Don’t forget to Add: Obama ran for his state office un-opposed. He brought up a tactic to disqualify his opponent before the election.
… because God decided to keep on raping Romney and his fellow Republicans because He wants to impregnate them
I actually didn’t much care for Romney as the GOP nominee, but if you objectively compare resumes even the most ardent ideolog has to give it to Romney. Not saying that resume is everything, but I consider it a meaningful factor. For what it’s worth, I thought Bill Clinton had a better resume than Bob Dole (except for military service).
Does the mormon god live near Kolob? Yay…finally found that little bugger.
I don’t know if you were referring to Romney’s resume for a private sector job, in which case of course he has the better resume, however, I assume you meant his resume in the context of qualification for being POTUS.
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What edge does Romney have in education? He did the JD/MBA program instead of the JD only like Obama…unless you’re saying that dual degree graduates are unequivocally better? Push…
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Romney has great experience in PE. Now, how does being a PE executive qualify you to be President? Or even how does any business experience for that matter? POTUS is not running a business!
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If you exclude Obama’s first term, then they’re roughly equal.
To me they seem pretty comparable, highly educated guys with modest experience in politics. However, you (and some members of this forum) seem to be fixated on his Bain Capital experience as direct qualification for the presidency. I think he’s extremely qualified to be Secretary of the Treasury…
LDS movement? LSD movement sounds so much better
He lost for many reasons, but the main one is:
Are you saying a Harvard JD received as part of a joint program is less valid than a straight Harvard JD? If that’s not what you’re saying, I really don’t see how anyone can argue a push when they have the same law degree and Romney has an MBA from one of the 5 best business schools in the world on top of that.
You’re free to disagree, but I personally believe that being a management consultant, cofounding a very successful PE firm, and saving both a consulting company and the Olymipic Games from bankruptcy is more qualification for POTUS than being a church-based community organizer and a law school lecturer. If Obama had been dean of the law school, I would give him some major props for that, but he wasn’t.
POTUS is all about being THE BOSS and being a manager. Cofounding and running a company and sitting on boards of portfolio companies provides far more experience managing than being a community organizer or 1 of 100 senators does. I actually think being a US Senator is piss-poor experience for being president, republican or democrat. It’s fine for VP because he’ll (or hopefully soon, she’ll) have knowledge of the inner workings of DC, but I would prefer POTUS’s background to be governor (or mayor of a major city), VP, military leader, private sector CEO, or head of a major government department (i.e. I would have no issue with Hillary’s qualifications for POTUS, wouldn’t agree with most of her positions, but would be comfortable with her background). Not saying being a former governor is a guarantee (see Jimmy Carter and GWB), but it is certainly the most relevant experience as far as I’m concerned. To that end, I don’t think Marco Rubio is particularly well qualified to be POTUS, but he potentially appeals to important demographics and wil get a lot of attention as a result. Nor do I think Paul Ryan is qualified, maybe if he were elevated to Speaker, but that won’t happen.
higgmond…take a break and go watch skyfall with mrs.higgmond
JD/MBA at Harvard in 4 years is not easy. Both the admissions pool and the people in that program are generally more competitive than normal Harvard MBA or JD. It’s even harder to finish in the top 5% of your class, which Romney did. Obama was president of HLR… which is also impressive, and Obama had fewer advantageous growing up.
Private Equity is not the same as policy, yes. However, in the upper tiers, there are clearly similarities in leadership requirements, politics, dealmaking, and making hard choices. Plus, don’t forget that Romney did other things as well. He was the CEO of a top tier consulting company, and was (somehow) the Governor of an extremely liberal state. Romney has repeatedly shown to be the best of a pool of extremely competitive people, and has managed to work with people who are culturally the opposite as him.
The argument “X does not qualify you to be President” is often abused. No job qualifies you to be President. Obama was clearly not qualified to be President. The breakdown of leadership qualities and values is what matters when electing a Presidential candidate.
I give Obama points for actually having President job experience. However, in 2016, we will have two candidates with no President job experience. If we had elected a new President in 2012, we would have the option of an experienced candidate in 2016. Just throwing that out there.
I’m not saying that this makes Romney the ideal Presidential candidate. However, if we are talking about paper resume, Romney > Obama.
“No job qualifies you to be President”
"Obama was clearly not qualified to be President. "
Let us absorb these statements together. By your logic, people like Lincoln and Truman should have never been president.
Being POTUS is not about being THE BOSS. It’s about being the most powerful politician. It’s about setting a message and a narrative, and convincing vast numbers of people to follow it. Obama has been far better at that than Romney, and that’s why he’s president.
It has absolutely nothing to do with being a Harvard MBA or M&Aing on the buyside.
Not directly… but clearly to be chosen as the leader of a group of highly competitive people, you must have those qualities.
I’ll agree that if you’d never heard of these guys or anything about them, Romney’s resume looks more prestigious than Obama’s. And having been a governor, Romney has executive experience in both business and government contexts, so Romney is probably more qualified in terms of experience than Obama (or McCain) was in 2008. But Romney did not run against 2008 Obama, he ran against 2012 Obama, and so the 4 years of POTUS counts and is impressive (and especially matters in the foreign policy aspect, which governors don’t deal with much - except a tiny bit on things like trade and immigration, where they can take some supplementary actions).
Also, if you consider where they started in life and what they had to overcome to get there, Obama starts looking much more impressive. Mitt was already plugged in to the political and financial community since childhood, with a father who was Governor and I believe a Senator (don’t quite remember those details). Obama had to break in from the outside. So Obama actually has more experience of what it’s like to be poor and non-privileged in this country (and non-white), and that resonates with a lot of people.
I think that both candidates qualified for the office. But they have different outlooks and sets of priorities. Ultimately, it’s what policies they will enable or disable and what you think those policies will do for you and the rest of the country that matters in terms of their vote.
Even in a job hiring situation (remember that here, you are effectively hiring your boss, not your employee), you don’t just hire the best resume. You look for fit with your and your company’s values and priorities. A highly capable person that has the opposite set of priorities as you will be very good at making your life difficult, and you don’t hire that person, even if they have a great resume.
Eight years of Bush and repeated crap like Todd Akin make it difficult for me to remember that not all republicans are idiots. Romney is not an idiot and he is qualified for the job. But he would have been pushed around by all of those other idiots in order to get anything done in Congress and I thought it was imperative not to empower their hands.
This discussion is so 2008.
This argument has some merit. A lot of the republicans in the House scare me. As a counter though, democrats retained control of the Senate, so it’s not like the tea partiers in the House could have set an agenda that would have made it through the Senate.
boo govt.
It’s not 1860 anymore and although I didn’t know Abraham Lincoln, President Obama is no Abraham Lincoln. When Truman was elected to POTUS, he had VP experience, war-time POTUS experience and ended WW2. If you believe Iraq and Afghanistan are comparable to WW2, you might as well stop reading.
Being POTUS is about being the boss and President Obama repeatedly makes it clear that he is the boss. Being a presidential candidate is about setting a message and a narrative and convincing vast numbers of people that they want to follow it. No one would argue that Romney did a better job of that.
Let’s see where the next 4 year go though. As I said either earlier in this thread or in another election-related thread, I’ll leave the GOP in 2 years if they throw a bunch of tea party candidates at the next House election, so my thoughts and votes will be totally meaningless as I choose among various 3rd party candidates.
I agree that there are loony Democrats too. But they don’t scare me as much as the loony Republicans.
When I look at the political scene today, as someone who has voted Democrat most of his life, I often find myself wondering if the best thing I can do is to try to do something to strengthen the moderate Republican wing. Simply because Democrats need someone they can actually compromise with (and this will also disempower the far left of the Democratic party, which is just fine with me as long as there is a moderate Republican wing to work with).
I prefer to vote Democrat and try to tack to the center. To me, that’s a minimax strategy that is actually more conservative in terms of change. But it’s not an effective strategy when the Republican party is basically under attack from the far right, and any Republican who even thinks about compromising with Democrats gets targeted for elimination in the next primary by the far right.
Ultimately it comes down to a Democratic party where the far left has more influence than I’d like, versus a Republican party that is anti-science, anti-education, anti-gay, thinks poverty is the outward manifestation of personal inferiority, and wealth in any form is a baptism that washes away sin. I used to think that Republicans were just a little harsh and unforgiving, but those guys have been pummeled by ideologues and turned into the party that promises to protect the wealth of the richest and offers prayer-in-schools and defense-of-marriage hogwash to everyone else.
(I understand that I’ve painted with a broad brush here, but this is my general feeling about the divisions in the parties).
The silver lining for (sane) republicans is this should force the party more to the center. Far right social policies are clearly being tolerated less by voters - especially a woman’s right to choose. Women came out and ended the careers of two politicians for being idiots. That will resonate within the party.
Over the next four years, republicans have a chance to come back to reality and redefine their base. If they can do that then this loss will be well worth it. Of course, it’s also possible another four years of Obama will push republicans even further into crazytown.
I’m higgmond and I endorse this post. Now if we could only get a decent number of prominent, moderate democrats and republicans to leave their parties and form a legitimate 3rd party, maybe we could move this country forward.