Op-Ed

Now that the election is history and President Obama has won reelection and the Senate has remained Democratic, it’s time to take a serious look at the next two months and the next two years.

Americans have once again peacefully exercised one of their most basic democratic rights and have reelected President Obama to lead our great nation for four more years. 

If Romney defeats Obama, it will mark the success of one of the most deeply cynical political campaigns in history.

Next week at this time Americans will have reelected President Obama — or fired him. There will be no shortage of post-mortems and exit-poll analyses, and the palpable anger of roughly half the nation that inevitably will follow — no matter who wins. There will be no inspiration or joyful weeping on either side, no matter who wins, as we all face a crisis the following day, no matter who wins.

The “fiscal cliff,” which combines deep spending cuts to military and domestic programs known as “sequestration” with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the payroll tax cut, the Medicare “doc fix” and unemployment insurance, threatens to plunge the economy into a tailspin and cause damage that would take years to undo. It can and must be avoided, but no one yet quite knows how. Despite bipartisan outrage over the state we’re in, most Democrats like our broken entitlement systems the way they are and most Republicans won’t raise taxes even for a 1-10 ratio with spending cuts to help reduce the deficit. The fiscal cliff was created by Congress in the summer of 2011 when both parties raised the debt ceiling with the promise (aka punt) of doing the hard work another day. Nearly one and a half years later the day of reckoning is here, and Congress has just six weeks to solve the thus-far unsolvable. Are you laughing or crying?

I believe President Obama, based on all the evidence and my own gut instinct, which I will explain below, will win a narrow victory on Tuesday to serve a second term. 

With any luck, 2013 will be remembered as the year Congress finally passed our nation’s most significant tax reform since 1986. But, before we get there, U.S lawmakers have a more urgent task before them: they must work to prevent both the largest tax increase in American history and $1 trillion in massive across-the-board spending reductions (including enormous cuts to our military) from taking effect. If Washington fails to act in time – if America goes over this so-called fiscal cliff – the consequences will be severe.

It was an avoidable tragedy. So why did it happen?

Regardless of the outcome of the elections, members of Congress will return in November under enormous pressure to “turn off” automatic spending cuts and tax increases that are set to take effect at the beginning of next year.

President Obama won’t have a chance to make up for his uninspiring debate performance until Oct. 22, when he will meet Mitt Romney in Florida with CBS’s Bob Schieffer moderating. The vice president’s debate comes before that, though, as well as a debate with a town-hall format that won’t allow the candidates much opportunity for oratory. So, as an old speech writer, I can’t resist offering suggestions for his last clear chance for summation. Here’s what I’d whisper in his ear the night before.

With polls showing Americans trust President Obama more on foreign policy and a debate devoted to the subject coming up on Oct. 22, Mitt Romney has been clarifying his positions in articles and speeches, including a major address Oct. 8 at the Virginia Military Institute.

Romney says he wants America to lead again, resuming the strategy that guided the United States for the 70 or so years prior to 2009. He has a good point, but much of his attention has been directed at what he considers Obama’s failings — leading from behind, apologizing, not being close enough to Israel — rather than toward delineating his own policy.

A good example was his pallid op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Sept. 30. It began with 10 paragraphs of throat-clearing (“President Obama has allowed our leadership to atrophy,” etc.) and offered precisely two prescriptions: make the ayatollahs believe “when we say an Iranian nuclear-weapons capability ... is unacceptable” and place “no daylight between the United States and Israel.”

Even in an election that will surely turn on economic issues, Americans deserve more from their candidates on foreign policy.