by Alec Bickerstaff ’15

What does the 2012 election mean to us high school students? A lot more is on the line for kids our age than in years before. These next four years could define whether we as a nation falter after years of economic recession or grow to the occasion as we did in response to the Great Depression, coming out of the 2008 financial crisis with our nation intact.

Barack Obama won in 2008 by establishing hope and change in America after 8 years of Bush-era tax cuts and wars. Obama wanted to turn focus back to America after Wall Street bet wrong and bankrupted their companies and clients. Those companies fed the Real-Estate bubble that forced a good chunk of Americans into foreclosure and forced the middle class to evaporate. Consumers weren’t buying which made the American car market struggle, favoring cheaper foreign cars. It was so bad in the markets that the Dow did the largest one day point drop in it’s history.

When Barack Obama came into office, the markets had found an uneasy stability but millions of Americans were still out of work and their homes were being foreclosed left and right. To try and reverse these effects President Obama signed into act the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, based upon FDR’s New Deal that provided money to people and corporations to for huge public construction projects. Although not as large, the general plan of the ARRA was to spark job creation and provide much needed infrastructure work in the US.

After the ARRA, Obama pushed the Affordable Care Act through congress without support from the Republicans. The ACA or “Obamacare” provided a giant amount of cash to the strapped Medicare/Medicaid system. Benefits such as having the ability to stay on parent’s health insurance until age 26 and refunding for the Child Medicare (CHIP for short) became quite liked among all.

Others parts, such as the individual mandate which requires people to have a healthcare provider by 2014 or face tax penalties, were not so universally supported. Some call it a small business killer or a governmental overreach, while others applaud the system as a way to ensure healthcare for all. The mandate was tried in the Supreme Court for being unconstitutional, and protested by many on both sides of the aisle. In a hotly debated case, a mostly Republican supreme court upheld the individual mandate. Shocking!

President Obama’s foreign strategies too have come under fire. So far, the war in Afghanistan has not improved and for US troops, the 2014 deadline to stabilize the country we have been in for years is coming up very fast. The government of Afghanistan is feeble after dealing with the death of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former president and the leader of Taliban-Afghani peace negotiations last year, the outlook of the war that the US has spent eleven years in does not look bright.

On the line is American role in the ever-changing world. We will be forced to decide whether we remain obstinate to growing nations or come to self-realization that it isn’t US versus the USSR anymore, that US foreign policy needs to focus on making more allies than enemies. More importantly we must be sure we are leaving Afghanistan with a stable democracy and Taliban and Al Qaeda influence at the lowest levels possible.

The war has also made the US a bigger target for groups such as the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda has grown far weaker in the last year after the morale destroying deaths of Al Qaeda chief and 9/11 orchestrator Osama Bin Laden and the death of his #2 American born lieutenant Anwar Al Awlaki in the past few years have been able to halt the spread of terrorism at least for now. The Arab spring has also given way to democracy and places like Libya and Egypt were freed from years of corruption.

In Libya, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown violently and killed; apparently, he was shot several times, and stabbed with a bayonet. On the Egyptian side, popular peaceful revolt resulted in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and the rise of leadership in Egypt. Since the changes of leadership in 2011, the US has experienced strained relations with Egypt, who had been a principle ally in advocating for US interests in the area since the 80’s.

Both candidates seldom talk about relations with South America. More trade agreements with our profitable down the street neighbors like Argentina and Brazil could start brining demand for products up giving our economy a little jolt it might need to get back on pre-2008 financial crisis economic gains.

We must ensure the promotion of democracy in a post Arab-spring Middle East. With all this in mind the two candidates, current incumbent Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have much to keep in mind come November 6th.