Running Out the Clock

Romney and running out the clock… Dems begin to press the panic button… Greenberg’s and Carville’s advice… Dems win AZ-8 special election… After primaries in ME, NV, ND, and VA, Senate races finally take shape… Eric Holder, political punching bag… Jamie Dimon testifies on Capitol Hill… And Romney addresses Business Roundtable meeting at 11:45 am ET.

By NBC's Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Brooke Brower, and Natalie Cucchiara

*** Running out the clock: With less than five months until Election Day, Mitt Romney and his team are running a campaign that would make Dean Smith (and his Four Corners offense) or Jim Tressel (and his grind-it-out gameplan) proud. If you're ahead -- or within striking distance -- against a talented opponent, you start running out the clock. Take, for instance, Romney's reply yesterday to a reporter’s ropeline question about whether he thought Democrats were taking his recent remark firefighter and police jobs out of context. "I'm not going to talk about that," he said. (Romney also has ducked reporters’ ropeline questions on Syria, JP Morgan, and even Wisconsin.) Or consider all the interviews he does with FOX (especially its cherry-picked programs vs. its newsier anchors) compared with other news outlets. Or think about the fact that the Romney camp isn't planning (for now) on delivering any new policy speeches. The message Team Romney is essentially giving: “We're going to talk about what we want to talk about -- and to whom we want -- and not talk about the rest.”

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*** But does a president get to control what he talks about? It’s impressive message discipline. And as Smith and Tressel proved, you can win tons of games -- and the ultimate prize every once in a while (especially if your opponent makes mistakes) -- by running out the clock. But here’s something about sitting in the White House: A president often doesn’t get to pick and choose the issues he has to deal with. Think of many of the events in the past five years: the financial industry’s collapse, the European debt crisis, the BP oil spill, the Arab Spring, the violence in Libya and Syria, and the list goes on. While a president gets to pick his domestic priorities (tax cuts, education, and Social Security for George W. Bush; health care and financial reform for Barack Obama), so much of the job is reacting to unplanned events. Ironically, the very issue Romney wants to talk about -- the state of the U.S. economy -- is something that presidents have little control over, especially compared with foreign policy (which they have A LOT of control over). And yet how long can Romney go without going into more detail about how he would handle the various unplanned issues that he would have to deal with if he wins. Take Syria. We know he doesn’t like how the president has handled this situation but how would a President Romney deal with Putin and Assad? He’s provided no clues and his campaign appears to be making sure there’s little opportunity (for now) to find out.

NBC's Mark Murray discusses whether President Barack Obama's message on the economy is working.

*** Dems press the panic button: While Team Romney appears to be running out the clock and displaying an impressive ability at message discipline, the Obama White House and campaign are dealing with Democratic Party that’s beginning to panic after a rough last two weeks. “Is it time for Democrats to panic?” the Washington Post’s Tumulty asks. “That’s what a growing number of party loyalists are wondering, amid a rough couple of weeks in which President Obama and his political operation have been buffeted by bad economic news, their own gaffes and signs that the presumed Republican nominee is gaining strength.” One criticism from the Democrats cited in the piece is how insular Team Obama is, a criticism that has dogged the Obama political team beginning Feb. 10, 2007 (the day Obama announced). This story illustrates two of the Democratic Party’s and Obama White House’s worst traits -- pressing the panic button (especially when nothing fundamental about the race has changed in the past two weeks) and ignoring outside voices (which is a criticism we continually hear about the Obama team). Former Bush strategist Mark McKinnon puts it well in the piece: “[The Obama campaign folks] are not any more or less smart than they were four years ago. The dynamics are just different. This time, the wind is in their face instead of at their back.”

We Will Settle for the Next four years

Editor's note: Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" (Times Books) and of the new book "Governing America" (Princeton University Press).

Princeton, New Jersey (CNN) -- This presidential election tells us something unexpected about American politics. For all the talk about polarization and discord in Washington, it appears that both parties will have pragmatic problem-solvers at the top of their tickets.

Democrats have accepted four more years with a pragmatist. President Barack Obama has consistently been willing to anger members of his own party by reaching out to Republicans and often embracing their issues, such as deficit reduction. Rather than a fighting for an ideological agenda, he has instead focused on one problem at a time and accepted the constraints that he faces.

Republicans are settling on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has spent much of his career avoiding ideological purity. By all accounts, one of his virtues as a leader has been his eagerness to delve into difficult problems and his willingness to experiment when trying to find solutions.

Julian Zelizer

As everyone knows, he has shifted his positions on matters such as stem cell research and as governor he was willing to put forward an ambitious health care plan that expanded government by using a conservative idea, the individual mandate.

Some pundits will read the decision to support these candidates as continued evidence of party loyalty. In the case of Obama, there were no Democrats who decided that they would challenge him in the primary because they wanted to avoid the kind of turmoil that occurred when Sen. Ted Kennedy ran against President Jimmy Carter from the left in 1980.

In the case of Romney, the Republican hatred of Obama is so great that the party is willing to compromise on a candidate whose politics are hard to pin down but who stands a better chance of winning in November.

Yet another way to read these decisions is that, at some level, voters are genuinely angry about the polarized status quo in Washington. They are willing to support pragmatic problem-solvers because, at some level, they find it appealing to elect politicians who could overcome the deeply dysfunctional government we have.

There is some evidence to support this claim. In "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America," Morris Fiorina argued that polarization was much stronger among political elites that it was in the broader electorate. His examination of poll data revealed that on many controversial issues such as abortion or gay rights, most Americans tended to be in the middle of the political landscape.

Second, the approval ratings of Congress also suggest that citizens are unhappy with polarization. Approval ratings for Congress are at about 12.5%, a historic low. When such a large number of Americans indicate that they don't approve of the institution, they are registering their complaints about the gridlock in Congress. Even though most Americans continue to vote for incumbents in their districts, they don't like the institution as a whole.

Finally, for all the talk about polarization, when it comes to electing presidents, voters have tended to go for the people who promise to reach out across the aisle. In 2008, Obama ran as the candidate who appealed to both sides of the political spectrum and who contrasted himself with the fierce partisanship of the Republican side.

In 2000, George W. Bush ran as the compassionate conservative who was willing to use government on behalf of some causes, and in 2004 he avoided some of the more divisive issues by emphasizing national security as his unifying issue.

In 1992, voters went for Bill Clinton, a proud pragmatist who wanted to move beyond the orthodoxies of the 1960s. Clinton was part of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group that sought to move his party toward the center. Clinton doubled down on this theme in 1996 as he leaned to the right following the Republican takeover of Congress, and he defeated Sen. Robert Dole by landslide.

The emerging contest between Romney and Obama thus provides more evidence that there is still room to move beyond Washington's bitter partisan stalemates.

When politicians yell and fight, they capture the attention of the television cameras but the public is not always with them. As this upcoming contest reveals, there is still a yearning in the electorate for a different kind of politics in Washington.

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