Michael Smerconish ’14 and Rohan Rajagopalan ’14
Barrack Hussein Obama: everything about the man, down to his name, divides the nation into separate camps.
The President has come under tremendous pressure to fix an ailing economy and has been criticized for his seemingly slow progress. The various bailouts he has promoted have stirred controversy. In fairness, would a Republican president have done differently? It is impossible to say what would have happened without the bailout, but there was a distinct possibility of a greater depression.
Obama has also taken a harsh stance on Al-Qaeda, and he led the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. More recently, he has declared his disapproval of the leadership in Yemen, something George W. Bush failed to do for about seven years.
The United States’ reputation as a respectable nation was repaired as a result of Obama’s election. There were celebrations in the streets of foreign cities and the United States was once again a global country. Obama took many steps to promote peace and international dialogue and was eventually rewarded with a Nobel Peace Prize. Obama’s presidency has been far from perfect, but given the situation into which he was thrust (by none other than George W. Bush), he has done a far better job than most could have done.
Obama’s greatest weapon going into the presidential race is his competition, or lack thereof. In an election that will most likely come down to the 20 percent of independent voters in the country, it seems that many of the Republican candidates do not have the more moderate views necessary to win the race. For example, all of the leading eight republican presidential candidates (Perry, Romney, Cain, Gingrich, Paul, Bachmann, Santorum, and Huntsman) are opposed to full marriage rights for same-sex couples. Although these stances may be the key for success for the republican nomination, how can these views possibly win voters when only 40 percent of America is opposed to same-sex marriage? Candidates like Rick Perry, the current leader of Republican polls, also share a common conservative stance against evolution, which Perry has called a “theory” with “some gaps.”
With respect to global warming, Perry stated that he would not “put America’s economy in jeopardy on a scientific theory that is not settled yet.” However, 71 percent of Americans believe that global warming should be on a medium to very high priority for the president. Despite these statistics, the economy remains the most prominent problem up for discussion. When asked in a recent debate if they would support a 10-to-1 reduction in spending coupled with tax increases, all of the republic presidential candidates said no. Again, this stance is rather surprising considering recent polls that show 64.5 percent of Americans to believe that the deficit should be reduced through tax increases.
Such statistics make it clear that the Republican candidates are solely focused on appealing to the dedicated, conservative, Tea-Party republicans who will have the biggest voice in deciding the republican nominee. However, if the candidates continue with this mindset, Obama will have a significant advantage in the general election when both Democrats and Independents are added to the equation.