(note to all- For this Throwback Thursday,  5 November 2015, we thought we might share an essay we wrote back on 7 November 2012, following the presidential election of that year- We’ll leave it to you to see if, indeed, our prognostications were correct.)

Election 2012-Afterthoughts

As many of us watched, Barack Obama managed to eke out an electoral victory, principally by winning the narrowest of margins in a handful of states, most notably my own. I had predicted that if Mitt Romney had won either Ohio or Wisconsin (not factoring Virginia, of course), he would most likely have won the election but, if Romney had lost both of these states that Obama would win. I was correct, and Obama won.

Half of the country is happy and half of the country is disappointed. Half of the legislative branch retained its Democratic majority (the Senate) and half of it retained its Republican majority (The House), thus assuring a divided government which succinctly reflects a divided country. One look at the electoral map also reflects this division with the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast being blue, and the South and most of the Western States being red.

So now what?

Well, a great president would reach out to the other side of the aisle and find ways to work out solutions to the problems our country faces- such is the purview of real statesmen. Yet, sadly, there is nothing in Obama’s makeup that would suggest that he is either capable of, or inclined to, working together with Republicans and Democrats alike to achieve consensus, because he is a politician, and most assuredly not a statesman.

Rather, by the indications of how he has conducted himself during his first term, and the way he conducted his campaign for re-election, his narcissistic and self-aggrandizing tendencies- not to mention his far-left political bent- will bring to bear a further polarization of our nation. He will attempt to govern by fiat- essentially putting into place policies, outside the legislative process, through the power of bureaucracy and regulatory oversight that will surely mean a continued erosion of representative democracy in the United States. His reckless spending priorities will expand the dependency of people on government – something our founding fathers had very much warned against, and this will ultimately result in the loss of individual liberty.

The fiscal catastrophe that will result will surely mean confiscatory tax policies that will weaken the private sector, eviscerate our military and naval forces, and ultimately weaken America at home, and abroad, as well. Whether or not this is what he set out to do in 2008, when he promised to “fundamentally transform the United States of America”, is now beside the point, for his re-election has assured that the United States will be weakened as a result, and history tells us that once there is an absence of power in the world, that this void will be filled by another, and that “other” is what we should all dread, most of all.

–Drew Nickell, 7 November 2012

©2012 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.