Coming Out Swinging

The President did well in the third debate. Romney did o.k., which is important. He didn’t fall over when he was pushed, but Obama was fairly effective in rebutting claims and pushing on Mittens’ policies and campaigning. My favourite line has to be the “horses and bayonets”.

But zingers don’t win debates and debates aren’t themselves what win elections. Where Obama has not done well is two-fold: attacking R-money, as the President has done over the entire campaign, is not the same as having policies, and if he’s got them, they’re the weak point Willard consistently points to, that they are four more years.

The last four years have no doubt been hard on America, as they have been elsewhere (and I am thankful for Australia’s currently robust economy and hope for more of the same or better; not that I’m likely to get either, at least not for long). There has been nothing dramatic to change people’s perceptions, even with 5 million “new” jobs and an overall decrease in unemployment, a decrease that appears to have resulted in treading water economically.

Obama has done well: Don’t Ask is gone, universal health care is closer than it’s ever been, we’re (mostly) out of Iraq and on our way out of Afghanistan. Killing people, even Osama bin Laden, whether with ground troops or the increased use of drone strikes, is not something I think is worthy of credit. Bailing out the automobile industry is.

People go on and on about deficits. They look at Greece and Spain and say: not us, thanks. But they don’t see that the austerity measures such as those proposed by Romney-Ryan are a significant part of how those countries got there. They look at Britain and see bipartisan austerity without recognising the cost it’s had to the society. Romney says that government doesn’t create jobs and that it shouldn’t be in the business of investing in businesses as if that was the same as investing in research and development. But business is where research and development needs to be conducted right now, because that creates jobs. It’s also a way to increase businesses starting up in the U.S. and creating jobs. The U.S. government has, in the past, directly created jobs, and it can do so again, investing in infrastructure development and long-needed upgrades and repairs. Deficits don’t matter. They can be reversed and they can be written down. Austerity has long since been proven a poor way to restore a nation’s economy. And let’s not let people like Mr. 1% get away with comparing Obama’s path to that of Greece. Greece has got a serious problem with tax avoidance, something R-money knows well and knows from first-hand experience.

Obama gets two out of three debates, but in the next two weeks he can still lose the election, and it’s his to lose. Unfortunately it’s too late to point to websites, and it’s too late to put up policies. We have to want four more years more than they want the next eight.