Political Heat endorses Barack Obama

The incumbent president deserves a second term in office

The official endorsement for president from Political Heat goes to Barack Obama.

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise; I’ve long-been an Obama supporter, ever since he first announced he’d be running in 2008. Since then, President Obama hasn’t necessarily been my ideal president -- but he has come through on a lot of promises, delivering to America the things she needs as a country in a big way:

He spearheaded a stimulus package that, though pricey, helped invigorate the American middle class and improve the economic conditions of our nation;

He signed a law to help shrink the gender gap, to one day perhaps close the discrepancies in pay between men and women;

He repealed a policy that discriminated against gay and lesbian women serving openly in the military;

He enacted a health care law that not only makes it easier for families to afford decent coverage, but prevents companies from denying their clients the benefits they had been paying into all along based on pre-existing conditions;

He brought an end to the war in Iraq, and a drawing down to the war in Afghanistan, as well as a renewed respect for our nation across the globe when it comes to international diplomacy;

And unlike our last president, he got serious about finding and ordering a strike against Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the largest terrorist attack in our nation’s history and the death of 3,000 American lives.

These aren’t accomplishments to scoff at -- they are significant, and considering the opposition he faced from Republican lawmakers (who filibustered his projects when they were out of power and refused to cooperate on any legislation when they assumed Congress), they are monumental in their scope.


There are many more accomplishments that he achieved as well, such as cutting the interest rates that students with Pell grants face, or expanding hate crime legislation, and so on. Where we are unimpressed with President Obama, we must remember that a lot more good was accomplished in his first four years than bad.

Does it warrant him another four more years? Without a doubt, yes. For, had President Obama been given a more cooperative Congress, one that wasn’t so willing to work against him for political purposes, there’s reason to believe that we could have seen even more from him than what we already have. Like a football coach with an injury-prone team, Obama cannot be faulted for his failure to do more.

He has, for instance, proposed a jobs bill that faced stiff obstruction. The bill would have been fully paid for, and would have added nearly two million more jobs.

Had that measure, and many more like it, been allowed to be enacted, there’d be no doubt that Obama would have cruised to a second term. But because of the GOP’s obstructive tactics, the president has seemingly failed to improve the economy beyond what he had hoped to have done when he took office.

Again, that isn’t Obama’s fault; and in spite of those tactics, unemployment is back below eight percent, with hundreds of thousands of jobs being added monthly.

With this in mind, Obama deserves to be returned to the White House. His counterpart’s plans are the same failed mistakes that got us into this fiscal calamity to begin with. Why should we believe, having enacted tax cuts ten years ago overwhelmingly to the rich and failing to see any real benefit from them as promised, that suddenly that tactic would somehow miraculously work now? The logic is flawed, and it won’t work.

Mitt Romney is a decent person; the personal stories told about him shouldn’t be disregarded, and his character as a human being shouldn’t be questioned. But his record as a politician and as a public servant in the state of Massachusetts, which was nearly last in job creation under his watch, shouldn’t be ignored either.

What’s more, the inconsistency in Romney’s positions gives us reason to question whether the real Mitt would govern this way or that way. Without fully knowing where he stands, how one can support his candidacy on any factual basis? The true base of support for candidate Romney rests upon those who oppose Barack Obama, which is hardly a reason to support anyone.

We know where President Obama stands. We also know what he’s accomplished. For those reasons, he deserves our votes, and a second term in office.