BRET STEPHENS: A NOTE TO THE WAVERING VOTER ****

Posted By on October 18th, 2012

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443854204578058382033394080.html

Mitt Romney won’t make war on women, the Middle East or the middle class.

Dear Wavering Voter:

No, abortion rights and access to contraception will not be jeopardized if Mitt Romney becomes president. Not remotely, not vaguely, not even close. No woman in America, including Sandra Fluke, will have war made upon her by a President Romney.

Maybe you think the job of a president is to be our DJ-in-Chief and set the mood music for the country. In that case, the slow-jam Obama administration has everything to recommend it, while a Romney presidency may get on your nerves like a hokey country song. But it won’t get in your way.

How am I so sure? It’s not a question of Mr. Romney’s sincerity on social issues. It’s the fact that since Roe v. Wade became the law of the land almost 40 years ago, Republican presidents have named seven justices to the Supreme Court, while Democratic presidents have named only four. Guess what? Roe v. Wade is and will remain the law of the land.

No, we will not have another war in the Middle East. Not even if President Romney orders Iran’s nuclear sites bombed to smithereens.

Remember “Operation Desert Fox”? Probably not. That was a four-day, full-on bombing campaign against Iraq ordered by Bill Clinton in December 1998, on the eve of his impeachment. The ostensible purpose of the campaign was to degrade Saddam’s WMD capabilities, which then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called “the threat of the 21st century.”

It must have worked beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Air strikes may be acts of war, but not the kind of war President Obama is warning will be our lot if Republicans are elected. Incidentally, Mr. Obama also says “all options are on the table” when it comes to Iran. If he isn’t serious about keeping a nuclear weapon out of the hands of the ayatollahs by any means necessary, he should come out and say so.

No, America will not once again become the global pariah it supposedly was under George W. Bush if Mr. Romney is elected.

That’s because, as we’ve lately discovered, we never ceased being a pariah in places like Cairo and Karachi. The Pew Research Center finds that positive attitudes toward the U.S. are broadly lower today throughout the Middle East than they were in the last year of Mr. Bush’s presidency. True, Mr. Obama has made America somewhat more popular again in Europe, so you can visit Paris again without fear of a political harangue at Les Deux Magots cafe.

But there’s a rub: Fewer people can afford the trip. Travel by U.S. citizens to Europe has declined every year of the Obama presidency. We’ll always have Paris, dear—we just can’t afford to go there this year.

No, your taxes will not go up by a couple of grand. They especially won’t go up “to pay for huge new tax breaks for millionaires,” as the Obama campaign keeps insisting.

The $2,000 figure is based on a study by an outfit called the Tax Policy Center. Of the study itself, Don Marron, the center’s president, concedes: “I don’t interpret this as evidence that Governor Romney wants to increase taxes on the middle class in order to cut taxes for the rich. Instead, I view it as showing that his plan can’t accomplish all his stated objectives.”

Discerning readers may note that there’s a difference between saying a tax plan isn’t going to achieve everything it sets out to do and claiming it will jack up your taxes. As for the $5 trillion tax cut the Obama campaign insists Mr. Romney is offering, Obama campaign spokesperson Stephanie Cutter admitted on CNN that “it won’t be near $5 trillion” once deductions and loopholes are closed.

It would be nice if the Romney campaign showed a more Reaganesque zeal for tax cutting. It doesn’t. In the meantime, the questions raised by the Obama campaign are: How stupid does it think the electorate is? And how stupid are we, really?

No, your grandmother will not be thrown off a cliff.

Then again, she might just be if you think that we can retire 76 million baby boomers over the next 18 years without adjusting to a world of longer lifespans and potentially lower trend growth.

This is the ugly reality unfolding at stunning speed throughout Europe today, and it could soon be our future, too. Depending on how you count (and on what happens with ObamaCare), Medicare will go broke sometime in the next four to 12 years. Ask yourself how old you’ll be in 2024: If you think you’ll probably be dead by then, you can relax. Otherwise your choice is to reform the programs, or watch them explode.

“Lawmakers should not delay addressing the long-run financial challenges facing Social Security and Medicare. If they take action sooner rather than later, more options and more time will be available to phase in changes so that the public has adequate time to prepare.” That’s from the 2012 annual report of the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees, not some hack partisan study.

Yes, the rich will probably get richer.

And if you’re eaten alive by the thought that someone, somewhere, is doing better than you, then you surely know how to vote.

But then, what is this election about? If you’re a wavering voter, it might be worth asking yourself what matters to you more: bringing yourself up, or bringing millionaires and billionaires down?

Write to bstephens@wsj.com

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