The Economist
published their endorsement for this year's presidential election today. The Economist, known to be a conservative news outlet, had this to say about President Obama:
"
Even to a newspaper with no love for big government, the fact that over 40m people had no health coverage in a country as rich as America was a scandal."
While one particularly scathing comment about Mitt Romney was:
"
...the extremism of his party is Mr Romney’s greatest handicap. The Democrats have their implacable fringe too: look at the teachers’ unions. But the Republicans have become a party of Torquemadas, forcing representatives to sign pledges never to raise taxes, to dump the chairman of the Federal Reserve and to embrace an ever more Southern-fried approach to social policy. Under President Romney, new conservative Supreme Court justices would try to overturn Roe v Wade, returning abortion policy to the states. The rights of immigrants (who have hardly had a good deal under Mr Obama) and gays (who have) would also come under threat. This newspaper yearns for the more tolerant conservatism of Ronald Reagan, where “small government” meant keeping the state out of people’s bedrooms as well as out of their businesses. Mr Romney shows no sign of wanting to revive it."
The Economist
also lists its history of Presidential Endorsements. For those keeping score, they are:
1980: Ronald Reagan
1984: No Endorsement
1988: No Endorsement
1992: Bill Clinton
1996: Bob Dole
2000: George W. Bush
2004: John Kerry
2008: Barack Obama
2012: Barack Obama
Its 1984 non-endorsement had this very prescient point that haunts us today:
"
Although Mr Reagan's ultra-Keynesian America is barrelling along towards full employment, all its trading and budget accounts are frighteningly out of balance. A sound international economic order cannot be built on the assumption that the rumbustiously richest country will go on borrowing unprecedented amounts at enormous interest rates from everybody else for ever."
All-in-all, it hasn't been a good few days for Mitt Romney. First, his keynote speaker from the Republican National Convention, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie,
effusively praised President Obama for his handling of the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy. Then, he attempted to do the right thing by
having a can drive at what was originally scheduled to be a campaign rally.
Just one problem though:
"
The campaign asked for nonperishable donations despite the fact that the Red Cross does not typically accept or solicit individual donations or collections of items because of the extra labor involved with sorting, cleaning, repackaging and transporting such items."
After that, New York City's Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg
made a surprise endorsement of President Obama based on his views on climate change, in spite of the fact that it hasn't come up much in this year's election cycle.
What does all this mean? Nothing, except that this will all be over in four more days,
when Barack Obama has an 81% chance of winning 303 electoral votes. Then, like the Hurricane Sandy recovery, we can all get on with the rest of our lives.
