Meet Dave and Christy,
quintessential American hard-working independent couple, with six kids between
them, both married for second time, looking to the future, worried about the
way things are going in the US, especially the economy, and wondering what's going
to happen to their business if there's to be another four years of Obama. OK,
they are Republicans, not Obama fans, but their hopes and fears for the way the
United States of America is heading right now are, I suspect, mirrored across a
broad spectrum of "typical" American families. The economy is
struggling, unemployment remains at more than 8 per cent, American influence in
the world is diminishing, defence spending is being slashed, the anti-American
voice around the world is increasing in decibels alarmingly, and the huge debts
are weighing heavily on the nation's ability to plan for the years ahead.
Congress is a mess of frustrated, obstinate, irresponsible, partisan,
self-seeking politicians who seem to have forgotten what their role is and the meaning
of serving their country. Meanwhile, American servicemen and women are dying
each day 8,000 miles away in a war that increasingly has less purpose and less
meaning - and there's still two years to go.
So Dave and Christy, in their early
50s, believe another four years of Obama will make things worse. Christy
believes the nation will go bust if Obama continues spending at the rate he has
in his first four years, and Dave just says his country has become dependent on
government - a very un-American concept. He ran a fish restaurant in Virginia
for years, knows more about scallops than most people and was famous locally
for his dishes. But when the lease ran out, he closed down. He didn't blame
Obama per se but he said the economy, the job problems, uncertainty over the
future had driven many of his customers away. The price of scallops had also
shot up after the BP Gulf oil spill and the nuclear power disaster in Japan
which forced Japanese restaurant owners to buy scallops from the US, because
the Japanese ones were "hot".
Dave is now a tree-feller and has
already lost a finger! His business is building up, but he fears his nation is
no longer the entrepreneurial, go-get, American dream country he knew and
loved, but has become a place where a huge number of people rely on the
government for benefits and have lost the work ethic. I know that sounds like
Mitt Romney. But this guy doesn't like Romney either. Dave is a
salt-of-the-earth kinda chap who employs social misfits when he can to give
them a chance. Christy works with deaf students and supports her Dave all the
way.
Yes, a typical middle class American
couple, fearful of the future for themselves and for their six kids. This is
America today.
