The team of people working diligently to re-elect Barack Obama should really, right about now, be sending a big "thank you" note to none other than Karl Rove -- for providing them the playbook they are now using to maximum effect on Mitt Romney. Maybe Rove left a copy of it lying around, when the Dubya administration was packing up its things to exit the White House, who knows?

In pre-Rovian times in American politics, election strategy went something like this: Find the major weaknesses in your opponent. Exploit those weaknesses by informing the public what a serious lack each weakness is. Build on attacking the opposition candidate's weaknesses, until you eventually undermine even their strongest points in the public's eye.

Karl Rove, however, stood all that on its head, to brilliant effect. The re-election of George W. Bush in 2004 was the most successful example of this new way of thinking: Find out what your opponent thinks are his strengths. Directly, indirectly, and through innuendo, launch a full-scale attack on his perceived strongest point. When you've obliterated the opponent's main rationale for running, then there'll be plenty of time later on to take on the minor stuff -- the opponent's weaknesses. By destroying the strongest part of their campaign first, you define them to the public before they get a chance to define themselves -- thereby making it impossible for your opponent to create his own "first impression" with the voters. The first impression that they'll get is "the main reason he says he is running is based on a lie," and that's the one that will stick in their minds.

To put this another way, Mitt Romney is finding out what it's like to be John Kerry. The two, after all, have a lot in common -- a political career in Massachusetts, lots of money, and a serious deficit of charisma. Terms such as "Bain-boating" and "Swissboating" are starting to be used to describe the similarities between Romney's current position and the infamous "swift boat" ads of 2004.

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To fully appreciate that subtitle, you really have to read it in your best impression of The Simpsons character "Comic Book Guy." I'm just sayin'....

The phrase refers to a very in-depth article by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, who gives us (happy Friday the 13th, by the way) thirteen reasons why this is the "worst Congress ever." It is an excellent article which I highly recommend, and I'm not just saying that because I am (admittedly) a sucker for articles with lots of graphs in them.

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From tomorrow until the end of this year, the House of Representatives has scheduled an underwhelming 41 days of work. This is pathetic. Call it "our taxpayer dollars not at work," if you will.

During the first half of 2012, from January through June, the House worked a grand total of 85 days. From July through December, there are only 45 days on the work schedule. That is nine weeks worth of work, to put it another way, out of six months on the calendar (roughly 26 weeks).

Counting from tomorrow on (the "rest of the year"), there are a total of 172 days on the calendar. To be fair, 50 of these are weekend days, leaving 122 weekdays. Also to be fair, there are five federal holidays in there as well, which leaves 117 non-holiday weekdays until the new year dawns. Divide 41 into 117, and you come up with the reprehensible figure of 35 percent. That's right -- your representative in the House is planning on only working a little over one-third of the rest of this year.

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A new political action committee was announced today: a lesbian "super PAC." Now, some folks might decry this development (for various reasons, which I'll get to in a moment), but personally I think it's a great idea. A super idea, in fact. Until progressives can manage to get a constitutional amendment passed which overturns Citizens United, we're all living in the world it created -- and we'd better realize it and adjust to it rather than just bewail the sad state of modern politics and money's influence therein. So I say: more power to the lesbians! Go LPAC!

In fact, I'd go further and advise other special interest groups dive into the same pond and create your own super PAC. How about a "Populist PAC," for instance? Or even an "Occupy PAC" or a "99% PAC"? Perhaps, a super PAC devoted to passing a "corporations aren't persons" amendment? I see nothing wrong with any of these, to tell the truth.

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Today, baseball holds its mid-season All-Star game. Which got me to thinking... maybe politics should put on a similar extravaganza, at least every two years while we're gearing up for election season.

All year long, every year, the American public is exposed to a vast universe of politicians speaking their minds, most often on television shows that encourage feisty responses. So would it be such a leap to put together the best from each side in the summer before an election? Rather than watching B-team politicians who can't even remember their talking points and think on their feet, wouldn't it be fun to pit the best against the best, in a grand debate spectacle on prime-time television?

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OK, I took Monday off, playing hooky in the warm summer sun.

Regular column service will resume Tuesday.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

A bright, shining ray of hope beamed upon the world of political wonkery this week, but then NBC dumped rain all over this parade by issuing denials of the rumor that David Gregory would be replaced as host of Meet The Press. Now, NBC actually has a few intelligent and serious political journalists on its staff who would likely do a pretty good job of hosting the Sunday morning chatfest, but as we've all known all along, Gregory is simply not one of them (neither, for that matter, is Brian Williams). So, like I said, we were all very hopeful when the rumor that NBC was thinking of getting someone with enough brains to ask a followup question to host their flagship MTP program, only to later be disappointed by NBC's denials. But who knows, maybe the rumors are true and the denials are fake. One can always hope.

One sad fact dawned this week in the media world, though. Before there was Futurama, before there were The Simpsons, there was "Life In Hell" -- a weekly comic by Matt Groening that helped a lot of folks cope, all through the Reagan years. Sadly, Groening has announced the comic's 34-year run is now at an end. We heartily agree with the NPR story which highlights a fitting quote from the comic as an epitaph for Binky, Bongo, Akbar and Jeff and all the rest of them, and which also sums up our feelings perfectly: "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."

Now, sadly, the ice weasels cometh for "Life In Hell." We'd like to offer up a moment of silence in loving memory. As we frantically try to pry pieces of the snowmobile off, to use as weapons in the gathering dusk, so to speak.

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Since it's the day after a mid-week holiday, we're going to take it easy today, and run a photo sent in by one of our faithful readers, for everyone's enjoyment.

After losing a bet made in these very pages, "Michale" humbly wore the following shirt all day long at his place of business:

Wear it with style, Michale, and in the future be careful making such rash bets...

Heh.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

The name "Romney" has historical significance in Massachusetts, but the story goes back a lot further than just a recent ex-governor. In fact, a "Romney" played a significant part in the American Revolution -- on the British side. The name, however, does not refer to a man, but rather to a man-of-war, the H.M.S. Romney, a 50-gun British ship that sailed into Boston harbor in 1768.

The Romney was there for a specific reason -- to help the British government enforce the Townshend Acts. It was a show of force, for the benefit of those unruly Americans who were resisting Parliament's new decrees.

The presence of the Romney was irritating from the very start. Following the custom of the times, the sailors forcibly began rounding up men to serve on the ship -- a practice known as "impressment," back then. Today, it might be referred to as being "Shanghaied." An informal version of a military draft, the sailors would just grab any warm body they found dockside and drag them back to the ship where they would become members of the British navy, whether they liked it or not. The citizens of Boston didn't take too kindly to the press gangs from the Romney, and they began fighting back by attacking the sailors, to thwart these attempts at kidnapping people off the streets.

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Absolutely even

Before we begin here, a quick program note is in order. Astute readers will note that today is Tuesday. These columns usually run on Mondays or Wednesdays, and are thus posted on Huffington Post and Business Insider as well. But, for the next five months we're phasing out widespread coverage of this column, and phasing in our Electoral Math series in its place. Because the presidential election will be the overwhelming story from now until Election Day, the head-to-head polling between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will be much more pertinent and newsworthy than our monthly look at how Obama is doing in the "job approval" polling. We don't want to overwhelm and confuse people by running too many charts, to put it another way. During this period, the ObamaPollWatch.com site will host both column series, so you can look there for the most recent of either. And, every month, we'll still be running the Obama Poll Watch columns, it'll just be on Tuesdays and Thursdays, that's all.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at how Barack Obama is doing in the job approval category. For the first time ever, we have an exact tie, at 47.8 percent. Here's the chart:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

June, 2012

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