Excerpt
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): So, Mark, you know, whatever Romney's task is, do you agree with David that the race is tight? Romney has picked up a little bit.
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: Yes, I will say this as a formulation of this race, that if President Obama is reelected on November 6, it will be primarily because he ran against Mitt Romney.
If he were running unopposed, 2012 would be a very tough fight for him. I mean, I think David's right. The race is close. I think that tells you how vulnerable the president is, when only 43 percent of voters think he deserves reelection. By a 2-1 margin, people think the country is headed in the wrong direction.
But Romney has essentially wasted the four months he had from the time he became the de facto nominee. He has not filled in -- there are two things that people want to know. What kind of a guy is he? Who is he? He has not revealed himself.
And he has a special problem because he only had one term in public office, during which he was pro-choice on abortion, he was pro-gun control, he was pro-environment, a greenie, and, in addition, he offered the mandatory health insurance that everybody had to buy with a public subsidy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: When he was governor of Massachusetts.
MARK SHIELDS: When he was governor of Massachusetts.
But that -- that is his only public record, and he's totally moved away from that.
Now, people don't know who he is. And they don't have a -- they want to have a sense of what kind of a guy he is, what kind of a person he is, and what he's going to do. He hasn't filled that in at all and he's let the Obama campaign fill in a lot of it and he's let the Obama campaign fill it in.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Go ahead.
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times columnist: I was doing a Google search looking for some information, and I came across a column I wrote in 2007. Of course, I reread what I wrote.
And it was this. It was like, how come he doesn't tell us who he is? And so that was 2007. And it's been five years since then.
JUDY WOODRUFF: About Romney.
DAVID BROOKS: And he still hasn't done that. So maybe there is nobody in the house. But I don't know. We will see.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, why is he doing so well then if he hasn't told us who he is?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think it's, quite honestly, because the president is in a tough situation.
The president has a ceiling -- you have to believe those polls -- about 48. And the president hasn't broken through to 50, 51. And, you know, Judy, I mean, the country is headed in the wrong direction. People don't -- are not optimistic about the future. They don't have confidence.
I mean, two out of three voters do not have confidence that the president's policies and plans will move us economically.
Three out of four people don't have confidence -- this is a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll -- that Romney's plans will. So, I mean, you know, the challenger has a special responsibility to say, this is where we're going. This is how we're going to get there. And he has not done that.
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