We Still Can

Four years ago, after a loss in the Democratic New Hampshire primary to Hillary Clinton, an Illinois Senator named Barack Obama gave a speech that would define his campaign...

"Yes We Can"

It inspired the nation and catapulted Barack Obama to the Democratic Nomination and eventually the presidency. So it is that we sit now on the threshold of another election year. The Democrats have their man in President Obama, but it is the Republicans that are looking for their nominee.

Last night the party was in New Hampshire. more specifically the party was at Mitt Romney's headquarters. The race was called early for Mitt which gave him the spotlight in prime-time to proclaim victory to the masses. This was the time for Romney to sell himself to a nation whose eyes were all on New Hampshire, a state that he had just won.

Four years ago, Barack Obama lost the state, but roused supporters with the hope of Yes, We Can.

Willard Mitt Romney did nothing of the sort.

In an economic climate that is less than favorable, Mitt Romney said the word "jobs" in his speech just one time. He said the word "Europe" 4 times. That may seem like an insignificant fact to the casual observer, but it is red meat to the Republican party and it shows a proverbial dropping of the ball on Romney's part. It also helps to show the difference in four more years of President Obama and a Romney administration.

Mitt Romney missed his Yes, We Can moment. He missed the chance to end the race for the Republican nomination. Barack Obama harnessed the optimism and the American spirit in the same state just four years earlier, Mitt Romney did not.

Romney took a different tact and the fact that he used the work "Europe" four times more than he did the work "jobs" give us a window into the soul of the Mitt Romney campaign and how they will look to paint President Obama in a general election match-up. The view from that window, couldn't be more sickening.

See, words like "Europe" and "socialism" and "appeasement" used by Mitt Romney help paint President Obama as something that the Republicans long to paint him as being: unfamiliar and un-American.

From the time he began campaigning for President the Republicans have used President Obama's history, heritage and connections to paint a picture of a man who was too extreme and not American enough to hold the highest office in the land.

They continued that drum beat by suggesting that he wasn't even born in this country, even after he provided a birth certificate. Mitt Romney is smart enough to see that the birther ship has sailed and he has moved on to more veiled attacks. But, he labels the President's economic policies as European Socialism and foreign policies as appeasement for the same reasons as the birthers push the idea that his birth certificate is fake. They want to paint him as an outsider, someone who isn't one of us and doesn't belong in the White House.

The truth though is different. Barack Obama's story is inherently different. The son of a black father and a white mother, raised by his grandparents, President of the Harvard Law Review, Professor of Constitutional law, State Senator, US Senator and President of the United States. His story is one of overcoming the odds and following a dream by capturing the hope and optimism that lives inside of each one of us.

To take issue with President Obama over his policies because you fundamentally disagree with them is one thing. But to use the words and lines of attack that Mitt Romney and other republicans use are wrong and have undertones of scare tactics and propaganda of generations gone by.

Barack Obama is just as much of an American as any one Republican running against him. He has America's best interests at heart and I am not disappointed in how he has handled the legacy of two wars and an economic downturn long in the works before he took office.

Barack Obama has turned out to be a pragmatic leader hell bent on bipartisan cooperation with people who are hell bent on seeing to it that he fails.

Mitt Romney has turned out to be a man who has made a career out of running for President, who does not have one solitary position that he wouldn't change for political expediency.

When I watched Mitt Romney's victory speech last night in New Hampshire I couldn't help but compare his fear mongering and lies to the hope and optimism that Barack Obama portrayed in the '08 New Hampshire primaries. I couldn't help but think of who I want in the White House for four more years.

It's going to be a swim upstream for the President no matter what happens between now and November with an unfavorable economic wind. There will no doubt be some that will look at the history of American politics and say that there's no way he can win. To which I would reply with a reminder of three words:

Yes, we can.