"That's not leadership - that's salesmanship!" - President Obama

The President's comment about Mitt Romney in the last debate.

The President is right. It's "salesmanship".

But if you cannot sell your own program and achievements, you do not deserve another term.

If this campaign wants to get back on the right track, they are going to have to spend less time trying to define Mitt Romney and Big Bird and more time defining their own record.

It's been four years since George W Bush left office and we have spent the last 4 years trying to save this country and get it back on track. As Bill Clinton said at the Convention, no President, not Barack Obama, not Mitt Romney, not even Bill Clinton could clean up the mess that was left in just one term. Perhaps that is where you want to start Barack?

We knew it was bad when George W Bush and Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, walked out in front of the cameras to tell the American people that if they did not get $700 billion dollars in a few days, the entire economic system could collapse. That would include the stock market and the big banks. It was bad news. It was not a simple recession.

By the time Barack Obama was sworn into office, we were losing 800,000 jobs per month! This was millions of jobs over just a few months time. This is what you have to remind people about, Mr President.

Many Americans had their savings in 401K's and in the stock market. The market was dropping like a rock. By the time this Administration was able to stabilize the markets, it had gone down to about 6500. People were losing their life savings! The stock market today is more than double that and people have regained most of their savings from the collapse of Wall Street. This is what you need to say, Mr President. Forget about Big Bird.

Not only are we not losing 800,000 jobs per month, we gained 114,000 jobs last month and we are back on the way to a recovery. Those numbers are not great but we were in a mess.

Do not be deceived by slick talking Republicans that want to double down on trickle-down and give more tax cuts to the wealthy and cut back on regulations that we have put in place so we do not go through another collapse like we had in 2008. Not only do they want to cut taxes by 20% for everyone, they want to increase defense spending by $2 trillion dollars! They don't have the money for Social Security or Medicare but they have the money to spend on defense contractors and taxcuts. Tell it like it is Mr President. The times are too serious to be playing games with these jobs-destroying Republicans.

This is the message the campaign must get on if they are going to win this election. It's time to get their heads out of their asses.