everybody agrees on that. . it was a well written speech. there s much in there that we can agree on. he says the issue is how do we build an economy in which the middle class can thrive and in which people can get their best chance. the question slts whether mitt romney is the answer to that. i heard chris say he s the technician who can get under the hood. he was as a businessman a guy who made a lot of money outsourcing jobs, taking companies to bankruptcy, loading them up with debt. and profiting personally, but that s not a job creating strategy. when he had a chance to test it as governor of massachusetts, it was kind of a disaster. they went from 37th in job creation to 47th in job creation. they had one of the worst records in the country on loss of manufacturing jobs. they had fiscal problems. he left a billion dollar deficit for his successor. what was interesting about that will speech was nos mention of the fact that he ever was governor of massachusetts. it was mitt s miss
hispanic and western voters, or he s going to have to show some pretty good strength in florida, ohio, virginia, to put together 270. he does not today have much of a margin of error. i ll say, though, there are a lot of audiences for that speech last night. one is really, really rich republicans who want to beat the president. and that performance i think will open some checkbooks. as long as he looks strong enough to bet on, he ll get multimillion dollar contributions to people supporting his candidacy, and he can have much more of a level playing field than senator mccain had against barack obama where he was so underfunded. you can see the president s concern about this financial thing just every day. it s like they are practically coming to my house and asking me to take part in this george clooney fundraiser thing. i got an email about it from somebody almost every day. they are there s a little bit of fear in the eyes on the democratic side financially now. this notion that
and larger debts on to the next. [ applause ] chuck, a lot to get through in that speech last night. what was your big take away when you watched him? first of all, i think it was a very good speech, best he s given to date. he s laid out the why not president obama. and it s funny. thinking about it this morning, after did i guestigesting it ov what s missing is why him. he has made the case that 59% of the country in the last poll believes the country is headed in the wrong direction. he s done the easy part, the case of why not. the question is can he do the why him. and i think that s going to be the greater challenge. but i thought it was a very concise speech. steven and i were talking about this last night. it was the best written speech that romney s campaign has put together. and he delivered it fairly well. look, he is still getting used to the teleprompter back and forth.
debates. i think it gets answered in the fall campaign. and i think that you will see some foreshadowing, some rolling out of policies that allow him to have an architecture to his campaign, you know, that are oppositional to the obama campaign. but i think you will see him very aggressive over the course of the spring making the case why not obama. because one of the problems he s had in this race is a belief, a pessimism in the republican side, that the president has this locked up. that s not true. this is going to be a close, very competitive election. all the way through. and i think that speech last night heartened a lot of republicans. a lot of republican donors across the country are saying, hey, this guy can win if he can stay on that message. you know, there s a point where in all of these when nominees start to fill the suit. i thought last night was the case where he started to fill the suit. i m shifting away from focusing on the personality to the issue of competenc
you know, one funny line, he didn t deliver it. you know, the line, we re not stupid. he s got to learn how to deliver some of these lines a little better. but i think it was a well written speech. off of what chuck just said, between now and labor day, what do you do if you re running the romney campaign? i think you make the case why not barack obama, and you start to foreshadow the why mitt romney case. i think clock management is an underappreciated value in politics. we have an extraordinary amount of time. and one the jobs of the campaign is to provide constantly new content. so he s going to need to go into the convention with new things to say. he wants to start communicating the case about why mitt romney when voters are starting to pay maximum attention. particularly 6% of the electorate that will decide the outcome in key states. so i think the why mitt romney question gets answered at the convention. i think it gets answered at the