President Obama came into office in 2009 to a country in shambles. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, America had lost 1.4 million jobs. Wall Street had almost collapsed. The once “too big to fail” auto-industry, which included mega-employers such as General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, were nearly bankrupt. Home foreclosures had increased 225% between 2006 and 2008. And the poverty rate had increased to 18.3%. John Kenneth Galbraith once said “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time.” President Obama is that leader.When confronted with a crippled American economy, he passed the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act. This alone gave California $33,288,877,152 to spend on projects in fields such as education, energy, transportation, and infrastructure, in addition to adding 18,226 jobs. Nationally, it helped stall the recession and put us back on the road to recovery. Then, he did what many great leaders tried and failed to do, he established near universal health- care in the form of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which gave health coverage to previously uninsured Americans, including nearly 3.1 million young adults since 2010. With regards to foreign policy, the President ended the war in Iraq and is withdrawing American sons and daughters from

Afghanistan.
Mitt Romney’s attacks on the

Obamacare are shaky, since the health care he enacted as governor of Massachusetts is strikingly similar to the one he disapproves of. Neither he, or Paul Ryan, his running mate, can give specifics
as to when all of our troops will come home from Afghanistan. And because he believes that America should follow the “everyone for themselves” mentality, he is pro- posing to drastically reduce the social safety net programs that help people in need.Under a Romney administration, it is up to you to fend for yourself without government assistance. He even wants

to end the Medicare program for the elderly as we know it. Do we,
as voters, want our government to assume such an extremely passive role, when the purpose of government is to be there for the needs
of its constituency? Its difficult to make out who Romney really is and what he stands for since he flip-flops on issues as important as abortion and gun control. Although I can understand the frustration and concern of conservatives, it

is too easy to criticize President Obama and his administration without taking into consideration the state of the country when he took office. For any leader, whether it be Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Barack Obama, it is difficult to move forward, without first ad- dressing the “anxiety” of the time. Upon taking office, he did what all great leaders do, and that was taming the beast that was our down- ward-spiraling economy. Whether you’re a conservative or a liberal, or stuck somewhere in between, you must acknowledge the fact that America is better now than it was four years ago.

Stick with what you know has and will work for America: President Barack Obama.