I'll first admit that I voted for Obama in 2008 and I voted for Kerry in 2004. Now that any suspicions that I might be a right-wing extremist are hopefully addressed, let me put this election in succinct terms. Whereas I was embarrassed and ashamed of George W. Bush as President, I'm terrified at the prospect of a second Obama term.
I spent a year living in Germany from 1998-1999. That was at the height of the Impeachment of Bill Clinton, but nobody in Europe bats an eye at a good sex scandal. America was at the top of its game and Americans were full of pride as the 20th century came to a close. Then came September 11th, 2001, which provoked an enormous outpouring of sympathy from around the world. Unfortunately, President Bush was very quick to squander that political capital. No one minded much that he pounced on Afghanistan, but by the end of 2003, it was pretty clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and America appeared to be engaged in oil-thirsty Imperialism more than justified peace keeping. Already, Americans abroad were experiencing condemnation. Students traveling in Europe found that they were more accepted in public if they sewed a Canadian patch on their backpack. I was very disappointed when the American people validated George Bush's presidency with a second term and I thought I was ready for "Hope and Change" when 2008 came around. I felt that it was too soon for Obama considering he'd just gotten to the Senate, but he was the only alternative on the ballot.
Disappointment set in for me pretty quickly in 2009, though. The trillions and trillions of dollars tacked onto the debt in order to bail out the crooks that caused the 2008 financial collapse were what sparked my political awakening. I have been uneasy about the national debt ever since high school when a few thousand dollars per citizen was a shocking statistic. Now it's ten times that amount with no slowdown in sight. As one might imagine, I was among the first on the Tea Party bandwagon and was bursting with renewed hope when sanity prevailed and Massachusetts elected Scott Brown (R) to the Senate upon Ted Kennedy's death. Nevertheless, the health care bill, which is unaffordable and rightfully unpopular, got rammed through in the most despicable display of Congressional gimmickry by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Obama has simply failed to improve any of the problems he inherited. In terms of the financial crisis, he is working only to worsen our long-term prospects. A few of the more egregious examples are the aforementioned Obamacare; his extra-Congressional directive giving amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants without doing anything to secure the border; and the active recruitment of countless new enrollees of governmental assistance, e.g. free cell phones, EBT cards accepted for the most frivolous purchases, disability benefits for anyone suffering from "anxiety" that has already maxed out their 99 weeks of unemployment, and his new order reversing Bill Clinton's welfare reform by no longer requiring recipients to look for work.
Finally, Obama declared that successful startups and established businesses do not owe their success to the hard work and ingenuity of their founders and leaders, but rather to "everyone" for building the roads, bridges, schools, power grid, etc. After such Socialist drivel, how is this race at all close? Unless we manage to make a serious course correction in the fall, I fear that America really will go over the brink. I pray that there are not too many states as incomprehensible as my state of Massachusetts, which will surely deliver a double-digit victory to Obama. If you've already decided to vote for Obama, I hope you reconsider because I think you'll regret his second term as much as I have his first.
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