(This post applies to folks here in the US, of course. Please don’t feel obliged to go to your local polling place in Toronto, Cardiff, Carrickmacross, or Addis Ababa.)
While I’d prefer you vote for Obama/Biden over their competition, I’d rather you vote for a member of that competition than skip voting tomorrow.
I am not an unabashed Obama fan. There are areas he’s disappointed me (being far more of a budget centrist/pragmatics/deal-maker than I’d like, whether it’s caving on taxes or on any sort of single payer or public option in the health care reform debate). There are areas where he’s royally pissed me off (homeland security executive fiat at home, kill lists without due process for American citizens abroad).
While, net-net, I think the past four years are a positive (and certainly no man has accomplished so much in the face of obstructionist opposition from his opponents), I’m certainly not as happy as I thought I would be when Obama was elected in 2008.
That said, I think Romney would be a net negative for this country. I think that because, honestly, I have no real sense of his opinions or plans or policy du jour. Are we talking liberal-moderate Massachusetts Romney of less than a decade ago? Or hard-conservative GOP Primary Romney of a few months ago? Or kinder, gentler, compassionate centrist Romney of recent squeak-to-the-finish general campaign weeks?
I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. I don’t think Romney knows. Because what I actually think Romney is, is an excellent salesman. Not a leader. Certainly not a true believer. Look at his Bain career — that sort of thing is all about selling. And today he is out to sell himself as President. To that end, he will tell whatever audience he has whatever he thinks they want to hear in order to close the deal.
And that’s meant he’s felt free to lie. And not just exaggeration-the-record or laying-calumnies-on-the-other-guy kind of stuff. Out and out not-true stuff. You can find the laundry lists in a dozen places (not just here). And we won’t even talk about the differences between what he says in public, to different groups, and what he says in private.
Now, all politicians do that, to at least some degree. But they do tend to have identifiable constituencies. And policies. Philosophies, even. You can trust them, or not, or like them, or not, or agree with them, or not, but there’s something there there.
I don’t know that Romney really knows what he plans to do when he gets to the White House. Except, maybe, begin his next campaign for President in 2016, and make his decisions on that basis. That’s really how I see the man.
Which means, that, like Dubya, he could turn out to be a relatively moderate (or certainly not as conservative as he campaigned) President. Sure, I think Dubya did a lot of stupid things, and things I strongly disagree with — but he certainly didn’t push the Evangelical Christian position, as policy, as hard has he’d promised. He could have been far worse.
So maybe Romney will be like that — giving lip service and minor benefices to the Cause, but trying to govern more toward the middle(ish) in order to win in four years.
Or maybe not. If he thinks it will net him the nomination, I think he’ll do pretty much anything to benefit his business supporters, as well as the Religious Right that doesn’t quite yet trust him. The Senate may restrain his worst excesses, but with the House in his pocket and a close-to-majority in the Senate (with a dozen or so Blue Dogs to lend him a hand), there’s a lot of damage he could do.
Romney’s also one of those guys that I find I watch out for as much for the people he surrounds himself with rather than the things he says himself. Randian uber-budget-cutter Paul Ryan is a good example. Robert Bork as a top judicial advisor. The gang of Neo-Con zanies (starting with John Bolton) he has advising him on foreign policy. And the whole Christian Right Culture Warriors he has at his back calling for outlawing abortion, recriminalizing homosexuality, getting rid of those pesky voting rights and employment rights and sexual equality rights and all the other things that have damaged some mysterious set of Traditions and Family Values that you can’t ever actually point to an era of US history believing in.
All of which sounds more like I’m anti-Romney than pro-Obama. That’s not quite true. I am pleased Obama got health care reform enacted (even though it’s about as private-insurance friendly a health care system as you could imagine, leaves some people still uncovered, and left itself open to bizarro challenges like the contraception mandate). I think the Dodd-Frank bill, which Obama supported, is a good thing, and I remain frustrated by the (mostly) GOP efforts to keep it from being fully enacted. I think the additional stimulus that Obama pushed for can truly be critiqued only for being too small and too short. I think there are a lot of things that Obama has done right (and certainly better than McCain would have).
But, yes, my views about Obama are a lot more tempered than they were four years ago, even if somewhat buoyed by vengeful resentment at the Right Wing’s attempts to smear, stymie, demonize, delegitimatize, and otherwise try to completely block his presidency. If nothing else, I think he deserves four more years for all the Muslim / Kenyan / Atheist / Marxist crapola that’s been flung at him since the 2008 campaign.
My views toward Romney are far more inchoate, given his elusive nature and lack of applicable track record (since he’s essentially disavowed everything about his time as governor, except when he’s bragging about it). I can only go based on what he’s said (especially during the craziness that was the GOP Primaries), and the people he’s surrounded himself with.
So, I’ll be voting for Obama. And against Romney. And I hope I win on both counts.
So either join me (huzzah!) or cancel my vote out (lesser huzzah!). But vote!