Biden and Axelrod make the case for electing Mitt Romney

President Obama’s re-election campaign will officially kick off on May 5, 2012 when he will be accompanied by his popular wife Michelle with back-to-back rallies in the battleground states of Virginia and Ohio. The truth is that President Obama has been campaigning for almost a year now and most observers recognize that President Obama hasn’t undertaken any serious governing in this period and is unlikely to do so in the remaining months. The trouble President Obama faces after trying a number of different slogans and strategies over the last twelve months is that the American economy is, and will remain the number 1 election issue this year.

Vice President Joe Biden appearing at a University in New York tried to champion the president’s foreign affairs achievements saying  the “bumper sticker” slogan to sum up Obama’s record is, he said, “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” Yes, there can be no denying that the president took the hard decision to send troops in to capture/kill America’s biggest terrorist target however; this election will not be based won using one major foreign policy success.  

Republican Mitt Romney captured the narrative brilliantly the other night in his New Hampshire speech by focussing on jobs, economic progress and saying, “It’s the economy and we’re not stupid.” Romney recognizes that American’s are hurting and knows this years’ election will be won on the economy and what future domestically American’s aspire to.

The one single factor that President Obama will not be able to escape no matter what celebrity status he tries to build, is his domestic record. President George H. Bush learnt this lesson despite enjoying a popularity rating above 80% a little over a year before he lost the general election to President Clinton in 1992.

Romney will not accept Obama's rich vs. poor class-warfare mantra, nor will he apologize for his own success. Romney envisions an America where success based on hard work is applauded, not punished or taxed away, where every child can be the next Steve Jobs and not the next food-stamp recipient. Romney wants American wealth redistributed, but not from those pulling the wagon to those riding it. He wants to create more of it and redistribute it from successful parents to even more successful children.

President Obama’s vision of the future is really a vision of the past, of a sort of idealized 1950s America where less globalization and less technology meant taxes could be higher and unions stronger, of an America where the central government and wise bureaucrats are the prime economic actors in key sectors such as energy and healthcare.

Only yesterday the presidents chief strategist David Axelrod made a convincing case for electing Mitt Romney when he stated the economy is ‘not as robust as we’d like.’ After three years of failed economic policies and broken promises, it’s clear that President Obama isn’t prepared to help build an economy that helps get Americans back to work or at the very least, is all out of ideas. President Obama was elected on a promise to make a better America and deliver change. American’s are realising that not only is the nation more divided under his leadership, they are no better off then when they first elected him in 2008.

Romney on the other hand  is aiming to offer a vision of an industrious economy of decentralization, consumer choice, and private-sector innovation where jobs are the result of value creation, not crony-capitalist rent seeking. Pro-market, but not pro-business. It’s a vision of how market forces can reform the social safety net and make it affordable. Not a Welfare State economy or a Warfare State economy. Romney promises to do better if elected and although he may not be the most dynamic character, I believe American’s would settle for a Chief Executive who has a proven record on creating and delivering jobs and one who is prepared to try new ideas and policies.

Romney has laid out plans to turn around the economy, whether it’s his jobs plan, whether it’s his tax plan. He’s been specific on what he would do in reining in the size of government. All his competitors with the current exception of Rick Santorum have thrown their support behind Romney and with such effective surrogates as Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and Newt Gingrich out stumping for him, Romney will be ably supported around the country.

President Obama and his Democratic team just don’t have the credibility they did when stumping four years ago. The Democratic controlled Senate haven’t passed a budget in three years and minority House Leader Nancy Pelosi sounds more like the former Iraqi Information Minister Comical Ali everyday in her desperate attempts to lay the blame for the poor economy at the Republican’s door.

In 2012 and the current global economic climate nothing speaks louder then results, and the harsh reality is President Obama is short on them especially economically and in particularly domestically.

This question every American will ask as they go to the polls in November is simple, can our country afford four more years of President Obama and his leadership style?