Why America must Re-Elect Barack Obama

In exactly three days, November 6, specifically, Americans will troop to the polls to elect a man who will steer the ship of the state in the next four years. The Presidential election offers Americans two competing visions and ideologies that they must grapple with as they exercise their civic responsibility on that day. It is to use the popular cliché of political pundits a “choice election”. President Barack Obama, the incumbent and a Democrat is a liberal who fundamentally believes that government has a role to play in the lives of the people; that rugged individualism though an American creed must have a human face and heart; that the social safety net which has defined much of American’s social engineering since the Great Depression must be sustained and if necessary expanded. The president believes the middle class is the engine of growth and prosperity as history has shown, and, has in the past four years pursued policies and programmes to strengthen the growth and sustainability of that class while not totally neglecting the needs of the upper class. Part of that approach centers around tax cuts and a deeply ideological conviction that educating American children to learn skills needed for jobs of the 21 Century should not break and render Americans bankrupt. The president has promised to maintain and increase such programs as Pell Grants and other financial aids that have seen Americans who otherwise would not have been able to afford college tuitions for their kids the ability to do so. The president also recognized that a healthy population is an important component to the overall economic development and productivity hence the single- minded devotion to the actualization of his Health Care Bill that he signed into law in his first year in office which the Republicans derisively call “Obama care”- a program they have sworn to repeal if elected. The right of women to make decisions that are in their best reproductive interest has found blessings with President Obama and is enshrined in the Democratic Platform. Abortion rights and the easy availability of contraceptives will continue to be respected as already settled by the landmark Roe v. Wade 1973 Supreme Court ruling. The Republicans whose catechism centers around the removal of government in peoples’ lives paradoxically wants to legislate morality and believes government should interfere in the right of a woman to make informed and logical decisions about her reproductive rights. Immigration reform has also been a major issue that the president wanted to tackle in his first term. It is morally wrong to have over 12 million people operate under informal economy and to live their lives in perpetual fear of the authority even though these hapless people have children who are as American as can be. The president’s efforts in this direction has been thwarted and frustrated by an ideologically inflexible Republicans in the Congress. The recent Executive Order by the president that stopped forthwith the deportation of children who had been brought into the United States as kids by their illegal immigrants’ parents was roundly pilloried and attacked by the Republicans. In areas of keeping America safe and secure in their homes and foreign relations the president has had a most robust anti-terrorism tactics that has gravely diminished the power and influence of terrorists’ organizations such as Al-Qaida whose main face and spiritual leader-Osama Bin Laden was killed in May 2011. The use of drones to smoke out and obliterate leading terrorist figures has proven to be exceedingly effective. Instead of indulging in unnecessary saber-rattling that had alienated American allies and created divisions across the Atlantic which very much defined the last Republican President-George Bush, the president has rebuilt those alliances and assured those countries that hegemonic as American power in the world may be, she will always listen to the issues and concerns of other nations- a notion that has been dismissed by Mitt Romney as showing weakness and leading “from behind.” The economy is growing and the fundamentals remain strong. Consumer confidence is increasing; the number of Americans who think the country is on the wrong track according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Polls has decreased tremendously. There is a growing sunny disposition of Americans about the future of the country. Should these gains be reversed for what Mitt Romney has promised he would do? Mitt Romney- the Republican challenger is a former liberal Governor of Massachusetts who found religion in extreme conservatism when he first ran for the Oval Office in 2008, is a clone of the last Republican administration that had driven the American economy aground through crony capitalism, tax cuts for the rich, laissez- faire economic policies that led to the 2008 economic meltdown. Their recipe for economic growth is based on the tried but failed trickle-down theory as opposed to priming-the pump. Mitt Romney has not promised anything different from these sets of failed ideas. He has been hiding behind the mantra of being a job creator because of his years as the CEO of BAINES Capital. The people he surrounds himself with are the same crowd that misled Bush into taking disastrous domestic and foreign policies that crippled the American economy and alienated its allies. Part of his battle cry has been the elimination of government in people’s live which by itself is disingenuous as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and the this week’s Hurricane Sandy that has wreaked untold destruction along the East Coast of the United States has shown. President Obama is deploying key resources and assets of the federal government to help with the rehabilitation and cleaning efforts that Hurricane Sandy had wrought – much to the appreciation of key Mitt Romney supporter-New Jersey Governor-the voluble Chris Christie, who has been applauding the decisive leadership of the president on major American media outlets. Government can never be truly eliminated from peoples’ lives, otherwise we would be returning to the Hobbesian ‘State of Nature’. The belief that government should not provide or severely cut important social safety nets while giving tax cuts to the super-rich and an increase in military spending which the Pentagon say is not needed;  that government should not provide conditions for all to be insured, because it amounts to a “ government take -over or “socialized medicine” and that abortion should be restricted even if the victim were involved in an incestuous relationship is way out of the extreme, but that is Mitt Romney and his running mate-Paul Ryan’s stance on abortion. In foreign and international matters, Mitt Romney is surrounded by some of the rabid and most hawkish members of the Bush administration foreign policy team that took America to a war of choice in Iraq instead of deploying resources to the main theatre of war- the war of necessity in Afghanistan. His foreign affairs advisers such as the ultra-hawkish former UN Ambassador, John Bolton, are stuck in Cold War mindset. They have been mouthing scary and inflammatory foreign policy initiatives that would, again inspire hatred of America by both its allies and enemies. The labeling of Russia as America’s number one geo-political foe, in a post- cold War world can truly be troubling, same with the unnecessary trade war with China that Mitt Romney appears to be bent on starting. The hard-line stance on immigration can only cause disaffection in an increasingly ‘brownish’ society that America is evolving into- a prospect that alarms the racially minded electorate located mainly in the Republican Party. The nod and a wink given by the Republican Party on covert and overt racially charged rhetoric by some of Mitt Romney’s supporters such as the ‘shoot before you aim’ former New Hampshire Governor-John Sununu , the comical character-Donald Trump and the annoyingly shrill-voiced intellectual lightweight-Sarah Palin is deeply troubling. Even though race relations in America is still a work in progress, we had thought the historic election of Barack Hussein Obama as the country’s first African American president will heal centuries-old scars of racial tension and mistrust; that the country had finally buried the ghost of slavery and its attendant racial discrimination which the Jim Crow-era politics had inspired and promoted. Paradoxically, that election unfortunately appears to have awakened those ghosts, and they have been on the prowl, displaying such anger and hate that shocks and appalls. It seems some people  have come to see that historic event as an affront  to  their racial sensibilities and have since gone back to stoke the embers of racial divides in the country-leading to recent poll by the Associated Press (AP)  which concluded that majority of white Americans harbor racial prejudices against blacks. The activities of such repugnant characters like Rush Limbaugh who on a daily basis continues to stoke this embers of racial animosity on his radio programme, and who is seen by many as the intellectual and ideological fountain of the Republican party is truly troubling. The Republican establishment is acutely aware of these troubling signs, but desires to profit by them; and seems to have harkened back to the Southern Strategy that was deftly deployed by Richard Nixon to win the White House in 1968 and 72 respectively. The Republicans have refused to lift a finger or raise a voice to condemn this inflammatory and racially divisive rhetoric. How sad! Given the above analysis, we at The Diasporan Star hereby urge the over 10 million U.S citizens of Continental African ancestry and the larger American population to repudiate the policies of the Republican Party as espoused by its candidate for the November 6 Presidential election, Mitt Romney, and vote for the re-election of President Barack Obama. The choice is clear and the alternative, stark and dark. Do we desire a return to the failed policies of the 2000-2008 or do we want to look forward realizing that if  today is better than yesterday then tomorrow certainly would be better than today?  The choice is that simple. We wholesomely ask you to vote for the Democratic slate and let us continue to march on, looking hopeful, sunny and proud that the American enterprise led by the able hands of the Chief Executive, President Barack Obama is again on the ascendance and a steady course. As Americans are wont to say: if it aint broke don’t fix it. We think the chord of national renewal has not broken, and therefore, should be strengthened with the re-election of President Barack Obama, lest we all fall into yet another swarm, from where we may never climb out again with our limbs intact. The choice is clear Americans – the rest is in your hands and conscience! - This article is an endorsement of President Obama by The Diasporan Star, African Diasporas leading newspaper in the United States