Romney would probably be more willing to execute hard decisions. Obama tries to satisfy all, which obviously never works and ends in a nothing accomplished deadlock
I wish we could combine the ideas of Obama with the wanton audacity of Bush junior…I think more than any other president, Obama needs to be very tactical in building up political capital and spending it in opportune moments…
I tend to lean left on most political issues, but feel like Obama has been a major letdown. My biggest concern with Romney is that he will bow down to the religious fundamentalist part of his party. Yes, he is Mormon, but did not push for Mormonism to be taught in Massachusetts public schools. I wish the evangelical Republicans followed that philosophy.
I think you have too much faith in him. I believe that the institition itself corrupts people, just the way the whole political system is set up in the United States leads to suboptimal ‘populist’ decision making. These types of mistake will emerge and I don’t think it really matters whose in power. Voting is more about picking a lesser of two evils.
Often presidents can either be populist in pursue of more votes, or do the right thing and help some future presidents get all the credit.
I voted for people in the past based on reasoning like “I’m sure he is lying - he won’t do those awful crazy things, but the other guy might” - it’s a very weird game…
I guess I’m not the only one who is having trouble finding positive things to support about either candidate. By my count, only 5 posts in this tread actually put forth a positive reason to support either one and I think I’m being pretty kind classifying some of the 5 as positive reasons (6 if you count good hair).
That’s the real problem with Romney though, he doesn’t have a natural supporter base in the GOP. Not the evangelicals, not white working class, not libertarians, not fiscal conservatives etc. etc. Plus he’s not Catholic or Protestant, so no natural base there either. The only faction I think of that can support him is neocons.
Obama on the other hand: Blacks (check), Yuppies (check), Elite University Liberals (check), Social Liberals (Check), Economic Liberals (check), Hispanics (unsure), white working class (doubt it).
I think broadly this is just the result of conservatism just going through an internal struggle to redefine itself after basically mistakenly supporting Bush. To me US conservatives seem to be mired in a pretty confused ideology. Conservatism is usually presented in the US as being about “small government, low taxes” when really conservatism is supposed to be built around an idealistic notion of ethnic nationalism. This notion of ethnic nationalism has been the source for the “small government, low taxes”, but by making the latter the “ideology”, things get really confusing. Outreach to minorities? Answer to that for the conservative party depends on what the “ideology” is. Wars of nation building? Answer again depends…etc.
As a result we get a good looking generical republican candidate.
Well, I have a few reasons to support either candidate:
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Not an idiot (Bush Jr, Kerry, McCain, Biden)
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Not crazy (Palin, Nancy Pelosi)
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Not entirely evil (Dick Cheney)
The economy is not so good, and no one has any great solutions, but we could do worse than a Harvard law professor and a genius consulting/finance executive.
Anyone catch the HBO doc on George H.W. Bush, 41? It was actually really good. He had a pretty interesting life. Seems like he was a cool dude back in the day.
yeah, even though I think he was an aweful president. On a personal level he’s a guy I wouldn’t mind drinking near beers and eating pretzels with.
Not that I know GW personally, but I never thought he was a bad guy. He was just manipulated by a bunch of evil people, and he did not have the strength or character to fight back. It must have been hard to resist control of his dad’s club that was treating him like a puppet.
I remember hearing a historian a few weeks ago on the Charlie Rose show state that Bush 41 will be considered the most underrated president in the modern era.