Elections Matter - 2012 Starting Up

So I'm still reeling from the fact that my beloved San Francisco Giants managed to drop three of four to the hated Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend when Monday morning rolled in, and I discovered another reason to darken my mood: President Obama is in fact going to run for reelection. under some thinking, somewhere, it's not like president Obama had a choice. He's the officeholder, therefore, he is supposed to run for reelection.

Because apparently, that's the way it's supposed to work.

In America, we can to reelect our president's. Good bad or indifferent, the incumbent officeholder usually beats the challenger. It doesn't take a PhD in history to see that's true. President Reagan and President Bush, the younger, both managed to hold onto their jobs despite having large portions of the population vehemently against their policies. President Clinton did not have nearly the problems of either Reagan or Bush, the younger, plus he had the damage of writing a pretty good economy into the election. In the past 30 years, the only president to be unseated by a challenger was President George H. W. Bush (or Bush, the elder). Bush, the elder, had the misfortune of writing a weakening economy into the election which was coupled with a lack of vision of how to move forward.

If you look at the numbers, President Obama should lose.

President Obama was elected on the promise that he would restore hope in effect change. You made a grand list of campaign promises which included closing Guantánamo Bay, restoring American prestige abroad, strengthening the economy, doing something about the foreclosure mess, and reforming health care. So let's look at what he's done.

He failed to close the Guantánamo Bay prison. Whether or not President Obama has restored American prestige abroad depends on your viewpoint. If you prefer the United States to be the contritional apologist who expresses remorse for nearly every action taken in the foreign-policy arena over the past 10 years, coupled with indecision and abdication when it comes to decisions about international crises, then yes, President Obama has restored the United States' prestige.

When it comes to the foreclosure crisis, president Obama did proposing get past a plan which was supposed to encourage resolution that would allow people to keep their homes. However, the plan was so weak, the mandates ineffectual, and the incentives essentially nonexistent, that it has been roundly viewed as a failure. As he demonizes Wall Street fortes profiteering over the foreclosure debacle, he has created a new regime of rules which are designed to prevent a future housing bubble crisis. Yet, under his administration, there has not been an investigation or prosecution, that I am aware of, of any allegedly guilty party.

I suppose it's easier to talk about going after Wall Street rather than actually trying to enforce the laws which are really on the books.

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Then there is present health care's great gift to this country: health-care reform. Sold to the American public, which so far hasn't been willing to buy it, as a panacea for all problems. In one hand, it's supposed to make us healthier and give more people access to healthcare done under the current regime. On the other, is a deficit cutting tool which will bring balance back to the budget. So successful is this piece of legislation, that since its passage health-care costs have actually increased. Not only have costs increase, but the administration has been handing out waivers (essentially passes which allows certain groups to not have to conform with the law) to at least thousand entities.when you combine a waverers and the increasing costs, question has to be asked: what good is health-care reform if it only makes the problem worse?

Finally, there is the economy. Obama may not wrecked it, but there is little to show that he's actually helped. In 2008 and 2009, when TARP in the stimulus package were being debated, numbers were produced by Obama's team showing that without these packages unemployment would run up to 8% in 2009 and than 9% in 2010. with the stimulus, they confidently predicted that unemployment would peak at 8%. is April 5, 2011, the unemployment rate stands at 8.8%.

Stolen from Ace.mu.nu

At the beginning of his term, the job losses were understandable. He was in fact inheriting a mess. However, after a while, that became the only excuse for what was happening. And President Obama never failed to remind us that this was not his fault.

Apparently, President Obama does not subscribe to the theory of "the buck stops here".

Broken promises. Ineffective laws. Lack of progress. And he thinks that he deserves to keep his job for another four years. Why?

Well according to the ads that he already has up and running on the web, its because people trust him. And it may be that a plurality (about 46%) of the people in this country do trust President Obama. It shocks the hell out of me because he has done absolutely nothing to earn that trust.

So we'll have to ask yourselves between now and November 2012, is why should we vote for this man? For one thing, even after four years in office, it appears that he values only one thing: remaining president. He does not lead. He allows others to take the initiative and then hold a press conference to correct misconceptions opposition that he subsequently claimed as his own, even though it was staked out by another subordinate member of his party.

He has not reached across the aisle to produce a bipartisan legislation, something he stressed in his previous campaign. Why is that? Because he's consistently taken the position that is palatable only to the extreme left of the Democratic Party. He has been as divisive, in his own way, as Bush, the younger, was from 2000 to 2008.

The question of whether or not bipartisanship is actually desirable is debatable. There have been long periods of time in this country where the parties were bitterly divided, the nation succeeded. The reason we were successful was because both parties realized that at the end of the day if you wanted to retain power, and they needed to either win the argument or achieve a compromise that benefited them. From 2006 until 2010, the Democratic Party controlled Congress. From 2009, onward, they also controlled the White House. In that time, they were unable to deliver substantial progress on any of the issues which are important to the people of this country with the sole exception of healthcare. Judging on those results, as well as the writer which they continue to trot out about what their plans and visions are for the future, how can we say that these people should retain the White House?

President Obama has been ineffective. On at least two occasions during his term of office he has consciously taken actions which are contrary to his duties as president has laid out in the Constitution of the United States. He should have been impeached. If we as citizens vote this man another term of office, and we say that what he has done meet with our approval.

President Obama does not merit nor deserve another four years in office.