9c916203   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats.d, soc.women, alt.fifty-plus.friends   
   XPost: soc.retirement   
   From: kinkysr@yahoo.com   
      
   Romney's non-defined "plans" might well knock the country back into   
   recession.   
      
   ======================   
   "Washington Post endorsement: Four more years for President Obama"   
      
   By Editorial Board   
   October 25,  2012   
      
      
   MUCH OF THE 2012 presidential campaign has dwelt on the past, but the   
   key questions are who could better lead the country during the next   
   four years — and, most urgently, who is likelier to put the government   
   on a more sound financial footing.   
      
   That second question will come rushing at the winner as soon as the   
   votes are tallied. Absent any action, a series of tax hikes and   
   spending cuts will take effect Jan. 1 that might well knock the   
   country back into recession. This will be a moment of peril but also   
   of opportunity. How the president-elect navigates it will go a long   
   way toward determining the success of his presidency and the health of   
   the nation.   
      
   President Barack Obama is better positioned to be that navigator than   
   is his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts governor Mitt   
   Romney.   
      
   We come to that judgment with eyes open to the disappointments of Mr.   
   Obama’s time in office. He did not end, as he promised he would, “our   
   chronic avoidance of tough decisions” on fiscal matters. But Mr. Obama   
   is committed to the only approach that can succeed: a balance of   
   entitlement reform and revenue increases. Mr. Romney, by contrast, has   
   embraced his party’s reality-defying ideology that taxes can always go   
   down but may never go up. Along that road lies a future in which   
   interest payments crowd out everything else a government should do,   
   from defending the nation to caring for its poor and sick to investing   
   in its children. Mr. Romney’s future also is one in which an ever-   
   greater share of the nation’s wealth resides with the nation’s   
   wealthy, at a time when inequality already is growing.   
      
   Even granting the importance of the fiscal issue, a case might still   
   be made for Mr. Romney if Mr. Obama’s first term had been a failure;   
   if Mr. Romney were more likely to promote American security and   
   leadership abroad; or if the challenger had shown himself superior in   
   temperament, capacity and character. In fact, not one of these is   
   true.   
      
   Start with the first-term record. We were disappointed that Mr. Obama   
   allowed the bipartisan recommendations of his fiscal commission to   
   wither and die and that he and Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) failed   
   to seal a fiscal deal in the summer of 2011. Mr. Obama alienated   
   Congress and business leaders by isolating himself inside a tight   
   White House circle that manages to be both arrogant and thin-skinned.   
   Too often his administration treats business as an obstacle rather   
   than a partner. He hardly tried to achieve the immigration reform and   
   climate-change policy he promised.   
      
   But economic head winds and an uncompromising opposition explain some   
   of these failures — and render that much more impressive the   
   substantial accomplishments of Mr. Obama’s first term.   
      
   FOREMOST AMONG these is the president’s leadership in helping to   
   steady an economy that was in free fall when he took office. It may be   
   hard to recall how frightening that time was, as the nation’s finances   
   were close to seizing up. President George W. Bush had taken the first   
   steps away from the abyss, winning approval from a balky Congress for   
   the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), but nonetheless he had   
   bequeathed a mess to his successor.   
      
   With no time to catch his breath, Mr. Obama designed and won approval   
   for a stimulus bill that slowed job loss and helped restore   
   confidence. He engineered a rescue of the auto industry. The steady   
   experts he put in charge of economic policy, notably Treasury   
   Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, navigated between the Democratic   
   Party’s left, which urged populist measures that would have been   
   expensive and ineffectual, and an obstructionist Republican Party,   
   which at times seemed content to inflict great harm on the country.   
   The industrial-policy element of the recovery plan, favoring high-   
   speed rail where it’s not needed and electric cars that consumers   
   won’t buy, wasted a lot of money. But on balance the administration,   
   working with the Federal Reserve, succeeded in its core mission. The   
   rebound of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 6,626 in March 2009   
   to above 13,000 today is no comfort to the many Americans who remain   
   unemployed or poorer than before the crisis. But it reflects a   
   recovery of the faith upon which every economy depends.   
      
   Mr. Obama’s second signal accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act,   
   will go a long way when fully implemented toward ending the scandal of   
   45 million Americans being without health insurance. It also could   
   slow the unaffordable rise in health-care costs, though it is hardly a   
   full answer to that challenge.   
      
   Mr. Obama advanced the leading civil-rights struggle of the day when   
   he ended the military’s discrimination against gay men and lesbians   
   and declared his support for same-sex marriage. He took an important   
   step against climate change by promulgating, and persuading industry   
   to support, ambitious fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks.   
      
   Mr. Obama continued Mr. Bush’s generous campaign against HIV/AIDS,   
   especially in Africa. He prodded states toward useful reforms in   
   teacher accountability and school choice. Though he failed to champion   
   immigration reform, his Justice Department stood up to the worst   
   harassment of immigrants in Republican-governed states such as Arizona   
   and Alabama. He peppered his Cabinet with leaders of substance,   
   including Hillary Rodham Clinton at State and Arne Duncan at   
   Education, and he nominated and won confirmation for two well-   
   qualified Supreme Court justices.   
      
   OVERSEAS, TOO, there were successes and failures. Mr. Obama’s   
   administration vigorously pursued al-Qaeda and tracked down its   
   leader, Osama bin Laden. He supported a popular uprising against   
   Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi. He recognized the importance of   
   bolstering allies in Asia against Chinese bullying, and he opened   
   trade talks with Asian nations intended to encourage an alternative to   
   China’s state-sponsored, often corrupt capitalism.   
      
   On the other hand, he was hesitant and inconstant in responding to the   
   two greatest and most unexpected foreign-policy opportunities of his   
   presidency: the pro-democracy uprising in Iran in 2009 and the Arab   
   Spring two years later. Mr. Obama kept the United States on the   
   sidelines as Syria plunged into civil war, costing more than 30,000   
   lives — most of them civilians — and breeding extremism that may   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)