The year 2008 seems like only yesterday, and yet it’s election season once again. However, judging by the speeches Barack Obama has just delivered to kick off his campaign, he would prefer we forget that four years have passed since the last the last time the American people selected a president.
It’s no wonder. Despite President Obama’s promises from that election, so little has changed.
We remember – and Obama will no doubt remind us – that he faced great challenges upon taking office. The economy was in trouble. Foreclosures were on the rise. More and more Americans were losing their jobs and entering the ranks of the unemployed. No one blames him for the crisis he encountered. But we do hold him accountable for the promises he made to make things better.
Obama’s advisers told us that his stimulus package would keep unemployment under 8 percent. To this day, it remains above that level. He promised that his housing plan would save millions of homes from foreclosure. To this day, the housing market remains in the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and millions of Americans remain in danger of losing their homes.
Obama promised to pursue all available energy sources, an “all of the above” policy. As of today, gas prices have doubled, and Obama stands in the way of the Keystone XL pipeline and domestic energy exploration. The president promised a new era of fiscal responsibility. Today, he is on track to preside over trillion-dollar deficits every year of his presidency.
No, we don’t blame Obama for the problems he inherited. We blame him for his failure to get the country back on track.
It’s clear that Obama wants to run the 2008 election over again. But the hope he promised remains in short supply for the millions of Americans still suffering from the ravages of the recession. The change he promised is also in short supply. We see the same big-government solutions to our problems, the same overspending and the same overregulation.
We don’t need more of the same. 2012 offers us a chance to embrace real change, to take a different path into the future. Mitt Romney has turned around troubled enterprises before. He did it as a businessman, he did it when he agreed to take control of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, and he did it as a governor.
When Romney was elected governor of Massachusetts, he inherited a state budget with a projected deficit of $3 billion and an economy that was shedding jobs. By the time he left office, that $3 billion deficit was a $2 billion rainy day fund and unemployment had fallen to 4.7 percent.
We need that sort of change in America today. We need a president who makes a difference, not one who makes excuses. Obama is right; it is time to move forward. That’s something he’s been unable to do these last 31/2 years. It’s time for new leadership. It’s time for Mitt Romney.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers is a congresswoman from Washington state. You can also read this online at The News Tribune.
