Undecided Voter: Am I the Only One Who Will Compromise?

With three months to go before the election, Yahoo! News asked a handful of undecided voters how they're leaning in the presidential race. Here's a perspective from one voter.

COMMENTARY | I'm dreading November. Why? Come Election Day, I'll cast my vote either to re-elect President Obama or to replace him with Mitt Romney. Either way I'll end up feeling like I'm the only one of the three of us who's willing to compromise.

At the start of June, I was leaning toward voting for Romney. Put simply, I've given up on fixing our national budget imbalance and ridiculous debt for my generation. But I maintain hope that by taking painful but necessary steps now, my daughter's generation won't have to navigate an economy destroyed by the our collective debt's adverse consequences. I don't categorically oppose President Obama's health care reform or other costly measures. But I saw Romney as more committed to making the deep budget cuts we need to see real debt pay-down progress.

Yet in the last two weeks, I've begun to realize that neither candidate appears willing to do what I see as necessary to effectuate real change: compromise.

As a public school teacher who lives in Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich's efforts to crush public school unions fell upon referendum last year, I should be shoo-in for Democrats. And, yes, Obama's television ad onslaught has left me suspicious about Romney's activities at Bain Capital. But instead of offering me a slate of reasonable compromises that make it easy to support him, President Obama seems unable to move beyond name-calling.

I mean, I'm supposed to vote for a presidential candidate whose biggest offering last week was to try to frighten me with a story of take-from-the-poor-to-feed-the-rich "Romney Hood"? Sorry, I'll need better than that.

And Romney seems as interested in teasing his vice-presidential pick as telling me why I should vote for him even though we disagree on gay marriage, tax rates for the wealthy, and federal education policy. I didn't download Romney's app and I guess I won't be the first to know which Republican loyalist will serve as Romney's attack dog.

In the past week my local paper has reported on investigations into materially falsified attendance records and a major ethics probe of the state schools superintendent. Can either candidate tell me how to make education more accountable and efficient without vilifying teachers and unions?

No -- that would involve compromise. So, barring a major surprise, I'll have to figure out who gets my compromise vote this November.

S. Alexander Cooke, 34, is a teacher and freelance writer in Columbus, Ohio.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/undecided-voter-am-only-one-compromise-012400531.html

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