The Choice To Be Made

 

Tomorrow, America goes to the polls in an historic election.

What we choose tomorrow will decide our future as a nation for a generation.

America, in the last twenty years has gone through a period of great pain and uncertainty, a period that started with us emerging as the victors of the Cold War and the unquestioned sole superpower and has ended with us as a nation in debt, with our economy stagnant and our status as a superpower in doubt.

There's no question in my mind that this has occurred because of the deterioration of our politics and our leadership.The last three presidents including the current incumbent have been three of the worst in American history in terms of lasting harm done to the country.

This is an opportunity to reverse that course.

It's no secret to anyone who visits this site that I have a fairly positive view of Mitt Romney. And I have for a while, even before he got the Republican nomination. What's less well known is that I was fully prepared from the day he got elected to support President Obama,put away the rhetoric of the 2008 campaign and give him a fair chance to succeed.

When President Barack Obama said he was going to govern from the center and be the president of all the people, I was prepared to take him at his word and let him prove it to me.

He failed utterly.

He failed in terms of competency, simple decency, and what I can only call presidential demeanor. Instead of being the president of all the people, he operated in the the White House as though he was mayor of Chicago, looting the treasury to reward his political allies and appointing countless 'czars' from among his cronies.

Instead of providing an example of austerity in tough times, the president and his wife set records for their personal spending at the taxpayer's expense.Last year, with 23 million Americans unemployed, the Obamas spent a record $1.4 billion taxpayer dollars solely to maintain themselves in the lifestyle they've become accustomed to. This includes the five star vacations,(the First Lady spent over $12 million dollars personally on her vacations last year alone) the president's incessant rounds of golf, the numerous parties and junkets, the fees paid to the entertainers at the White House, the inflated staff's salaries, the whole enchilada. By contrast, Britain maintained its entire Royal Family for a mere $57.8 million during the same period.

Instead of taking advantage of his high approval ratings and a unique opportunity to promote Dr. Martin Luther King's vision of racial harmony and race neutral equality, he took every opportunity to divide America and exacerbate racial tension for his own political purposes.

Instead of putting our financial house in order, he massively increased the national debt to $15 trillion, blaming his predecessor for policies he voted for as a senator.

Instead of working to ensure America's energy independence, the president ensured the highest energy prices in America's history by a quasi-illegal moratorium on off shore drilling, a ban on oil leases on public lands, and his killing of the Keystone pipeline, which would have provided thousands of badly needed jobs as well as a flow of oil from Canada Alberta oil sands. And to add insult to injury, the president spent hundreds of millions of dollars of public monies on Department of Energy loans to 'green energy' companies run by his donors and bundlers that went bankrupt.

When Barack Obama began his presidency, he had veto proof majorities in both houses of congress and a demoralized Republican minority that was more than prepared to work with him if they'd received the slightest outreach and encouragement. Instead, we saw an arrogant president who responded to Republican concerns about the effect of the president's stimulus and ObamaCare spending and the lack of a realistic budget with a curt 'I won', followed by his literally locking Republicans out of the room when the bills were crafted and the spoils divided.

Republican Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell's famous remark about ensuring that Barack Obama became a one term president only occurred at the end of 2010, after the historic midterms, after the GOP had endured a total lack of respect by this president and his fellow Democrats, after rules that had governed the senate's procedure for decades were arbitrarily changed to avoid any GOP input.

Instead of a competent foreign policy, we saw distancing and even some hostility towards our allies ( particularly but not limited to Israel), no progress on halting Iran's progress towards nuclear weapons and the empowerment and enabling of the Muslim Brotherhood at home and abroad.

Instead of enhancing America's military, we saw it hollowed out with draconian cuts. Instead of a strengthened American deterrent. we saw a 'reset' with Russia that saw the Russians getting their long awaited goal of throttling America's missile defense and access to America's top of the line nuclear technology.

And after hearing this president claim al-Qaeda was 'on the run' after Osama bin-Laden's assassination, we see the spectacle of al-Qaeda resurgent in the Middle East and North Africa as a direct result of President Obama's policies, including his war in Libya that resulted in al-Qaeda and their affiliates getting their hands on Moamar Khaddaffi's arms supplies.

Instead of the transparency he promised, we got executive orders galore, a 2,000 page ObamaCare bill shoved down our collective throats that even the legislators voting on it had no time to read, Fast and Furious and Benghazi.

Barack Obama resembles no one so much as the modern Rehoboam, telling the people of America that if he gets a second term he's going to double down his failed policies and add to their yoke. He deserves an unequivocal rejection.

In Mitt Romney, we have a chance for a very different sort of man in the White House.

Aside from his impressive resume (after all, he's exactly the sort of person you'd hire if you needed to turn around the struggling enterprise America has become after 20 years of mismanagement), there is an opportunity to experience something very different in the Oval Office we haven't seen for quite some time....character, competence  and simple decency.

Mitt Romney's life has been marked by these qualities. After all the to do about his tax returns, when he finally released them, people were astounded at the extent of his charitable giving, and that essentially unjust Democrat talking point faded away quickly.

In spite of the Obama Media's attempt to cover them up or spin them, stories of Mitt Romney's genuine concern and kindness for others  have continued to come  out throughout the campaign.

He has lived a life marked by faith, service to others and success with difficult challenges based on his own efforts, and the contrast between him and the current occupant of the White House couldn't be more marked.

As president, he will be a pragmatist rather than an ideologue, and a great deal of how his presidency goes will depend of what kind of congress he ends up having to work with. In view of Democrat  Senate Majority leader Harry Reid's abysmal conduct towards him during the campaign and Reid's boast that a Democrat majority senate will never work with a President Romney, a lot will depend on how the down ticket races turn out.

But just as Ronald Reagan found a way to pass much of his agenda while having to work with an obstructive  Tip O'Neill, I'm convinced that Mitt Romney can accomplish the same. There's no doubt that unlike the last three presidents, he will leave the country far better off than he found it.


With Mitt Romney in the White House, we will again see a president we can respect and look up to rather than a president who looks down at us and rejects the very notion of what an exceptional nation we are.  We will see an America resurgent and respected again by both our friends, our enemies, and most of all, ourselves.

What happens tomorrow is in G-d's hands, as I'm sure Governor Romney would be the first to agree.

Is America ready to elect a competent and decent man as  president? Are we ready to reaffirm the principles of our blessed Republic, or have we decided it's an antiquated concept that no longer means anything to the majority of us? Are we still the free country our founders envisioned,  convinced of our divine destiny?

I believe we are..but tomorrow will tell the story.