Editorial: Obama agenda seeks mostly not to offend

• A Plan for Jobs & Middle Class Security being sent to more than 3 million voters.
• It's an acknowledgment that the president needs to go beyond attacking Romney.
• Romney also has proposals that are both vague and impractical.

Incumbent presidents seeking re-election rarely offer brand new agendas. And for months, President Obama resisted putting out a detailed plan for a possible second term. Better, his campaign figured, to focus on tearing down Mitt Romney and denying the Republican challenger avenues of attack.

Finally, amid much chiding and after this week's third debate, Obama released his agenda — in the form of a glossy brochure called A Plan for Jobs & Middle Class Security that is being sent to more than 3 million voters.

The document is slick, well-presented — and largely besides the point. Obama has always had an agenda, one that Democrats cheer and Republicans fear. It starts with trying to boost the economy while striking a deal to rein in future deficits, in part by raising taxes on the wealthy. It involves preserving his signature accomplishment, ObamaCare, through its full launch in 2014. And it also includes bringing troops home from Afghanistan, preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, enacting immigration reform, and trying to rekindle interest in combating climate change.

So for voters, Obama's printed plan — packed with proposals for hiring new teachers, investing in renewable energy and tax cuts for business — is best regarded as a campaign advertisement. It ducks some of the bigger, more contentious issues that the president would rather not highlight in the heat of a close campaign.

As for his thinking on those larger issues, an off-the record interview Obama gave to TheDes Moines Register, which he later decided to make public, is more revealing than the formal plan released on Tuesday.

In the interview, he said he was committed to seeking a "grand bargain" on the budget that would mix $2.50 of spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes. But Obama's failure to fully embrace the recommendation of his own deficit commission, and his continuing fondness for new "investments," make it questionable whether he'd be more successful in a second term at reining in the national debt.

Obama also reiterated his commitment to comprehensive immigration reform. That has more potential because, as the president told The Register, if Romney loses, Republicans might be eager to mend fences with Latino voters before the next election.

But don't expect to hear much more before Nov. 6 about the need to curb benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which would rile up Obama's liberal base, or hot-button issues such as immigration and global warming, which could scare off independents.

Hence the glossy plan. It's an acknowledgment that the president needs to go beyond attacking Romney. But as a proposal it is designed mostly not to offend.

To be sure, Obama is not the only one who has published an agenda lacking in specificity. Romney has a stack of proposals — notably his plan to cut tax rates by 20%, offset by unspecified reductions in deductions and credits — that are both vague and impractical.

As for Obama, the question is less whether he has fresh policy proposals to put in a slick brochure than it is whether he has any new ideas for dealing with a Congress not likely to be more friendly than the one that thwarted his agenda the past two years.