I have
not made a secret of the fact that I would vote for Bozo the Clown or
Donald Duck — or even a box of cornflakes — before ever casting a ballot
for Barack Obama. Not only because of his disastrous foreign policy,
which directly affects me as an Israeli, but also because of his
appalling attack on free-market economics — something that involves my
pocket. As a U.S. citizen, I am forced by American tax laws to pay lots
of my hard-earned shekels to the potential Ponzi scheme we know as
Social Security. And I certainly wouldn’t want to hit retirement age and
be told that the till I had been filling was empty.
Luckily, the Republican
contender for president is not a cartoon character or a breakfast
cereal. In fact, Mitt Romney is a likeable guy with values I share, both
about what America’s role in the world should be and about what a
government’s role in society should not be.
Still, since I want
ahim to be elected, it does matter to me what others think of him. That
is why I became a bit disheartened two weeks ago when I arrived in the
United States for a visit.
The fact that the press
is coddling the incumbent and publishing polls indicating an Obama
victory on November 6 came as no surprise. Nor have the statements from
die-hard Democrats been unexpected. But I’ve been distressed by the
response of my Republican friends, whose fear of defeat has made them
hyper-critical of their candidate. Romney’s fine — they concede — but
he’s no Ronald Reagan. Even Ronald Reagan himself was no Ronald Reagan
at this point in the lead-up to his slam-dunk against Jimmy Carter in
1980, but that has not encouraged the nervous nellies among them.
Beating the phenomenon that is Barack Obama, they say, requires more
than mere charm and good politics; it calls for a superhero.
Well, last night’s
first debate between Obama and Romney seems to have caused a seismic
shift in that attitude. Romney wasn’t merely cool, knowledgeable, and
presidential throughout the hour-and-a-half spar; he wiped the floor
with his rival effortlessly. And though all the pundits agree that there
was no specifically memorable “aha” moment during the debate, they gave
a clear win to Romney. Even Obama supporters suggested that maybe their
guy doesn’t do so well without his teleprompter.
It is now the Democrats
who are down in the dumps, for the moment at least. They have been so
busy trying to persuade swing voters that Romney only cares about the
rich; that he will tax the middle class; that he will rob the
60-somethings of their pensions; and — the most ridiculous of all — that
he will “throw granny off the cliff.” Indeed, this last idiocy has been
part and parcel of the Obama campaign, which asserts that Romney
doesn’t care about the poor, the needy, or the wheelchair-bound
“grannies.”
Given Romney’s personal
and political history, this particular piece of nonsense is as
laughable as it is ludicrous. Nevertheless, it has gained some traction
in the public, most of whom understand economics about as much as I do —
which is to say that our eyes glaze over when we are quoted percentages
and figures in the billions and trillions, especially when they are
accompanied by decimal points.
All Romney had to do to
counteract the claims about his fiscal plans for the future was to say
that they were false. It was sweet to watch Obama get stumped by this.
It never occurred to the Commander-in-Chief that he would be faced with
an opponent in the debate who might actually contradict him.
Romney’s words and
demeanor allayed anxieties among many floating voters about his
granny-slaying tendencies. The only person they saw Romney pushing off a
cliff last night was Obama.
Ruthie Blum is the
author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab
Spring,’" now available on Amazon and in bookstores in Europe and North
America.
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