s what leads me to believe that I am standing next to the next president of the United States.”

Meanwhile, also in Virginia, Biden wrapped up his final campaign rally – at least until the 2016 presidential race begins – with the hope that Tuesday’s election results will usher in a new era of bipartisan cooperation, even as he poked fun at his at times overly honest persona.

“Now it’s time for our politics to be as good and as noble as our people,” Biden said at a Monday evening rally in Richmond. “It’s time we come together and realize the great potential of this great country. It’s time to replace unyielding ideology with principled compromise.”
Virginia is more integral to Romney’s path to 270 electoral votes, but it’s important enough to the Obama campaign that Biden had two stops planned here today — in Sterling and Richmond.

Obama’s team has taunted Romney for spending time in states like Florida and Virginia that are considered more critical to him winning 270 electoral votes.

“The numbers we’ve seen in Florida and obviously they think so too because Gov. Romney is spending an awful lot of time in states that they say they have won. So we, we’re looking forward to tomorrow,” Obama adviser David Axelrod said in Wisconsin. “We see many different paths to 270 and all those paths are attacked today. … We think that there are myriad ways for us to get there. We’re not throwing Hail Marys in states that we’re never going to win to try to get to 270. That’s the difference between the campaigns.”

To listen to the rhetoric from the two campaigns, one would think both have the election in the bag. Romney insisted he was eager for Election Day,and his team was upbeat too.
His team was upbeat, too. Press secretary Rick Gorka told reporters “we’re very, very optimistic about our chances tomorrow,” as senior strategist Stu Stevens fired projectiles at him from a small toy pig from the Machine Shed in Iowa.

The mood could hardly have been more similar Aboard Air Force One, where Obama’s team was certain that he will be reliving his “Glory Days” of 2008 come Tuesday. In case he needed a reminder, Springsteen, one of several celebrities who have punctuated the end of the campaign with performances at Obama events, traveled with the president for an itinerary including Madison, Wis., Columbus and Des Moines.

“It was pretty cool,” Springsteen said of his ride on Air Force One. He said he and Obama talked about the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the rocker’s native New Jersey. “I’m feeling pretty hopeful” about recovery efforts, he said.

The story of this last day before the election is one of two competing campaigns that look at the same numbers, the same variables and the same maps and come to opposite conclusions about where the race stands. What it likely speaks to is a return to the narrowly divided presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 after Obama redrew the electoral map in 2008. No matter who is sworn in at the Capitol in January, he now seems likely certain to have to lead a polarized country with a split Congress — Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in the House.

Two national surveys released in the past few days — the POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground poll and the CNN/Opinion Research poll — have shown a dead-even race. The biggest gap in any recent survey: Pew Research had Obama up 50 percent to 47 percent on Nov. 3, numbers which were duplicated in a Washington Post-ABC tracking poll. But not all voters are created equal in the race to 270 electoral votes.

“The polls that matter are the polls that are happening in the states,” Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday. “You know, it’s a close race, there is no doubt about that, but we have the advantage in critical states like Ohio. You know, no Republican’s ever won the White House without going through Ohio. And we feel pretty good about where we are right now.”

The nightmare scenario, for both campaigns and the electorate: Ohio isn’t decided on election night and the presidency hangs in the balance. If it’s close, the Buckeye State’s 18 electoral votes could be decided in a count of provisional ballots, a tally that by law wouldn’t start until 10 days after the polls close. Both candidates will spend part of the last campaign day in Columbus, where swing voters in the Franklin County suburbs have historically been an important constituency in close elections. Obama is almost sure to win the city and the county overall, but will he match the 100,000-vote advantage he racked up there in 2008? Romney’s hope is to keep the margin closer to the roughly 50,000-vote edge John Kerry had over George W. Bush there in 2004.

To listen to Obama’s team, the nation will have an early evening on Tuesday. Axelrod has wagered his trademark mustache on a victory, White House senior adviser David Plouffe said Sunday on NBC’S Meet the Press that he is “very confident” the president will win re-election, and Axelrod, Plouffe and Cutter have termed Romney’s efforts to swing Democratic-leaning states such as Minnesota and Pennsylvania “laughable,” “ludicrous” and “not based in reality.”

But while Obama made a swing through the Midwest on his final day on the trail, former President Bill Clinton hit the hustings for him in suburban Philadelphia, a region where Democrats need to pile up a big edge to win statewide elections in Pennsylvania.
Each candidate ended the day close to home: Obama’s last stop was in Iowa, next door to his home state of Illinois, and Romney wraps up in New Hampshire, not far from his Boston headquarters.

In Manchester, after Kid Rock introduced them and before they began speaking, the Romneys basked in deafening cheers for foru minutes from the rambunctious crowd of 12,100 at the Verizon Wireless Arena here.

The GOP nominee’s final pre-election rally – a play for New Hampshire’s four electoral votes – brought him full circle.

“This is a special moment for Ann and for me because this is where our campaign began,” he said. “You got this campaign started a year and a half ago at the Scammon Farm. And then your primary vote put me on the path to win the Republican nomination. And tomorrow your votes and your work right here in New Hampshire will help me become the next President of the United States!”

“Because we’re among family I wanted to introduce you to at least one of our sons. This is the one you don’t see very often. He’s a doctor that lives out West and he’s been out campaigning for me, my son Ben Romney.”

Ann Romney waxed nostalgic as she introduced her husband. “It’s been a long journey. It started in New Hampshire a year and a half ago. Our hearts are full, and what we have learned by going on the trail is we’ve seen the America that you all love that we all love we feel it’s in danger we feel it’s slipping away from us. I love this country I love the people I’ve seen in this country but more than anything I have loved hearing the voices of the women that I’ve heard all across this country. And I have to tell you so many women are hurting in this economy and I have some hope for you because guess what, hope is on the way and it starts tomorrow!”

— Reid J. Epstein contributed to this story from, Madison, Wis., aboard Air Force One and Columbus, Ohio; Hohmann reported from Manchester, N.H.; Sanford, Fla.; Lynchburg and Fairfax, Va. and Columbus; Jennifer Epstein reported from Sterling and Richmond, Va.; Juana Summers reported from Reno, Nev., and Allen reported from Arlington, Va.
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Monday, November 5, 2012



The looming GOP civil war -- whether Mitt wins or not
By: Jonathan Martin
November 5, 2012 04:39 AM EST

Mitt Romney is shown here. | AP Photo
Whether or not Mitt Romney wins, his party must confront its demographic crisis. | AP Photo


WEST CHESTER, Ohio — Mitt Romney’s boisterous rally here Friday night featured both the promise of the Republican Party’s future and a sharp reminder of why the GOP may lose its second consecutive presidential race on Tuesday.

The scene in this Cincinnati suburb also set the stage for the party’s coming inner struggle to define itself no matter this cycle’s outcome.

A cadre of young and diverse Republican officials took the stage to speak before Romney. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte each made the case for their nominee and offered a reminder of the strength of the GOP’s bench.But they did so before a crowd that was nearly all-white and their appearances were sandwiched in between slashing speeches from a familiar roster of older white males like Rudy Giuliani, who took it upon himself to demand that President Barack Obama resign over the Benghazi attacks.

Regardless of whether Romney wins or loses, Republicans must move to confront its demographic crisis. The GOP coalition is undergirded by a shrinking population of older white conservative men from the countryside, while the Democrats rely on an ascendant bloc of minorities, moderate women and culturally tolerant young voters in cities and suburbs. This is why, in every election, since 1992, Democrats have either won the White House or fallen a single state short of the presidency.“If we lose this election there is only one explanation — demographics,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

But Republicans are divided on the way forward. Its base is growing more conservative, nominating and at times electing purists while the country is becoming more center than center-right. Practical-minded party elites want to pass a comprehensive immigration bill, de-emphasize issues like contraception and abortion and move on a major taxes-and-spending deal that includes some method of raising new revenue.

But many rank-and-file Republicans in Congress and grass-roots activists won’t sanction amnesty for undocumented immigrants, are determined to advance restrictions on abortion and have no appetite for any compromise with Democrats on fiscal issues. And that doesn’t even get at the growing cleavage on foreign policy in the GOP between the party’s hawkish wing and the rising voices who prefer a more restrained role abroad.There’s not much of a moderate wing left in the GOP, but the pragmatism versus purity battle that looms on the horizon could be as fierce as Republicans have seen since the Goldwaterites sought to wrest control of the party in the 1960s.

Now, as then, the establishment is made up mostly of older pragmatists, such as Romney, House Speaker John Boehner and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. And it’s the younger “Red Dawn Republicans,” like Jindal and likely Texas senator to-be Ted Cruz, who are the true believers.

This split will loom over the GOP for the next few years whether Romney is in the White House or on the beaches of La Jolla. If he becomes the 45th president in January, Romney will have to tread carefully as he grapples with a conservative-dominated Republican House, a Senate GOP increasingly divided between old bulls and younger true believers and thousands of party activists who opposed him in two presidential primaries.

“He’ll have half the party watching him every morning,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, calling the House GOP “the bedrock he’ll have to maneuver around.”

A Romney loss would mean the same internal issues would come to the fore more quickly and explosively but with no clear leader at the top of the party. Consider all the voices who’d jockey for attention: the pragmatic Senate and House GOP leadership; next-generation stars like Rubio and Paul Ryan; older reformers led by Jeb Bush; conservative stalwarts like Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky ; and the talent-rich ranks of current Republican governors. These forces would all assert their authority in the lead-up to what could be a sprawling 2016 presidential primary that renders a judgment on which direction the party will take.

The fault lines are already clear: True-believers will say, see, this is what happens when you nominate moderates — John McCain lost in 2008 and Romney lost in 2012 because they couldn’t or wouldn’t make the case for conservatism.

“Structurally, a Romney loss, following a McCain loss, would be a rebuke to moderates who have wanted ideological conservatives to fill the bus but not drive the bus,” said a GOP operative close to one sure-fire future presidential aspirant. “The nominee in 2016, if he is not a President Romney, will certainly be a card-carrying movement conservative with a track record to match.”

The pragmatists will howl at this and point to the underlying issues in the electorate.

“If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m going to go nuts,” said Graham. “We’re not losing 95 percent of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we’re not being hard-ass enough.”

Of the party’s reliance on a shrinking pool of white men, one former top George W. Bush official said: “We’re in a demographic boa constrictor and it gets tighter every single election.”

The first big issue that Republicans will confront is the so-called fiscal cliff and whether to cut a major deal on entitlements and taxes with Democrats in a divided Senate. Veteran GOP officials think a President Romney would be much more likely to win support for a compromise from tea party-backed Republicans than a second-term Obama.

“They’ll want to support their president,” said former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour of congressional hard-liners. Barbour, aping the voice of a House or Senate conservative said: “’He don’t agree with me on everything, but at least he’s trying to take our country in the right direction.’”

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah.), a young conservative, added of Romney’s ability to bring along more ideological elements of his party: “That’s exponentially more true because of Paul Ryan’s presence. He has the personal relationships and street cred to make that happen. That’s one of the reasons Mitt selected him.”

If Romney loses, the party will almost certainly be far more divided when it comes to a grand bargain. Potential 2016 hopefuls like Ryan and Rubio will be hesitant to support any deal that could make their right flank vulnerable in a GOP primary.

Chaffetz thinks that congressional conservatives would take their cues from Ryan.

“Win or lose, Paul is the most influential guy in the House and probably the Senate,” he said.

Some sort of fiscal agreement could be finessed with the conservative base if it’s sold as tax and entitlement reform, if individual rates do not go up and it’s exemptions and deductions that are eliminated.

“We as Republicans would be smart to tell our Democratic colleagues that we will eliminate deductions and apply the revenue to the deficit if you take on entitlements,” said Graham. “But if we become the party that can’t compromise, in the view of the average person we’ll get punished.”

Yet while there may be a way to make a grand bargain palatable to the rank-and-file conservatives, immigration reform is much more clear-cut and therefore tougher to find consensus around and may be even more illustrative of the internal civil war Republicans seem on the verge of.

After getting pounded on it in election after election, some congressional Republicans will seek to deprive Democrats of having the issue every two years. But anything that smacks of amnesty will face fierce resistance in the ranks of a GOP caucus that is even more conservative than when the issue was debated in 2007, to say nothing of the likes of talk radio and cable opponents.

To some longtime Republicans, the party faces an existential question on immigration.

“Once we deal with the issue, we’ll have a permanent majority for a generation,” said Gingrich. “But until we do, we’re permanently in danger of losing.”

Gingrich’s solution, regardless of whether Romney wins: “It’s going to require Jeb Bush coming to Washington for about six months and working directly with Marco Rubio and building a bipartisan majority. We really need Jeb to live in Washington for six months to get this done.”

Barbour, an outspoken supporter of immigration reform, said the key is to make the economic argument for why reaching an agreement on the issue makes sense.

“Let’s just say 5 million of the 12 million [undocumented immigrants] have a job, pay taxes, have a family and children here — they’re residents who contribute,” he said. “Let’s say we deport all of them — well who’s going do those 5 million jobs? Are we going to find 5 million Americans to do them? Not a chance.”

But the opposition to a bill that includes legal status for undocumented immigrants will face roadblocks from congressional Republicans, regardless of who is in the White House.

“ ‘Comprehensive’ seems to be code word for amnesty,” said Chaffetz, who won his seat following a primary against a Republican who was a moderate on immigration. “I don’t think that’s doable.”

But even if there is an immigration reform bill passed, some pragmatists fear a scenario in which the issue becomes relitigated in a future GOP primary. It’s easy to envision, for example, a Republican going to Iowa in 2015 and campaigning for much of the year on a pledge to repeal “Obama’s amnesty law.” The specter of that could stop future presidential hopefuls such as Ryan and Rubio from being party to any deal.

“Too many Republicans treat harsh immigration rhetoric the way a smoker treats cigarettes,” lamented GOP strategist Todd Harris. “You know it’s going to kill you, but you do it anyway.”
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Barack Obama the not-so-happy warrior
By: Glenn Thrush
November 5, 2012 04:39 AM ESTBarack Obama is shown here. | AP Photo
Obama officials say their boss had no choice but to run the campaign he did. | AP Photo

Barack Obama’s enthusiasm gap began at home.

There is a surprisingly simple explanation for Obama’s up-and-down performance as a candidate during his reelection grind in 2012, for those lackluster TV appearances, for that epic flop Oct. 3 on the Denver debate stage that might yet cost him his presidency on Tuesday.

Until the final sprint, he just wasn’t that into it.

The key to understanding the Obama enigma of 2012, according to more than a dozen Obama associates interviewed by POLITICO during the campaign, is that the president enthusiastically approved the message of relentless attacks against Mitt Romney. But until the last week of the campaign — when optimism made a major comeback — Obama executed it mirthlessly and mechanically, at times reinforcing the “meh” vibe of his supportive but uninspired base.Obama’s pollster, Joel Benenson, told him early on that hope and change couldn’t be recycled in a country enduring three years of grim recovery, and the campaign’s highly effective June and July anti-Romney blitz in battlegrounds was brutally effective. But the attack-first, hope-second strategy never quite suited Obama personally — in fact, it seemed to directly contradict his transformational, upbeat brand.

That unease with his own campaign not only drained energy from his reelection effort but could have nasty, knock-on consequences if he wins. A scorched-earth victor won’t do much to heal Washington’s divisions, with a probable GOP House and Democratic Senate set to be at loggerheads, regardless of who wins the presidency.

“I get why he had to do what he did. It was smart politically. But he’s become the embodiment of the partisanship he once decried,” said The New York Times’s David Brooks, one of the few journalists to strike up a real relationship with Obama during his first term. “The dissonance [between Obama in 2008 and 2012] is so obvious. … Can you think of a president who ran more different campaigns the first and second times? I’ve tried. I can’t.”Obama officials say their boss had no choice but to run the campaign he did, given Romney’s fact-challenged attacks on Obama’s record. They point to key moments — from the campaign’s first ad to Obama’s convention speech to his positive closing argument at the second debate — to bolster their claim that his 2012 message isn’t quite as downcast as people think.

“Elections are always about choices, and it was our job to lay out that choice throughout the course of this campaign,” said Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter. “But now is the time to make our closing argument, when people are making their final choices, and the president is making a very compelling and persuasive case to stick with him and finish what we started. And, he’s enjoying it.”

Even Brooks, a right-leaning centrist whose critique annoys Obama’s team, acknowledges that Obama’s 2008 theme needed a makeover for 2012, given the initial lack of enthusiasm of his base and the country’s larger anxieties about the possibility of a long, slow national decline.

(Also on POLITICO: The best stories of 2012)

But the absence of such a powerful motivating message has contributed to the sense, among political professionals and regular voters, that Obama downsized his own aspirations to hold onto power, something he railed against in 2008.

Clearly that perception had an impact on Obama’s attitude, aides privately acknowledge, which in turn allowed the charisma-challenged Romney to portray himself at times as the optimistic, hopeful candidate.

“[Obama] found his voice in 2008. That voice has, for the most part, been missing in 2012,” said CNN contributor David Gergen, who counseled presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

“This isn’t the kind of politics this man likes to practice. … Another factor is that he’s a moody person. Bill Clinton, for instance, was a much sunnier person. He let things roll off him more easily. You could see that during [Clinton’s] reelection campaign. … The clothes of this campaign, the negativity, don’t really fit” Obama.

Gergen said that Obama’s attitude might not cost him the election, but “he may have cost himself a mandate, an opportunity to clear the air in Washington” by letting Romney back into the race after the lackluster first debate. Obama’s surge in September, following the conventions, would have resulted in a bigger win than he could possibly achieve now.

His failure to nail down a larger, more durable lead in the Denver debate meant Obama had to stay personally negative longer — delaying the closing pivot to positivity he had looked forward to.

“Look, he knew what he had to do to win in 2012, and that involved making the sharp contrast between himself and Romney. He never hesitated on that — operationally,” said a Democrat close to Obama attuned to the president’s variable moods.

“But he’s a guy who feels a lot more personally comfortable making an optimistic case himself. The negative stuff doesn’t come naturally, and it really shows. … It’s clear, he just wasn’t into that as much when he had to carry that [negative] message himself. … And [he’s got] no poker face. None.”

Obama hasn’t been uniformly flat. A new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Tracking Poll shows him now neck and neck with Romney in terms of his voter enthusiasm, a sign that some of his ’08 magic might be back.

And his stump speech has always had its optimistic passages, always brimmed with his argument for fairness, especially on tax policy and entitlement reform, and always contained allusions to the spirit of ’08.

“If people ask you what this campaign is about, you tell them it’s still about hope, you tell them it’s still about change,” Obama shouted at the end of his kick0ff rally in Ohio six months ago — staring directly at 3,000 empty seats.

But a back-to-the-future theme has taken hold in the past 10 days, as if someone flicked the “hope” switch back on, as Obama himself shifts to a more upbeat closing argument while also throwing himself into the crisis of Hurricane Sandy.

That hasn’t stopped his campaign from churning out the negative ads, but he’s been scaling back or softening his own Romney hits. On Thursday, Obama’s first day back on the trail after the storm, he scarcely mentioned his opponent.

And he’s warmed to the idea of identifying himself as the “champion” of regular Americans, a phrase he wrote himself after struggling for months to find a way to meld his current campaign’s aggressiveness with some of the old 2008 uplift.

Obama biographer Jonathan Alter, who has been traveling with the president during the final week of barnstorming in the battleground Midwest, understands why Obama couldn’t rerun his 2008 campaign. But he thinks it was a major mistake to cede the optimistic high ground to Romney for much of the race.

“At this point, it’s a question of why he wasn’t making this argument, with this much passion, a lot earlier on. … I think he was so worried about over-promising, he wound up under-promising and under-performing,” Alter said after an Obama campaign stop in Ohio.

“I get where he was coming from. If you took a ‘Morning in America’ campaign you would have gotten hammered, but a hope-and-change message and more sober approach aren’t mutually exclusive,” he added. “They may have gone too far in the other direction. There weren’t enough aspirational ideas for a second term.”

Brooks agreed, adding, “You couldn’t do hope-and-change and Bain at the same time?”

Obama insiders think he’s finally hit on the right hybrid. The new Obama speech, with its explicit references to his promises of 2008, still contains its share of anti-Romney lines. But now they are in the context of a renewed Obama commitment to “change” — a challenge to Paul Ryan’s riff that Romney-Ryan is the new and improved “change and hope” ticket.

The address resonates more with grander themes of his election night address to 240,000 in Chicago four years ago than with the Big Bird, Seamus-on-the-roof and Bain attacks of 2012. And it’s given the candidate new spark — along with the fact that an exhausted Obama can now see the finish line.

“I’ve known him for 20 years. … I’ve never seen him more exhilarated than he is right now,” senior adviser David Axelrod told reporters traveling with the president in Ohio late last week.

“You can see in the speech he’s delivering … that this is coming from his loins,” he said.

Obama doesn’t own the franchise on incumbent ambivalence. Anyone who’s had hands on the controls, as a sitting president or as a vice president running from Air Force Two, feels the indignity of having to campaign again.

“These guys do get pissy. That happens to all presidents running for a second term, but it’s especially true for Obama, given the kind of campaign he ran the first time,” said Richard Ben Cramer, author of “What It Takes,” a landmark chronicle of the trials of the 1988 presidential candidates, including President George H.W. Bush, a diffident politician accustomed to the trappings of power.

“It’s very hard to top the presidency. … It’s really hard to get into the mode of, ‘Well, I have to talk to these guys in Medina, Ohio,’” he added. “For 3½ years, nobody tells the president, ‘You f—ed up,’ and all of a sudden people are telling him what to do. … So, I think Obama wants to be there, wants to be president, but he doesn’t necessarily want to do all the things he had to do to be there.”

That’s not to say Obama is ambivalent about the result of the election — he’s a ferocious competitor. Behind the scenes, insiders paint a portrait of a candidate deep-diving into polling reports on Air Force One and in Roosevelt Room strategy sessions, and who does, in fact, personally approve every message.

In speech-writing meetings, he’s often the one to suggest the addition of more optimistic, aspirational passages, aides say — even though he has frequently bowed to the counter-argument that he can prevail only by defining Romney in the most negative way possible.

The tension took its toll. Obama infamously told a Nevada campaign worker that his Denver debate prep was “a drag,” and aides say he was far more engaged during his daily economic and intelligence briefings than the atmosphere of “That was great, Mr. President, but…” at the cram sessions.

Obama’s field organization, micro-targeting operation and strategic focus on eroding Romney’s reputation in a half-dozen swing states have kept him in the race even when the candidate himself has sometimes “underperformed,” in the words of one former Clinton aide.

The reaction among the party faithful, and some of Obama’s own staff and volunteers, was rage, a sense that they were slaving 15-hour days, building a billion-dollar juggernaut — all for a man who hadn’t bothered to show up when it mattered most at the first debate.

“It’s not that he didn’t care, it’s that he was confused by the competing priorities,” said a Democrat close to Obama of his confounding performance in Denver. “That got him down.”

Reporters who have been with the president were less surprised by the flop. Obama’s performance on the trail has been so variable that reporters covering him seldom know quite what to expect. Unlike his former rival Hillary Clinton, who could campaign on three hours sleep, Obama needs his rest and often delivers his worst speeches when he doesn’t get enough shut-eye. The ’08 flashes of inspiration have come, but sporadically.

The day after he bombed in Denver, he arrived at a park early in the morning and electrified the audience, one hand in his pocket, the other one gripping the podium or sweeping off to the side at a 90-degree angle from his body, head craned into the bank of microphones — a gesture that signals to his staff that “he’s really into it.”

A few days later, during an appearance at Ohio State University, he seemed to be going through the motions and struggled to get through the canned Sesame Street gags packed into his stump speech to razz Romney over his threat to cut PBS funding.

“So for all you moms and kids out there, don’t worry, somebody’s finally getting tough on Big Bird,” Obama said, stumbling over the words. “Who knew that he was driving our deficit? So he decided we’re going after Big Bird, Elmo’s making a run for the border and Oscar’s hiding out in a trash can. Gov. Romney wants to let Wall Street run wild again, but he’s going to bring down the hammer on Sesame Street. Look, that is not leadership, that’s salesmanship. We can’t afford it.”

The contrast between that kind of message and the speech he delivered on Nov. 4, 2008, couldn’t have been more stark.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,” Obama said then.

His personal affection for such language explains, in part, why Obama seems so thrilled to replace Big Bird with some of the aspirational touches of 2008. But there’s something new: humility.

“It started to click after Denver, when he began asking voters for their help, rather than telling them why they shouldn’t be so disappointed,” said one former Clinton aide who backs Obama.

The irony is that the perfect pitch for 2012 ultimately has been one from 2008 — not his own, but Hillary Clinton’s claim that her political “scars” from the 1990s made her tough enough to change Washington in the future.

“You know I’m willing to make tough decisions, even when they’re not politically convenient,” Obama says in his closing pitch. “I know what real change looks like, because I fought for it.

“I’ve got the scars to prove it.”
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