The road not taken

Four years ago, Barack Obama touted “change” and “hope”—his platform was that Bush’s policies weren’t working, so it was necessary to switch directions and try something new.

Fast forward four years, and we are suffering from 7.9% unemployment—a number that has stayed steady for 42 months straight with no signs of improvement—and a 16 trillion dollar debt—6 trillion more than what it was four years ago. Barack Obama said very clearly in his 2008 campaign that if he could not turn things around, it would be a one-term deal. Yet now he’s begging for a second chance.

Should we give it to him?

Any successful business owner will tell you that if an employee receives a specific job and does not tackle and—at least in part—solve the problem, the likelihood of that employee keeping his job is low. Why should we give Obama his job back? He hasn’t solved any problems, and he hasn’t set up any business models that will work.

The Des Moines Register (Iowa’s premiere newspaper) is the most recent of a long line of newspapers to officially endorse Mitt Romney as our next president. And they make it very clear why they’ve chosen him.

Romney has proven himself in both the public and private sector. He is personally successful, having graduated with honors from Harvard Law and Business. He transformed failing companies into moneymaking enterprises, he ran the 2002 Winter Olympics, and in Massachusetts, with a primarily Democratic legislature, he turned around the economy and left the state with a $2 billion rainy-day fund.

As the Des Moines Register points out, Obama’s and Romney’s tax plans are similar in that they both promise tax cuts for the middle class (though Obama wants to raise taxes on the wealthy). But it is Romney’s faith and trust in the private sector that makes him better suited for our current economic climate. In the four years since Obama has taken office, small business growth has slowed, if not stopped entirely.

But “[t]hroughout the campaign, [Romney] has expressed faith in the private sector to fuel a more robust economic recovery if it has more confidence that the federal government will not be an obstacle. Romney has a strategy for job growth through tax and regulatory relief for small businesses, encouraging all forms of domestic energy production, education that prepares graduates with job skills, expanding foreign trade and reducing the burden of federal deficits. That formula, coupled with his business acumen, should unlock this nation’s economic potential.” (emphasis added)

This isn’t a matter of whose policies or whose personality you like better. It’s a matter of who can get the job done. Who can take this crippled economy and turn it into a sunny day for Americans and the rest of the world? Mitt Romney has a record and he’s proven himself. Before being president, Obama had no record and no experience—and after his four years, Americans are worse off. How is this at all a tight race? Even if you don’t love Romney—and let’s be clear, he has certainly flip-flopped on some major issues—you have to admit that he is a successful businessman, with great knowledge of economic issues and moneymaking enterprises.

It’s time for a change; it’s time for someone new. And if Romney is elected and fails us just as Obama has failed us, then we have to fight him and elect someone new in another four years. No one has put Romney on a pedestal of greatness—he is far from it—but this is not the time to be arguing over semantics.

We’ve come to a fork in the road, and each path takes us down a route far different from the other. Choose wisely: it will make all the difference.

It’s a hell of a world out there. – CB

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Pope Saint John Paul II’s First Good Friday Homily

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