WASHINGTON -- Lead item on Mitt Romney's campaign website: "Michigan and Arizona, Thank you. Donate."
OK, folks, after the never-ending early primary phase, here comes the really boring part. Newly convinced he'll be the GOP nominee, Romney is asking for your dollars so he can drive stakes into the hearts of his remaining rivals and get back to trashing President Barack Obama.
Romney isn't sure how much money he personally has ($150 million? $200 million?) but for the first time he is asking for small contributions as opposed to huge sums from Wall Street big wigs, lobbyists and CEOs who attend his private cocktail soirees. (Obama, of course, is doing the same thing. The name of the game not only is who can get to $1 billion first but how many patriotic Americans contributed.)
But the issue today is Romney and what he wants to do if elected.
An interesting question. Officially: "More jobs. Less debt. Smaller government. Restore America's promise. Believe in America."
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Romney says Obama has made the country's economic problems worse. Although the economy is improving, nobody is happy with it. But let's examine the question of how Obama made the economy worse, if in fact he did.
We have just been through a grueling debate about the auto industry, which Obama helped with a bailout, following former President George W. Bush's lead. GM and Chrysler are not bankrupt (Ford did not participate) but are thriving. Romney said the industry should have filed for bankruptcy and gotten private help, but there was no private help at that time. If Romney had prevailed, thousands of auto industry jobs would have vanished.
After five years of running for president, Romney is still stunningly vague on how he would promote more jobs, less debt and smaller government. His major premise is that if corporations get more tax breaks and have less government regulation, they will hire.
History does not support that thesis. Corporations have the lowest tax rates in decades and are sitting on cash. And during the Bush era, government regulating slowed dramatically. (If regulations from the Securities and Exchange Commission and other agencies hadn't been so weak, some economists think the downturn would not have been so severe.) And regulations are the glue society uses to make food safer, medicines more effective, consumer products less hazardous, air and water cleaner and businesses more competitive.
The European nations that slashed their budgets and cut the size of government after the economic collapse, hoping to reassure investors, have proved decisively that this was the wrong medicine at the wrong time.
Nobody likes the size of the federal debt, made larger by the stimulus spending that Obama pushed through Congress (without Republican support). But the total amount of that spending is less than 3 percent of the country's total output for this year and the last three years. Eighty percent of economists in retrospect see no other solutions that could have worked any better.
Another reason for increased deficit spending is that the bulk of federal expenditures are fixed, such as Social Security and Medicare. Also, we have been at war for 10 years. And we have had declining tax revenues, as 25 million Americans have been unemployed or under-employed.
I am truly tired of Romney's goofiness, his gaffes and his mortifying, demeaning attempts to pander to the lowest common denominator. I do not want to hear one more tired, stupid cliche from him.
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If Romney wants to be president, he must deliver a cogent vision for America. It is way past time for him to say what he really thinks, act like a grown-up presidential candidate and spell out exactly what programs he would cut. We've been through hell, and we deserve serious answers, not more hot air.
If Romney is such a bottom-line genius, when, if ever, is he going to give us the bottom line?
Scripps Howard columnist McFeatters has covered the White House and national politics since 1986.
