Rick Santorum folded his campaign Tuesday after losing in a knockout blow in Wisconsin. This leaves
former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney all but certain to win the nomination. With a heavy year
ahead for Wisconsin politics, it will most definitely be a state prized by both campaigns. As a swing state
with a modest ten electoral votes, we are in a unique place. Our votes matter. While President Barack Obama
has not been perfect, I stand in favor of his nomination.

It is very hard to complain about Obama’s foreign policy. I was a skeptic of the moves he was making
early on, but as his term has progressed, it has become clear that he has been brilliant. While the surge
in Afghanistan was tragically a failure, on all other fronts Obama has been spot on.

Intelligence was used brilliantly to end the manhunt for Osama bin Laden and cripple an already ailing Al-Qaeda. Obama honored the timetable for withdrawal in Iraq, which
had been pushed back many times by the previous administration. The administration also drafted a
reasonable plan for Israel. Obama’s foreign policy has been the best of any president in decades.

While the economic recovery has been slow and painful, the president’s policies have helped aid the
economy, strengthen the social safety net and prevent dangerous actions within the finance industry.
From the month Obama was sworn in, in the middle of the recession, job loss slowed and eventually
turned into growth. Unemployment has been on a decline since April of 2010, according to The Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Obama’s stimulus bill likely saved the U.S. from a depression. As shown on his website, major financial industry reforms placed new
regulations on the industry that likely would have prevented the crisis in the first place. He also expanded unemployment benefits, as reported by Accounting Today.

The likely reason the recovery has been so slow is that there was not a second stimulus,
and not that Keynesian economics have failed. Obama’s economic record is solid but tried by very hard
times.

While Obama has been far from perfect on social issues, he has done some good things. The New York Times notes that Obama did end “don’t ask don’t tell.”
Obama did try to reform the entire health care system, making health more a right than a commodity,
as his site explains. However, after going through the sausage making process in Congress, the bill was flawed and now looks
as though it may be overturned by the Supreme Court. The administration ended a ban on stem cell
research, which has the potential to do great things in the medical field, as reported by CNN. I do not think Obama has been perfect. The administration has done little on immigration, an issue very
close to my heart.

While Obama has not been the knight in shining armor that much of the youth expected him to be,
he has made a lot of right moves. I do not trust Mitt Romney with the economy or with foreign affairs.
The last thing youths need is a war in Iran. The last thing the economy needs is no regulation. The
recession likely happened, in large part, because the right laws were not in place. While socially I disagree
with Romney’s vision for America, I doubt he would be able to change much of the status quo.

Obama is a better candidate than Romney because he has proven himself. Perhaps it wasn’t always pretty, but the
country is in a better place now than it was in 2008. Obama was given a difficult situation and has been
able to make good progress on it. Overall, I feel Obama deserves reelection. I urge Wisconsin to vote for
him.

Spencer Lindsay ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in political science.