Niall Casey
Contributing Writer
Mitt Romney is a man endearingly out of step with the modern presidential campaign. He has built a campaign solely around the practical rather than the emotional. He holds fast to the premise that a president is not a spiritual leader nor a national symbol but a public service role like any other. He holds to the old idea that he is passing through an institution that is bigger than he is.
He, like Obama, exemplifies his generation. Romney has the reticence of a man raised by the people who were raised by the depression and the Second World War. As such he considers it incongruous to use personal anecdotes to further political ends. As a result he has left his opponents characterize him as the heartless corporate raider. Yet, to the surprise of the political class, his message is resonating across America.
In November 2008, America seemed on the cusp of something great. Journalists competed for grandest hyperbole to describe Obama’s ascent to the presidency. To many around the world his election was a symbol of America returning to its best traditions. To others his election was seen as national atonement for past injustices.
Millions across America and around the world listened to Obama’s soaring rhetoric with an expectant and delirious hope. On his inauguration day Obama announced that “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”
Four years on from when those words were spoken, the American economy remains in a decrepit state. Bush’s recession has been replaced by Obama’s stagnation. The case against Obama could simply me made by stating succinctly the economic facts of the time: stubbornly high unemployment, more people declaring themselves disabled then finding jobs, poverty at an all time high and one of the slowest growth rates of any developed nation.
This was not part of the plan. After trying every elixir and potion in the Keynesian medicine box, the economy remains stubbornly sick.
Looking, as is his habit, at the far horizon, Mitt Romney sees an America made prosperous through innate American virtues- thrift, industriousness and entrepreneurial daring.
He believes that economic salvation does not come through government committees or diktats, but through unshackling job creators. He has set a bold manifesto for growth and recovery. He draws on his record of turning around failing enterprises. Government, has grown too big, he believes, and it now stifles growth and opportunity.
He has set out on the arduous task of taming Leviathan. He believes that shrinking the federal government, streamlining the regulatory system and simplifying the now burdensome Tax code are crucial in regaining America’s competitive advantage and emerging from the malaise.
The contrast between the two men were strikingly clear during a recent debate. Obama, feeling inconvenienced by the whole affair, gave a gray, lethargic defence of his first term. When faced with serious questions he retorted with stale clichés. Romney is contrast was at his best. 
He was bold, erudite and passionate. His true persona emerged; not the heartless ideologue but the modernizing, reasonable, reformer his record suggests.
Romney draws on his allies experiences. Paul Ryan exemplifies this new generation of conservative leadership in America. They’re young, wonkish, bold and not prepared to dodge the long term structural problems that America faces. They’ve been emboldened with an energizing fiscal reformism.
Across the states, Republican governors from New Mexico to New Jersey, have embarked upon aggressive economic campaigns to reverse their decline. As a result, since the beginning of the recession average incomes in Republican states have grown 4.6% in contrast to the anaemic 0.5% growth in Democratic states. In short the Republicans have become the radicals.
The democrats are waging a war for the status quo. As a result America faces a choice between the reactionary liberalism of the Democrats and a Republican Party with a newly found zeal for reform.
To nations around the world who look to America to drag a struggling global economy back to growth, Obama seems deeply out of his depth. He has been running a campaign based on recondite and often trivial issues. His campaign cannot take an economic question without an outburst of anti-corporate populism.
He is running a campaign devoid of economic reality and is hoping a cocktail of fear mongering and appeal to entrenched interest groups will be enough to garner him to 50%+1.
America has tried the hope and change mantra. Maybe what America (and Europe) needs is responsible, conservative leadership. Mitt Romney never anointed himself savior of the world, he never portrayed himself as anything more than a successful executive with a history of turning around failing enterprises.
He doesn’t assert to feel you pain, it is not his to know. He offers to ameliorate that pain. In straightened times that should be enough.
