I write this less than 3 weeks before the 2012 Presidential election. I am very concerned - Mitt Romney is gaining in the polls. And the more I see of Romney, the worse I feel about who he is and what many of his supporters think.
I divide Romney supporters into 2 groups. First, the die-hard conservative Republicans - the ones that either broadcast on Fox News or get their information from it. Second, the more independent voter who looks to see who is the more competent.
Obama was on a roll for the past few weeks getting the votes of his base and the independents. Romney's campaign suffered from suspicions due to his lack of transparency. He did not reveal his tax liability and how he shelters his money. He didn't give an explicit explanation that shows how his tax reduction will bring the deficit down. He didn't say publicly how exactly he would deal with the Arab-Israeli dispute, or Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, China, or Russia.
Then came some damaging events for Romney: the secret recordings in Florida - which gave insight into at the very least his attitude towards a large part of the electorate. His "47 percent" remark drew enormous criticism. Romney at first said it was "unelegant" but did not show remorse. The pollsters detected that there was a growing mistrust as Romney's numbers fell.
However, at the first debate, Romney made a comeback. He did so without revealing any more of his plans, and without showing any remorse on the "47-percent" remark. He did it by first portraying our current economic state as Obama's failure, and then stating that the usual conservative free market approach coupled with a universal tax cut will be the way back to prosperity. In the debate (unlike the recording) he only hinted at the "47-percent" by framing opposition to government solutions as only "against the government" policy (especially Obama's), not against "the people" who receive the government benefits. Clever, and it went unchallenged.
I didn't catch all of the debate. I was driving home and listened to some of it on radio. It was clear that Obama was unprepared. I was screaming the rebuttals to Romney at my windshield but Obama failed to go on the offensive. I remembered that I had seen the lackluster Obama before - it reminded me of some of the 2008 debates. When I got home I saw the split-screen TV that had Romney calmly smiling during Obama's answers - which gave him another advantage since Obama seemed nervous.
A few days later my fears became justified: the polls now show Romney ahead. Clearly the independents shifted.
I cannot explain what happened to Obama, and I hope he does a better job in the next 2 debates (more on this later), but I wish people understood exactly what Romney was selling.
A few examples:
First, his philosophy on government. In an era of high deficits AND high unemployment, it's easy to say government tries to do too much and claim that if only we brought down government spending and gave the money back to "you, the taxpayer" a massive number of new private sector jobs would be generated. More on this later.
Second, the notion that the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) leads to a end of choice (freedom).
Finally, the specifics of his tax policy and the deficit issue. The Republican argument that we pay too much taxes always has appeal, and the easiest thing to do in a campaign is to claim that everyone, yes everyone, benefits from their solution.
I wish Obama had brought up that we are a country evolving in finding solutions to problems. Let's not forget how we ended slavery. It was a government-based solution that was opposed by business. But the overriding concern over the business interest was the moral way we treat each other as human beings and citizens.
The same holds true for child labor laws, worker protection laws, and minimum wage. Government has intervened. But even though businesses have to pay more, we have some degree of ensuring some morality in the employer-employee relationship. There's almost always going to be that business interest - morality tradeoff.
(As an aside, isn't it ironic that Conservatives deal with the immigration issue by calling for a "fence" but not really going after businesses that hire illegals. I don't see guns and rallies in front of those businesses. Perhaps it is because those businesses benefit from the illegals' lower wages?)
The concept of Government investment is, as we know, nothing new. But it is interesting that Republicans, in the 1936 Presidential campaign, claimed that FDR's New Deal was and will continue to be a substantial failure. Again, they use the same arguments that we hear today - that we cannot have prosperity if the government takes "our" money and it it's always better to satisfy the business interest. The Republicans' morality believes that the "freedom" of striving for profit is, and will generate good behavior. We've seen lots of examples that say - "not always".
Another aspect in our country's moral evolution has been in retirement and health care. Keep in mind - Social Security and Medicare are more like insurance policies - not entitlement programs. The conservative objection is that these are compulsory. But these are programs that benefit retirees - people who have paid into a system that just guarantees that you get back what you put in. The free market could get lucky and do just as well or better - but there are no guarantees. So we've evolved to favoring some safety for our seniors - do we want to turn back on this?
The evolution of health care requirements for non-seniors, as I see it, affects both the public and private sectors. The public sector expanded programs to cover some disabilities and to those who are living in poverty. The private sector implemented health insurance so that individuals and families can buy into a pool of health benefit money so long as they agree to the rules set by the insurer.
I'm not sure exactly why health care costs have risen so much, but I see several factors. As a child, my father had insurance to cover only "emergency" events and long hospital stays. I was not covered under any policy. The rare "normal" doctor visits were paid for out of pocket. Fortunately, I was a healthy child. My father, however, had a serious heart condition and died at age 62 (I was 16) when he suffered his first heart attack. I don't know if bypasses were available back in 1970, but I doubt that any preventative procedure would have qualified for emergency insurance. But we didn't have the money to pay for it out of pocket, so my Dad took his chances.
When you combinine the growth of private plans that cover non-emergency treatments as well as the public sector plans for the disabled and disadvantaged, we see more expenditures in health care than in my father's day. You can look at it a couple of ways: now that we have insurance, the costs seem more transparent. This is good in that it takes a lot of the worry away and people really get treated early and live longer. But the downside is that expectations for coverage rise as we expect our out-of-pocket expenses to go down.
I have no great answers to this, but what I can say is that the Republican message that the ACA results in less individual freedom is bogus. I can speak from personal experience that it is Insurance Companies, not the Government, not the doctors, that are the impediment to the care I often need. For example, it is the insurance company that dictates what medication I should take for my allergy. My doctor was eventually able to get what I needed approved, but I pay more for it because it isn't the medication of "choice".
Romney and the Republicans want to sell the notion that the Government is intruding too much. But under ACA, we still have private plans. The "intrusion" is that these plans must meet the standards that doctors and consumers want, even if it digs into the insurer's profitability.
Thus, my exit question for Health Care is: Do we want to continue to have health care decisions be totally market (read: profit) based, allowing people to fend for themselves, or is our moral code OK with having some regulations so that everyone in this country knows that he or she won't go broke due to bad luck with his or her health?
If we can keep the costs down, if we can still enforce some individual responsibility in both health care and retirement, and if we can make sure there is no fraud, I'll go along with Obamacare and not privatize Social Security.
Regarding tax policy: We've been down this road before. Romney and Ryan are showing Santa Claus and hiding Scrooge. You cannot hide an important question such as "how do you get more revenues when you are cutting taxes" behind a answer such as "I'll work with Congress to figure this out". I hope Obama finds a way to make sure Romney doesn't get away with this.
Related to taxes is the issue of the deficit. As Bill Clinton urged, do the math. Compare the 1990's to the last decade. Look at the fact that the increases in unemployment under Bush resulted in higher unemployment insurance costs (and keep in mind that our citizens paid for this up front, so they are not "entitlements"). Romney and Ryan need to answer to the Clinton line that the Republicans "got us into the mess, complained that Obama didn't get us out fast enough, and want to be put back in charge".
I hope the Obama campaign gets a few ideas from this writeup and the next 2 debates go much better. I will write a foreign policy piece shortly.
Thanks for reading.
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