Deal With It!

It's forge or flee...

On the stump, high on post-debate testosterone, President Obama teased the crowd: "You've heard of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Square Deal.... Well, Mitt Romney wants to give you..." Here it comes, I thought. Would it be the "Bum Deal"? "Sucker's Deal"? "Let's Make a Deal"? None of these, as it turns out. "Well Mitt Romney wants to give you the Sketchy Deal." Huh? Where's the allusive power in "sketchy deal"? Then it hit me, he's rhyming, at a distance, and some what clunkily, with the famous Romney "Etch-a-Sketch" moment. Mario Cuomo once said, "We campaign in poetry; we govern in prose." If this is the poetry, I'm afraid what the prose will sound like.