The last TIME magazine before the election devotes six pages to competing essays from E.J. Dionne and Rich Lowry urging voters to support either President Obama (Dionne) or challenger Mitt Romney (Lowry).
Lowry, editor of National Review, explains why even those who aren’t particularly excited about the 2012 election would be served best by the man from Massachusetts.
A President Romney would be utterly unburdened by messianic expectations. If he’s elected, the American public will have hired him to do a job, not to save the planet or redeem our politics. Thankfully. We’ve had enough self-styled heroic government to last us a good long time.
President Romney’s task would be simple, if not easy: to reform government for the 21st century and put it on a basis more conducive to private-sector growth and long-term national solvency.
He and running mate Paul Ryan are the candidates of change at a time when our future depends on it. The welfare state is in crisis around the Western world, especially in Europe but also here at home—acutely in such states as California and Illinois. It is creaking under dated assumptions, aging populations and the unavoidable truth of the age-old axiom that you can’t spend money that you don’t have.
