Cal Thomas: The 2012 choice

The choice, as President Obama has said, could not be clearer. Is our country a giant ATM, dispensing money and benefits to increasing numbers of people while requiring little, if anything, of the recipients? Or is America a land of opportunity where people can rise as far as their skills and desire to work will take them, with a safety net for those who need it?

We have become a debtor nation with too many of our fellow citizens believing the productive “owe” them just for being alive. Debt shackles individuals and nations. Benjamin Franklin said: “Think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty.”

Government under President Obama has reduced our liberty by expanding its power over us (think Obamacare) and deepening our debt. There is no indication things will get better if he wins a second term; quite the opposite.

In its endorsement of Mitt Romney, the influential Des Moines Register got to the heart of the matter. It noted, “ ... the single most important challenge” for the next president will be “pulling the economy out of the doldrums, getting more Americans back in the workforce in meaningful jobs with promising futures, and getting the federal government on a track to balance the budget in a bipartisan manner that the country demands.”

Good luck on the bipartisan part unless voters give Romney a Republican Senate, but even then the archaic Senate rules require a supermajority — 60 votes — to pass anything of significance. There won't be 60 Republican senators.

Any leader must inspire, but not base that inspiration on personality alone, which Obama has done, which is why the air has gone out of his balloon.

A nation's citizens must believe their leader's policies will work, benefiting them and the nation. That was the point of the Register endorsement. The newspaper noted Romney's experience and faith in the private sector, which it believes will spur an economic recovery.