Election Day Thoughts: We Deserve Better

In 2008 John McCain said “I will not take the low road to the highest office In the land.” His opponent Barack Obama took a similar tone, stating almost prophetically “if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters. 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. “ 2008 candidate Obama, meet 2012 incumbent President Obama. While “hope and change” inspired a movement to be proud of in 2008, the closing argument of the same candidates current campaign has been widely recognized as the exact set of tactics the wide-eyed dreamer in 2008 warned against. In a time of economic uncertainty and unrest around the world, an election to the most powerful office in the world should be an election of ideas. It should be a war of plans, ideologies and competing visions for recovery.  It should be.. very different than what it is now. You may hate Romney’s ideas and think they’re terrible, but at least he has them. President Obama hasn’t furnished his own undoubtedly because he didn’t think he’d need to. A president that puts himself in the top four Presidents of all time couldn’t possibly have imagined a real challenge to his throne.  He has decided to face that challenge with the most negative, small campaign in generations, using a campaign of distraction and distortion to keep his job. I submit to you that he has not campaigned in a way that would make him deserving of your vote.

A few weeks ago, in an attempt to compensate for his sleepy first debate performance, President Obama used the subsequent third debate to unveil a new strategy: slash and burn. Instead of a debate on substance, it was an exhibition of “zingers” and punch lines his staff had undoubtedly thought of the morning after Romney delivered the biggest Presidential-debate beat down in history. This attempt at a comedic performance served as a sad representation for the 2012 election as a whole. An election that put plans for comprehensive tax reform against calls for opponents tax returns, and an election that pitted big ideas against big bird and big distractions. While one candidate focused on presenting plans and ideas, one focused on schoolyard punch lines. The campaign Obama has run is not only beneath the office of the President; it’s an utter embarrassment to the United States and the political process that maintains the greatest democracy in the world.

My biggest problem with the Obama campaign is that a majority of Obama’s attacks on Romney have been based on character. In an interview with Rolling Stone (a hard hitting interview to be sure) the President of the United States called his opponent a “bull-sh*tter.” This is a rare departure from normal presidential tradition of having campaign surrogates and vice-presidential candidates perform the heavy lifting in the “smear” department. He seemed to take his own administration by surprise because his communications director asked the Rolling Stone interviewer “not to be “distracted by the word” but to “focus instead on the importance of choosing a President they can trust.” That’s not to say Biden and the campaign surrogates haven’t been doing their jobs. In the early months of the campaign the Presidents surrogates called Romney a “felon,” accused him of somehow inflicting a women with cancer and killing her, and the vice President has spent weeks speaking directly of Romney’s “lack of character.” Biden also told a mostly-black rally audience that Romney and Ryan want to “put them back in chains.” But Obama’s eloquent and intelligent use of “bull-sh*tter” follows a line Obama has been pushing to  “destroy Romney” as campaign strategists described it early on.

In contrast, Mitt Romney came out with a 59 pt. plan over a year before the election started. It had specific details for job creation, deficit reduction and sustainable economic growth. He later narrowed it down to five specific steps to creating 12 million jobs (in part because the Obama campaign seemed to struggle with the wonky details). President Obama has not provided any economic agenda for a second term. He has no plans to improve on the unemployment woes that have somehow grown worse under his watch. The “budget” he presented (as a formality) was not only rejected by every republican in congress but by every democrat as well, perhaps because it added about ten trillion dollars to our egregious 16 trillion dollar deficit over 8 years. He has, however, proposed a tax. Not a tax plan, just a simple tax on the rich to further the class-envy strategy he has embraced when all else has failed. But the tax he supports is not an attempt to raise revenue to deal with the deficit, that revenue would only be used to pay for increased spending. Ernst and Young has concluded that this tax will kill 710 thousand jobs.

Every attack the President has made against Romney on an actual policy basis has fallen flat after it proved to be nothing more than a fundamental misunderstanding of policies. That or the Obama campaign is simply bad at math.  Obama’s charge that Romney wants to pass a “5 trillion dollar tax cut” was walked back by Stef Cutter, one of his own campaign managers. He has repeatedly said that Romney “wanted to liquidate the auto industry.” The president doesn’t seem to understand the basic economic principles behind the managed bankruptcy that Romney advocated, which is particularly interesting considering that it’s the same managed bankruptcy the President ended up ultimately taking it through. I challenge any democrat out there to find another substantial policy the President has addressed. The truth is the President hasn’t made dull old things like “substance” or “plans” a centerpiece or even an important piece of his reelection campaign. A brief glance at the tealeaves would suggest that this is because “substance” is not on the President’s side. Any economic measure would prove that the President has been an abject failure in every possible way. Unemployment is actually higher than it was when he took office, a change from 7.8 to 7.9. But you know these dull old “facts” and “statistics” already because they’re the one element that can’t be spun or twisted. Numbers are numbers and they aren’t on the President’s side.

I repeat my primary thesis: President Obama has not campaigned in a way to be deserving of your vote. If the Obama campaign model wins, America loses. The level of rhetoric and campaign seriousness will be forever denigrated. Future campaigns will focus on the character attacks, big bird videos and pathetic distractions. Don’t vote for him just because you identify yourself as a democrat. Don’t vote for Obama because you think Romney “just wants to help the rich” or “doesn’t care about the poor” because both are patently false. I urge you to reconsider an Obama vote because the best-case scenario by every possible measure if “more of the same” and that isn’t good enough, even for a democrat electorate that seems ready to settle. With the country in trouble, does Presidential wordplay like “Romnesia” give you comfort? With close to 24 million people looking for work, does a 30 second video about saving Big Bird give you confidence in their opportunities? With almost 20% of all children living under the poverty line does a condescending debate quip about Bayonets give you hope for their future?  While it may have led to backslapping and self-congratulating among the Obama joke writing staff (I imagine it’s composed of the dregs of NBCs most recent cancelled sitcom writing staffs) it doesn’t present a vision. Obama took what could have been an opportunity to make a case for his devastating defense cuts and used it to insult Romney both with the bayonet line and a sarcastic explanation of submarines being “ships that go underwater.” It’s no surprise that Romney almost immediately closed thegap with women. I am giving commentary on the specifics of Obama’s policy proposals because as far as we know, there are none. I am simply suggesting that before casting a vote for President Obama, you consider what his campaign implies. A candidate campaigns on what they think is most pressing to the nation and if you think Big Bird, binders, bayonets, and “Romnesia” are the most pressing issues for the country, than Obama is your guy. If you prefer a leader that calls him opponent names and accuses him of ridiculous crimes instead of explaining how he’s going to fix a bleeding economy, than Obama is your guy. But I think we both know that we deserve better.