Romney in Fighting Form
I think most of the American voters are sick and tired of politicians who think that they can play Superman and Santa Claus all wrapped up in one politician.
Mitt Romney has put off many — including the current writer, who admittedly campaigned for the abortive Ron Paul.
Since Romney’s successful culling of the requisite number of delegates, different camps in the Republican party and independent circles have not shaken their skepticism of the man.
To many, he is a bland technocrat, hardly a hallmark candidate for the populist passions which stir up and drive voters to the polls in large numbers. To the Tea Party and social conservative elements in the nation, Romney is moderate, lukewarm, or just too cool for their embers. Voters in the GOP and across the country usually look for a dynamic politician, one who grants big promises and speaks with a booming panache.
Even if Romney fails to deliver on the rhetorical flair that voters are looking for, there is nothing wrong with that. The United States does not need anymore Superheroes, who end up adding more zeroes to the deficits and national debt threatening this country.
Barack Obama tricked himself out as a superhero, a messiah for the masses tired of eight years of misguided compassionate conservatism. Obama tried and failed in is make-believe role of Superhero. The resulting explosion of debts and deficits, followed by the gross expansion of state power, has proved the president to be quite a villain regarding individual liberty and Constitutional Law. The Constitution is a document of enumerated powers, yet Obama and his Congressional majorities of like-minded liberals have all but eviscerated any distinction between what Congress and the Executive can and cannot do.
From the outset of the Republic, the Chief Executive was never intended to be a popular or populist rockstar. In fact, the Electoral College enacted by the Framers was meant to diffuse populist sentiment in favor of reasoned deliberation on the part of political elites. This elitism, however, posed little threat to the American people precisely because the Framers intended the President to execute the laws passed by Congress, nothing more. With checks and balances frustrating the minute interests of the people, the states, the rich and the poor, the likelihood of drastic or dangerous legislation passing through to the president would be limited at best.
With the rise of political parties, with the process of electors reduced to patronage among the leaders of the major parties, the system of political diffusion embedded in the Electoral College has become a rubber-stamp for the majority of popular votes.
Unfortunately, popular elections have dressed down the role of presidential selection into soundbites and biting attacks, neither of which inform the voters or the powers remaining in Washington as to what they should expect from the next chief executive. We have been deluded long enough into believing that the next president will be the Superhero who will balance the budget, fight off every bad guy, appeal and appease every interest group looking for more of other people’s money.
Mitt Romney is no hero, and that’s just super. We need a calm and placid leader who knows how to compromise without fudging on core issues. This country needs to acculturate itself to expecting less from government and more from its individual members. The government is broke, and the less that government does for the people, the more quickly the state will repair and retreat from the public square.