Waaaay back in 1976, NBC’s Sat­ur­day Night (now known as Sat­ur­day Night Live) ran one of their spoof adver­tise­ments, for Shim­mer Non-​​Dairy Floor Wax. In it, a hus­band (Dan Aykroyd) and wife (Gilda Rad­ner) are argu­ing over whether Shim­mer is a floor wax or a dessert top­ping. Chevy Chase enters the kitchen as the spokesman to clar­ify that Shim­mer is both a floor wax and a dessert topping.

In sim­i­lar fash­ion, Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans are argu­ing over whether this year’s Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is a ref­er­en­dum on the Pres­i­dent, or a choice between two candidates.

I’ve got news for you: this elec­tion is a ref­er­en­dum on the Pres­i­dent and a choice between the two candidates.

Ref­er­en­dum

Cer­tainly any elec­tion with an incum­bent has an ele­ment of ref­er­en­dum to it. In essence, a ref­er­en­dum on an incum­bent is like fir­ing an employee. If your employee isn’t doing the job you want, you’re enti­tled to fire that employee. Elected offi­cials are no dif­fer­ent. In fact, this is the whole point of hav­ing reg­u­lar elections.

But let’s look at how it works in the world of employ­ment. If I have an employee who isn’t doing the job, I have lit­er­ally bil­lions of alter­nate choices. True, the vast major­ity get elim­i­nated right away, but in the end I will typ­i­cally inter­view dozens of poten­tial can­di­dates, after going through hun­dreds of résumés. And, if I have gone through all of them and none con­vince me that they are an improve­ment over the sta­tus quo, I can imme­di­ately go back and start over.

With a Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, our hands are tied quite a bit more. Real­is­ti­cally, we are rarely pre­sented with more than two choices, since third par­ties are all but excluded from the process. And so we are left with two peo­ple, and one chance every qua­dren­nium, to replace the incum­bent. And that means that we can’t have a ref­er­en­dum exclu­sive of also hav­ing a…

Choice

When pre­sented with two options, one which we cur­rently have but don’t like a lot, is it bet­ter to switch or not? That, of course, depends on what the other option is. I’m going to dip my toe here in God­win ter­ri­tory, but just to prove a point. Imag­ine for a moment that the Repub­li­can Party nom­i­nated Adolph Hitler as their can­di­date of choice. Would we truly be bet­ter off with him than with Barack Obama? (I’m sure that there are a few who would say yes, but very few.) We sim­ply can’t avoid con­sid­er­ing that the replace­ment may be worse than the sta­tus quo.

Is Mitt Rom­ney an improve­ment over Barack Obama? Cer­tainly to those who believe that the gov­ern­ment that does the best does the least. And to those who never found a tax that they like. And to those who con­sider Fox News to be fair and bal­anced. In other words, the Repub­li­can base.

But is he an improve­ment to peo­ple who aren’t already pre­dis­posed to hate Obama? The answer to that ques­tion is far less clear.

Shim­mer

For Repub­li­cans, it needs to be a ref­er­en­dum, because the choice doesn’t look appeal­ing to mod­er­ate, unde­cided vot­ers. Rom­ney comes across as stiff, stilted, and arti­fi­cial. In con­trast, Obama comes across as com­fort­able, easy­go­ing, and nat­ural. Rom­ney is light on pol­icy specifics and heavy on plat­i­tudes, while Obama has long been clear on his pol­icy specifics. That doesn’t make the Rom­ney choice look par­tic­u­larly good to moderates.

For Democ­rats, it needs to be a choice, because Obama’s record doesn’t look appeal­ing to mod­er­ate, unde­cided vot­ers. Obama promised a lot, but the most com­pelling promise he made was to end the ugly par­ti­san­ship in Wash­ing­ton. It was a nice promise, and one that made him sound like a sav­ior (much of the rea­son why Repub­li­cans derided his “celebrity” per­sona). But it was one on which he didn’t deliver. Per­haps nobody could have, but nobody else made that promise. Another key promise he made was to fix the econ­omy. And, yes, it’s bet­ter than it was three years ago. But it’s nowhere near as good as the pic­ture painted by his cam­paign rhetoric four years ago. Per­haps nobody could have brought about that level of recov­ery, but Obama is the one who made that promise. Those were the two most com­pelling promises, and nei­ther of them lived up to the rhetoric. That doesn’t make the Obama record look par­tic­u­larly good to moderates.

This is why both can­di­dates have focused more atten­tion on get­ting the base to the polls, and less on draw­ing the mod­er­ates. Those mod­er­ate vot­ers will be look­ing at the Novem­ber elec­tion as Shim­mer Floor Wax. They will con­sider both the ref­er­en­dum and the choice ele­ments. Tastes ter­rific, and just look at that shine! It’s unlikely that either will be more com­pelling than the other to them in the end, and since nei­ther one pulls a voter toward a can­di­date, the com­bined force is likely to do lit­tle more than make them stay at home.

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