Presidential was what Obama needed from Sandy, Simon writes. Stronger Obama back to the stump

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody some good, and Hurricane Sandy has given Barack Obama a lift beneath his wings.

His swift reaction to a major disaster coupled with a shrewd calculation to stop personally campaigning in order to supervise the relief effort from the Oval Office have provided him with one thing he has most needed since the first debate: the opportunity to look presidential.


Presidential is what Obama needed from Sandy because a presidential image was exactly what Obama lost at his first debate with Mitt Romney. Obama’s meager performance fed into a narrative that has existed ever since he first campaigned for the presidency in 2007: He can appear aloof, cold, academic and bloodless.

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So his debate performance allowed voters to ask themselves exactly what Team Obama didn’t want them to ask: “What’s so wrong with Mitt Romney anyway? He looks presidential. He talks presidential. Maybe he could be presidential.”

Strong performances in his second and third debates against Romney certainly helped Obama, but Sandy has been the real godsend. There is a difference between exploiting tragedy and having the benefits fall into your lap. All Obama really had to do was not screw up, and he did that admirably.

At the same time, his campaign effectively exploited Romney’s ludicrous past opposition to FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It was during the primaries and Romney was pandering to both the far right and libertarian wings of his party.

Romney didn’t come out and say that disaster victims ought to borrow reconstruction money from their parents, but he came close. He demonstrated the cluelessness of the ultra-rich as to how natural disaster devastates people who may lack the safety net of savings, insurance, offshore investments and numbered accounts in Switzerland.

It was June 2011, and John King asked Romney at a CNN primary debate whether states rather than the federal government should take on a more significant role in disaster relief.

“Absolutely,” Romney replied. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.”

The thought of private companies providing disaster relief for profit rather than the government rushing immediate aid to victims is neither sensible, effective nor humane.

Which is the problem of corporate candidates. They view government as an enormous business. It is not. Government does not exist to maximize profit; it exists to help its citizens.

And when disasters like Sandy strike, people realize that fact much more keenly. They also realize, as many are now saying, that big disasters require big government.

Which is why Romney is now so tight-lipped about his comments on FEMA.

On Tuesday, his traveling press pool asked him no fewer than 14 times whether he would eliminate FEMA should he become president. Romney repeatedly ignored them.

This is from a Romney pool report: “He (Romney) went over to the crates of water and began loading them into the truck. ‘Governor, are you going to eliminate FEMA?’ a print pooler shouted, receiving no response. Romney continued loading up the truck. Wire reporters asked more questions about FEMA that were ignored. Romney kept coming over near pool to pick up more water. He ignored these questions:

“Governor, are you going to see some storm damage?

“Governor, has Chris Christie invited you to come survey storm damage?

“Governor, you’ve been asked 14 times (about FEMA), why are you refusing to answer the question?”

Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, has been lavish in his praise for Obama in recent days. He has called Obama “outstanding” and said that Obama “deserves great credit.”

“He gave me his number at the White House and told me to call him if I needed anything,” Christie also said. “So I thank the president publicly for that. He’s done — as far as I’m concerned — a great job for New Jersey.”

Fox News’s Steve Doocy asked Christie if there was “any possibility that Gov. Romney may go to New Jersey to tour some of the damage with you.”

“I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested,” Christie replied. “If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me.”

Not everybody praised Obama. The most-reviled, least-trusted former FEMA director, Michael “Heckuva Job, Brownie” Brown, said Monday that Obama had moved too quickly in dealing with the disaster.

“One thing he’s gonna be asked is why did he jump on [the hurricane] so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in … Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas.” Brown said. “Why was this so quick? At some point, somebody’s going to ask that question.”

Trying to switch discussion of all topics to Benghazi has become the chief Republican tactic in the waning days of this campaign, a matter I’ll deal with in a future column. But it was left for Brownie (who else?) to show the contemptible worthlessness, to say nothing of clumsiness, of the strategy: Obama should not deal quickly with hurricane damage in the United States because he allegedly didn’t deal quickly with an attack on a U.S. Consulate in Libya?

Does this make any sense to anybody? No, but sense is no longer the point in this campaign. Romney is maintaining a grim, no-response response to questions from reporters, feeling that if he says nothing and does nothing off-message, he will win the presidency because his staff has shown him polling numbers proving it.

On Wednesday, in a conference call with reporters, Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, said, “For Romney, time’s running out.”

But Romney wants the time to run out. Very, very quickly, before Obama can regain any more lost ground.

With Sandy over, Obama has announced the resumption of his campaign, with planned stops in Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado on Thursday.

David Axelrod, Obama’s top political adviser, put it this way, when asked about the political effect of the storm and Obama’s return to the campaign trail:

“I am hesitant to make political calculations of something that led to the death of 50 people,” Axelrod said. “[But] we passed a threshold, and we have an election on Tuesday.”

Obama has shown he can be a president — even pleasing a top Republican governor along the way — and now, it is time to show he can be a campaigner once again.

Roger Simon is POLITICO’s chief political columnist.