Strong At Home = Strong Abroad

There are two new polls out that bear mentioning on the eve of tonight’s debate.

The first is the QUINNIPIAC poll that shows Obama leading Romney by 5 points in the state of Ohio.  That lead is down from 10 points two weeks ago.  This shows that the president is still ahead in what may prove to be the most important state in this election.  It also shows that Romney has made huge strides in the past two weeks.  The question is can the president hold him off.  The key here is turnout.  If the president’s ground game can re-invigorate student and Hispanic enthusiasm he will hold Ohio.  But if Romney’s surge continues over the final two weeks and he over takes the president in Ohio there is no reason to believe that he won’t do the same in the other swing states.  If Romney can pull past the president in Ohio we think he wins this election.  The key component contributing to Obama’s lead is the auto bailout.  In Ohio, one in 5 jobs is realted to the automobile industry.  The president saved the industry.  Romney wanted to let it go under.   

The other important poll is the NBCNEWS/WALL STREETJOURNAL/ MARIST poll that shows Romney and Obama tied nationally among likely voters at 47% of the vote.  The more interesting piece of this poll is that 62% of likely voters want the president to make BIG changes if re-elected.  They want to see changes in Washington and in the economic components that affect their daily lives.  They don’t want to talk about the past…and they don’t want four more years of the same.  As we have said before, the president has yet to lay out a clear, concise pronouncement of his vision for the future.  He has given us bits and pieces…100,000 more teachers, more manufacturing jobs, investment in alternative sources of energy…but he has yet to connect the dots with voters.  It’s tough for him to do that tonight with the focus on foreign policy.  But if this poll strikes the administration as it did us, we expect to see the president more clearly articulate his vision for the future over the final two week stretch of this campaign.

So what does any of this have to do with tonight’s debate on foreign policy?

In yesterday’s post we wrote about how about how there are those in politics who want to expand America’s role in the world even though our economic resources are insufficient to accommodate such expansion.  The fact is that you cannot have a strong foreign policy if it is not backed by a strong economy.  For example, Iran knows that the US is a war weary nation that is going through economic turmoil.  They know that the American people are more concerned about jobs than they are about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  So they are using that perceived weakness at the nuclear bargaining table.  The president and our allies have imposed stringent economic sanctions on the Iranian regime.  Those sanctions are having a devastating effect on Iran’s economy.  According to an article in the New York Times, the weakened economic conditions in Iran have resulted in an apparent willingness on their part to discuss their nuclear ambitions.  The economic conditions in both countries are having a direct impact on their foreign policy.  You cannot be strong abroad if you are weakened at home.   

Foreign policy and economic policy…the two are irrevocably linked.  We will be watching tonight to see which candidate more clearly articulates the correlation between the two.