By Rylee Mathis Posted December 12, 2012
There were plenty of candidates for president this year, but, ultimately, it came down to only two: Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. As we waited in anticipation for the final tally, most Americans knew who was going to win even if they didn’t want to admit it. While counting the final votes, it was even said that it was ‘mathematically impossible’ for Romney to win.
Now that Barack Obama has been re-elected, our country is asking itself, “Now what?” He promised us so much while fighting for the presidency, now we’re waiting for him to keep his promises. All we can do at this point is keep our faith and hope he makes the next four years worthwhile.
According to CNN, while Obama was making his speech after the votes were counted, he mention several times that America’s journey will be long and difficult. He said we can expect positive change and growth, but only with a lot of time and a lot of hard work. Americans who voted for Romney are skeptical as to whether Obama is willing to put in the work for this change.
Considering Nevada is a battleground state, it’s not surprising Lowry High School students and staff are fired up about the decision our country has made. Some of those who wanted Romney to win wanted it because they just didn’t like Obama due to the past four years. Some people really didn’t even pay attention to what Romney’s plans were if he were elected president.
“I think both of them had some really good ideas, but I wanted Romney to win,” said sophomore Shannon Munk. She continued to say that she thinks Romney would’ve managed jobs in America better than Obama will and that Obama will probably lead us into more wars.
“There’s nothing anyone can do about it [now], so who cares?” said Munk.
English teacher Mr. Matthew Felshaw voted for Romney but it wasn’t actually his decision.
“They’re the exact same person to me,” said Felshaw. He posted a poll on a site, Edmodo.com, for his English classes asking who students would vote for if they could vote. According to the site, 61.54% of the students who participated in the poll chose Romney and 38.46% voted for Obama. In result, Felshaw voted for Romney.
Felshaw continued saying that the two competitors’ political parties tried to convince America that these men were two completely different people when at the end of the day, they’re both the same.
In his last term, Obama failed to keep some of his promises he made on things like gun control and the war in Afghanistan. This term, his campaign promises are mostly being kept or are still in the works. According to Politifact.com, Obama has already done things like extended child tax credits and marriage penalty fixes, created an Advanced Manufacturing Fund, created an international tax haven watch list, increased minority access to capital, and much more.
As the President, there’s a lot to be held accountable for, so it’s understandable that he didn’t keep his promises; the presidents before him didn’t keep their promises either, but that was a different time. In this economy, politicians can’t promise the people of this country something that we’re all going to rely on just to find out it’s never going to happen.
While there were promises broken, there were also a lot of promises kept. Obama passed a new health care law, pushed Wall Street reform, established a credit card bill of rights, expanded eligibility for Medicaid, and much more. It’s hard to tell what our future will look like according to the past.
