California's Sacramento Bee has endorsed President Obama for reelection. Papers endorse candidates for a variety of reasons, but the Bee's editorial clearly lays out the President's accomplishments, while highlighting the Republican party's near treasonous obstructionism and Romney's habitiual lying.
Obama not only inherited wars, he inherited a mortgage meltdown and the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. He had to act quickly to prevent two automakers from going bankrupt and forestall a larger Wall Street catastrophe, and he did.
While some critics on the left say he should have gone further, by breaking up banks and launching an ambitious New Deal-style jobs program, it should be remembered that even Obama's modest "stimulus" package was fought tooth and nail by Republicans in Congress. As has been well documented, the Republican strategy was to block all of the president's efforts at economic recovery, even if it kept unemployment high for an extended period. As a coldblooded political strategy, it has worked, and millions of Americans have paid the price.
The last four years are instructive, but the next four years could well determine whether the United State repowers its economic engine and rebuilds its middle class, or whether it lapses back to the unequal and deficit-created policies of the Bush era. Although his positions seem to change on a weekly basis, Obama's challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, clearly would pursue tax cuts for the rich, on the discredited theory the wealthy would invest their savings in U.S. jobs. These "trickle down" theories haven't worked before and won't work now. Romney has also pledged to repeal health care reform, a transfer of wealth away from people who would receive subsidies to businesses and the wealthy who would be taxed under Obama-care...
Obama – unruffled by Looney Tunes claims that he is a "socialist" and a "Marxist" – has pursued a consistent, moderate path that has pulled this country back from the brink and put it on a path toward recovery. In a second term, with just a little help from Congress, he could finish the job and pursue other priorities, including upgrading transportation infrastructure, reinvesting in higher education and making the United States a leader in clean energy technologies.
By contrast, Romney has been all over the map on climate change, health care reform and fiscal policy, and he seems determined to lead us into a costly war in Iran, regardless of the consequences.
We've seen this script before. We don't want it again.
The entire thing is worth a read.