Linked by Drudge today, an article from the Weekly Standard tell us Obama Has Massive Lead in Global Poll. Apparently La France trumps all in Obamanisme with the president pollling 72% there. But have heart Francophiles — the entire country is not that way. Here, exclusively with PJM, is the translation of an article that just appeared in the toujour gauchiste (always leftist) Libération.
Why Romney must win: a French perspective
By CHARLES BEIGBEDER, ARNAUD DASSIER, PHILIPPE KARSENTY, AURÉLIEN VÉRON ET THOMAS ZLOWODZKI National Office of the French Free Market Party
Mitt Romney’s November 6 victory in the American presidential election would be happy news, not only for America, but also for the Western world, which could thereby regain its prosperity, its greatness, its power, and its values. The first debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney opened the eyes of numerous political pundits: without a prompter, President Obama revealed himself incapable of defending his economic record.
If we were Americans citizens, we would be voting for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan without hesitation because Barack Obama has been a bad president of the United States. But above all, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have the right analysis, and they have proposed creative as well as free-market solutions to bring the U.S. out of its economic decline. Because after four years of the Obama presidency, America resembles the America that Jimmy Carter left to Ronald Reagan in 1980: an economy in shambles and a weak foreign policy. The image of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, brutalized and assassinated in September, reminds us of the American hostages in Teheran in 1979. In 1980, Ronald Reagan arrived, and America took off, her economy strengthened and the USSR collapsed.
To vote Romney is to reject the economic and diplomatic failure of Obama. Under Obama, America’s public debt has soared to heights never attained in U.S. history. It has climbed from 9 trillion dollars to 15 trillion dollars in four years. Poverty has exploded, with an increase of more than 50% in the number of Americans forced to resort to food stamps and private charity to feed themselves. Already downgraded in 2011 by Standard and Poor’s, America’s credit rating soon should again be downgraded by Moody’s. The economic failure of Obama is self-explanatory: He tried to apply to America the same policies that have laid Europe low after more than forty years, by borrowing money and at the same time injecting public money into the American economy. The result: an astronomical public debt and an anemic economy. The solution Obama proposes for his next mandate? The State, always the State, and again more the State.
On the diplomatic front, America has weakened herself, and it is probably due to this that in France, from the extreme Right to the extreme Left, she is so loved. In Egypt, in Libya, in Tunisia, or in Syria, the United States has buttressed Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood. Was this Obama’s grand design while he went to deliver his speech in Cairo in June 2009? If yes, he has achieved his objectives. Facing Iran, Obama does not know how to be firm, leaving this country, the major supporter of international terrorism, to advance toward obtaining atomic weapons. Can the free world accept living with the sword of Damocles, that would be an Iran with nuclear weapons, capable of threatening Europe and its neighbors thanks to its ballistic capability?
We are going to vote Romney because the Republicans ask the right questions and propose good solutions. Mitt Romney well understands that the economy is the principal failure of Barack Obama. In choosing Paul Ryan for vice president, he has committed to the free-market way that permits a return to the America of the 1980s: fewer taxes and more personal responsibility. Mitt Romney seems to have retained Ronald Reagan’s maxim: “The State is not the solution, it is the problem.” America, and more so the free world, needs an American president with a grasp of the issues, not a prompter reader who loses his aptitude when he is deprived of his prompter. Mitt Romney has proven by his experiences that he knew how to manage public funds, whether in Massachusetts or while organizing the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games. To vote Romney-Ryan is to open the way for a western renewal. Beyond their economic growth program, the Romney-Ryan ticket — the “Centrist” and the Catholic free market — incarnates the fundamental values upon which the United States was founded and has prospered.
In the unstable period where guiding lights seem to be missing, the vigor of the Romney-Ryan ticket could equally indicate the voice to follow to a West without a compass. Faced with the Obama charm, masking his vacuity and his incompetence, it is necessary that the Republican candidate prevail in the election. France and Europe need a strong and prosperous America to confront the challenges of a new world, whether they are economic or geopolitical. To hope to see France inspire herself by the clear and healthy ideas extolled by the Romney-Ryan ticket is probably a utopia, while one observes that all political leaders in French politics wish for an Obama victory.
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