But only if a Republican candidate starts laying out a sensible plan for the American economy

"All the same, there are other current and former governors who this newspaper wishes were in the race—notably Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels and Rick Perry".

Either you have lost your mind or are using some really messed up drugs. I do not know to much about Chris Christie other than he is really fat. Mitch Daniels does not ring a bell.

However in regards to:

JEB BUSH; The last thing this country needs is another Bush in the White House. The first one was indifferent to his position and only wanted it to complete the resume and enrich his wealthy friends. I need not say much about his dimwitted son who mismanaged our country for eight years and put us in this situation that we are in now. I do not think anyone can repair the damage that George W Bush did to our country, When a future Edward Gibbon writes about the Decline and Fall of The United States, a great amount of the blame will go on this (not funny at all) joke of a President we had with W. Bush.

RICK PERRY: Oh you have really got to be kidding me. As a resident of Texas, I can tell you this this guy is just a plain nasty moron. He has done so much damage to this state, that it will take a generation or two to repair. All he does is take state money and enrich his wealthy friends. He has cut education, services to the poor, enviromental protection. He has ensured that we are a low wage under educated state. We still rank at the bottom of everything. He would be another GW Bush, possibly even worse. He is very delusional. He now claims to be GOD's chosen candidate and plans to hold a conservative christian rally at reliant stadium in Houston, to proclaim, I do not know what. He would be very dangerous for this country, with his delusions and stupidty.

Please ECONOMIST, do not bring these names up again, and get some psychiatric help.

(Obama)"is still trying to kid Americans that their fiscal future can be shored up merely by taxing the rich more."

That's false. Try harder Economist.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but as far as I know you can't legitimately criticize Obama for failing to reign in the deficit while also criticizing him for not magically producing jobs. How does the government produce jobs? Spending. How do you reduce the deficit? Not spending. People seem to care more about jobs overall, so the president delivered.

Now as the article speculated, would a Republican have produced more jobs than Obama did? Well, would Richard Nixon have handled the Cuban Missile Crisis better than John F. Kennedy? At some point you're really going into mindless second-guessing.

"A serious Republican candidate must come up with answers to the two big problems facing America’s economy"
Hah, now that is rather amusing. I can't remember the last time a "serious republican" had a chance at winning the nomination (Barry Goldwater maybe?). You make it sound as if the repubicans are even going to try to make the ends meet - and to convince me of that you would have to first point to somebody who refused to sign the latest version of the "contract with America", citing the fact that you can't balance the budget by cutting taxes. In fact, there is simply no way you CAN balance the budget without either: 1. Raising taxes, 2. Cutting defence spending, 3. Cutting entitlement spending - while they have shown a willingness to do some of 3, it has already backfired and lost them a solidly republican seat in the house, and the cuts mentioned wern't even enough to balance the budget.
They are not a serious party, stop expecting a serious candidate or serious ideas. They will continue to pander to the uneducated who can't see the fundamental logical fallacy of their suggestions while drawing money from those they really serve.

I live in MN and I seriously doubt that Pawlenty could even carry his own state. Granted, it's not only his fault, but we have a $6 billion deficit in this state. If he is unable to work with Dems in MN to manage state finances I don't see how he will do it at the federal level.

Whatever Obama's merits and demerits, I can't begin to imagine a Republican, certainly not a doctrinaire no-tax-increase one, coping with the mess he inherited half as effectively as he has.

Since one of the latter doesn't even seem to be on the horizon, Intrade's betting form (09 June) with 60.9% odds predicting Obama's re-election probably reflects much better than more reasoned analyses which way the country will go next elections.

More to the point, Obama generally doesn't duck issues (witness his stance with Israel or even his former pastor)and has the brains and balance to grasp what has to be done, what's doable and how to rally support for doing so. Let's sart extolling a couple of his virtues instead of trying to rewrite a Republican playbook that's economically illiteratre to say nothing of beingphony..

‎"A serious Republican candidate must come up with answers to the two big problems facing ‎America’s economy: how to get more people back to work, and how to fix the deficit."‎

Yet no one is asking for answers from the Democratic candidate. Instead of announcing new ‎economic policy proposals (President Obama deep-sixed the bipartisan debt commission's ‎recommendations, and Austan Goolsbee's departure might be a signal that the White House ‎economic team has run out of ideas), President Obama is taking an "economic stimulus/auto ‎bailout" victory tour. Because the general election is 17 months away, The People ask "now ‎what, Mr. President?"‎

In 2008, Barack Obama wanted to change the country; in 2012, he might want to change the ‎subject.‎

As some wag commented, "You voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you weren't a racist, you'll vote for his opponent in 2012 to prove you aren't an idiot."

You have laid out a reasonable set of things that a good Republican candidate should push for.

But what leads you to think, even for an instant, that a Republican candidate who pushed for those policies would have a prayer of getting the nomination? Perhaps the next 6 months will see Republican primary voters come to their senses. But that would definitely not be the way to bet.

Does Obama have weaknesses as President? Yes. (And that's independent of the state of the economy, which a President has far less control over than politicians would like us to believe -- at least when they are out of office.) But judging from the positions that the would-be Republican candidates are feeling impelled to take, he is going to seem a tower of strengh by comparison.

Welcome to the Republican clown show. Certain to be plenty of double speak while quietly fostering a crony-capitalist network of the military industrial complex, the corporate, big oil, and wealthy special interest over the good of the country and it's people.

President Obama has been a disappointment to me, because he has failed to make the case for more stimulus now until the lost jobs are recovered, followed by real deficit reduction starting in about FY 2014. This is what President Reagan did when we set post WW II records for spending as a % of GDP in FY's 1981, higher in 1982 and even higher in 1983. We didn't stop setting new spending records until all of the 2.7 million lost private sector jobs had been recovered. Discretionary spending was higher in 1981-1983 than it has been in 2009-2011.

But part of that case is also outlining the steps to balance the budget once the economy has recovered. Under President Reagan, we passed laws to raise the retirement age and increase Social Security Security taxes BEFORE the economy had recovered. We just didn't implement these deficit reduction measures until AFTER the lost jobs were recovered.

We lost 8.8 million private sector jobs from Feb '08 to Feb '10. Although we have recovered over two million of those jobs in the last 15 months, we are still short 7 million jobs when you take into account the decline in government jobs at the state and local level--more when you consider the expanding working age population. That is why we need to continue fiscal and monetary stimulus, something for which President Obama has failed to make the case. More aid to states to help them maintain needed employees, as well as some more road projects to help the construction trades who will be in a recession for many years to come. Continue the payroll tax reductions. Maintain extended unemployment benefits in some form, but phase it out over the second year to provide increased incentives for people to accept some form of employment.

President Obama should have endorsed the recommendations of his budget commission, making sure that the implementation of those deficit reduction measures waited until after the lost jobs are recovered. And he should be making a stronger case for continued stimulus now.

I think the Economist should note that the Democrats have failed to pass a budget in the last two years. If the Republicans run on simply having a budget, never mind proposing one, that would be an enhancement from where we are now.

Too bad the elections are always decided on marginal issues: Gay rights, illegal aliens, abortion, death penalties and so on. While yes those issues are by no means unimportant but I find it hard to believe that they are more important the very level of wealth that allowed us the luxury of indulging in such endeavors instead of worrying about our next meal. We weren't far off from a depression, all it would potentially take is a delayed/worse bailout or some of the austerity measures advocated to be passed now . And yes while some leaders do address the the important issues of health-care, prison-systems, and economic policy they do not take effective initiatives but instead defer to populist policies unfit for application in reality.

If Americans do not take the imitative to educate themselves about the factors that affect their livelihood and freedom and act upon them then they don't deserve their quality of life and if things go south they'd have no one to blame but themselves.

Now I personally have no love for the USA, no more than I would for any other circus. But alas, 70% of the jobs here are dependent on trade with them so I wish them well because I wish myself well.

I wish the Middle East access to unbiased education/media and I wish the Americans to actually use their access to unbiased education/media.

I wish the Chinese the political and economic determination and I wish the Americans to actually exercise and defend their political and economic freedoms.

I wish this so I won't go poor from a poor USA and so I could stop being so angry.

The liberals have it easy: just promise feel good stuff. Health care for everybody. Better food at schools. More spending at schools to get better results. More good paying jobs (s/h for union jobs and all those glorious benefits). Path to citizenship. Renewable energy for everyone. What's a conservative going to do? Tell the truth? That the last guy won the election by promising everyone the moon (hope) by taxing the rich (change you can count on) but was really just blowing smoke up (fill in the blank here).

The conservatives could have a field day with Barry and Eric's excellent adventure with justice department without scaring seniors into believing they're going to lose everything and starve to death.

The conservatives are going to have to demonize what the liberals are doing to win this battle AND have a plan for a better day in America. Margaret Thatcher did it in 1979. But before a conservative candidate in America undertakes the Iron Lady's battle plan, they have to be certain that Americans have finally given up on the 'hope-y change-y managing by the seat of ones pants' thing.

It doesn't feel like Americans have hit the same bottom the UK felt when they voted Thatcher into office. As far as I can tell, there have not been substantial power outages that resulted in clerks taking one customer in at a time with a flashlight to buy groceries to feed their family while the neighborhood stood in line outside, around the block.

So if a conservative wants to get elected and he's unsure if the country is really in the mood to cut government spending, he better not follow the advice found in this column.

So what I take from this article is that since a left-leaning centrist (Obama) has only half-succeeded and half-delivered on his 2008 promises, then a right-leaning centrist (insert candidate here) is needed to complete the picture by half-succeeding and half delivering on their 2012 campaign promises.

In my experience bipartisanship is fantastic idealistically, but that doesn't necessairly translate to efficiency in government.

Americans may just be fine with a socialistic/communistic President that runs on "hope" and "change". They were stupid enough last time to fall for this left winger. They may not yet have learned the lessons. Certainly The Economist hasn't. They endorsed the man last time and still do not recognize the man for the hoax he is.

Certainly, government cannot "create" meaningful, economically productive jobs. Only the private sector can do that. And how has Obama encouraged the private sector? His union and banker bailouts? Even Goldman got over $15 billions from AIG courtesy of a former Goldman guy who structured it)! From over riding normal legal rights to give the unions major ownership of GM and Chrysler while depriving secured creditors of any rights to assets? By talking about taxing CO2 and having it treated as a poisonous substance? By silly costly ineffective SEC regulations? By silly costly health care legislation? BY always talking about the rich paying their fair share when the top 20% already pay over 80% of taxes?

No wonder private enterprise is not expanding or has any confidence in the future.

The Economist's desire to see a Republican candidate adopt a budget plan that includes a mixture of cuts and taxes is reasonable. And it is laudable that the magazine would push for it.

I doubt, however, that it will happen. It would birth an inevitable confrontation with Ryan - Norquist - the Tea Party, as well as all those on the right who have pledged full support to these groups on this issue. This makes it substantially certain that the Economist's plea will fail; no current or potential Republican nominee is strong enough politically to comply.

"The overall tax take—at its lowest, as a share of GDP, in decades—must eventually rise.

An honest Republican candidate would acknowledge this"

Assuming that this Republican candidate desired a deficit reduction plan biased towards spending cuts, wouldn't a wiser negotiating strategy be to ask for spending cuts, and then "compromise" by accepting tax increases and fewer cuts?

"If ever there was a time for pragmatic conservative realism....Well, I guess a 1 for 3 average will get you into the baseball hall of fame. Which is no White House, but still there are worse places.

This is a terrible article.... The republicans have ruined america. The economy is their fault. The wars are their fault. They consistently lie to the citizenry. The standard of living is in decline. The country is becoming more illiterate. It is all the fault of the Republicans - stupid people like George W. Bush, thieves like Dick Chenney, incompetents like Rumsfeld. Now you want the return of these morons? The people that believe plumbers know about curriculum development and complex foreign policy issues - this is who should run America? The Economist is full of crap. Intelligencia?? Apologist for its advertisors - And you call yourselves journalists? You disgust me.