For America's future, The Post endorses Mitt Romney for president

For America's future, The Post endorses Mitt Romney for president

• Last Updated: 12:57 PM, October 25, 2012
• Posted: 1:51 AM, October 25, 2012

Four frustratingly long years ago, a war-weary and economically battered America took a flier on a savior.
It didn’t work out.
Now, in 12 days, the nation will return to the polls — to reject, or to ratify, the results of the great Barack Obama experiment.
That is, to reject or to ratify the notion that hoping for change is a sound footing for productive national policy.
But, by the evidence, it is not.
It cannot create jobs.

It cannot reduce deficits.
It cannot restore foreign confidence in America — or Americans’ confidence in their own great nation.

America needs more than hope. It needs leadership. That is why The Post today endorses the candidacy of Mitt Romney for president of the United States.
Scrape it down to bedrock, and Mitt Romney knows that there is but one issue in this campaign: America’s woeful economy, and the demonstrated inability of President Obama to cope with it.
Obama says he inherited the mess, but he’s done nothing to fix it. Borrow, spend, regulate and redistribute is not a prescription for sustainable growth, yet that has been the totality of his program.
He says things will get better — soon. But there’s no evidence for that.
Obamanomics has produced:
* A sky-high national debt, now at a stupefying $16 trillion and growing.
* Intractable unemployment and a workforce hemorrhaging discouraged workers.
* No perceptible economic growth.
* Historic expansion in welfare programs — especially food stamps.
Obama proposes massive tax increases aimed not so much at the rich, as he claims, but squarely at the middle class and small business, which is insane: Small business — the real engine of American job creation — needs to be nurtured, not squeezed dry.
Americans need jobs — jobs for those trying to raise a family, jobs for those who are leaving school, jobs period!
Instead, they are about to be saddled with an unworkable health-care boondoggle that will suck hundreds of billions from a private-sector economy that could better use the cash to create — yes — more jobs!
Can Mitt Romney really turn all this around? Yes, he can.
In the debates, Americans saw a leader.
They saw a man with the experience, the temperament, the principles and the knowledge to address America’s economic woes instead of just blaming others.
After all, as governor of deep-blue Massachusetts, he worked with a Democratic legislature to close a $3 billion deficit without raising taxes or borrowing.
There is one other significant issue.
Four years ago, Obama vowed “to restore America’s standing in the world.” But he has sown rancor and confusion instead.
Our friends don’t know if they’re still our friends; our enemies wonder whether we have the courage to stand up to them.
The result has been a cataclysmic breakdown of US leadership in the Middle East.
Israel — and not just Israel — questions whether Obama is committed to curbing Iran’s nuclear threat.
Syria is in open civil war, while Egypt and Libya teeter on the brink. Osama bin Laden may be dead, but al Qaeda has hardly been contained — as Benghazi tragically proved.
In contrast, the smoke now hanging over the Middle East testifies to Obama’s inability to get the job done.
Any job.
Because, in the end, the fundamental problem is the president’s core philosophy.
He believes in equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity — and that is not how America is supposed to work.
America is not working right now.
Forward?
For four more years?
We think not.
Mitt Romney for president.