Who Should Win Obama or Romney: Why Obama Deserves a Second Term in the White House

Impact

After what seems like the longest presidential campaign in the history of the world, Election Day is finally upon us. Tonight either President Obama will win his bid for re-election or America will welcome Mitt Romney into the Oval Office, come January 2013. 

A lot has been said and done by both campaigns in the past few months in hopes of getting the support of undecided voters. One would imagine by today most of those undecided voters have already made up their minds – to those who haven’t, I have one thing to say: join me in supporting Barack Obama for re-election.

I am not disillusioned enough to think President Obama’s first term was what I expected it to be. His 2008 campaign sold me on hope and change and while I emphatically believe my family and I are not worse off today than we were four years ago, I know things have not moved at the pace nor quite in the direction I wanted them to. Yet, I am proud of what the president has done while in office. 

My bias is clear when I say it was one of the most profound days of my (short) life when President Obama became the first sitting president to publicly support same-sex marriage. This, coupled with the Obama administration’s decision to no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in Court, shows to me the president values my liberties as a human being and a citizen in this country.

Mitt Romney is running on a platform that seems to value economics over people. I understand the importance and gravity of having a healthy, robust economy. I know that without jobs and money we cannot continue to grow and be the great nation that America is – but I value constitutional freedoms more than a paycheck. Every citizen deserves the constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness because without it, we’ve created a caste system in this country and that’s not what freedom and equality look like.

Barack Obama cares about his constituents. That the first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, his support of expanding Pell Grants and, yes, signing Obamacare into law shows me that he cares . These things affect people personally and profoundly.

I don’t mean to imply Mitt Romney does not care about Americans — although he thinks his job is not to worry about nearly half of the country. I don’t believe Mitt Romney is evil. I do believe that Mitt Romney is a scary choice for president. It worries me that if Mitt Romney is elected today we still would not know who the man sitting in the Oval Office will be in January. It’s Election Day and even after paying attention to the political news cycle for a good chunk of the past 13 months, I don’t know what he stands for besides lowering taxes for everyone in the country and simplifying the tax code.

It worries me that Mitt Romney thinks women are not capable of making decisions about their own bodies — something they would know much more about than he would — or same-sex couples are not worthy of benefiting from over 1,000 federal provisions of which marriage is a factor in determining or receiving benefits or students should borrow money from their parents to get an education or start a business.

It’s 2012: such ignorant and misguided views don’t belong anywhere near the person who’s leading this country. We want America to continue to be the beacon of opportunity and greatness it’s always been, and we need a president who values all citizens and who understands what the American people’s lives are like and can lead from that knowledge. Today, that president is Barack Obama.