Obama’s all about the ground game

My high school football coach, Al Munoz, kept his game plan simple. Blessed with an offensive line bigger than most, he'd run the same smash-mouth running play over and over again until it stopped working. Then he'd run a new play until it stopped working.

No one called him an offensive genius. Maybe they should have, because coach won a lot of games with teams short on talent but long on ground-game skills.

Kind of like President Barack Obama, a guy short on presidential talent but long on campaign ground game.

For 3½ years, the president has run the same economic play over and over and over again. If he read it once from a teleprompter, he read it a million times: George W. Bush caused it, but he's fixing it - slowly but surely.

Until this month, when he committed an unforced error by claiming that he has not only got the economy on the mend, he has also finally got the private sector "doing just fine." At that moment, you could almost feel Obama fatigue set in across the land as people began to realize that the "Obama recovery" may end up being worse than the "Bush recession."

So what does Obama do? He immediately changes the play.

He announced last week that he would unilaterally bypass Congress and administratively implement a part of the so-called DREAM Act. It's outrageous and probably illegal. But, politically speaking, it was nothing short of a brilliant diversion.

I felt like George C. Scott in the movie "Patton." As Gen. Patton watched his adversary, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, maneuver in battle, Patton said: "You magnificent bastard. I read your book."

In one week, the president changed the narrative from his lousy economy to his compassionate immigration reform. And, more to the point, he had the loyal opposition coming off as if they were uncaring fools or, worse, closet racists.

Spokesmen for GOP presumptive standard-bearer Mitt Romney responded to the idea with the same effectiveness of fish flopping on the deck of a boat.

Look, the Romney campaign is built to win on the issue of the economy. Nothing wrong with that. But he can't seem so unprepared on other topics, particularly this one piecemeal proposal that resonates so deeply with the American Hispanic community.

On Thursday, Romney finally unveiled his own immigration reform plan. Among his ideas: welcoming more highly skilled and educated workers from around the world, letting international students stay and work here after completing degrees in high-demand disciplines, and refining the DREAM Act to put young illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship if they serve in the U.S. military. After all, who is against doing right by children and young adults brought here by their parents, with no say in the move?

But no matter how compassionately you handle them, as a country, what good is it if America becomes an economic Mexico? That's liberal cruelty at its ironic best.

You know this won't be the last diversionary tactic from the Obama campaign, and Romney must be ready for the next one. He can't be caught flat-footed again. I would suggest he study the methods of Newt Gingrich, a master at smartly articulating the measured conservative view on any topic, yet always able to turn it back to God, country and his wheelhouse.

Immigration reform, gasoline prices, renewable energy, terrorism, education, NATO, China - none of these topics changes the fact that Americans now suffer under an economy that has yet to recover. It should have been fixed by now. And without a strong economy, all other issues take on secondary meaning. So, until Obama can come up with a better line than "It's Bush's fault," any kind of diversion in national debate works for him.

Talk about Fast and Furious, the Muslim Brotherhood, Solyndra or ObamaCare. It's all good for Obama, because right now, the greater the focus on the economy, the more appealing the Romney alternative becomes.

Obama may be the worst president since Jimmy Carter. But, he's one magnificent campaigner. Damn it.

Sherman Frederick, former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and member of the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm.