Candidates Obama, Romney: As Flawed as Any in Recent Memory

And as for the Independents and Undecideds?  No matter WHAT any partisan hack or spin doctor can promote, they're torn...and with good reason...as evidenced by the very close race that this presidential election continues to be.  So who is Governor Mitt Romney?  Who is President Barack Obama?  Hard to say, but it's much, much easier to figure out what they're NOT:

1) HONEST:

Governor Romney (or former governor, if you prefer) made a decision to keep his tax records under wraps for reasons that remain suspicious, unnecessary and unknown to most; in a nutshell, he's rich and is paying less taxes than what many people would consider fair.  Yet his money is earned legally and is HIS, the IRS is fine with him, and he's also a very, very, very generous man who gives a great deal to charity.  So he's appears to be a good man, overall ... but with an agenda.

President Obama made a decision to keep much of his past under wraps (and yes, he's an American born in Hawaii).  Yet only partisan suckups dismiss his background, and minimize concerns over his hired czars and questionable cabinet appointees.  He appears to have lived an honest life, though, and is like the contender a good father and husband, and a good man (no matter what conservative talk radio says).  But he, too, appears to have an agenda.

2) REPRESENT THE MIDDLE CLASS:

Governor Romney may have earned his wealth (he had a nice childhood, but he made the decision to shoulder his own risk), yet his image is of someone above the rest of us, and out of touch despite the fact that he and his wife have known more fiscal and health-related hardships than most acknowledge...but couldn't his pomp and personal opulence really have waited until after the election?  His decrying that 47% of this nation is unwilling to take personal responsibility of their lives might continue to hurt him, but his greatest shortcoming is his failure to restore hope to Americans that they will be rewarded for their hard work and investing.

President Obama, despite the rhetoric and fawning adoration of the press, isn't exactly skimping and slumming it during his term in office.  It's easy to respect his insistence on spending his time with his family, but too much of it comes across as opulent as former Speaker Pelosi's frequent--and reprehensible--practice of using military jets at taxpayer's expense.  Although it's convenient for the stock market that Fed Chairman Bernanke is printing more cheap dollars, it's forcing a huge rise gas and food prices that are destroying the lives of all Americans--particularly the poor and middle class who have suffered for years.    

3) JOB CREATORS:

Governor Romney has probably been unfairly judged by his experience at Bain Capital, which both downsized jobs and created jobs alike--sorry, folks, capitalism demands both downsizing and hiring when indicated.  But despite his long string of successes in the private sector (and his successful handling of the Olympics in Salt Lake City), the questions of how he would address job outsourcing to Asia, and of how he would attract job creation in the US, remain woefully and insufficiently answered.  He has yet to earn the trust of job-seeking Americans who want to stop Wall Street abuses and clean up modern-day corporate America.

President Obama has also overseen downsizing and hiring, but with a long string of failures and potentially-unconstitutional approaches to employment.  He saved GM, but that involved downsizing.  He created jobs at public expense at Solyndra and other politically-connected corporations that are at least as distasteful as the Dick Cheney/Whitewater deal in Iraq.  More importantly, with unemployment (and underemployment) so high, it's safe to say he's failed many Americans who voted for him in 2008.  His 2009 Jobs Stimulus Bill was poorly handled, did not help the general public ... and the President has yet to acknowledge that.

4) FOCUSING ON THE DEBT:

Governor Romney has a good talking point about the exploding debt ($1 trillion a year and growing, folks!), but he still remains mum (or insufficiently articulate) about what he would do to really bring that down while raising revenue for continuing federal responsibilities.  While the press and many Americans ignore the need for EVERYONE to sacrifice to prevent our children and grandchildren from being destroyed by a mountain of debt WE caused, Romney has yet to take his own credible stand.  Furthermore, he's yet to articulate how tax loopholes among the very rich can be closed...particularly among wealthy job exporters.

President Obama's claims that he inherited a horrible fiscal mess is true, but after his first 1-2 years in office he had the obligation to stop the deficit spending.  His performance is opposite to his 2008 campaign promise to cut the deficit in half, and the "blame President George W. Bush" strategy has become outdated and lacking credibility for at least two years.  He was recently quoted on Univision as stating his greatest failure in office was his inability to establish immigration reform...but isn't the President's greatest failure in office his inability to encourage job creation, increase federal revenues and lower the debt?

5) REACHING OUT TO THE OTHER SIDE:

Governor Romney has run such a top-down, CEO-style campaign that he has alienated both opponents, supporters and independents alike--which is opposite to what he did as Massachusetts Governor and as head of the Salt Lake City Olympics when he was able to pull different groups together to achieve good results.  The GOP primary is OVER, but Romney has yet to meet Americans' need to courageously address how ALL socioeconomic classes can do more to get more and achieve success, how we can balance the budget, and how we can create jobs and wealth for both liberals and conservatives alike.

President Obama has been anything but a uniter, and his claims that the Republicans just aren't working with him are as specious as his claims that everything is his predecessor's fault.  Both Democrats and Republicans alike have rejected the President's budgets, and he wasted two years on national healthcare when he could have, and SHOULD have, focused on creating jobs and restoring the economy--for BOTH the private AND public sectors. When it comes to government contracts and the middle class, the President appears too often to represent only the public sector and the connected within the Democratic Party.

In summary, neither Governor Romney nor President Obama has shown themselves worthy of being elected to office for the next four years.  Of course, one of them will win, but it's very difficult to see how either one can pull the country together again--they are both like President George W. Bush, who was a divider and not a uniter, and left this country in flames.  Romney and the GOP did not invite Bush or Cheney to the GNC Convention, and Obama and the Democrats continue to decry Bush...yet neither are any better.

We don't see a President Reagan or President Clinton who, whether one might love or hate them, did reach across the aisle.  We see no tradeoff of closing of tax loopholes in return for decreased tax rates and wealth creation for the upper economic classes (as with Reagan), or a tax hike but reduction of dividend/capital gain taxes to--again--create wealth for the upper economic classes (as with Clinton).  In general, a rising fiscal tide raised all boats under Reagan and Clinton, but Romney is no Reagan, and Obama is no Clinton.

The political conventions are over, and the "gotcha" and political spinning are now all we've got.  Yet we've still got are the debates, and hopefully better messages (including apologies and clarifications) by BOTH candidates to show that we will have a President, and not a tyrant who squelches one half of the country, to lead this nation after what has been a miserable four years for the overwhelming majority of Americans.

(Ken Alpern is a former Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee.  He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee, chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and is co-chair of the non-profit Friends of the Green Line (www.fogl.us).  He can be reached at [email protected] .    The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw



CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 77
Pub: Sept 25, 2012