President Obama and Paul Ryan on the campaign trail tonight, the President in Davenport, Iowa, and the congressman in Oxford, Ohio, and the tone getting ugly over the last couple of days on both sides.  

 

But we're focusing tonight on substance, namely the Romney campaign's ongoing difficulty explaining its own plan for dealing with the budget mess. Listen to Senior Romney Adviser Ed Gillespie on the Situation Room.

 

How many years would it take for the Romney budget to result in a balanced budget?  

 

Wolf, I'm not sure of that myself actually. I will get that to you, though, and, Wolf, I'm sure it's on our website. I should know it. I'm embarrassed on your here that I don't have that number at the top of my head. I didn't know we're going to talk about that today. I apologize for it.  

 

All right. We'll get the number and we'll tell our viewers.  

 

Prepared questions, I didn't know you were going to ask.  

 

So that was just a few hours ago on the Situation Room.

 

What makes it all the more interesting is that last night, in his first solo interview, Mitt Romney's new running mate was no less stumped.  Listen.  

 

The budget plan that you are now supporting would get to balance when?  

 

Well, they're different, the budget plan that Mitt Romney is supporting gets us down to 20% of GDP government spending by 2016. That means get the size of government back to where it historically has been. What President Obama has done is he has brought the size of government to as high as it hasn't been since World War II. We want to reduce the size of government so we can have more economic freedom.  

 

I get that, but what about balance?  

 

Well, I don't know exactly when it balances.  

 

Well, there are no specifics on the Romney Web site as Mr. Gillespie suggested or in the Romney budget plan about when that balanced budget, budget, rather, will be balanced. Now back in June Mr. Romney said he would try to balance the budget within eight to 10 years. Back in March, though, he admitted that the budget lacked enough specifics to say for sure just when or if it would be balanced. Listen.  

 

Well, I haven't laid out all the details of how we're going to deal with each one of the deductions and exemptions. So I think it's kind of interesting for the groups to try and score it because frankly it can't be scored because those kinds of details are going to have to be worked out with Congress.  

 

Just a few days ago his top adviser said that no new specifics would be forthcoming whether that's good enough for voters really to decide and not for us to decide. But it does raise the question over whether or not the Romney campaign has a messaging problem.  

 

Joining us this evening, Ari Fleischer, the former Bush White House spokesman and unpaid occasional communication adviser to the Romney campaign.  Also Robert Reich, he's the former labor secretary in the Clinton administration and the author of a new e-book which is called "Beyond Outrage:  What's Gone Wrong with our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix It."