Predictions for America if Romney Wins, if Obama Wins

By Kelli Lundgren

If Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney is elected in November:

• A change of president will foster increased consumer confidence, stimulating the economy. Hope of change for someone "better" no matter his actual effectiveness produces a renewed enthusiasm in those that voted for him.
• The stock market will spike up in value in November, especially for the Fortune 100 companies, although values will eventually adjust back to reality.
• Wall Street may ease credit.  Combined with historically low interest rates, this will further spur an already stabilizing real estate market creating more construction jobs.  Wall Street will have its president of choice in office; one that offers deregulation.  This is good for the short-term, possibly bad for the long, especially if big banks are still too big to fail.
• The extreme right wing will likely relax protests and moral attacks on women, contraceptives, minorities, health care reform and federal government overspending.  But they will strongly pursue prayer in public schools and co-mingling religion with government, hoping that Romney is on board.
• The budget deficit will continue to grow for years, perhaps at an even a greater rate under Romney’s Republican supply-side economic watch. (The deficit historically has grown at a greater rate under Republican presidents rather than Democratic).  Republicans will keep budget deficit growth quieter, less transparent; similar to what was done in the G.W. Bush administration.
• The economy will be business as usual under Romney and will continue to grow slowly with unemployment shrinking gradually in spite of Romney’s claims Obama didn’t do it right.  Our country is having to pull out of one of the most devastating economic crashes in American history; over-stimulated, self-corrected, or more accurately, federal government sustained.
• U.S. oil, gas and mining ventures have been expanding significantly under Obama's watch. They will continue to do so under Romney, possibly expanding at an even greater rate under the guise that the U.S. should be self-sufficient, even though more of our energy production is exported rather than used at home. 
• Utah’s Republican distain for federal government will reduce to a simmer, as it did during the G.W. Bush Presidency.
• I’ve never met Mitt Romney.  He seems nice, yet Americans don’t appear to be getting to know him in his campaign.  He is in “tell people what they want to hear” mode.  It would be refreshing to know the person under the pretense.  We may never get to know who he truly is.  If president, people may quickly start to distrust Romney if the economy does not grow or he pushes us into another war.
• Once the vitriol of the presidential campaign is over, and if Romney wins, Republicans will soften up on Obama and forget they ever had such despise for our first black president.

If President Obama is re-elected in November:

• Americans left and right will feel a psychological let down.  Obama is a moderate.  Liberals will vote for him in November but don’t believe he is doing justice to important causes.  The right has painted him bad no matter what he does right or wrong. The right will feel they were slighted if Obama wins.
• Obama seems fairly transparent.  If you want to know what he thinks about America, about the Constitution, about life, about long-term vision, read the books he wrote before he became president.  Education, self-responsibility, and self-esteem are critical issues to him.  Also, he isn’t hiding his past or his tax returns.   His motives are consistent and open for debate.  This is good for a country’s long-term.  He is a likeable person only if individuals are open to liking him.
• Obama will do more daring things in his lame duck presidency; cut back on military spending, push for more education, and hopefully create a long-term plan to wean us off of oil and coal; the plans he desired before he inherited a falling economy.  Congress will still push back; Republicans in Congress will still throw a temper tantrum even over good ideas.
• Tea Partyers will rise again and rally if Obama gets a second term. 
• The economy will still grow under Obama's watch, slowly.  Maybe this is not so bad.  With Obama, Wall Street will continue to attempt to find ways to lend almost-free money to people, and the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates low.  It will further stir the awakening real estate market, which historically helps an economic recovery.  Perhaps slow growth is better than run-amuck greed that lead us to the edge of a cliff in 2007.

Lastly, seriously, and for our future, this year's elected U.S. President should lead the world in addressing and fixing CO2 levels in our atmosphere.  We should have started 20 years ago.  It's time to get serious.  It's time for politicians to stop denying the data.

As climate change continues, drought ridden states will look to the federal government for subsistence, flood ridden shores will too, and too many people world-wide will be looking to the U.S. to help in famine, extreme heat, and unexpected cold.  There will not be enough federal and state dollars to deal with this, nor familiar environments to produce usual crops, etc., if we do not start now reversing this course.