OPINION by Jasper Alexander
Imagine getting a new job where your predecessor had left a complete mess. The filing system was inadequate, clients had stopped calling and the company’s financial situation was in complete disarray. On top of these challenges, you receive very little support from your co-workers in your efforts to turn things around. After working hard for almost four years and making incredible progress in turning the company around, you have to go through an evaluation to see if you keep your job. Your employer brings in another manager from a smaller division to see if there is a potentially better fit for continuing the progress that you have created. After three rounds of interviews and countless questions, management is still split on whether you should keep your job. How would you feel about being in this situation? Would you consider this fair?
And that is where our President finds himself. When he started his “job” in 2009, President Obama inherited an economy on the brink of collapse, two wars and a global frustration with the Bush doctrine of unilaterally enforcing our country’s foreign policy agenda. And it is inarguable that he has made things better. Yet national polls such as those found here, still have the President deadlocked in a race to keep his job. It seems as if company management has forgotten how bad things really were when President Obama began working for America and how his Republican co-workers in Congress made it even more difficult to improve things either through the record setting use of the filibuster or by refusing to compromise on any proposed policies or legislation.
Now the President has to compete to keep his job with someone who on the surface seems qualified because he ran a smaller division of the company with mixed results.
Based on the rounds of interviews, it is becoming increasingly clear that the best candidate to continue moving America in the right direction is our current leader. Not only has he outperformed Romney in two out of the three debates, he also has faced the challenges that many Americans are currently facing.
Enough with the corporate model, let’s talk real-life.
If you are an American struggling to pay for your education, wouldn’t you want someone who has actually had a student loan as your advocate? If you are a poor American, wouldn’t you want a President who knows what it feels like to be poor and to have been on food stamps? If you are a middle-class American, wouldn’t you want a president that actually defeated poverty through education to become middle-class and who understands the challenges of raising a family as a middle-class American? If you aren’t convinced of President Obama, do you really want a president that has lived a life of privilege, never had any financial challenges (ever) and looks at borrowing money from your parents as the best way to solve any financial challenges that you may have? What are you to do if your parents don’t have money to lend? Suffer.
Given his qualifications, his accomplishments since taking office and his true understanding of the challenges that so many Americans face today, it is clear from the state of the national polls that even our black President may need a little affirmative action to get what he has earned — a second term as President of the United States.
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