(Opinion)

SEVERAL DAYS AGO, a friend and I had were having lunch at one of our favorite swanky and overpriced New York restaurants, catching up on our professional and family lives, chatting about football and the upcoming season, and about how mild the winter had been. Then the topic shifted to the politics and the election in particular – one of our treasured topics of lunch and drink conversation. He’s your typical New York conservative: liberal on social issues, more conservative on fiscal policy, and pragmatic on foreign policy. He probably would have been a more representative member of the Republican Party 25 years ago. We’re both disappointed at this election cycle and particularly with the set of mediocre candidates the GOP is selecting from for what in theory is meant to be the best on their side to take on an incumbent president. He asked me: “So should I like Obama in 2012?”

That word can be interpreted in several different ways so I took his “like” to mean Obama’s chances of winning the election with mutual agreement on at least some policy issues. I’m not particularly impressed with Obama’s performance although I aim to be fair and understanding of the scope of the mess that took place in the months and years leading up to his inauguration and the complexity involved in implementing the best solutions, which we are sure a Republican administration wouldn’t have solved any sooner based on earlier lunch conversations. There were several areas that would do well for the two of us to evaluate before either he or I make a decision, even if they result in disagreement.

First, given the scale of what happened to the economy, one can’t seriously expect things to return to the “normal” we knew so swiftly. True, it has been a few years since we have technically been out of the recession, but in many ways, this downturn was three decades in the making and can’t be blamed on Obama, or even Bush. And given the scale of what just happened combined with the current configuration of our economy, labor market, and labor force, it is unreasonable to have expected a full recovery — at least in the labor market — by now (remember how long the recovery in Reagan’s first term took following the late 70’s stagflation?). Nevertheless, that won’t stop the opposition from exploiting the situation, especially if it seems to be working. He and I both found it hard to believe that a GOP administration would have done any better, and also agreed that the opposition Democrats would have exploited the situation, especially in an election year.

Then we got into foreign policy and noted that we are out of Iraq, have killed bin Laden and several other high-profile terrorists, Qaddafi is dead, we are hopefully soon out of Afghanistan, and have taken a more “patient” approach on Iran and have mustered enough support for virtually the entire world to gang up on them and isolate them (ditto Libya and even Syria). There are some obvious failures or works-in-progress including: Israel-Palestine, Iran, the Arab Spring, China, the mess in Europe, and even Mexico. The Arab Spring is a far broader and more complicated development and we can’t simply insert ourselves into it without serious negative consequences let alone fully and constantly evaluating the situation. Israel-Palestine is so complicated a topic that we could speak about it for hours (and probably run up our bill). But again, how much more different or effective would GOP policy be, especially given what happened during the Bush years?

On domestic policy, the economy and competitive future of the nation are the most important issues to the voters, which we both personally care about the most since our children will need the skills to compete in the economy of the future once we have a better idea of where it’s going, and we also despise the traffic and transportation bottlenecks associated with trying to move through, out of, and into New York. While it is true that spending and the deficit are up under this administration, a look at the numbers will tell you that Obama’s policies can’t be attributed to more than half the deficit. As costly as the stimulus was, doing nothing would have been catastrophic. We both disagreed with the auto bailouts a few years back and I remember one night in 2009 when we moaned about it while out to dinner. We both turned out to be wrong, although we are not using that as a reason to call for more government involvement with industry just yet.

So the answer to the earlier question is: “probably… sure”. But then that has us thinking what seems to be the obvious: the argument has reduced to a question of “how much better would the GOP be?” . This isn’t even a discussion about a choice between Obama and some seemingly great future leader from the other party; it’s a discussion about whether a weak GOP candidate, probably Romney, can beat Obama and just how better of a job he would do. And when I think about it, I don’t see Romney being much different from Obama. Would he be hawkish on foreign policy? How much more simple and fair would the tax code and fiscal policy be? Getting involved in and fighting on the wrong side of the culture wars bears the risk of political suicide and is an area Romney would likely try to avoid. And embracing Tea Party austerity and fiscal ideas would result in an ugly domestic political battle, not to mention what we have seen in the UK as a result of similar policies and how that should be a deterrent to any administration considering similar action.

This pathetic situation is probably a result of the 2012 primaries and GOP electorate over the years. The conversation manages to drift further to the right with every primary season – legislative branch included. The Santorum and Huckabee successes were because of social issues if the cable news channels and newspaper and online op-eds are to be believed. Romney has to play that game in order to minimize the short-term damage he would sustain during the primaries before likely becoming the nominee. I know what I am getting by now with Obama, even if I don’t agree with everything he has done and feel he needs to be more aggressive in areas such as national infrastructure, national security – especially border policy, better educating the workforce of the future, and elements of his foreign policy, to name a few. And although my friend and I like to think of ourselves fiscally conservative and not so left-leaning on foreign policy, we prefer the Obama we both know to the right-wing loon side we have to see in the GOP candidates, with maybe the exception of the sincere Ron Paul, as they play this sorry game of slugging it out for delegate count.

So if there are more potential nationally electable, idealistic, and charismatic GOP candidates, why aren’t they running? I think they are afraid of having to risk their political careers being ruined if and when they have to face Obama in the general election. Obama is one hell of a politician, a fantastic orator, and knows exactly how to speak and communicate what seems like common sense, even if he doesn’t always follow through with what he says. Don’t underestimate his political machine or how easily and quickly he would be able to shred Romney in a head-to-head debate. Provided the economy doesn’t turn more negative and oil prices don’t put too many more people in a hard spot, he will have an easier time doing so. A good chunk of those potential candidates probably know that and so are waiting for 2016. It would be equally foolhardy to underestimate the discipline and motivation of the GOP or to think that they don’t already have the “Greatest Hits” material ready for Obama when it is time.

Then we realized that it was probably time to put our jackets on and get through the latter half of our workday. This New York conservative agreed with my points and nodded his head in disappointment when he said to me: “The sad thing is that you’re probably right”. And such unnecessary negativity is probably a product of the nation’s toxic and dysfunctional political environment for which both parties are to blame, although the current dysfunction in the House is probably more attributed to the majority party there. If only we had an employer that paid us to eat at this restaurant and have these discussions.