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9/28/12, "We recommend Mitt Romney for president," Dallas Morning News Editorial
"Barack Obama will forever be a historic, as well as historical,
figure in American life. The 44th U.S. president, yes, but more
noteworthy, he will forever be the first African-American to lead a
nation riven through centuries by racial and ethnic division.
His election in November 2008 inspired. Even those who may not have supported him could not deny the significance.
With
it came an optimism that the ideals he stressed as a candidate, like a
post-partisan Washington where Democrats and Republicans worked
together, were within reach. He took office amid great turmoil, a
crashing economy and two wars atop his priorities.
Candidate
Obama, an orator of great skill and cadence, might have overcome
everything and put the U.S. on a brighter path. President Obama,
unfortunately, fell short of the challenge. The wars have largely faded
from headlines, but the economic struggles remain, along with an
attendant worry about future federal spending, deficits and debt.
Obama’s
Democratic supporters would argue that no one could have succeeded in
what he inherited, that the nation’s problems were far more severe than
anyone could handle in four years.
We respectfully disagree. On
the central issue that will define his presidency — a stalled U.S.
economy weighed down by crushing annual deficits and accumulated debt —
Obama showed himself to be less leader than follower. While he expended
his political capital on new government programs, unemployment stayed at
debilitating heights.
For that reason, this newspaper recommends Republican challenger Mitt Romney for president.
We
see evidence of Obama’s shortcomings in his re-election campaign, a
relentlessly negative push to disqualify his opponent instead of
standing on his accomplishments. His campaign has worn voters’ patience
thin by constantly blaming predecessor George W. Bush for “the mess he
left behind.”
Cleaning
up that mess, however large, was what Americans trusted to Obama.
Romney
had to survive a fractious primary by steering too far right on some
issues. At his core, however, we see him as a “Chamber of Commerce
Republican,” more attuned to business interests than the tea
party/social conservatism that defines today’s GOP.
Importantly,
Romney speaks the language of industry. His tenure leading Bain Capital,
for instance, has come under sharp criticism for years, but it also
reveals a man who understands capital formation and how that,
extrapolated through an economy, can lift the U.S. from its stalled
state. Even some of Obama’s Democratic allies — notably rising star Cory
Booker, former adviser Steven Rattner and former Rep. Harold Ford —
were quick to criticize the campaign’s Bain-centric attacks on profit.
Unlike
many in his party, Romney understands that government has a place in
the economy and in American life, just not as much of a place as Obama
would afford it.
Obama
has cited, with some justification,
recalcitrance from congressional Republicans for thwarting him.
But in
his first two years, when Democrats had a wide margin in the House and
filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, Obama’s wounds were
self-inflicted. He put his chips on a necessary but ill-conceived
stimulus program and a massive health care overhaul. Left to languish
were a broad-based energy bill, comprehensive immigration reform,
entitlement reform and, most ominously, effective job-creation programs.
Obama’s people warned of unemployment rates as high as 8 percent
without the stimulus spending, only to see rates exceed 8 percent,
anyway, for 43 consecutive months — and counting. Real household income
has fallen in consecutive years. Food stamp enrollment has hit record
highs; the percentage of adults in the workforce approaches record lows.
Annual
deficits for every year of the Obama presidency will top $1 trillion,
pushing the federal debt past an astounding $16 trillion.
Obama’s
Affordable Care Act was his signature domestic achievement. Its many
laudable features included the individual mandate, but one was not its
financing, which led this newspaper to oppose it. Obama left the details
to Congress, and what emerged had no realistic funding stream and did
too little to contain future costs.
Of most concern, Obama was not
unaware of the fiscal problem. He put together a bipartisan panel to
help forge a solution but then abandoned it. Left to languish, the
Simpson-Bowles group could not achieve the votes to force congressional
action. The proposal, which included a roughly 3-to-1 package of
spending cuts to revenue increases, was the kind of compromise candidate
Obama had advocated. As president, he chose not to act.
Romney
has shown an ability to lead, from turning around the deficit-ridden
2002 Salt Lake City Olympics to his term as Massachusetts governor. His
plans for tax and entitlement reform are encouraging, shifting the focus
from government first to freeing the private sector to innovate. Voters
should demand more specifics, but at the heart of his plans —
especially on reforming a teetering Medicare system — is an instinct to
rely on competition over regulation to drive growth.
Yet Romney does give us pause. His famed flip-flops on issues from
immigration to health care, always pushing further right, are worrisome.
His difficulty in speaking precisely and inoffensively on such issues
as London’s Olympic preparedness, Israeli Palestinian issues and U.S.
embassy assaults paint him, at best, as a foreign policy neophyte.
And
his secretly recorded comments at a Boca Raton, Fla., fundraiser drew
an unreasonably sharp line between those who pay income taxes and “the
47 percent” of Americans who only take and would never support him,
anyway. These ill-advised statements offended many and played directly
into the Obama campaign’s picture of an excessively wealthy candidate
out of touch with the common man.
Not his finest moment, nor
was
it the lone defining one for Romney. What we’ve seen of him
over many
years — from business success to running a state to impeccable personal
and family attributes — convinces this newspaper that the time is right
for someone with his broad skill set.
Obama
himself once said that
if he didn’t repair the economy “in three years, this would be a
one-term proposition.” The facts show it’s time for a principled,
pragmatic leader who can get Washington working again." via Free Republic
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