The Bucknellian

John Coleman & Kamran Khan
Contributing Writers

During the first presidential debate, Barack Obama did not live up to the expectations of his supporters. Unfortunately, he was not prepared to defend himself against Mitt Romney’s ever-changing policies.

Recently, Romney has been attempting to appeal to centrist voters, so he has been changing his position on key issues, tending to lean less to the right than he has in the past.

During the second debate, however, Obama was on top of his political game. He pounced on Romney, eager to call Romney out on his fickle stances. Obama was significantly more confident this time around, calling Romney out for opposing the Affordable Care Act since Romney previously supported a similar bill as governor of Massachusetts.

When asked to provide specifics about how his plan to reduce the nation’s deficit is mathematically sound, Romney had no answer. The ideas that Romney and Paul Ryan propose just don’t make sense.

Throughout the whole campaign, Romney and Ryan have been protecting fat-cat businessman such as the Koch Brothers, who have been giving Romney millions of dollars to protect their personal interests. If Obama is elected, then their selfish lifestyles are immediately threatened.

Another issue of contention for the election has been reducing the federal deficit. Obama wants to increases taxes for the wealthiest one percent of Americans to 40 percent in order to reduce the deficit. He also wants to let the Bush-era tax cuts expire, which will bring in another $800 million over the next few years. He also wants to close loopholes for billionaires and big businesses, such as Exxon Mobile, that don’t need government subsidies to thrive.

Even still, all of these policies combined will not balance the budget because of the state of the economy. Looking back at Bush’s presidency, we see that Bush came into power during a surplus, but when he left office, the U.S. was in over $10 trillion dollars of debt. Where was this balanced budget approach when Bush was waging an unjust war on Iraq? That war alone cost the United States millions of dollars and instead of using taxes to fund this war, Bush put the tab on a “credit card” that Americans are forced to pay in the future.

Another hot-topic issue in this election is the economy. How can it be fixed? Obama has created five million jobs with his policies over the last four years, and has made the tough decision to bail out the automotive industry which has created over 800,000 jobs. Romney refuted this idea and wanted to let Detroit go bankrupt.

Obama also detailed the production of oil, saying that production has doubled in the last 30 years. Natural gas is being produced on public lands at its highest rate. The United States has also been investing in green energy in an attempt to liberate the United States from dependencies on other countries, which would ultimately lower gas prices.

Obama believes that America needs an educated work force to progress. He believes there is a wealth of opportunity to create jobs in STEM fields if citizens are educated in math and science. He has increased Pell Grants and lowered the interest rates on student loans to make it affordable for students to attend college. Romney wants to cut out Pell Grants and other education spending in order to balance the federal budget.

As far as foreign policy, Obama ended the war in Iraq, supervised the killing of Osama Bin Laden, weakened al-Qaida and helped bring democracy and peace to Arab nations. Obama has a strong commitment to peace and security for Israel, as shown by the tough sanctions he implemented to weaken Iran’s currency. Recently sparked protests in Iran are proof that Obama’s sanctions are working. Obama has made the United States safer and more respectable in the eyes of the world because of how he has made strengthened relationships with allies in the world.

Obama has demonstrated success and plans for improvement in the economy, the federal deficit and foreign policy, proving that he is the superior presidential candidate. While you can argue against his policies, you cannot claim that he did not deliver on keeping America safer and stronger; he is a man of his word.

Joe Selvaggio and Josh Cohen
Contributing Writers

The first presidential debate of the 2012 campaign took place Oct. 3 at the University of Denver in Denver, Colo. It is clear that the challenger, Mitt Romney, came away besting the incumbent president, Barack Obama. An Oct. 4-5, Gallup poll revealed that
those who viewed the debate overwhelmingly believe Romney did a better job than Obama, 72 percent to 20 percent. Sources from both the left and the right agree that Obama’s performance lacked preparedness and presidential gravitas, while Romney appeared more confident, more capable and better equipped for the debate.

Throughout the debate, Romney pressed Obama hard on a multitude of critical domestic policy issues.

On energy, Romney discussed his goal of becoming energy independent by focusing on harnessing untapped domestic energy sources, such as oil and natural gas. He criticized Obama’s energy policy, highlighting regulatory suffocation, such as the drastic reduction in drilling permits, and the $90 billion of wasted investments in the president’s green-energy agenda.

Romney’s ability to command the stage carried on into the discussion about jobs, where he focused on the importance of allowing the private sector to create new jobs by reducing individual tax rates, which are being paid by 54 percent of small businesses that currently employ over half of all private sector employees. He also plans to eliminate incentive-distorting tax deductions for both individuals and corporations, many of which were inserted into the tax code over the years as sweetheart deals for supporters of politicians of both parties. Many of these tax deductions simply lead to suboptimal resource allocations, as individuals and corporations respond to tax incentives instead of market price signals. In addition to the micro-economic benefits of shifting from tax preferences to lower marginal tax rates, Romney points to the macro-economic benefit of lower marginal tax rates, which incentivize increased employment of labor and capital leading to economic growth and increased tax revenues.

Romney argued that the president’s current plan will only do more to stifle the job market, based in part on the abysmal record that Obama tallied in his first term. Obama sold his 2009 stimulus plan to a naïve Congress, based largely on a promise that the unemployment rate would not rise above 8 percent, if the plan were to be approved, and that by September 2012 the unemployment rate would be no higher than 5.6 percent. Of course, the actual unemployment rate peaked at 10 percent in 2009 despite passage of the stimulus bill. The actual announced unemployment rate in September 2012 was a whopping 7.8 percent, and if it weren’t for discouraged workers leaving the labor force since Obama took office, the rate reported in September would have been 10.7 percent.

The vaunted “job growth” of the president and his surrogates during the exceptionally weak recovery of his term has been insufficient to keep pace with the growth of the population of working-age Americans. Romney stayed true to his campaign’s message throughout the course of the debate. He championed small government, while slamming the president on his reckless deficit spending and amassing of a huge national debt. He was able to voice his opinion decidedly against Obamacare and the individual mandates that it brings, while maintaining that healthcare reform would be a priority of a Romney administration.

Besides displaying a clear understanding of key domestic policy issues, Romney was finally able to show his presidential poise. For the first time since campaigning began, he stood toe-to-toe on the same stage as the president of the United States and debated as no less than an equal, coming away as the victor. Thus far, election polls have shifted dramatically across the board as the second debate approaches. It will be interesting to see how Obama responds to the challenge of being behind 0-1 in the debates and behind in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. It has yet to be seen if Obama has the ability to climb out of the shadow cast by Romney.