WASHINGTON — Worried about the economy? The rising cost of health insurance? The burgeoning federal debt? The presidential candidates have a bullet point for that.
But despite Republican Mitt Romney’s 59-point jobs plan, President Barack Obama’s 64-page blueprint for change and both candidates’ policy speeches, voters still sense something’s missing.
Just 40 percent of Americans think Obama “has a clear plan for solving the country’s problems,” according to a June survey by Gallup, while 38 percent say Romney has a specific proposal.
“This election so far has been about the future in only the most general terms,” said William Galston, an expert on government and politics at the Brookings Institution and a former Clinton administration official.
Obama and Romney have each “said and written enough to be able to argue that he has been specific,” Galston said. “But when it comes down to what really matters — what are the top three or four things that I will do if I am elected or re-elected — I scratch my head.”
While a lack of specifics is something that voters bemoan about their candidates every presidential election, the vagueness of the 2012 race is even more pronounced as both campaigns spend more time arguing about past issues such as Obama’s health care law and Romney’s private sector experience than on what they would do if elected.
Plus, this year, each side is accusing the other of not being upfront with the public about his plans if elected. Romney points to Obama’s overheard comment to the Russians that he would have more flexibility in a second term on issues such as missile defense. Obama points to Romney’s unwillingness to say exactly what would replace the health care law if he and the Republicans successfully repeal it.
There are plenty of ways to distribute blame for the public’s fuzziness about the two candidates’ intentions.
For one, there are still plenty of significant unknowns about their policy plans — more so with Romney than Obama, who has already spent 3½ years governing from the Oval Office.
Romney, for example, has pledged to cap total federal spending at 20 percent of the gross domestic product by the end of his first term, increase defense spending and put the federal budget on track to be balanced within eight to 10 years. But he has offered scant detail about the spending cuts that would be necessary to pull off such a trifecta.
Obama, for his part, has laid out annual proposed budgets for the federal government that are lush with details. But year after year, many of those details are dead on arrival in Congress, leaving voters to wonder how things would be different in a second Obama term.
Comprehensive plans to address illegal immigration and Social Security’s financial woes also have been pushed into a second term by Obama, although he took unilateral action to stop deporting young people who were brought to the country illegally as children.
Romney, meanwhile, has been vague on a number of big-ticket policy fronts beyond his sketchy budget proposals. He has promised a “civil but resolute” plan to address illegal immigration — details to be announced. And he makes a virtue of the lack of specifics he has provided on what he’d do after repealing Obama’s health care overhaul, saying states should make the call on how to cover their uninsured.
