Why I Voted for Obama
As Romney and his supporters charged, Obama failed to fulfill many of his 2008 campaign promises. Even Obama himself blundered on this during the second presidential debate. The four years of Obama administration has been disappointing. He got his priorities wrong by putting health care reform over everything else immediately after he took office, when the 2008 financial crisis should have been the most urgent and most important issue. Later during the budget negotiations that resulted in the default of the US debt, he was absent. He let Congress and the Tea Party dominate the agenda. He led from behind, as Republicans charged.
He took the risk and succeeded in finding and killing Bin Laden. While that has been a bring spot during his first term, his domestic achievements have been scant. He took the wrong approach in his signature legislation, the health care reform. Instead of focusing on reforming the health care and insurance systems to make them more efficient and use the savings to provide universal coverage for everyone, he put together a hodgepodge plan that is over 1000 pages long and contains provisions that meet the special interests of every possible lobbying group. In deed more people will be covered, but the inefficient systems are still in place and the money to provide the additional coverage could come from no other places other than the printing machines.
His lack of focus on finding solutions to the problems in the economy may have prolonged the recovery. Like a mediocre doctor, he treated the sick patient with a prescription that only alleviates the symptoms for the short term without eradicating the disease. He increased spending and was unable and unwilling to provide a clear plan to offset that spending in a timely manner.
Some people attempted to compare him with Lincoln when he took office in 2009. He recruited Hillary Clinton, his rival during the primaries, as his Secretary of State, just like Lincoln did when he had William Seward as his Secretary of State. Lincoln became the President at the dawn of the Civil War. Obama became the President after the first wave of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. But unlike Lincoln, who guided America out of the war and abolished the institution of slavery, Obama wasn’t able to grasp this historical opportunity to become a great leader. Instead, the economy is still anemic, there is no recovery in sight from the crisis of four years ago.
Obama has been just another politician in his first term as the nation’s 44th president. He has had his chances to achieve something great and he squandered them. I didn’t have a high hope of him when he was inaugurated nearly four years ago and I still don’t have a high hope of him achieving anything significant in the next four years. So why did I want him to remain in the White House for another four years?
The structure of the US government makes the President a very powerful person. But unlike other types of governments, the US President is not a dictator. Although the President can do many things, he is powerless in many other things. Unlike a dictator, a US President must be a first rate politician to be able to navigate the complex US government power structure, which includes the Congress and the Supreme Court.
The executive branch is best adept at handling emergencies, rather than long term legislations. When a President tries to achieve something via legislation without the pretense of a crisis, it inevitably results in more political struggle than a united effort. The health care system has been ail for a long time and needed a fix, but it was not in a crisis mode that catastrophes were imminent. Thus reforming health care couldn’t be and shouldn’t be a quick fix. Given that reforming health care was one of the most important goals for Democrats in 2008, it was not surprising that when he found that he had both the Senate and the House at his side, he manhandled the Republicans in this matter. The result was that the voters sent Tea Party members to the House, and he found himself severely crippled by the obstinate Republicans, who opposed him on almost everything.
Thus when crisis really came when the government needed to raise the debt ceiling, everyone stuck their toes. The country defaulted for the first time in its history and people blamed both the President and the Congress. The government deserved the blames and the handling of the health care legislation should share a large portion of the blame.
Legislations that have historical significances and very long term effects don’t need to be thoroughly deliberated by the legislators. Most of the government functions we have now were not created by legislators after some careful studies. Instead, most of them were created in response to crisis. Social Security, FDIC, and many other programs were created in the first 100 days of the Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. The nation was in dire need of something, or anything, to save it from going to abyss when the unemployment rate was above 20%. So the programs were created and people found them to be useful and they have become a sacred part of the government.
So in response to the financial crisis, it would have been possible for the government to come up with something. But rather, Obama chose to tackle health care instead. By the time that was done, the financial crisis abated and he lost the opportunity.
Thus, I never expected and still don’t the President and the executive branch of the government to be able to drive legislations that would profoundly change the current situation, unless something becomes an emergency.
If I had any other choice, I would not have voted for Obama. But Mitt Romney was not a choice either.
When I first came to the US as a student many years ago, I knew nothing about the American political system. In fact, I knew pretty much nothing about America. When I got out of the plane and landed on the US soil, I was equipped only with an unstoppable desire to go out of China. I came to the US because it was probably the only possible destination for anyone who wanted to leave China. So I learned English, only in reading and writing and was good enough to read some text books, and I entered a university. I didn’t understand a word of what the professors said in class. But I was able to graduate because I was essentially repeating what I already learned before. I got a master’s degree in Computer Science a second time.
So I was able to stay in the US afterwards. My English improved tremendously over the years and inevitably I also learned a lot about the people and the ways of lives of this great nation, among these, the political system, the ideas of democracy, and the dual party structure.
Initially I had no idea about what the Democrats stood for and what Republicans stood for. After sometime I learned some ideological differences. It was an absolute shock to me when I saw on TV and through other media that some people don’t believe in the Theory of Evolution. I am an atheist and I respect people’s religious beliefs, but I just don’t understand why evolution would be such a problem for some people that they cannot tolerate to have it taught in school.
Being someone from China, we were indifferent about birth control and the ways abortions were performed. As later I learned more about how some of the abortions were done like murders in China, it only enhanced my hatred of a totalitarian system. But here the ideas of the hard line Republicans on abortions have gone beyond reason. Most of the abortions should be illegal, but when people also want to legislate all forms of contraception, that can only be thought as insane.
The constitution of the United States is perhaps the most successful, sacred, and admired legal document on earth. In large part, the reason that people around the globe look up to the United States can be attributed to the existence and adherence of this document. The citizens of the United States are law-biding people. The Constitution, as the supreme law of the land, is followed by the citizens in almost every part of their lives. Such a following has become almost a religion for many. Perhaps nothing in the Constitution has been so engraved in the lives of people more like the first two amendments.
The Second Amendment is untouchable for some people. They would give up their lives than giving up their guns. As I understand more about this issue, the absurdity of this religious interpretation of the Second Amendment becomes more and more evident. When the founding fathers wrote this amendment more than 200 years ago, the armed conflicts were fought with simple and crude weapons. A musket or rifle was the most potent weapon a person could possess. Thus a well-regulated militia could really overthrow a government. In addition to the many structural ways of restricting the powers of each branch of the government by creating the legislative, judicial, and executive branches, they put additional restraints on anything that would result in a totalitarian system, among these are the freedom of speech, which guarantees people’s right to express their opinions, and the right to bear arms, which guarantees people’s right to use force to reject oppressions that speeches couldn’t stop.
But the Second Amendment was perhaps the most contentious and yet useless article in the Constitution ever since its creation. The idea that people could thwart a government from imposing something they don’t like on them by force was a real naivety. Rebellions and other forms of anti-authority activities succeed not because people have the rights to bear arms, but because people have the courage and the willingness to risk their lives. When Daniel Shay didn’t want to pay the taxes, he rebelled. He had arms and he had followers, but he didn’t succeed. The new United States government was a democracy, but it wouldn’t hesitate to use force to compel people to obey the laws.
The notion that because I have a machine gun and thousands of rounds of ammunition and thus I have additional means of protecting democracy and my liberty, is just utter nonsense. If we strictly interpret the Second Amendment, we should have been allowed to own nuclear weapons. Fortunately people are sensible enough to understand the difference.
I think very few people really believe that liberty can be ensured by having guns at their homes. If there are such people, they are fools. The more practical reason for rejecting gun control is the money involved. The gun industry would disappear if guns are outlawed.
Contrary to some beliefs, the hard core Republicans are not rich people, who may be said as ones that don’t want to pay more taxes. If you look at the political map of the United States, you can see that the Red States are mostly Midwestern and Southern States, and rural areas in other States. A typical Republican in such places are white middle age men who don’t have college educations. They are religious and their ideas about government are really simple, practically they don’t want any government. They interpret liberty in the most original and strict sense. They are Republicans not because they know or agree much about the Republican Party and its agenda, but simply because some of the Republicans voice their ideals. These are mostly single issue voters and among the single most important issue is gun control or abortion.
As a Chinese American, I admire the kindness of the American people who allowed me to become part of them. But when I watched the Republican National Convention I cannot in anyway hope that I can become part of them. Unlike the Democratic National Convention, the Republican convention was dominated by whites. There were many TV cameras and it was hard to find a person of any color in the crowd. The Republican Party has attracted a portion of the American population, which is still a majority but that majority is receding. Some of my fellow Chinese identify themselves with whites, but when I look at myself in the mirror, I can’t believe that if I go into such a crowd I don’t become a spectacle. On the other hand, if I went to the Democratic convention, I could easily blend in and wouldn’t feel any uneasiness. Granted I would look different, but so did everyone else, there were whites, blacks, Asians, Latinos, and others.
Thus when I did my voter registration after I became a US citizen, I registered as a democrat. I have experienced many elections. This time I really seriously thought about voting for someone other than Obama. But Romney didn’t convince me that he would do better than Obama. I have never believed that any President would be able to do much about the economy anyway. Even if FDR were the President today, he would have not done well. He could have done worse, at the beginning of his second term, the first thing he did was try to change the US government structure and he failed miserably. Presidents are the heads of the executive branch of the government; they are in place to deal with emergencies. Low term effects can be introduced by Presidents in response to crisis, but fewer of them achieved much in normal political situations.
Thus senators and congressmen often possessed more leverage in shaping the future of America. People often pay more attention to emergency situations and fail to appreciate the magnitude of the effect of influential senators. People know a lot about Lincoln but not many know the role Henry Clay played in the slavery issue. The Missouri Compromise was probably the most profound legislation in American history and yet it has been mostly forgotten in the current political debates about the fiscal cliff. Would someone be able to produce a compromise like that? Although the famous compromise delayed the slavery issue for more than 30 years, Americans finally still had to reckon with it and paid a bloody price for it. Let’s hope that the current debate doesn’t end up that way.
Another branch of the government is the judicial branch. The Court decisions have the most profound effect on people’s lives. In every presidential election Roe versus Wade is brought up. This is ridiculous, but some American’s just don’t understand that personal liberty includes a woman’s right to choose. If Romney is given the power to install new Supreme Court justices, will he install someone who will interpret the Constitution like living in the 19th century? May be or maybe not. But one thing is for certain, Obama will pick people who interpret the Constitution by its spirit, not by its literal sense.
So after some thinking, I voted for Obama.
