Mitt is running a misguided campaign

Normally a presidential nominee gets about a 5 percent bump in the polls following his party's convention. Following the balloon drop in Tampa 10 days ago, Mitt Romney's bump was essentially zero percent. Something's wrong with the Romney campaign, and there is precious little time left to put it right.

As President Barack Obama's first term nears its end, there is no doubt that America is in peril. You don't have to take my word for it. Seventy percent of the nation believes we are not headed in the right direction. The economic recovery has been anemic at best. Unacceptably high unemployment persists, even in the face of massive stimulus spending. Federal deficit and debt levels have soared over the past four years.

And all of this has combined to keep President Obama's approval rating below 50 percent. History teaches us that when a president has an approval rating below 50 percent, he's vulnerable to defeat.

But all through the summer, the polls have shown that President Obama clings to a small lead. And more ominous for Romney is the fact that the president's lead is even larger in most of the dozen or so crucial battleground states that will determine who wins the election. Romney's campaign is deeply flawed, and amazingly it is increasingly clear that the nominee and his inner sanctum of advisers can't figure out what's wrong and fix it. I say "amazingly" because the problem and the fix are plainly evident.

It's not as if those in the Romney campaign haven't realized they are in trouble. Months ago, they wrongly assumed they could win simply by bashing a failed Obama administration. Over the summer, they learned that tactic was not sufficient to the task of winning the White House. Then, as the convention approached, they figured out that they needed to humanize Romney in order to attempt to counteract the widespread perception that he comes across as a patrician utterly lacking warmth and a connection with everyday Americans who are experiencing a world of hurt.

And they also belatedly figured out that Romney and the Republican Party don't play well with the most crucial bloc of voters in the coming election — suburban women. How these women vote in places like Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, the Virginia suburbs of Washington, Tampa, Charlotte, Philadelphia and Denver will spell victory or defeat for Obama or Romney.

And so Team Romney loaded the convention program in Tampa with personal vignettes about Mitt Romney's extraordinary life and also featured numerous prominent women to address these deficiencies. These were smart and essential moves, and there is no doubt they were successful. But the convention bump was negligible. What's missing?

President Obama's track record has been abysmal. His brilliant 2008 campaign centerpiece of hope and change was stillborn two months into his presidency when he voluntarily relinquished leadership of his stimulus and health care reform efforts to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. But those strategic miscalculations to the contrary notwithstanding, President Obama remains formidable because he is likable.

And he's the incumbent. For any challenger to defeat a sitting president requires that challenger to explain how he would do the job differently and more effectively. And that's what Romney has failed to do. This is a blunder of epic and fatal proportions.

Ever since Romney selected Paul Ryan to be his running mate, we have heard Ryan say that when they win, "We will lead." But he has not said how they will lead or what they will do. In his convention address in Tampa, Romney said he would make America energy independent by 2020. But he did not say how he would get that job done.

To win, he must specify how he will change Obama's policies regarding the economy and jobs. And until I hear a better set of ideas, I believe the content of The Shadow's past three columns on how to harvest and use the enormous amount of untapped natural gas and oil buried under America's feet is just what the doctor ordered for what's missing in Mitt's campaign.

Read those columns, Mitt. They will give you the specifics you need to deal simultaneously with the way forward on robust economic growth, job creation and energy independence. Once you tell the American people that the nation has 4.2 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas (enough to meet the nation's electricity demands for 575 years), 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, and estimated royalty revenues of $37.5 trillion, it will be game, set, match for your campaign.

Oh sure, the environmentalists will go nuts, but they're locked-in Obama votes, anyway.

The place to unveil this thunderbolt is the first presidential debate, which will focus on domestic issues at the University of Denver on Oct. 3. It will throw Team Obama on the defensive. And it will keep it on the defensive because it has no countervailing set of specific ideas. It will give millions of Americans the reason to vote for you that thus far you have not provided. And among those millions will be enough suburban women in states like Colorado, Ohio and Virginia who will enable you to win the states that you will otherwise lose.

It's now or never, Mitt.

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