Analysis: A big choice on the government’s role
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Where did the AP get this writer? By any world standard, Obama is moderate to right. Even Obamacare was written to STRENGTHEN the private insurance companies .. what else can you call a system (conceived by Mitt Romney!) that give the private companies a path to millions of new, young, healthy patients? As for Romney, the AP hack is right. He proposes a top down economy not see in the US since Teddy Roosevelt went trust busting. Countries that have tried Romneyomics have either ended up with a national corporatist government (Italy under Il Duce) or bankrupt like Argentina under Peron.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Suspense over the too-close-to-call presidential race has partly obscured the fact that Americans on Tuesday will choose between two dramatically different visions of government’s proper role in our lives. The philosophical gulf between the two nominees is wide, even if the vote totals may be razor-thin. With record numbers of people on food stamps and other assistance, President Barack Obama emphasizes “we’re all in this together” – code for sweeping government involvement. His campaign theme song is “We Take Care of Our Own.” Romney wants smaller government, including fewer regulations – rejecting Obama’s contention that they’re needed after the meltdowns in financial and mortgage markets and a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. His theme song is the individualist anthem, “(I Was) Born Free.”
For all their philosophical differences, neither man has hit Americans between the eyes with the painful truth of what it will take to tame deficit spending, driven by the public’s demand for low taxes and high services.
This year’s voters are unlikely to make big changes in Congress. After dramatic swings in the past three congressional elections, and ongoing assessments of the tea party’s influence, power may not end up shifting on Capitol Hill for a while. The fiercely divided Congress may continue to block major presidential initiatives, regardless of who’s in the White House, unless there’s the type of bipartisan breakthrough that has proven elusive.
An Obama win presumably would keep the government roughly on its current course. Congressional Republicans would be unable to rescind his biggest domestic achievement, “Obamacare,” which eventually will require everyone to have health insurance.
Writ large, Obama’s approach to governing is a new generation of the New Deal and the Great Society. The federal government tries to balance interests such as energy exploration and the environment, private enterprise and consumer protection.
Romney’s approach echoes Ronald Reagan’s declaration that government is the problem, not the solution.