Choosing Only Between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is a Disservice to America

In the Presidential elections that I have been aware of in my lifetime (starting with the 92 election).  There has only been one where there have been any more than the two major party candidates.  That was the 92 election where Ross Perot made a run at the White House.  He managed to run as an independent and received nearly 19% of the popular vote.  He failed to win, but had a MAJOR impact on the election.  It gave the voters a third perspective.  A third perspective on the campaign trail, a third perspective at the debate table, and a third perspective on America and where its Commander and Chief should take the country.  I'm a firm believer that Bill Clinton has Ross Perot to thank for winning his first term.  Statistics show that the incumbent has an advantage when running for re-election.  This was wiped out by Ross Perot running being that third check box on the ballot.

Every other election since always seems to come down to this; which one is the lesser of two evils?  To be totally honest, I'm not a big fan of either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.  The latter may come as a bit of a surprise to some.  I don't agree on either candidates stances on same sex marriage, on abortion, or on their tax and economic plans for this country.  That leaves me (and many others with a tough decision).  Do I vote for whichever candidate I dislike the least, or do I find another candidate who is running for the office of President, fully knowing that I am more or less throwing away my vote because they don't have the campaign funding, reach, or national footprint to be a factor just so I can feel like I've taken the moral high ground?

This is what is so sad about our system.  I'm sure there are many people out there like me who don't really agree with the major candidates platforms, but vote for candidate D or candidate R because at least I like them more than they other guy.  What we need to do is really take a look at this two party system and understand what a disservice it is to our nation to have to pick between a Barack Obama or a Mitt Romney. No offense is intended to either candidate on my part.  It really isn't about them, or any other candidate that has run under the GOP or Democratic party banner.  Our country has grown to the point where two major parties aren't enough anymore.  Each party has also grown to the point where they are a shell of what they were meant to be.  I see the major parties, much like I see the big unions such as the UAW today, corrupt and very much becoming the bureaucratic monstrosities that they at one point, were designed to counter.  The Democratic and Republican Parties have raised around $640,000,000 EACH.  That means we can expect somewhere around $1.2 BILLION dollars to be spent on this years election cycle.  Breaking down the candidates themselves the numbers get even more hard to comprehend.  According to the NY Times, Barack Obama has raised $690,000,000 and spent $615,000,000 while Mitt Romney has raised $633,000,000 and spent $533,000,000.  That is well over a $1 TRILLION dollars between the two of them.  Isn't that in and of itself enough wasteful spending?  That is almost as much debt as we are adding to the national debt this year.  How can't that be corrupt?  Look at how many people have donated that money, with the real expectations that their donations will result in favorable policies for whatever special interests they have.


This is exactly why the Democrats and Republicans alike don't want a third party around.  It really isn't because they don't want there to be a possibility of a third candidate with views that might be an overall better match for the voting public.  It is because they don't want to lose their share of that TRILLION dollar pie of campaign funding.

My own left of center perspective pretty much agrees with this entirely. I have heard many people say it doesn't matter who they vote for, that it wont change anything. Or the famous Ralph Nader quote regarding John Kerry and George W. Bush in the 2004 election when he stated there was not a dime's worth of difference between the two candidates. There are obviously many differences between the two major parties, and may differences between President Obama's ideas, views and policies from the ones that Mitt Romney holds and would like to see put into place. But just how different are they?

 As mentioned already, with all of the money their campaigns have received, how will that be "paid back? In 2008 I was an Obama supporter, these days I am merely an Obama voter. The difference lies in my efforts then to see that he gets elected, from petitioning to have him on the ballot in Ohio(before most people even knew who he was and thought the race would come down to Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guliani), to canvassing door to door, registering voters, and knocking on over 100 doors the weekend before the election  This time around I will just be voting for him and nothing else. I pay close attention to politics, out of both fascination and suspicion. I was surprised to learn that President Obama in all of his private fund raising meetings with Wall Street people of note has raised more from that select group than all other presidents combined. So what if I not only sympathized with the Occupy Wall Street movement but was intent on wanting their good intentions carried out at the highest level, who should I support? A candidate who believes that "Corporations are people," or the President who has received the most money from Wall Street types in history? 

Simply put, we need more options. Contrary to what the media likes us to believe, this country is not becoming more and more polarized. It seems that way because of the way one media outlet spins everything and the other outlet uses a bullhorn to shout everything they claim is "news." The truth is the country is very center oriented politically, on some issues they are center right, others they are center left, and this doesnt take into account the ever growing Libertarians and all of the other small factions of people who do not wish to be segregated into political groups.  Who are they supposed to truly support? Anyone can go into a voting booth and pull a lever, but to truly have a candidate to support is an awesome feeling. It makes you think that you are doing the utmost of your duties as an American citizen. It is truly a shame that the two major parties, in conjunction with major media outlets and the corporate elites in the country have effectively shut out any outside contenders from getting involved in a meaningful way. America deserves better than that, its citizens deserve better than that as well. Even if you are an adamant supporter of either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, you would be better served by a true challenger calling out both of them on the real hypocrisy of their individual views and their political party's stance. 

First Presidential debate broken down.

I think it is safe to say that the outcome of last nights debate, was nothing short of unexpected.  The democrats were touting this to be the deathblow to the Romney campaign in the form of an oratory slaughter delivered by the President.  It seemed that the media was even reporting that the Republican party was preparing to defeat.  What we had instead was  a VERY nervous and shaky appearing opening statement by President Obama followed up by a confident and to the point opening volley by candidate Mitt Romney.  As the debate went on, President Obama got himself in order, but never recovered to the point where he could both defend his current term, and present his argument for his plan for the next 4 years.

Josh, what do you think?

I completely agree that the President clearly did not perform well at all. My overall take of the debate was that Mitt Romney performed good, not great but good. However in such a contrast to the way President Obama debated, it made Romney look even more a winner. Some have said this was the best debate performance by a Republican presidential candidate not only since Ronald Regan but in the history of televised debates. Admittedly I can only go back to the years I have witnessed debates, I wasnt 2 years old watching Regan debate in 1984! But I will grant that Romney was amped and extremely well prepared while Obama was neither. 

Taxes:  The difference in strategies was made quite a bit more clear as the debate went on.  President Obama stuck to his policy that the only way to turn the economy around is to incentivize small business by creating tax breaks for creating new jobs, and to increase taxes on those in the highest income levels ($250,000/year and above).  This will help keep revenue up so that we can work towards a balanced budget, while at the same time giving releif to the middle class.  Candidate Romney came out with what to me, was at the very least a much better explanation of his policy's, or even maybe a change to them.  I am not sure at this point which description is more accurate.  Romney's plan lowers the base tax rate on all but the highest income earners (those above $250,000/year will see their taxes stay at the current Bush era rates).  At the same time he will eliminate or progressively phase out some of the current deductions.  This is where I believe the campaign adds claiming that middle income family's tax bills will go up by $2,000+ a year under Romney's plan come from.  President Obama repeatedly sited reports that this tax plan will result in a $5 TRILLION increase in the deficit, two which Candidate Romney repeatedly denied by stating that he will allow no tax cuts that are not revenue neutral.  Romney claimed that his version of tax reform would ease the strain on small business because many small businesses are not taxed under the corporate rate, but the individual rate.  Dropping the base rate would allow the small businesses to be able to hire more workers and jump start the economy.  

For me this was a small win for Romney, but fell short of what it could have been.  Till now MUCH of the campaign ads supporting Romney/against President Obama could pretty much be summed up as "are you better off now than 4 years ago".  Not much at all in the way of substance to them.  For the first time, I think the public saw a very clear explanation of Candidate Romney's plans, if he would have taken it one step further, could have really gotten people talking.  That one extra step was to explain (which he briefly began to but then stopped) that under his plan the purpose of the tax cuts are to stimulate the economy.  A growing economy can make the same net revenue, or more under a lower average tax rate because there is a bigger piece of the pie.  Grow that pie and a 10% slice of it is now bigger as well.

Josh, what do you think?

On taxes I know Romney has to make sure that he doesnt admit that his tax proposal would result in a 5 trillion dollar deficit increase but it has in fact been scored as doing just that. To Romney's credit, when Obama brought this up several times, Romney effectively ended it by calling the President out on the claims and striking it down. I do not see how it could make that big of a difference in taking the tax rates back to where they were in the Bill Clinton era. People must remember that by letting the Bush tax cuts expire, and lets be honest since Obama extended them as well they cant solely be attributed to George W. Bush anymore, that you would still be paying the lower tax rate on the first 250,000 of your income. It is only after you get above that mark that that portion of your income is taxed at the higher percentage. So if you make 300k a year, you are still paying the smaller percentage on the first 250 and only that last 50k is taxed at 39%. I am actually in full agreement with this plan going forward. Mr.Romney has specificed that he will balance the budget with economic growth. A fine promise and something that all Americans would want, however this could be overly optimistic. I for one to not believe we will ever have a balanced federal budget again as long as we have an endless state of war. 

I think that by directly confronting the President on his claims of a 5 trillion dollar deficit increase and at least in the debate shooting them down, Mitt Romney came out on the winning side of this debate as well. 

Health care:  This was a much more even area of the debate.  The President made the decision to embrace the "Obamacare" term (something he probably should have done a while ago thinking from his perspective).  This section of the debate had much of Obama's speech time defending Obamacare and attempting to point out that Mitt Romney wants to repeal it, but hasn't come forth with a plan of what to replace it with.  Candidate Romney countered with a few ideas, such as handing Medicare to the states to soley administer.  President Obama also stated that he modeled much of Obama care after Romneycare from Massachusetts . Candidate Romney stated that his state's health care law, works for his state (Romney then starts talking 10th amendment and states rights) but isn't something that the entire nation should have to work under.

It's no secret that I'm in favor of a few of Obamacare's changes (eliminating pre-existing condition clauses and lifetime limits on the dollar amount of care are two of them that I agree with based on personal experience, though I understand why they were in place before) but largely I am not in favor of the law.  Where Candidate Romney did a great job of articulating his tax plan, he didn't do quite as well with the health care portion.  I see this one as a draw, with neither side really gaining any ground.

Josh what do you think?

For the sake of a debate, both candidates offered differing views on health care and in particular Obamacare. However, seeing what Mitt Romney did as Governor of Massachusetts with the health care system in that state I think the truth is both candidates are much closer in their vision than perhaps they would like to admit. I thought President Obama by and large has the winning hand on health care. Not necessarily because of Mitt Romney and any policies or ideas he may offer for health care, but because of the corner he has been painted into by other members of his party who want the Affordable Care Act repealed and to start from scratch and build a new plan.  

There is definitely a need to reign our health care costs which have long been spiraling out of control. But this is one area where if left on their own the private sector could not and likely would not ever bring down costs and offer enough help to people who need it the most. We will save a health care debate for the future. But I do not believe that Mitt Romney would ever be able to appeal "on day one," as he likes to put it. The law was upheld by the US Supreme Court. It would take a huge majority in Congress to get it repealed. For better or worse, and I agree with John about the better parts of the bill while even I do not like the individual mandate, Obamacare will be around for a while. 

Takeaways:  Overall I think that today is proving to be a very different day than many expected it to be.  It honestly looked to me that Obama was going to cruise in for a solid victory in November, but that looks far from certain now.  The immediate poll results I saw after the debate showed that undecided voters were leaning heavily towards Romney based on the debate and it seems that most talk I've seen this morning on social media is agreeing that Obama had a very poor showing.  Romney seemed to have a well defined plan and strategy.  He stuck to his talking points and did a better job that I have seen him in any point in his campaign of outlining his platform.  Obama almost looked like he had planned to not be the first speaker.  He appeared more prepared to counter punch than to come out swinging.  I've been going back and looking at the fact checkers and it looks like each side had a fair number of misquoting of the numbers.  That is almost to be expected in venues like these.  You have the have a large wealth of information memorized for these events.

All in all, President Obama missed out on his chance to put away this race early. He was up in virtually every poll, he had significant leads in key swing states such as Ohio, but he missed his chance. The media always wants a horse race, they will even manufacture one if they can. They wont have to do it this time, Obama just gave it to them. I now think that this race will go down to the wire, I still expect Obama to lead in most polls by at least the margin of error, but after this debate Romney without a doubt showed Republicans he can put up a fight and get aggressive with the president. We can only speculate as to what happened to Obama and why he came out so flat in the debate early on. I agree he recovered as the night went on but the damage was already done. Any Mitt Romney will now attack rather than being put on the defensive as he has throughout this presidential campaign. 

The Ghost of Ross Perot

Regardless of your view on either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, you are missing a lot of new ideas and fresh perspective in every presidential debate that only contains candidates from the two major parties. The last time a third candidate was on the stage in a presidential debate was in 1992 when Ross Perot self financed his own campaign for president. What Perot was able to bring to the stage was the ability to go after both the Democratic and Republican parties for their stale and convoluted ideas about the country. He pointed out the similarities in each candidate, and how they were essentially two peas of the same pod. With his own financing he could point out to the public that he was not bought and paid for, he would have no allegiance to any financiers of his president. 

While I am not saying the presidential needs Ross Perot back up there, they do need someone else who can call both of the candidates out and make the general public realize there are other options out there. The difficult part would be figuring out just how to get a specific third party into the debates. Some have said whichever candidate is polling the highest nationally, others have said to go with any third party candidate that has actually help an elected national office either presently or in the past as it would prove they are capable of winning an election. We all know there are a lot of wing nuts out there that run for president every 4 years. And I doubt many people want to have someone on stage that is merely a distraction from the other candidates that are most likely to get the votes needed to become the next president. But figuring out who is eligible to go would be the easy part, once we as a country decided that it was time to put another voice in the debates. It would be good for the voters, good for the two major political parties-even if they would not admit it, and it would be good for the country. 


That is a great point.  One of, if not the biggest issues with today's political climate is that our current two party system has a choke hold on it.  It becomes hyper polarizing.  It has become one of the biggest with us or against us mentalities that has been seen in this country.  The Democrats and Republicans actively try to perpetuate this as well.  There is so little room for honest and open discussion.  If you are a democrat, then you are demonized for thinking a more conservative, or Republican view has merit.  When each party has upwards of a TRILLION Dollars at their disposal, there are only a few independent people on earth who could finance a campaign against that.  

It keeps our REAL change from even being discussed.  Instead of talking debt reduction, we talk deficit reduction.  Instead of a clean slate look at the tax code, we get additional loopholes and complexity.  Instead  of a streamlining and simplification of healthcare, we get Obamacare.

In all of this, I can't help but partly blame the third party candidates themselves.  They need to start campaigning as independents from the very beginning as soon as the primaries begin.  Stop waiting till the last  weeks and months before the election to make a push.  If you are going to be serious, you must get your name out there as soon as possible.  Only then will you have enough time to get people to ask the questions, who is this third party candidate, what do they stand for, and why are they a good alternative to the Dems and Repubs?

Mitt Romney's Five Point Plan

In this installment I am going to take a look at Mitt Romney's Five Point Plan for his campaign.  Here is a copy of his plan from his official website.

Point 1: Energy Independence. Increasing access to domestic energy sources.  This is a good idea, but a little vague.   Are we talking lifting the ban on shallow water offshore drilling in the gulf?  Allowing drilling on land currently protected? Streamlining the permit process for exploration is good, provided that it doesn't cut corners and makes sure that only fiscally and environmentally responsible companies are rewarded the permits.  The coal industry has taken major hits from recent EPA regulations brought on by the Obama Administration.  Cleaner energy alternatives are without a doubt the end goal for our nation, and the world.  What we as a nation need to be careful about is being realistic about our goals.  I'm actually fine with most of the regulations that have been put in place, but it is a little too soon for them without a viable alternative to replace coal with.  We don't have one today.  Approval for the Keystone pipeline is long overdue.  If we are going to source more domestic and non middle eastern oil, we need a way to transport it to our processing facilities.  Much of the domestic oil we have access to is in Canada and Alaska.  Without the pipeline we have to transport everything via ship down the Pacific, across the Panama Canal and up through the Gulf.  The Keystone pipeline is a much more efficient alternative and will help keep the price of oil and gas lower.

Point 2: Skills to Succeed.  This point reminds me of much of Presidents Obama's plan.  Very good talking point, but with no real direction behind it on how to make it happen.  Where are all of these great schools that we need to give access to?  They certainly aren't out nations public schools for the most part.  They have become lost between labor union negotiation, and teaching to standardized test scores instead of true learning.  I believe the training programs are already out there, we as a people need to do a better job of helping people choose realistic career paths.  Why do we want to attract the best and the brightest from around the world?  Shouldn't we focus more on making our own citizens the best and brightest in the world instead?

Point 3: Trade That Works For America.  Cracking down on China's trade practices looks good on paper.  What we should be very aware of is the sheer amount of dependence we have on the goods that they trade to us.  Many many of the products we use depend on today are either made in china, or have their components made in china.  There is also the pesky little issue of owing them a large sum of money in the form of bonds and other federal debt.  Opening new markets is a good idea, but where are these markets that we aren't involved in?  I work for a company that touches over 125 countries.  I'm curious to understand exactly what Mr. Romney means by building stronger economic ties to Latin America.  If we are talking about an expansion of NAFTA then I am quite skeptical.  NAFTA was an attempt to make us more competitive from a manufacturing standpoint, bu tend the end it moved jobs north and south of the border.  The Reagan Economic Zone is party of a larger Romney economic plan that would allow countries adhering to a "free market" set of trade rules designed to promote international business.  I think the idea itself is sound, but this international trading zone is a 2 way street for import and export.  We have a real problem in this nation of a lack of export so the benefit might not be as great as Mr. Romney hopes it will be

Point 4: Cut the Deficit.  I have a huge problem with this issue with both parties today.  Before I go into the individual bullets on Mr. Romney's plan I want to cover this briefly.  Why is all the talk about deficit reduction?  Why aren't we talking about debt reduction?  The Ryan plan takes over 28 years before we balance the budget and quit going into the hole.  That means we'll likely double our current $16 TRILLION debt before we start paying that down.  we are already very near a tipping point.  Our nations credit rating has been downgraded, we are very near exceeding our GDP in debt and it doesn't look like either party is interested in changing this any time soon.  Cut 5% from non defense discretionary spending.  That only takes us from $1.264 TRILLION to $1.178 TRILLION in discretionary spending.  That's barely a drop in the bucket.  Cap federal spending to less than 20% of GDP.  2011 GDP was $15.09 TRILLION meaning that if we worked under the Romney plan last year the federal budget would have had to have been under $3.018 TRILLION (actual were $3.630 TRILLION)  This means that the budget would have been cut by $612 Billion dollars, or ~1.6%.  Again, this is another drop in the bucket and doesn't make any real impact when you look at the numbers.  Give states the responsibility for programs they can implement more efficiently.  I'm in favor of this in general.  My personal believes are that way to many of our programs are in the Federal Governments hands when they don't really have a constitutional authority to do so.  Instead of eliminating them, they should be handed over to the states to run.  Consolidating agencies and align  pay and benefits to the private sector average.  This is a good idea as there really isn't a reason to pay a government employee more (or less) than what they would make working for a private firm.

Point 5: Champion Small Business  Reduce taxes on job creation through individual and corporate tax reform.  Lower taxes are always better in my book.  How this enacted will be crutial to understand what impact, if any it would have on the ability for businesses to create new jobs and for individuals to start new businesses.  Stop the increasing regulations on businesses.  This is a major sticking point of new job creation today.  This administration, and the past several, have not been good at communicating their regulation strategies.  They also have felt the need to continuously create new regulations.  The problem with this (and with the continued pushing down the road of the extension of the Bush tax cuts) make for an environment that is very hard for businesses to plan for.  Everything in business runs on 1, 3 and 5 year plans.  Without having confidence that they can model their business and know what they chances are for profit, then they will stay where they are today.  Protect workers and businesses from aggressive unions.  I'm not a big fan of unions, though I believe they still have a place in the world today.  I'll save my longer thought process for another entry, but when union leadership make 6 figures, they've become their own business and begin to operate to make more money by expanding their union.  Replace Obamacare with real health care reform.  ObamaCare had a few good points scattered in with creating more bureaucracy.  It has helped to continue the increase of cost at the consumer level.  I don't believe that the plan that Romney supports to replace it is the right direction either.  I'll save more on that for another entry

Overall I think that Mitt Romney's plan has more substance  to it than President Obama's, but only by a narrow margin.  Both candidates have some talking points that are good for debates, but I think they lack the background substance and feasible actionable items behind them to make them come true in a real world situation.