This time I’m more than perplexed. I’m worried. And I don’t understand the thinking of a large percentage of the American electorate.
Mitt Romney expresses his view of the world as a contest in which competition reigns, with inevitable winners and losers. He seems to imagine a dog-eat-dog world in which we are all out for ourselves (and should be left to carry this process out to its logical conclusion: the rich getting ever richer, ‘damn the poor’). He has shown his willingness to let the ends (his winning) justify the means. Such a cynical and manipulative world view has all sorts of worrying ramifications.
I don’t doubt that Barack Obama has some significant competitive spirit—one would have to, to strive and succeed at becoming US President—and a modicum of competition can surely have positive effects. But the world view that Obama emphasizes in his speeches and in his actions portrays a much stronger force aspiring toward human cooperation. He has shown his interest in protecting the US populace at home (in health care, in economic affairs) and in working toward cooperative international relations. He has made huge repairs in our relations with the rest of the world after the debacle of George W. Bush’s reign.
We human beings, to a large degree, make the world that we live in. The world becomes a competitive place to the degree that we all see it that way and act within a ‘take-no-hostages’, competitive framework—this is doubly true for the world views of powerful people. The world itself has become incredibly interconnected. The need to cooperate among nations, and within our own nation, have become crucially important. Romney’s emphasis on ‘America as No. 1’ is not what is needed right now. Such a world view plays into the hands of, encourages, those who consider violence to be the best answer to conflicting perspectives, interests, traditions.
Another source of worry: An elected leader should be trustworthy. When I hear Obama speak, by and large, I believe him. His sincerity comes through in his body language, his words, his actions; and it is reinforced by the words of his close associates. Romney, on the other hand, changes his story at every shift of the political winds. For months we’ve been hearing, for instance, about his anti-abortion stance, his commitment to the ‘right to life’ [a weird perversion of this phrase, in my view—focused only on pre-life, often at the expense of other, functioning, breathing life]. Now, after falling disastrously in the polls, he’s saying that he will not fiddle with the current legalities of abortion. While explicitly advocating governmental interference in a woman’s decisions about her own body, he has called for ‘freedom’ from such intervention in business. On the economic front, for months, he has urged, over and over again, minimizing regulations on business [Can’t people see that the lack of regulation was a central element in the financial disaster of 2009?]. Last week, in the first debate between the presidential candidates, Romney changed his story. ‘Of course we need regulations.”
In that debate, Romney changed his stance on issue after issue (and told lie after lie). I have no faith in anything he says; we have no idea how he will actually behave as president (if we are unlucky enough to see that outcome of the election). And his competitive, ‘America first’ ideals would put us (and others!) in grave danger of additional US military involvement.
The debate brought out a difficult philosophical dilemma: Believing in cooperation, Obama tried to have a civilized debate, based on genuine positions and substance. I believe that he entered the fray—perhaps a little naively—hoping for honest exchange with his opponent. Instead, Romney launched attack after attack, with much of it based on figures pulled out of his hat, new policies apparently invented on the spot. When a cooperative spirit meets a cynical and competitive world view, the cooperative partner can be put in a bind. To respond in kind, with attacks, goes against the cooperative world Obama is trying to create; but in the debate, when he followed his principles and did not counter-attack, his response was perceived as weak. He was seen to ‘lose the debate’. Although I’ve seen Obama convey a more commanding presence than he did in this first debate, he still far outshone Romney, in my book.
It was a pleasure to witness the Biden-Ryan debate. Biden managed to provide facts, counter accusations, very effectively. His good humour came through, even as he provided blistering rebuttals. What some commentators called ‘smirks’, I saw as heart-felt laughter coming from Biden’s incredulity that anyone could lie and/or alter positions in the bald-faced manner Ryan, like Romney before him, was adopting.
Another stand-off rolls around in a few days’ time…I have a feeling that Obama will be taking taking off his gloves (no matter how reluctantly).