“A lot of generalities…shades of Mondale (”shared sacrifice”)…not concrete or specific enough to make the case against Obama or for Romney…even his own story about what he did in NJ wasn’t really compelling…

“Saying we need leaders to change polls, not follow polls….but Obama doesn’t follow polls…if he did, he wouldn’t have pushed through Obamacare and still be committed to it.

“Well delivered, but just not good enough…

“Way too much talk about shared sacrifice. Do we remember how many states Mondale won? Otherwise known as Mondale ONE.

“Now Chris Wallace is saying one thumb up for Ann Romney…one thumb down for Chris Christie….

“Points out correctly that he hardly said anything about Romney.”

Anyone who has been in a presidential campaign knows that everyone has advice for how you can do better. Right now everyone is telling Mitt Romney: You need to do a better job of connecting. Not me. Yes, I have advice – just not that advice.

The campaign is in its battle of the agendas phase. The two sides are fighting over whose definition of the key issues before the nation will dominate discussion in October and early November.

You would think that with an economy stagnated at a disturbingly low level, unprecedented national debt that our top military man has said itself is a threat to our security, net-job-killing federal spending and troubles around the globe, both sides would be agreed on the serious questions facing us.

Instead the president has invented one war after another that he contends Mitt Romney is waging on the rest of us: wars on women, on the middle class, even on puppies, until it turned out that the president has eaten puppies.

By law, candidates must approve every message their apparatus puts out. If you had any doubts about how nice a guy Mr. Obama is, look at the way his campaign has stuck to the angry (bordering on hate-filled) message of businessman Romney shipping jobs overseas long after it has been revealed the former governor did no such thing. In his rise to prominence, Mr. Obama was fortunate that dirt emerged on several strong opponents, who then became unviable. The persistence of his campaign in trying to manufacture dirt on Mr. Romney leaves me, at least, wondering if those earlier revelations were the result of luck alone.

The Romney campaign has been focused and disciplined in its response, answering through surrogates when appropriate (particularly when the Democrats have misrepresented the governor’s economic achievements in Massachusetts) but not getting distracted from the president’s failed economic performance.

The president has plenty of money, having reportedly conducted by now more political fundraisers than his four immediate predecessors combined. And yet considering the intensity of Team Obama’s attacks, plenty of money looks like plenty of nothing. Yes, the polls have moved a little. But by and large, despite the full frontal assault, in the major swing states, the Real Clear Politics average of polls puts Mr. Romney substantially ahead of where he was at the toughest points in March, April and May. In all cases, the spread between the candidates is within polling’s margin of error.

So what is my advice to the Romney entourage?

First, pay more attention to pictures. The best press event the Romney people have staged in the last sixty days was the surprise visit to Solyndra headquarters. The picture of the lavish facility fit perfectly with the candidate’s remarks, a serendipity typical of Ronald Reagan’s campaigns. Too often, though, Team Romney’s stage settings borrow more from George W. Bush, depending on words pasted to a banner or stuck to a podium (“More Jobs. Less Debt. Smaller Government.”) to tell their tale. The Reagan method says more and excites emotions better than the Bush one. It connects. Go with Reagan.

Second, pay more attention to soundbites. Governor Romney’s speeches are well crafted, intelligently argued and draw a clear distinction between his vision and the president’s. His speechwriters are very good. There is a need, though, to work harder on defining phrases.

As cable television has come to dominate coverage and millions may see large portions of even minor stump appearances, campaigns have de-emphasized the catchy, memorable formulations that were the staples of the old network evening news broadcasts. The Romney campaign should bring back the soundbite. Mostly this requires asking the question for each event, “What phrase or sentence do we want people taking away with them?”

Third, pay more attention to merchandizing the message. Brief the media in greater detail before and after each press event — fact sheets, experts available on the press bus, that sort of thing. In other words, tell them what you are going to tell them, followed with telling them what you told them – and providing the kind of background that gives depth and detail to a story.

Yes, I know friends will still tell Governor Romney that he needs to connect more – some magical transformation of personality and delivery. I don’t buy it. He is who he is. He’s done very well with that over the years, including in the least hospitable state for a Republican in the nation. The challenge is easier. It is just a matter of doing it.

Both have understood that the GOP can’t sit back and wait for the president’s miserable performance to bring him down all by itself. A candidate must define his opponent’s failure, then use that as a springboard to defining an alternative.

Everyone is saying that the long contest has been bad for the GOP. But none of the candidates had shaped and internalized these messages event four weeks ago. So in this long march something may have been lost, but something has also been gained.

But let me get this straight:

1) banks will be punished (do I understand this right, by a committee headed by Eric Holder?) if their lending is too risky,

2) and they will be required (by another special committee, I believe) to give more home loans (meaning to people who would otherwise not qualify for the loans, or else the government would not have to be involved) at lower rates (which means rates that do not compensate them as much as the market says they need to be compensated for the risks they are taking, all of which sounds like a new edition of the policies that brought on the financial collapse),

3) which must mean that they will have to pull back on risky lending someplace other than homes,

4) the only place that most banks would be able to pull back on riskier customers would be loans to small and new businesses,

5) but these are the businesses that have created just about all the jobs over the last 20 years and he said early in the speech he wants to encourage them,

6) so maybe their growth capital will come from selling stock to the kinds of people who invest in new and small businesses,

7) but through the Buffet Rule he’s going to double the tax rate on investment income for those people, meaning that, like the banks, they can’t be fully compensated for the risk of backing small and new businesses,

8. so they will not invest more in small and new companies but in big established firms,

9) so more of those small and new firms will have to turn to the government for capital,

10) which luckily he said would up its investing in early stage businesses with “the best” ideas,

11) “the best” ideas meaning, I guess, as with Solyndra, ideas that advance his agenda through companies whose owners support his candidacy),

12) or maybe it would be companies that agree to invite unionization (since the unions have failed to organize the new and dynamic sectors of the economy, which is why they have been shrinking),

13) but then with the big businesses, he wants to punish American companies if they invest overseas,

14) and he wants to increase exports,

15) but being competitive in the global markets often means having part of your production near your markets, which is why many companies have opened production facilities abroad and many foreign companies (BMW and Honda, for example) have opened their facilities here,

16) so he’ll make these companies less competitive, meaning less able to export anything that might be paired with some other product the company makes abroad in order to attract buyers,

17) and it also means he’ll have the U.S. ignoring many of the international trading rules of which we have been the principal sponsor since the end of WWII, rules that have led to an incredible growth in widely shared wealth all over the planet,

18) which means that, if he follows through, he’ll blow up the post-WWII global economic system,

19) which in the very short run may help the uncompetitive American labor unions but in the not-so-long run would devastate every economy on earth,

20) but it would also mean he would be in a position to decide where big companies could invest, and when, just as he’ll be in control of all new and small businesses, too.

I believe that’s what I heard the president advocate tonight. Am I wrong?

All the candidates were very strong, the best debating ensemble ever in a presidential campaign. But Gingrich turned the race around with the passion, imagination, cogency and inspiration of his Monday performance. He demonstrated the impact of great rhetoric. And he did it in a field that, at least in debate, is extraordinary.

I take an interest in presidential speech giving. I wrote speeches in the White House for nearly two-thirds of the Reagan presidency, the first half of that time for the Vice President, second half for the President.

Presidential rhetoric is an instrument of presidential power and an aspect of presidential duty. Particularly when putting the prestige of the nation on the line, any president –every president — must convey clarity about the mission, confidence in his decision, faith in the nation’s purpose and its leadership in the world, prudence in pursuing national interest, perspective about the historical framework of the action, and determination about seeing things through.

These are not just matters of political posturing and the personal interests of the man in the office himself. These are matters of leadership that only the man in the Oval Office can provide. They are matters of his duty to the American people who elected him and the office he occupies. They are part of what every president swears to when he raises his hand on Inauguration Day and pledges to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

By these measures, the last few weeks have been among the worst for presidential rhetoric on record. In the last seven days alone, how many times have we heard cries from both Left and Right that there is no clarity about the goal of our mission in Libya? How much confidence has been conveyed in contradictory statements about the participation of the U.S., whether we are involved or not involved or sort of involved?

It began before

Libya. How much leadership was there when one member of the administration said Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was not a dictator and should not step down, only for others in the administration to do an about face a few days later? Yes, I know that Joseph Biden is the vice president, not the president, but he was speaking for the White House. Presidential rhetoric sometimes extends beyond the words of the top man himself.

And yes, I know that the situation in Egypt was changing rapidly and difficult to discern, as it has been everywhere in the Middle East during this period. But Milton’s reflection on his blindness can sometimes apply to presidential rhetoric, particularly when events and intelligence reports leave you close to blind: “They also serve who stand and wait.” A sense of nuance, of framing statement to say enough but not too much, of restraint is also part of the task and art of the job.

In talking about leadership, I am not criticizing the supposed lead role of the British and the French in Libya, or the overall generalship of a Canadian in the operation. If those countries are ready to pitch in, that is all for the good. We are carrying a lot of packs in the Middle East and globally. If other western democracies can assume more cost and lift a greater share of the weight, by all means let them.

But it is essential to keep in mind that resources are not the only reason for American global leadership. More than any other nation, we are inclined by temperament, history, national governance, and tradition to step back and look at the good of the whole. The term honest broker is used too much in national and global affairs, but it is nevertheless true that the U.S. is the world’s only reliably honest broker. A president who coveys confidence in the place of the U.S. in the world helps preserve that role – a role essential to long run world peace.

The current president has not, to put it mildly, conveyed great assurance about U.S. global leadership. And in the past few weeks, as that leadership has been needed, his statements have done nothing to recover from that lapse or reclaim that sense of assurance.

Nor has he in his presidency displayed much historical awareness. For example, going back more than a year, his remark in Normandy on the sixty-fifth anniversary of D-Day, left at least this listener with a sense that he and his staff barely understood what had happened six and a half decades before or how much a duty the legacy of those event placed on all Americans who followed.

So tonight’s talk is an opportunity to start setting the current president’s rhetorical house in order. In the past several months in particular, but from early in the term as well, that house has been a mess and getting messier.

It is time for a little spring cleaning.

Well, #1) the buddy system seating — Ds mixed with Rs — apparently kept the Ds from getting up a wave. They were too dispersed. So the applause was too. It often sounded as though only one or two would start, then look around, see no one with them, and stop in embarrassment. But besides staging, why?

#2) With the exception of medical liability reform, on specifics Mr. Obama seemed still to be using soft words to conceal unyielding positions, as in, let’s freeze the budget immediately after I spend another trillion on toys for prep school boys like clean energy and high speed rail and everything else I can think of. This bate and switch act is old.

How about Congressman Paul Ryan’s reply?

Ryan is a better man than his speech, which was wrong for the occasion. Compared to the epic poem that is the SOU itself, the reply is an op-ed: short, fast, to the point. So like an op-ed, the reply needs to focus in on one specific and build its point.

To my knowledge, only one reply has ever upstaged a presidential speech to a joint session of Congress, and that was Senator Robert Dole’s to Clinton on Hillarycare. And Dole did it with a graphic, a chart showing the bureaucracy the bill would build.

Here’s the upshot: Ryan tried too hard to tell us deep truths we already knew; the president did the opposite.

Disappointing night.