Election 2012: Bypassing Congress – the new Obama approach

But Democratic campaign veteran Doug Thornell sees more gains than risks in Obama’s immigration decision.

“The Republican base is pretty inspired to beat Obama already,” Thornell said. For persuadable voters, he said, “this is in keeping with a president who does big and bold things.” Romney, he said, is “pretty vanilla.”

If the economy were humming, Obama might not need to do big and bold things. But a national unemployment rate of 8.2 percent forces him to take some chances.

That’s what he did Friday and briefly stole attention from the start of Romney’s five-day bus tour, whose theme is clear: jobs, jobs, jobs.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

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