Romney's agenda-free speech gamble

This isn’t because Mr. Romney lacks an agenda. His platform is brimming with ideas, most of them good and many excellent. He simply didn’t talk about them. No doubt this was a strategic political calculation—perhaps a judgment, based on polling, that Mr. Romney’s main challenge is to reassure undecided voters that he’s not heartless, scary or extreme. …

Perhaps this is how it will all turn out, but someone should point out that this policy-free zone is risky in its own way. By failing to explain his own agenda, Mr. Romney has left an opening for Democrats and Mr. Obama to define it instead. We wouldn’t be surprised to see them pivot away from personal attacks on Mr. Romney and Bain next week and devote all of their time to assailing his policies. …

These Democratic attacks will be caricatures or worse. But they will have a blank canvass on which to paint because Mr. Romney did so little to explain what he would do and how it would help improve the economy. His only references to taxes were that he won’t raise them on the middle class and he’ll cut them for small business.