By Zac Byer, on Tue Oct 30, 2012 at 9:15 AM ET Our resident Gen Y “He Said; She Said” team — Jordan Stivers and Zac Byer (who also happen to be dating) offer their closing arguments for the presidential candidates. Click here to read Jordan’s piece. And Gen Y’s unofficial Hollywood spokeswoman, actor, writer and director Lena Dunham, weighs in here.
Here’s Zac:
 Can America really afford to continue down the path we are on?
Can we afford to continue with the same policies that have left 23 million Americans unemployed? That have resulted in the smallest labor force in over thirty years? That have ballooned our national debt over $16 trillion – $5 trillion of which has been added in the last four years alone?
Forget about whether or not you’re satisfied with those numbers – I can’t believe you are. So, the better question is whether you accept those numbers? I sure hope you don’t.
We must bring real accountability to Washington. Politicians don’t deserve free passes, especially when they pile even more debt on an already burdened public. The cost of living is too high, and our national morale is too low. Short-sighted, quick-fix economic policies and Washington solutions do not have to become the new normal. Neither does the excuse-me-blame-him strategy. We shouldn’t – and we won’t – accept that.
That’s why we shouldn’t accept four more years of poor prioritization, insincere excuses, and half-baked leadership. It’s why we shouldn’t accept four more years of Barack Obama.
***
 I won’t argue that the economy was in a good place on January 20, 2009. The Bush Administration gave us a lot to pay for: two wars, a new prescription drug subsidy, TARP, lower tax rates. While his conservatism may have been compassionate, it certainly wasn’t cash-conscious.
And President Obama means well. While I didn’t vote for him four years ago, I wanted him to succeed as much as his most loyal supporter. When we wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night, we are still Americans…and we are all in this together.
But in the last four years, Obama’s hope has changed to disappointment.
Take the 2012 fiscal year. The government taxed us to the tune of $2.5 trillion to operate the country. Whether you think the 16th Amendment is the best or worst component of the Constitution, I hope you’ll agree that $2.5 trillion is a lot of money. And yet, $2.5 trillion wasn’t enough for Obama’s government. They spent $3.5 trillion – 44% more than they brought in! Not only is that unsustainable, but in Mitt Romney’s words, that’s immoral.
Americans all across the country work hard to stick to a budget. We live within our means, and we don’t spend more than we can afford. If we can do it, why can’t Washington? Why shouldn’t Washington?
***
Read the rest of…
Zac Byer: Gen Y He Said — Closing Argument for Mitt Romney
By Jordan Stivers, on Tue Oct 30, 2012 at 9:00 AM ET Many virtual trees have fallen in examining Gen Y’s involvement in Campaign 2012. Seen as an excited, game-changing voting bloc in 2008 for Barack Obama, much has changed during the job-challenged recovery of the past few years.
Our resident Gen Y “He Said; She Said” team — Jordan Stivers and Zac Byer (who also happen to be dating) weighs in. Click here to read Zac’s piece. And Gen Y’s unofficial Hollywood spokeswoman, actor, writer and director Lena Dunham, weighs in here.
 In 2008, I was a junior at the University of Kentucky and it was my first time voting in a presidential election. I found it so exciting that my first ballot ever cast was for Barack Obama, a candidate so different from any I had ever seen or heard about, not only in terms of race or background, but in what he stood for – equality, opportunity, and working together. As I walked around my fairly conservative campus the day after the election, wearing my Obama 08’ shirt and getting dirty looks from other students, I felt so proud that our country had come together and decided to go in a new direction.
I admit that a lot has changed since 2008, not only in my life, but in the country and in President Obama’s White House as well. I’ve graduated from college, worked for two years, and started law school. I’ve become an adult and realized that the state of the economy affects me and that it is vitally important for our national wellbeing. The country has come down from the high it was on after the 2008 election, and because of the difficult recovery from the even more difficult financial situation Obama inherited, many have become disillusioned with the President. But I don’t think this is a result of failed leadership of the President, but a result of our having impossibly high expectations of Obama, and a lack of understanding of the depth of the problems he has had to solve.
I’ve been hearing a lot of Republicans, and Mitt Romney himself, talking smugly about how young people are not as excited about Obama this time around, as if they’re saying, “I told you so, now you know better than to have any optimism about government and the good things it can achieve.” This is so cynical. The mood is different this time, but that’s natural. The President has had the hard job of actually governing for the past four years, and some of the sexiness has worn off. But this doesn’t mean that young people do not believe that President Obama is still the candidate with our best interests in mind. Because of the President’s policies, I’ve been able to stay on my parents’ health insurance through my transition from school to work, then back to law school. He’s supported many of my friends and colleagues who are gay by declaring that they should have the same rights as everyone else. He has kept student loan rates down so that we can pursue higher education. He’s allowed those of us who have grown up in the U.S. but are still not considered citizens to make it official. And let’s not forget how strongly he has represented the U.S. in foreign policy by killing Osama Bin Laden.
Read the rest of…
Jordan Stivers: Gen Y She Said — Closing Argument for Obama
By RP Nation, on Mon Oct 29, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET I could write several pages of why I think that Mitt Romney must be our next President but I realize that much of it will fall on deaf ears as everyone has their own take on every issue that I will bring up. Some will call out for a larger government, and I will argue for a smaller government. Some will call out for increasing taxes, while I would argue the opposite. So I am not going to waste my time or yours repeating the same party talking points.
I think that there is one issue that no one can really argue. We must have bi-partisan participation and compromise in the next four years if we are to resolve the major fiscal problems that threaten not only our country but also the entire free world.
Barack Obama promised to unite our country but we knew early on that this would not be the case. Early examples were sobering including the failed stimulus trillion and the health care plan. Obama has not only failed to unite us….”there are no blue states or red states only the United States” ….but he has been the most partisan President in the history of the US.
Romney has been called a Massachusetts moderate by his challengers in the Republican Party and most of us think that is accurate. He reached across the aisle as a Governor and everyone expects him to do the same as President. Does anyone really think that Axelrod, Jarrett, Holder, Cutter, or other White House insiders to do the same. Instead it will be four more years of a dysfunctional Washington where name and blame continues and the public continues to be more and more disenchanted.
We need a President who will actually meet with Democrats as often as he does Republicans . We need to shove aside ideology in favor of pragmatism. There is only one candidate who will appoint moderates to positions of leadership. There is only one candidate who will govern from the middle. Mitt Romney must be our next President .
S. Randolph Waldman, MD is the Director of Waldman -Schantz Plastic Surgery
By RP Nation, on Mon Oct 29, 2012 at 2:15 PM ET While our current POTUS has not come through with many of the campaign promises that he made in the 2008 election, I get the sense that he takes responsibilities for these missed goals, and will continue to work toward moving the country forward.
When I listen to Mitt Romney, and look at the amount of pivoting that he has done, I feel he speaks with a forked tongue. I think that he is a strong business leader, but, I don’t think that he has the majority of this country in mind. I don’t feel like he can truly connect with the middle, wherever the middle is.
It’s not one thing, but a summary of things. Everyone makes a bad comment, or has a bad day, but, with Mitt, in looking at this statements, he seems to be contradicting himself throughout the entire nomination and election process.
I don’t feel like he can be trusted with running this country.
By RP Nation, on Mon Oct 29, 2012 at 12:30 PM ET Quite simply, one has to ask before pulling the lever: Do I want this man to be president?
Do I want my candidate to win, or simply the other man to lose?
I know when I voted for the president’s re-election that I would be getting a return to fair taxation, a continued drawdown of foreign wars, the rights of women respected fully, and a continuation of a recovery program that has taken us from hemorrhaging 700000 jobs a month to gaining thousands more.
Still, the right has vilified this man from jump street. Their stated top priority on his election day was not to help the country right itself after the failure of their rule, but to defeat the president. For four years they have stood in the way of growth for their own political ends. They have blocked every measure they could that would improve the economy and to top it off, they are now running a candidate without a single firm position other than, “I’m not the guy your radio tells you to hate.”
Will you reward them?
Will you elect a man who has presented no ideas?
Will you hand power back to those who have so recently and so fully abused it?
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Oct 29, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET  Another day traveling by air.
Another day with mild to modest frustration with a major airline.
The major airlines seem more and more to remind me of a old school ma’arm, just waiting to slap you on the wrist for something inconsequential.
Mostly because they enjoy doing it…
And another day, thankfully, salvaged by Southwest.
The new cool substitute teacher that all the students love. And all the school marmy teachers hate. ; )
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In SouCal airports you see a lot of people who look like celebrities, carry themselves like a celebrity , and who want to be confused for a celebrity–but who are not a celebrity.
I think it’s fun.
The fun part for me is staring at them awestruck and looking like, carrying myself like and wanting to be confused for one of their fans.
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It smells good in California.
Even in the airport.
Clean.
It’s like people here shower two or three times a day.
Or use some sort of New Age magnetic device that repels dirt and dust and prevents perspiration.
It’s not quite human.
Like a fresh fruity well-toned Droid who just finished another colon cleanse.
I somehow worry that people I say hi too will suspect I don’t smell like one of them and know I’m not from here.
The low level humming from my iPhone from the Black Crowes isn’t helping any either
==========
 It’s a dog’s life —not!
Remember the bleak saying about every down-and-outer getting their moment, “Every dog has it’s day”? I doubt that gets used in SoCal.
As I pulled out of the airport into San Diego last night the one thing I noticed over….and over…. and, yes, over again…was the privileged life that dogs lead out here.
At least one in three people I saw out last night in a suburb near downtown San Diego were walking their well-groomed, poised and, frankly, self-confident dog(s). Not in a cutesy or ostentatious way, like Paris Hilton carrying a tiny lap dog in her purse as a sort of panting accoutrement. Rather it was a normal person finally acting like the “dog’s best friend” we’ve always promised to be but—as any dog you know will tell you—have not lived up to.
And that attention and connection with their human shows, too—shows in the way SoCal dogs carry themselves and interact with other dogs—and even humans. They have a carriage about them which says, “Welcome to my town. Notice my owner. Pretty cool guy, huh?” It’s like the dogs are as self-conscious of who is walking them as their owners are about impressing others with their choice and type and breed of dog.
It’s darn near like the dogs out her are treated as a separate but co-equal species to humans. When you see a person and their dog on a chain walking, it’s not like back home. It’s like a couple out to get ice cream. Sure, the human appears to have control of the leash, but I suspect if you look closely it’s some sort of mutual canine-human leash that lets the two co-equal species stay together but without holding hands, or paws.
Oh, and dogs aren’t left outside here when their human pet goes into a store. No hitching post for these darlings. The dog walks in with every right to be there as anybody else. And seems a little impatient because there isn’t a larger canine section.
And as much as I hate to admit it, these dogs can be intimidating to people visiting from out of town. A strong-and-silent type pit bull was in Rite Aid last night with a cute young couple for a walk. The dog was well-manicured and obviously a female because it had a little bow in the corner of its well-coiffed mane. She began sniffing me—not like other dogs…but slyly as if by accident— and I instantly felt self-conscious when the dog looked up at me with these soft but probing and judgmental eyes. Although my new domesticated pit bull acquaintance didn’t say these exact words out loud, she was clearly thinking “You’re not from around here, are you? What….what kind of –whatever it is that you are….are you? And don’t even think about cutting in front of us in line. I’ll bite you and humiliate you in front of everyone. I’m still a dog, you know. Are we clear?”
I nodded affirmatively to the dog. I recovered my bearings long enough to realize something wasn’t quite right and mumbled, “Nice bow.”
The dog’s head whipped around as if to say, “What was that?!” “What?” I said. “I didn’t say anything.” The human owners looked oddly at me.
I offered, “Sorry. I wasn’t talking to you.”
It was the first time in a very long time that I felt like Junior from Hee-Haw stammering for something to say and knowing it would not be something appropriate or helpful. So I just kept quiet. And let this dog have its day. Like it does everyday in SoCal.
Read the rest of…
John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Travels to SoCal
By Artur Davis, on Mon Oct 29, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET  If it turns out the life of Barack Obama’s presidency is measured in months, left-leaning analysts will agonize over what went so wrong. Their explanations will range from confusion over how a stunningly gifted orator never mastered the greatest national pulpit, to consternation about the intransigence of Republicans and the eruption of the Tea Party, to sober hand-wringing about the intractable nature of 21st Century democracy.
But the mourning will not match the genuine misery and perplexity many Americans feel regarding the state of the nation. For all the explanations of how Obama has fallen short of his promise, the simplest one is in the discontent of those 23 million plus individuals who are under or unemployed, some for such long stretches that they have fallen through the cracks of the government’s official statistics. These men and women are the source of a national fury over why things are the way they are, and they and the Americans who know them have proved resistant to deflecting responsibility or changing the subject.
 To be sure, as his defenders never cease to point out, Obama was greeted with the debris of a national calamity. The country seemed to be teetering on the edge of depression for stretches in late 2008 and early 2009, a casualty of a Washington environment that privileged and made unaccountable the giant government sponsored housing enterprises and a reckless Wall Street culture that took the risk out of lending for the mortgagor. But rather than tackle the crisis with single-mindedness, Obama veered off in too many scattered directions: a stimulus whose legacy is a slew of poor returns on investments in alternative energy and uncompleted construction projects, a partisan healthcare law that drained off a year of the administration’s efforts, a massive overhaul of the carbon producing economy that was too unwieldy for even many Democrats to embrace, a financial industry bill that has not stopped excessive leveraging in the capital markets. The portfolio is one that Obama and his allies have strained to explain, much less justify.
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Artur Davis: A Closing Argument for Mitt Romney
By Ronald J. Granieri, on Sun Oct 28, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET As the late night comics and cable screaming heads continue to mock and skewer the small percentage of undecided voters who will tip the balance in next week’s presidential election — How can someone be so stupid as to not be able to tell the difference between the two candidates? — I learned that one of the smartest people I’ve ever met is among this derided consitituency.
Ron Granieri is a graduate of Harvard College, earned his PhD in History from the University of Chicago, and has served as a professor at an Ivy League university. Moreover, as a precocious college student — who happened to be my roommate — Ron’s near photographic memory would enable him to beat me at Trivial Pursuit without ever allowing me a turn.
I’ve asked Ron to share with the RP Nation the path of a Reagan acoloyte who became frustrated with the far right turn of the GOP, only to be later disenchanted with the promise of the Obama Administration.
Because it will be voters like Ron who could ultimately determine our next President.
– The RP
= = = =
When The RP approached me the other day to ask me to join in the round table of “closing statements” for one candidate or another in the presidential election, it forced me to confront something I have tried to avoid for many months.
We have all seen the skits and made the jokes about undecided voters. Saturday Night Live mocked them for being ignorant. [Watch the video at the bottom of this post — in which an undecided voter asks whether French kissing could lead to pregnancy.] The brilliant Steven Colbert recently took it even further, comparing the elusive undecided voter to Jodie Foster’s epically (if unintentionally) hilarious backcountry wild child, Nell.
I have enjoyed a few chuckles at these images myself. But deep down I have been hiding a shameful secret: I am one of them.
I never thought it would come to this.
 Ron’s childhood idol I have always been politically curious, going back to my childhood when I talked politics with my extremely political father. I can remember telling him I thought President Nixon should resign during the summer of 1974 (I was 7). By the time I was in high school in the early 1980s, I had become, following in the intellectual footsteps of my childhood idol, William F. Buckley, Jr., an enthusiastic conservative. My father, who admired Buckley in spite of rather than because of his ideology, was not completely happy about that, but he respected my positions, and we had some wonderfully spirited arguments. When the Georgetown School of Foreign Service application requested an essay outlining the one international problem I would most like to address in my future career, I wrote a perfervid essay on the need to combat international communism. No copy of the essay survives from that pre-word processing age, unless it is in a Georgetown archive somewhere, but I well remember being proud of calling communism “an international gangrene that threatens the health and safety of every society it touches.” I wonder what the folks at the Walsh School thought of it. I don’t know if it helped or not, but I did get in, even if I ended up going somewhere else.
In college I became one of the most visible conservatives on campus, editing Harvard’s monthly conservative student paper, the Salient. It culminated in my being featured in a full page of the graduation issue of the Crimson in 1989, as one of a handful of notable graduates of my class. That article, I discovered, is still available online, but when I think of it I think of the yellowing clipping that my mother framed and hung on the wall in what used to be my bedroom in Niagara Falls.
 Graduation Day: Ron at far left, The RP, second from right I had opinions on everything back then. Some of them I still hold; some I do not. A few of them make me shake my head in affectionate embarrassment for a young man who was awfully full of himself. Nevertheless, I had a pretty clear sense of where I stood on things; I voted in every election I could, and my votes followed those convictions. It was not always easy to be the most conservative person in the room (an experience that followed me from college to graduate school to at least the start of my academic career). But it worked well thanks to lots of good friends and plenty of mutual good will and respect for differences.
 In 88, Ron supported Bush 41, but teen hooligans made him a sleeping billboard for the liberal Dukakis Gradually, however, my sense of having a clear political home began to shift. Part of it was seven years living in the wonderful state of South Carolina, birthplace of both Steven Colbert and Strom Thurmond. In the final years of the last century and the early years of this one, I saw a Republican party that became increasingly focused on issues that did not appeal to me. On the local level I saw a rising tide of anti-intellectualism, anti-urbanism, and nativism. The national party displayed those traits as well, but mostly became fixated on slashing taxes, and too often responded to serious discussions about how to provide enough revenue for existing programs with vaguely neo-Confederate rhetoric about shrinking government disconnected from political reality. It was the party of the suburbs, of the Sun Belt and the Evangelicals. None of those traits much appealed to me, an Italian-Irish Catholic intellectual from a Rust Belt industrial town who prefers Alexander Hamilton to Thomas Jefferson and believes the Good Guys indisputably won The War of the Rebellion. The Cold War conservatism that I had embraced so closely, with its sense of national purpose, was dying out, and the new individualized Right was leaving me cold.
I remember well the moment when I really felt that things were slipping away. It was in spring 2000, on the eve of the South Carolina primary. I answered the phone and it was someone from the George W. Bush campaign team taking a poll. She was very pleasant, asked me if I had decided whether to vote for Bush or John McCain, and I admitted I was thinking it over. She then launched into a critique of McCain that trumpeted Bush’s plans for immediate tax cuts that would give the budget surplus back to the voters. I responded that I liked a lot of things about Governor Bush’s “compassionate conservatism,” which I took to mean conservatism based not simply on individualism but which included a sense of shared community responsibility. At the same time, I told her I did not really think that it made sense to rush to cut taxes when we still had a national debt in the trillions. (This was even before Afghanistan, Iraq, Medicare Part D and TARP, of course.)
An embarrassed pause followed. Then she curtly thanked me for my comments and hung up.
I should have taken that as a clear sign of where the Bush campaign stood and where my concerns fit into that agenda. But breaking up is hard to do. Even as I felt increasingly alienated from the GOP, it continued to get my votes. At least, that is, until 2008, when my frustration with the party and where it had led the country moved me to turn my back on them and vote for Barack Obama.
There, I said it. College friends may need a moment. I’ll wait. I recommend deep breaths.
Read the rest of…
Ron Granieri: I’m An Undecided Voter — And Yes, I Know How Babies Are Made
By Jonathan Miller, on Sun Oct 28, 2012 at 8:15 AM ET Despite being a proud, progressive Obama supporter, I frankly found the Lexington Herald-Leader‘s decision to run a minority view editorial on the presidential race refreshing. Allowing your readers to have both sides and then decide on their own is a good policy, one that is at the core of The Recovering Politician.
However, I am confused by a statement made within the minority editorial (linked here) that said Publisher Rufus Friday “chose not to use his power as publisher to overrule the majority.”
I’m confused because just a few inches below the editorial sits the editorial board policy which states that “Herald-Leader editorials are the consensus of the editorial board” of which the publisher is but one of 5 members.
Does the publisher always reserve the right to overrule the other 4 members? If so, will that be disclosed in the circumstance that he does? Is this a new policy or is this just the first time I was aware of it?If anyone knows the answers, please comment below. Thanks!
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri Oct 26, 2012 at 9:15 AM ET As you may have noticed, we are only 11 days away from what some call the most important presidential election of our era.
OK, they say that every 4 years…but it is certainly clear that the American people are being offered two highly contrasting visions of the nation’s future.
This week, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are offering their closing arguments to the American people — summations of why they have earned your vote.
That’s why we are dedicating a week at The Recovering Politician to Campaign 2012: The Closing Argument. Over the course of the week, a dozen of our contributors — of course, representing both sides of the aisle — will be making their own summations for the candidate of their choice.
And you can, too. We are calling on the RP Nation to join in as well. Send us a closing argument for your presidential candidate — Obama, Romney, or a 3rd party candidate if you prefer. If it is only a paragraph or two — or just one strongly worded sentence — feel free to leave it in the comments section below. If it is longer — up to a maximum of 1000 words — you can email it to Staff@TheRecoveringPolitician.com. To ensure its publication, please send it to us by Noon, Thursday, November 1.
And who knows, maybe a campaign staffer picks up your ideas, shares it with the candidate, and you will have changed the course of American history. Or perhaps you just get a kick sharing your thoughts with thousands of other readers across the country.
Either way, we’d love you to join us.
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Can America really afford to continue down the path we are on?
I won’t argue that the economy was in a good place on January 20, 2009. The Bush Administration gave us a lot to pay for: two wars, a new prescription drug subsidy, TARP, lower tax rates. While his conservatism may have been compassionate, it certainly wasn’t cash-conscious.
