Why I'm Giving President Obama My Vote for Four More Years

Question: Does Barack Obama deserve four more years?
Answer: YES.  

I am a registered Republican. I grew up in a Republican household. Of my five favorite presidents three were Republicans & only one was a Democrat.* When I lived in New Zealand from 2002 to 2004 my friends & I would get into political debates with them pushing a moderate socialist view & myself always defending American capitalism. They, along with most of the world, would attack George W. Bush while I defended him (though I admitted some of his faults & was fond of telling them that the senator from my home state of Arizona, John McCain, should have been president). Yet four years after I returned home McCain had a chance** to become president & I voted against him. On facebook my endorsement of Obama lead to surprised responses ranging from "really?" to "what the fuck joe." So why did I do it? Why did I turn my back on McCain, my party, & my old politics? Why did I vote for Barack Obama?

*George Washington was a Federalist. As for the other four they're Lincoln, Eisenhower, & both Roosevelts.
**Ok so he didn't really have a chance between Bush, Palin, & a tanking economy. 

 I'd like to say it was all because of policies like the Republicans, & many Democrats, being wrong about Iraq & the deregulation of the financial industry while Obama was right on the former & talking a strong game on the latter. Those, the growing financial inequality in the country, my own shifting views on gay marriage, & many others certainly played their part but that wasn't what put Obama over the edge for me. Nor was it Sarah Palin, as unstable & unready as she was, that made me an Obama voter. Ultimately I did what many an undecided, or uneducated, voter does, I chose my candidate by making a personal assessment of each man's character. I'd read that for all of his moderate politics McCain's temper was anything but, while Obama projected a rational cool headedness. It seemed to me that if each man was presented with evidence that one of his policies was wrong Obama seemed more likely to correct course* while McCain would obstinately refuse to listen. While my thinking was certainly above the "which candidate would you rather have a beer with" silliness it's still not how I'd advise anyone to make a decision on who to vote for. With that said I turned out to be right about Obama & that's why I'll be voting for him again.

*While I thought this was a plus Clint Eastwood clearly felt differently as evidenced by his GOP Convention "speech" in which he lambasted Obama, & all attorneys, for "being taught to argue everything... to always weigh everything" which also of course neglected the fact that Mitt Romney has a law degree from harvard & passed the bar in Michigan.

The Right loves to claim that Obama's any number of things they find frightening, be it socialist, Muslim, or simply a far left ideologue, but the truth is all of these things are off base. In the reality that Fox News & talk radio seem to have lost touch with Obama's been one of the most moderate presidents since World War II. His first major legislation was the the stimulus one third of which was Republicans' favorite thing in the world-tax cuts. The stimulus cut taxes for 95% of working families, it was the biggest middle-class tax since the Reagan presidency, & if the GOP was more concerned with governing than obstructing I imagine more than three of the party's senators would've voted for it.* On healthcare Obama originally opposed the individual mandate but ultimately realized it was necessary to adopt this idea created by the conservative Heritage Foundation in 1989, pushed by Republicans in the 90s, & championed by Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts. Of course once Obama & the Democrats adopted it it became a socialist attack on the Constitution but obviously that can only be true if in the twenty years leading up to the passing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act the Republican party was run by Socialists, or maybe even Communists, who hated the backbone of our government. I don't know about you but that seems pretty far fetched to me.

*Of the three the late Arlen Specter was eventually so turned off by the GOP he switched parties & Olympia Snow is retiring after this year citing hyper-partisanship in Congress as the primary reason why. 

Finally on Conservatives' greatest concern about an Obama presidency, foreign policy, Obama has excelled by continuing, with the exception of torture, the same policies of the Bush administration (even some he disagreed with before taking office) & yet doing so with more tact as the U.S. is perceived more favorably throughout the world. While al-Qaeda isn't finished it's leadership has been decimated well beyond the death of Osama bin Laden,* & while the death of Ambassador Stevens and others in the Benghazi attack was undoubtedly an intelligence error (literally, it was a CIA operation) there's no reason to believe Obama or Biden could have done anything to prevent it. In fact in the last presidential debate Romney struggled to find any major difference he had with Obama on foreign policy outside of abandoning the speak softly and carry a big stick tactic in favor of speaking loudly while carrying that same stick.

*Some on the right have attempted to diminish the death of bin Laden by making the ridiculous charge that the Obama administration gave away classified information to the filmmakers of "Zero Dark Thirty" in an effort to improve his image; naturally there is no evidence that anything of the sort happened. 

Over the last four years Barack Obama has fulfilled the faith I put in him four years ago, clearly demonstrating for all those not blinded by partisanship that he is a more than capable president who is willing to alter his policies so that they best serve the nation, and for that reason* he has my vote.

*In addition to his support for marriage equality, the DREAM Act, access to birth control-the, shockingly, best way to prevent abortion-& a common sense policy towards taxes & the deficit.