The President's silence about his plans isn't an accident. Articulating no specific agenda in public offers him the advantage of having to defend nothing, even as he attacks Romney-Ryan. What's more, he has calculated (correctly, in my view) that taking the rap for having "no plan" is better than submitting his real agenda (focus on global warming, with job-killing regs; higher taxes; more spending; turbocharged Dodd-Frank regs and more) to the scrutiny of the American people.
If Obama is able to crawl over the electoral finish line, he will claim a mandate -- and the press will back him on that claim, even in the absence of any real evidence for it. Perhaps GOP superpacs ought to run some footage of Obama promising Russian president Medvedev more "flexibility" after the election -- and ask voters what that means for us, both at home and abroad.