What does the re-election of President Barack Obama
mean for me and the world?
We have been following
the American election and I have to say I was very happy with the results. I
supported Obama´s policies during the last four years and I believe that his
re-election was the right decision. The United States still is the
world´s largest superpower and their actions don´t affect the American people
alone, but the entire world, so the election is as important for us as it is
for them.
The United States influences the world
economically, culturally, socially and in any other ly-s we can think of, but
not necessarily in a good way. The USA´s stock market crashes, the rest of the
world´s does as well, they go into an economic crisis, we do too. Also,
not necessarily in politics or economics, but the influence of American culture
is all over the world. Some countries like it, some countries don´t. But the
fact is that there aren´t many countries that can just "not have" an
opinion about the United States nowadays. So the way they conduct
their country will, some countries more than others, affect the way our lives
will be like for the next years. Seeing how such way depends almost entirely on
whether the next president will be a Democrat or a Republican, I was very glad
the Democrats won.
Talking about party ideals for a while,
I agree much more with the Democrats´ general proposals and beliefs than with
the Republicans. Seeing as how I didn´t see any of the candidates having
many direct plans for Brazil, I have to content to analyse who I think is more
appropriate to govern a country the size of the United States, considering the
influence it has in the rest of the world.
About the last few years, in Obama´s
mandate. The United States were in such a way when Obama came into office that
it would take much more than four years for them to recover. The debt and the
crisis were enormous and Obama did do a good job trying to pull them out of it.
. He has to be careful, because like I said, the United States is a huge
economy and the consequences if anything went wrong would go beyond their
borders, and would reach the entire world. He is going slowly, but he does have
a plan and if one has the capability to analyse the situation, one can see that
he is doing the right thing. He also took the army out of Afghanistan, focused
on finding terrorists, successfully brought Osama Bin Laden into custody and
has defended the United States for the past four years. Internally, he
increased taxes for the upper-class, and even though they don´t like it, we all
have to agree that it was the best thing to do. He has taken many other
controversial measures (to the American eye) but I think they were all
necessary and right. Overall, I think Barack Obama has shown he is an
intelligent person, not only when governing his country, but as a human being, he
has shown honesty, integrity, sense of justice and humanity. I think that those
are the best qualities needed in a president (or in any position of power,
really) nowadays. We can´t forget that the president isn´t only a president, he
is a human being, and his actions have to show that he is capable of being good
at both jobs.
Mitt Romney, however, hasn´t show
competence in neither of the aforementioned areas, in my opinion. For me, what
he has shown is inconsistency of thought, distortion of information, shallow
arguments and contradictory proposals. His main (and only) critique about
Obama´s mandate was regarding the economy. Every time he mentioned that Obama was
"going too slow with it,” I couldn´t help thinking, "so people from your party have caused the mess, left it to
the Democrats to clean it up, and you complain they´re doing it too
slowly?" I might not be fully informed about the economic crisis, but I
imagine that fighting two wars at the same time has its share of guilt to the
flourishing economy they have today. It is interesting how the
opposition´s only argument was about the economy, and yet Mitt Romney couldn´t
give a specific plan for how he would handle the problem. He can speak very
beautifully, of course, about how the United States is a country blessed by
God, that they are the most important nation in the world and how they are
above any mundane law. But during the entire course of the campaign I didn´t
see one valid argument for how he would conduct such an amazing country.
Rather, he just gave contradictory and flawed plans, on how it was necessary to
give more money to the army, but not raise taxes, how it was needed to build
more jobs, but he is always supporting the richest part of the population. He
has shown in more than one occasion arguments that opposed to something he had
previously stated, and when asked about what happened to the former argument,
he would deny ever saying such a thing. Another interesting aspect we have seen
during the election was some of the arguments of “team Romney” people. Now, it
would be a really good thing to vote for Romney if the opposing candidate was a
“Muslim, Atheist and Communist.” That would really overcome Romney´s
inconsistency.
Now, how can a country like the United
States (or any country, really) have a president who doesn´t stand by his word,
changes his mind constantly and isn´t capable of giving one profound argument
or plan to how he would conduct the country he claims to be capable of
conducting? The United States is in a tough position, and they must admit
it and try to change that. They can´t expect to continue doing the same thing
and having the same standards they did before. Many of Obama´s policies might
not be what the average American has in mind for their almighty country, but
they match the situation they are in, and the sooner they recognise that, the
more quickly they will recover.
So, to answer the topic question, (I´ve
gone out of topic, I think) to the rest of the world the re-election of Barack
Obama means that we are going to have the next four years without any major
wars or conflicts (involving the United States) and a slow but present growth
in the economy. They will be very similar to the last four years, which in my
opinion is a good thing. About me, I think the re-election of Barack Obama
simply means all of the above, to the extent that if Mitt Romney had won, we
might have another war, or some other crazy action being taken for a shallow or
unjustified reason, and the world would be practically in the hands of a person
whose all personality traits I have already given my opinion about. So, I am
very happy with the results of the election, because not only the man I really
didn´t want to win, lost and the man who I agree with won.
Go, Barry Obama!
