Believe in America is the more rhetorical, the less personal, the less biographical, and less balanced pendant to Mitt Romney's book
No Apology: Believe in America. It also makes it, despite some more up-to-date information, the less interesting of the two. That it is less personal and biographical shouldn't come as a surprise, as it is, first of all, not written by Romney himself, and second, it is a pamphlet, a campaign manual, complemented by messages from Romney-supporters in business, industry, and government. For anyone interested in getting to know a little more about Romney the man, No Apology is the better choice.
I praise the initiative of writing a pamphlet in which ideas are relevantly summarized. The way it is distributed for free, either as a PDF, or as an eBook for Kindle should be lauded. I'm not a great fan of the book's structure, however. It should work fine in theory (a chapter on tax policy, one on regulations, one on trade, etc., and chapters subdivided in Obama/Romney dichotomies), but in practice you keep reading about the same policies over and over.
The pamphlet's main thrust, unsurprisingly, is that President Obama did about as much wrong as he could have and that a Mitt Romney as President would be about as antithetical to that as it can get. Whether that's really true I leave in the middle. For anyone hoping that this text would have anything to say on social issues, you will be left in the dark here--the title might have already given that away. Of course, the economy will, pace Santorum, be the most important subject of the 2012-elections.
With an unprecedented downgrade by S&P; "almost 46 million Americans...living on food stamps;" crippling unemployment ratings, and an average duration of unemployment that "has risen from 24.1 weeks to 40.4," Romney is more or less rightfully positioned against a president who had garnered a mythical reputation. Romney, on the other hand, is constructed as someone who will be able to fix the economy. He contributed in upgrading the credit rating of his Massachusetts--although raising taxes in 2002, before Romney was elected, may have actually been one of the key reasons [...]. And the pamphlet reminds us that when Romney was elected Governor, "the state economy was in distress and the budget was out of control." What it doesn't tell us that three Republicans (1991-2003) were Romney's predecessors.
Many of the ideas in the pamphlet disappointingly lack in content and scope. Romney likes to talk about "streamlining" and may think people credulously believe in that concept as to accept it. Yet, much remains unclear when he wants "rules affecting coal power plants [to] be streamlined to achieve the necessary environmental protection while avoiding job-killing plant closures." He wants to overhaul the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and others, which begs the question: how does he combine that with adhering to the idea of "preserv[ing] environmental gains." In essence, how, and what, and when? When Romney discusses financial regulation reform he merely points at what's wrong with Dodd-Frank, then demands deregulation, while stating that the good concepts of Dodd-Frank "must be translated into law in a way that creates a simple, predictable, and efficient regulatory system appropriate for our dynamic economy." Again, how, and what, and when? Flexible regulation practices of some sorts are needed. However, when the pamphlet claims "because foreign regulators are not likely to implement restrictions of their own, U.S. banks will be left at a competitive disadvantage" it is flat wrong. Europe has stricter financial regulation laws that are supported by clear majorities.
Now, what surprises me a little in a treatise about fixing the economy in such hard times is the amount of third rails, such as the military (or militarism as Paul would say), loopholes, and tax-increases. Why not have a sane discussion on rational cuts in defense spending. Why not have a sane discussion on the many loopholes corporations consistently find to pay hardly any taxes? Romney himself did a pretty good job on cleaning out some of these excessive loopholes during his time as Governor, now we don't hear anything of that in the Republican camp. (Actually, Gingrich in the September 12, 2011, debate when asked about these loopholes, flatly stated "I'm cheerfully opposed to raising taxes" as to `reassure' people he won't do anything about them). Has it come down to this? I agree with Romney that the tax code should be simplified, I agree that the death-tax is inane. What I do not agree on is that Republicans make people believe that an incredibly small tax raise on the very rich will be bad for the economy. They seem to have forgotten that the rate was at a one time high of over 90% from the mid 40s until the mid 60s. Even during most of Reagan's time, the rate was 50%. And yes, the poor are still waiting for the trickle-down effects from that era.
The total lack of criticism of any of President Bush's policies is daunting as well. Not a word on him, yet instead the pamphlet cites an overly incorrect statistic on debt: "It took 43 presidents 220 years [from 1789 through 2008] to accumulate $6.3 trillion of national debt." I do not wish to understate in any sense the enormous deficit and debt increases during the Obama-era, yet before he took office, the debt was already almost $11 trillion.
I'm also getting a little tired of that, by now, well-known and unproven narrative that someone from the private sector is instantly--as by magic--able to govern a country. Thus, the statement "Mitt Romney spent most of his career working in private enterprise" is a nice one, but it doesn't tell us anything. As if malpractice is non-existent in private enterprise; as if fraud is non-existent in private enterprise. If there's one thing we've learned from the crisis, it is that "corporations are people" indeed, but not in the beneficent sense Romney has it. Lest we forget, President Bush had ample experience in the private sector. And the pamphlet's statement, "with little private-sector experience, President Obama turned to the only thing he really knew: government," is about as silly as claiming that Romney as President, would use his Urim and Thummim to designate what's best for the US.
