The Case Against Re-Election

The conservative publication National Review is hawking on its website a poster that lists 689 reasons to vote against the re-election of the president. Granted some of their entries consist of punchlines and multiple refernces to Joe Biden. NR's humorous pokes at the incumbent aside, there are plenty of legitimate arguments why the president should be defeated for re-election as Barack Obama has failed on multiple levels, from policy to leadership. Failure On Energy President Obama's record on energy is disatrous on multiple fronts. First his hostility towards our primary energy resources (oil, natural gas and coal) defies comprehension and leads one to speculate that he's not for an "all of the above" approach to energy but is for a "cold turkey" shift away from our reliance on oil. Secondly, his fervent faith in green energy that are many decades away from remotely displacing oil and coal defies logic, though not politics. The Obama Administration is captive to special interests that have profiteered off his investment of taxpayer dollars into green companies like Solyndra that went belly-up and cost the public nine figures. Executives with that infamous green concern did manage to pay back one debt- to President Obama via campaign donations. President Obama has stubbornly refused to permit the Keystone Pipeline, which would bring in more oil from Canada and thus make the US less dependent on oil imported from outside of North America. His opposition to the Canadian pipeline is a good example of how the president prioritizes the wishes of his green constituency over America's national and economic security, since access to energy is critical to both. An Economic Failure The nation's unemployment rate stands at 7.8%, which is where it stood when President Obama took office. In between then and now, America's unemployment rate was at 8% or higher for over forty consecutive months. The president celebrates that as progress, but I don't think the over twelve million still looking for work were dancing in the unemployment lines when they heard the news. In another statistic that is a measure of how well/ill the Obama economy truly is, over 46 million Americans are on food stamps and tens of thousands are filing for disability. This past June, slightly more people filed for disability than landed jobs. The president has also failed as the country's fiscal manager. Instead of closing the deficits and chipping away at the national debt, his administration has added over five trillion dollars to it. Failure on Foreign Policy Obama's foreign policy has been equally misguided, pulling the missile defense rug out from under our staunch allies in eastern Europe while extending to Russia more trust than advisable. Iran has not shut down its nuclear weapons program but is four years closer to producing an atomic bomb. And while the details about the events that led to the slaying of our ambassador and three other Americans continue to trickle out of Libya, we do know that President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other White House officials misled the country by stating that the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi was a reaction to a YouTube video. They either lied to America or revealed themselves as dunces. Being guilty of either charge makes them unfit to occupy the positions they hold. Failure As A Leader Despite being a gifted orator, Barack Obama has tried to distract the electorate from the shortcomings of his first term by engaging in unprecedented demagoguery by a president to demonize the opposition. He's also a hypocrite concerning his pleas for bipartisanship. Joseph Cao, the country's first Vietnamese-American member of Congress, took the president at his word about working with Republicans on Capitol Hill. Cao was hardly a lockstep vote for the GOP, breaking party ranks often to support Obama's agenda yet the GOP freshman had his trust repaid in daggers when the president supported his opponent. President Obama has also dodged accepting any responsibility for the high gas prices and wheezing economy. You'd swear George W. Bush was in his third term the way Obama avoids accountability and furiously shovels fault on to his predecessor. Obama was only a few years removed from the Illinois legislature when he began his quest for the White House. It is with great disappointment that he has not grown beyond his community organizer roots during his time in office. Clint Got It Right While Clint Eastwood's address at the Republican National Convention has been widely panned and mocked, the Hollywood icon said something that is simple yet profound: the guy who was hired four years didn't get the job done and it's time to bring in someone else to do it. Only a blind partisan or someone whose vote is motivated by a far lesser consideration than his job performance could look past the president's record and vote to give him another four year term. Voting for change for the sake of having change is not wise though America has an able and mature alternative to the incumbent in Mitt Romney. The GOP candidate not only represents a different philosophy but a drastically different life experince that has prepared him for the job he is seeking. In contrast to the president's partisan and academic background, Romney was a consensus builder as governor of Massachusetts, a state dominated by Democratic officials on all levels of government. Romney's ascension wasn't based off giving a handful of high profile speeches but real accomplishments, having played the lead role in saving the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and achieving success in business and finance. Rather than being envious or jealous of Romney's earned wealth, Americans should look at his success in the private sector as a statement of qualification that he understands how the economy works and what solutions need to be put in place to create more jobs. I am optimistic that an overwhelming majority of American voters will be guided by reality as it is and not what Obama and his allies try to make it appear to be when they vote on November 6th. President Obama had his chance and it's time to go in a different direction. Mitt Romney should be elected our next president.