I would vote for the president if... #debate #Romney or #Obama

On October 4th. in 1945 President Harry Truman ordered the Navy to seize the oil refineries where 43,000 workers were on strike. This action was heroic because the workers were unionized, and traditionally organized labor has backed the democratic party. In essence he was throwing members of his own party under the bus. Truman did this because he was protecting the country. He weighed his options and decided that the partisan benefits of giving in to the union was nothing compared to the threat on our national security from an oil shortage. Last night president Obama said that, "the first role of the American government is to keep its people safe."

Mr. President, I would suggest that our people are economically unsafe. Our deficit and accumulating debt threaten to lower our standard of living and divert resources away from vital services. Mitt Romney would say that we can not afford to cut defense spending. I would suggest that the economic war that we are currently fighting is more significant than any missiles currently aimed at our shores. The only thing currently holding up our standard of living is our currencies dependable reputation. When our currency becomes devalued from ongoing borrowing, then our standard of living and domestic tranquility will be jeopardized.

Real leadership happens when a president decides to attack his own party in the interest of solving a problem which jeopardizes our security. There are examples of this on both sides of the isle. Teddy Roosevelt took on business interests when he purchased land for national parks. Both Truman and Roosevelt's' actions could have easily cost them a second term. If Harry Truman were debating Teddy Roosevelt on the deficit I would like to believe that both of them would give in to accomplish a greater good. In this age of partisan politics I hope that Romney and Obama can reach out across the isle and work together to solve this problem. It does not matter who won the debate last night. This debate was about competition. The real debate right now is with our Chinese competitors. They value cooperation over competition. If we are going to compete in this current economic war we had better learn to compete against their state capitalism with bipartisan cooperation. In this previous post I suggested further dividing the powers of the president over the issue of the deficit. Click here for this post.