If Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wins the White House, his administration may take “a market-based approach” toward the regulations to come via the Dodd-Frank Act, says Ari Fleischer, ex-White House press secretary and political analyst for CNN. Yet Fleischer never mentioned in his analysis yesterday at the SIFMA Tech Leaders Forum and Expo the word “repeal.”
Just to remind you, Fleischer worked for ex-President George W. Bush as press secretary and primary spokesperson from 2001 to 2003. He also served as the senior communications advisor and spokesman for the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign. He briefed the White House press corps during the 2000 presidential recount, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and aftermath, two wars and the anthrax attack. His firm, Ari Fleischer Communications Inc., advises corporate clients and those in the sports world on how to work with the press.
I was fully expecting to hear Fleischer say that Romney would work hard to repeal Dodd-Frank and put a stop to many other new regulatory reform efforts. But this was not the case. Could this mean that the new regulations are so far advanced that even a GOP-dominated House and Senate (presuming they make new gains in November) would not bother to go back to the drawing board? Or that a newly minted Romney would put the brakes on regulation via appointees that will be less zealous than the incumbents? If that’s the case, Romney will have to move fast as he’ll have only six to 15 months to fully staff his new administration, Fleischer says.
Fleisher’s assumption is not new. I have heard in private talks with analysts, vendors and user firms that they doubt that the march of new regulations can be stopped despite the Republican rhetoric. Fleischer might be right that the best Romney can do to please his base is shift the interpretation of Dodd-Frank.
I also think the new regulations may have to take a back seat to the massive “cliff” issues that the White House and both houses of Congress will face after the November election as Fleischer points out. The federal government has put off major tax, spending and debt limit matters, which have to be dealt with by Dec. 31 of this year. “We have a scheduled calamity,” he says.
“If Obama is re-elected, there will be a lot more onerous rules [for financial reform],” says Fleischer, a former liberal Democrat who converted to Republicanism during college. His main thesis is that the US body politic has never been more volatile and that the Democrats and Republicans have been helped and hurt by the rapidly shifting electorate. He argues that Obama could easily lose the election especially if his favorability ratings stay below 50% by October. “The President’s Gallup numbers are on the bubble,” he says. Obama’s fortunes are sinking because of a “spending fatigue” and a lack of enthusiasm among voters.
The fragile economic recovery has also taken its toll, Fleischer says. While voters don’t blame him for the recession, they blame him for not fixing it, he says. In fact, the numbers to watch during the coming presidential campaign will not be the popularity polls but the number of the jobs created or lost during the prior month and reported on the first Friday of every month, and the latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) news, he says. If there’s an uptick in those figures, Obama is likely to get a boost. “If not, then the president will be joining the ranks of the unemployed.”
Yet the anti-Obama conditions are not enough to guarantee a victory for Romney, Fleischer adds. The former Massachusetts governor will have to overcome his flip-flops on major issues and an inability to connect with voters. In contrast, Obama has “a tremendous attribute” in that he has “lots of likability among voters.”
Citing the extremely close Presidential election of 2000, Fleisher says that the 2012 race could be a replay of that divisive time. The variable is “an October surprise” that could come in the form of Obama’s ratings hitting a new low, trouble in the Middle East such as Iran developing a nuclear weapon or Israel bombing Iran, an economic catastrophe in Europe or the unraveling of “papered over” major political and social problems in China. Any one of these events (or a combination) could instantly change the course of the race in unpredictable ways, he says.
What may not affect the outcome in 2012 is Romney’s selection of a running mate because most people vote for the presidential candidate, not the vice president, Fleischer says. “I would love it to be Paul Ryan,” he says, referring to the fiscally conservative Republican Congressman from Wisconsin.
However, Fleischer says that in 2008, the Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate may undercut his theory. “I think that was the first time people voted against the vice president,” he says.
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