Innovation, entrepreneurial exceptionalism, individual aspirations with realism in risk taking and the ability in America to not only see your dreams come true but to help your fellow Americans by your successes. Nowhere else in the world are we able to be anything we want to be. Nowhere else in the world are we able to travel on roads we all built and be either the founder/inventor/CEO or the worker at that business we choose our own destiny. We, yes, we, my fellow Americans, get to decide who and what we want to be. Nowhere else in the world do we have these freedoms. And we now have the freedom to decide our next president.

As an older American I have witnessed the changing political climate in each generation I have lived. As a child, I saw President Eisenhauer as an elderly man who did not seem to fit into what was becoming a fast-paced new world. I saw young President Kennedy give us hope and uplift us. I saw President Johnson sign monumental civil rights legislation that changed America, and I saw the Vietnam War and then I saw a very sad man with his head bowed down refusing to even be considered for president again.

I saw President Nixon as a man grasping at power. I saw President Ford as a healer. I saw President Carter as an idealist who was in over his head. I saw President Reagan as a man who deeply cared about others and America. I saw first President Bush as an honorable good person. I saw President Clinton as an idealist who ultimately came to understand the importance of compromise and he became a leader. I saw second President Bush as a man trying to make his parents proud, to keep us safe and who loved America.

And I see President Obama as a man out of his element, a community organizer, a person who works for a president but is not qualified to be a president. He is a man who knows nothing about business, economics, entrepreneuralism. And at this time in our nation’s history, it is about those three things.

That is why I am voting for Mitt Romney. He has a proven track record as a business owner, entrepreneur and economist who understands risk taking. But most of all I am voting for Mitt Romney as president of the U.S. because $16 trillion in debt is just plain wrong; $5 billion from the last 3 1/2 years is just plain wrong. Our way of life, our freedoms are at stake, and I will not have my children and grandchildren pay my debt!

 

Vicki Pestorious

Albert Lea