This week, President Obama has embarked on a college tour to try and rekindle youth support for his campaign. His scurrying for the college vote reveals much about how things have changed since 2008.
Four years ago, my generation provided the wave of enthusiasm that President Obama rode into office. Approximately two-thirds of voters under 30 cast their votes for President Obama. On election night, students on college campuses across the country celebrated his victory.
At the time, it was easy to understand why. On the campaign trail, Obama seemed to speak directly to our generation in promising a new kind of politics. Running on the theme of hope and change in the face of a daunting economic crisis, he appealed to our optimism about America and told us that things could be different. He railed against out-of-control spending and against a swelling national debt, declaring that it was “unacceptable” for Washington to be “running up the credit card” on our children.
But four years have now passed, and we can see how things turned out.
In spite of the president’s promises to restore fiscal responsibility, the federal government continues to amass record levels of debt. Obama has presided over the largest budget deficits in American history, and the results speak for themselves. When he entered office, the obligations of the federal government totaled $10.6 trillion. Today, they have surpassed a mind-boggling $15.9 trillion.
It seems, in retrospect, that we gambled on Obama, and four years later, the gamble turned out to be a bad bet. The economic “stimulus” cost the country nearly $800 billion and the economy is still struggling to get back on track. Nationwide, the unemployment rate stands at 8.2 percent. But for young people, the reality is even harsher: half of recent college graduates can’t find full-time work. It turns out that hope and change wasn’t everything that it was cracked up to be.
Obama has yet to grasp that fact. In addressing young people today, he misses the crux of the problem we are facing. He likes to talk about the skyrocketing cost of college tuition and the soaring levels of student debt. Without a doubt, those are real problems. But they are problems we could readily solve if there were good jobs for young people coming out of college today.
But more lofty speeches just aren’t going to cut it anymore. Words cannot cure the challenges we face.
Instead of more botched policies, we need practical solutions. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney spent most of his career in the private sector, helping to start new businesses and turning around failing ones. He understands how the government can either facilitate job creation or get in the way. College students want the investment they made in a college education to pay off. Romney understands how to foster that kind of economic environment.
And his choice of Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate tells us something else. It tells us that he is serious about turning the tide on the irresponsible spending and crushing debt that is on track to cripple my generation if we don’t do something about it soon. More than anyone else in Washington, Ryan understands the budget — not just its problems, but how we can fix it responsibly.
My generation can’t afford four more years of Obama’s broken promises. We can’t simply wash, rinse and repeat the same policies that haven’t worked. We need to chart a new direction, and that begins with electing new leadership to the White House.
Michael Cogar is the Chairman of the College Republican Federation of Virginia.
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