The foulest complaint of the week is: What a boring
election; nobody is saying anything interesting. Sullen columns by David Brooks and
condescending editorials in The Economist
tell Americans they aren’t being offered a significant choice. This is dangerous and untrue.
Telling voters that it’s a dull election is as good as
telling them not to bother to vote. And not voting in this election would be an
outrage.
At the heart of the election’s image problem is the media’s
distorted shorthand: both sides exaggerate, answer to millions, represent
elites, and carry ideological baggage; so, covering the election is mostly about
conflicting sound bites and the competence of two professional campaign teams—just
two gray calculators, so relax.
In fact, Obama is graying and possibly is the most
calculating president since Lincoln. A conservative, if you will. Romney,
however, is not.
The Economist
understates their differences by putting both equally off center:
“But the Republicans’ main
problem is taxes. Successful deficit-reduction plans require at least some of
the gap—perhaps around a quarter—to be closed by new revenue. If the
Republicans got rid of loopholes, they could cut all the main tax rates and
still raise more money.
“The Democrats’ challenge is more
on the spending side. Productivity has been flat in the public sector at a time
when it has doubled in the private sector. Mr Obama needs to decide whether he
is on the side of taxpayers or public-sector workers (who, if they work for the
federal government, earn more than their private-sector equivalents do in wages
and benefits). He needs to get serious about cutting back regulation, rather
than increasing it; and he needs to spend more time listening to successful
business leaders rather than telling them all is fine.”
Click on: http://www.economist.com/node/21559630
Obama’s spending challenge is America’s challenge—it’s
embedded in the country—and is acknowledged by the president and most of his
party. Indeed, his spending performance during his first three years is
actually better than that of his Republican predecessor.
Romney’s tax problem is entirely self-inflicted and
threatens America’s financial and social order. It is the child of a novice
fanaticism; it excuses paranoia; it has made compromise impossible; and it tells
Americans to give up on their own creation—government for the people.
Government isn’t your servant, stern young Republicans
insist. If you want one of those, ask your daddy for one of his.
Obama offers more incremental management, a slow, united
recovery. Whether sincere or utterly without conviction, Romney would lead a
radical, coordinated Republican effort to transform Washington along the lines
of a sugary illusion about daddy’s 1950’s America.
The Economist well
represents the assumption that Romney is simply an expedient liar. That in
office, he and Republican intellectuals would bend to the data that they’ve
ignored for years and find a way to do “something sensible” on taxes,
loopholes, and spending that would allow the budget to balance later in the
decade—and all this while providing for a strong defense and presenting levels of support to
an aging society.
Rational conservative voices like The Economist and David Brooks seem to believe that while Romney’s Republican
platform is incredible, it’s reasonable to trust that he has a sensible plan of
his own.
The idea that Romney has a hidden agenda to be a moderate
president deserves no more respect than the fear that Obama, locked away in his
hope chest, has a blueprint to turn America into a European socialist state.
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