A Quick Post on the Last Debate and Upcoming Election

That debate last night was rather boring.  I felt like Romney was just trying to find something to pick at with Obama’s foreign policy, but the two seemed to be more in agreement on most things than not.  Obama took jabs at Romney for some comments he made about who the biggest threat to American security was (Russia and NOT al-Qaeda), and Romney criticized Obama for not putting in crippling sanctions against Iran sooner, but other than that it was rather ho-hum.  Of course, I went to bed at 10, so maybe I missed something in the last half hour or whatever.  If I did, shame on me!

But I came away from it thinking that Obama is a better leader for our country than Romney.  Yeah, people think he hasn’t done enough in his 3.75 years in office, but I really have to disagree.  And here’s why: on 9/11/2001 the World Trade Center Twin Towers were destroyed.  I was in Manhattan a few weeks ago, and the Freedom Tower is a beautiful piece of architecture, but it is still being built—eleven years after the worst tragedy in our nation’s history.

When Obama took office our economy was on the path to becoming the worst economy in our nation’s history.  We were inches away from slipping into a depression.  We were fighting two wars, people were losing their homes in droves, unemployment was sky-rocketing, auto manufacturers were ready to close their doors and put hundreds of thousands out of work.  The economy that Bill Clinton had built had been destroyed in the eight years that George W. Bush was in office.

I think people give George W. too much flak.  Ok, maybe he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box, but he had a lot on his plate.  Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t have gotten into a war in Iraq, but it was bound to happen sooner or later—just like some sort of conflict in Syria and Iran will happen sooner or later as well.  And with 9/11 and Katrina, George W.’s presidency was one heck of a wild ride.  It’s like the country had one gushing wound after another, and all he had to work with was band-aids and a little iodine.

I don’t think anyone realized the repercussions that all the trauma and turmoil of the 2000’s had on our country.  And we really do live in the moment.  Quick, think back—who won the World Series in 2009?  The Yankees did.  Who won Season Nine of American Idol?   Lee DeWyze.  Do you even remember watching any of those?  Could you even tell me who the runner-ups were or any highlights from those two contests?  Probably not, because we tend to forget things so easily—things that happened just two or three years ago.

Obama has had 3.75 years to rebuild our economy from the brink of destruction.  In the grand scheme of things, that's NOT a lot of time.  And the people that complain that Obama hasn’t done enough for the country are the same people who switch lanes on the freeway over and over, hoping that one lane will move faster than the other.  I watch those people and get so irritated.  Look, you impatient morons, don’t you realize that people JUST LIKE YOU are doing the same thing in front of all of us, causing us all to be backed up?  Or worse yet, the ones that drive up the shoulder or past all the merging traffic to cut in line way up at the front.  Yeah, what’d you save, like two minutes?  Patience is a virtue, people.

And that’s what I think about Obama.  I think that if he gets another four years to work with, when his presidency is in the history books, people will look back and see that he really did do a wonderful thing for a country that was slumping on so many levels.  And I'm afraid that if he doesn't get that four more years, Romney may take us backwards again.  And I'm just not comfortable with that.