With special thanks for his sacrifice and service as a public official, I respectfully vote against President Barack Obama.
The last decade of the twentieth century had very little in common with the nine that came before it. In the previous ninety years the human race had been ravaged by the Great Depression, two world wars, the rise of communism and the threat of nuclear holocaust. Very few could have predicted that this tumultuous 100 years would come to a close as quietly as it did in 1999. Countries had become connected through an economic globalization that intertwined their interests and mutual prosperity. America thrived in its position as the lone global superpower; a dominant culture that had emerged from this century of war and hardship in better shape than any other. The last country to challenge this superiority, the former Soviet Union, had collapsed a decade prior. America as we all saw it was primed to stand atop the mountain for generations to come.
But like so many good things in life, this peace and prosperity were too short-lived. Despite the good feelings in America, the 2000 Presidential election was the closest in four decades. George W. Bush, a two term Texas governor and son of a former President, challenged the incumbent Vice-President Al Gore for the Presidency. Though President Clinton left office with high approval numbers, the public did not warm up to his heir apparent, the stiff Democratic nominee from Tennessee. Mr. Bush was able to use this indecisiveness in his appeal for a new “compassionate conservatism.” Mr. Bush barely defeated Vice-President Gore, who won the popular vote, with a 271-264 victory in the Electoral College. A recount was demanded in the state of Florida, which resulted in a Supreme Court decision depriving America of a President-elect until December. The recount in Florida was soon declared over by a 5-4 decision along partisan lines, and Governor Bush became the new president.
But the election took a total on the American psyche. For the first time since 1888, a president was elected without the majority of popular votes cast. As the media conducted its study of the election, the country was soon divided into the colloquial Red States and Blue States. Glib republicans declared victory and vengeful democrats sought to take their frustration out on the man they did not consider their true President. Partisan battles would rage for the first nine months of Mr. Bush’s first term, only to come to a halt on the horrible day now infamously known as 9/11. In the worst attack on United States’ soil since Pearl Harbor, over three thousand Americans were killed by Islamist extremists armed with box cutters and commercial airliners. A decade of war would ensue, claiming another 4,000 American lives, and an even deeper loss of trust in government that would plague the American people throughout President Bush’s beleaguered two terms in office.
By 2008, the feeling of unrest in the country was palpable. Citizens remained divided in the electorate following another close election in favor of President Bush in 2004. Wars continued in the Middle East, the Federal government underperformed in a hurricane-torn New Orleans, a recession had settled in the economy as of late 2007, and a devastating financial collapse lurked in the tall grass to devour American families’ net worth to the tune of 40%. In the midst of this turmoil emerged a slender Senator from Illinois, the first African-American nominee for president from a major political party, Barack Hussein Obama.
Mr. Obama’s story and his untraditional background (exemplified by his foreign sounding name) injected new life into American politics. The young man from Illinois’ message of hope and change served as initiative to restore the American dream for those who had become disenchanted with the politics of their country. His cool demeanor, sense of optimism and cross-generational ties seemed overpowering when juxtaposed with the aging Clinton Machine in the democratic primaries. He defeated the favored Senator Hilary Clinton for the nomination in stunning fashion. This juxtaposition of youth and energy against tired beltway veterans was reinforced in the national election against Mr. Obama’s seventy-two year old Republican adversary, Arizona Senator John McCain
The white haired, Vietnam War POW from Arizona was tasked with fighting the uphill battle of defending President Bush’s stewardship of the country, while simultaneously trying to advocate his own vision for America’s future. Though Senator Obama struggled to break away from Mr. McCain in the polls throughout the summer, his lead became insurmountable upon the financial collapse of 2008- a final, but not necessarily fair, indictment of the Republican establishment. Their decade of power had now come to a close, book marked by runaway spending, insider Washington politics and a finally a stale message for the voting public in the face of mounting adversity. It was now a time for Hope and Change, and Mr. Obama would ride that sentiment like a tidal wave sweeping across America, and into the White House.
President Obama entered Washington with far more good will than his predecessor eight years before. With a Gallup approval rating of 68% after his inauguration, America was ready to put its faith in the hands of the first African-American president, and his message of change. Alas, all that glitters is not gold, nor are promises for change on the campaign stump nothing more than empty rhetoric designed by ambition.
His first initiative as President was to tackle the failing American economy with a stimulus bill. While many Republicans, particularly conservatives, reject this method of government intervention, they realized elections have consequences. The decision for such a bill was the President’s and that of the newly minted Democratic supermajority in the legislature. But much like the previous Republican House, the President and his democratic cronies saw to spending money on pet projects fit with their ideological agenda. This was done at the expense of targeted expenditures that could help, in theory, spur the economy. Republican suggestions of a smaller bill, or at least a targeted middle class tax cut were quickly dismissed by the President.
The President’s central failure when drafting this bill was the choice to delegate responsibility of the bill’s particulars to the Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, stalwart beltway partisans. These were not the actions of a man looking to change the tone of Washington, or even that of his own party. No less than a month in office, the Hope and Change in which the President seemed so determined to make real quickly descended into the same old political game of one-upsmanship between parties we had witnessed for decades prior.
In the end, a bill of over 800 billion dollars was drafted, approved, and signed by the President with guarantees to bring down unemployment and save the American economy. In his last week before the 2012 election, unemployment is higher than the day President Obama entered office.
Moving forward, instead of expanding his efforts to combat the job crisis and help spur growth in the economy, Mr. Obama and his democratic supermajority concentrated their intensity on a universal healthcare bill: The Patient Affordable Healthcare Act, also known as “Obamacare.” Another Democratic dream bill, the President chose to tackle an issue that was not pertinent to the prosperity of the country like the issue of the workforce crisis. In fact, the length, complexity and vagueness of the bill caused problems in the private sector, leaving businesses big and small reluctant to hire more employees or expand their practice as they did not yet know the ramifications of the omnibus bill- which read at over 2,000 pages in length. This process took up the central efforts of the federal government for over a year, close to the halfway point of the President’s first term. Mr. Obama’s window to enact real change in government and the country was quickly closed. The Democratic majority had rammed through a healthcare bill that vested power in the hands of the federal government over seventeen percent of the American economy. This vast expansion of government control was passed by the slimmest of margins through partisan bias and backroom dealing. The public’s good will that the president carried with him to the capital on Inauguration Day had now quickly manifested itself into frustration.
From there the house of cards that was the Obama Myth crumbled. His progressive agenda was quickly repudiated by the American public in a midterm election landslide. Republicans gained 63 seats and a sizable majority in the House and picked up four seats in the Democratic controlled Senate. President Obama and his surrogates blamed this landslide on the electorate’s mood swing, born out of their angst toward incumbent public officials, not the President and his agenda. While trying to deflect the blame for its party’s historic losses, the administration missed the big point. Not only had President Obama failed to change Washington, which was undeniable based on their false spin blaming incumbent members of his party, but the American people were clearly unconvinced that the President’s two biggest legislative achievements would actually help their situation, or the country’s.
Today we see little difference in America from what we saw in 2010. The Republican congress has done its utmost to halt President Obama’s progressive agenda, but the President has turned a deaf ear to American people’s outcry in the midterm election. The President, with little accomplished domestically in the last two years, is now running a campaign based on too few ideas for the future, and too many stale ideas from progressivism’s checkered American past.
President Obama’s lack of a plan for the future has been substituted for an all out attack on Governor Romney. Mr. Obama’s disdain for the governor that was far from subtle in his three debate performances embody the petulant trajectory his re-election campaign has taken. From blaming a woman’s death on the governor to an assault on Big Bird, a false war on women and now “Romnesia”, we have seen an incumbent president’s campaign for re-election take the low road in every inflection point of the debate. Sadly, the President and his party do not realize that such political parlor tricks do little to help the 23 million Americans out of work; the record high 46 million Americans on food stamps; our crumbling and soon to be debt consuming entitlement state; the nation’s 16 trillion dollar debt; record trillion dollar deficits in each of the President’s four fiscal terms; and our armed forces stationed around the world whose security only grows weaker as our domestic situation continues to deteriorate.
But, as then Senator Obama said in his 2008 acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for President, “If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things.”
There are only two choices that can be made in a presidential election in which the incumbent runs for another term: 1) to affirm the county’s choice made four years prior by continuing the county’s current trajectory or, 2) to repudiate the choice made four years ago and move the country in a different, and hopefully better direction. I respectfully choose the latter. President Obama’s dedication to the progressive ideology has only weakened our country since his ascendancy in fall 2008. He had his chance to lead the United States to brighter days, and has failed to do so. It is time to elect a President who can.
– John P. Burns
tammanyhalldotcom 