Romney's Successes Lay the Path for Excellent Presidency

By MAX REINHARDT

With the election now just days away, the race is looking tighter than ever. Virginia is still up for grabs and, surprisingly, so are the votes of many Mary Washington students.

The policies of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have jeopardized our generation’s economic future and put our county on the path to Greece, instead of on the path to prosperity. Severe structural unemployment, especially among younger, college-educated people, crippling debt and pervasive pessimism about the future have been the hallmarks of the first Obama presidency, and we do not see any possibility of positive change under a second.

The dark days of Obama’s malaise must come to an end. For the following reasons, and many more, the UMW College Republicans indefatigably support Gov. Mitt Romney for president.

Romney has had a stellar 25 year career in business. During his tenure at Bain Capital, the firm’s investments helped create over 100,000 jobs. Just to name a few, as stated by politifact.comStaples: 89,000 jobs, Sports Authority: 15,000 jobs and Domino’s: 7,000 jobs. If Obama wants to blame Romney for layoffs at failed firms, then he must attribute these successes to him as well. More often than not, Romney’s thoughtful planning and cool-headed calculations have put people on the payrolls and money in the pockets of investors.

Americans need a president who knows what it is like in the private sector. Obama has never run a business, he has never made a payroll and he has never had to deal with the ropes of red tape and taxes that small business owners are forced to endure. Before 2009, he had no executive experience at all.

In contrast, Romney successfully governed the bluest of blue states before seeking the presidency. His leadership as governor of Massachusetts helped stave off a serious fiscal crisis. Michael Kranish’s superb campaign-season biography, “The Real Romney,” colorfully depicts how the governor worked with Democrats to close a $3 billion budget deficit, pass four balanced budgets and stop an economically insane retroactive capital gains tax.

Our generation desperately needs an economic turnaround like the one Romney engineered in Massachusetts. If we graduated today, we would wade into a squalid economy, where 53 percent of recent college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed, according to the Associated Press. For a bit of bipartisanship, we will concur with liberal economist Paul Krugman: “Students who graduate into a bad economy never recover the lost ground. Instead, their earnings are depressed for life.”

There is no evidence that any of this would change if Obama were re-elected. His only campaign promises are retreads from 2008, such as stopping subsidies to oil companies and promising to end tax write-offs for corporate jets. He has already had four years to accomplish these goals.

Even when his plans for recovery were enacted, they did not work. Obama got the $800 billion stimulus he wanted, and Americans got 41 straight months of unemployment above eight percent. This occurred despite the fact that a January 2009 report from the president’s Council of Economic Advisers promised that, if the bill passed, unemployment would never exceed eight percent.

The president has repeatedly taken credit for saving the American auto industry, ignoring the fact that the auto bailout was passed in December 2008 by President George W. Bush.

While Obama habitually blames Bush for all the ills of his presidency, he repeatedly credits Bush’s successes to himself, like ending the war in Iraq.

President Obama campaigned on an antiwar platform and promised to withdraw our troops within 16 months of his inauguration. Instead, he followed the timetable for withdrawal set by President Bush and the Iraqi government in 2008. In fact, Obama even tried to keep 16,000 U.S. troops in Iraq past the December 2011 deadline, according to the New York Times. However, the Iraqis would not allow it.

If Obama were a student at Mary Washington he would have to face the Honor Council for taking credit for other people’s work. Dishonesty is dishonorable and it does not matter if you are a student or the president.

Our generation’s economic security and our nation’s fiscal stability depend on this election. If we are to have any chance of inheriting a better America, then there is no alternative; Mitt Romney must become the 45th president of the United States.