Behind the Ad: Romney still wants to blame Obama for not fixing Bush's mess fast enough

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: The Ryan-Romney campaign.

Where: Wisconsin.

What's going on: According to CNN, Mitt Romney's campaign released a new ad on Saturday aimed at Wisconsin voters. It's part of a series of state-specific ads that are being released in battleground states.

In fact, shortly after President Obama's speech at the DNC, the Romney campaign announced 15 new television ads as part of what it's calling "A Better Future" series. The Wisconsin ad brings the total to 16 in nine states.

The theme is the question Romney posed as part of his RNC speech, asking voters if they are better off now than when Obama took office:

"This president can ask us to be patient. This president can tell us it was someone else's fault. But this president cannot tell us that you're better off today than when he took office," said Romney to supporters at the Republican convention.

It is an interesting question. Romney hopes people will simply forget that when Obama was elected, the country was in economic free-fall under the watch of the previous president, who just happened to be a Republican. It seems fairly obvious that we are in better off now than when the Bush presidency put the country in the worst economic shape we'd seen since the Great Depression.

We all understand the question. And we also understand that Romney hopes people will punish President Obama for not fixing fast enough the mess a Republican administration and GOP policies created in the first place.

As a strategy, I just don't think it's a winner.



(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)