Presidential can-do spirit.

AuthorRock, Robert H.
PositionLETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN

OVER THE PAST YEAR, the foremost topic of discussion at the dinners preceding my board meetings has been the upcoming Presidential election. Directors are keenly interested in the outcome, and they seem to be as bifurcated as the general electorate. At these dinners, the chair has polled the board about their predictions, and by a small margin the consensus is that President Obama will narrowly win reelection.

The 2012 Presidential campaign has been going on for almost a year and is now poised to devour us, particularly those of us who live in the dozen or so states that will decide the election, including Pennsylvania where I live, as well as those usual battleground states of Florida and Ohio. Several other states will be highly contested, such as Virginia, Iowa, Indiana, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, and perhaps North Carolina and Minnesota. If you live in these states, you will be bombarded with TV commercials, robo-calls, and direct mull.

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The tone of the campaign has been devoid of vision, aspiration, and optimism. President Obama no longer evokes hope and change. Both parties use the rhetoric of negativity. This tone may be the inevitable fallout from our severe socio-economic woes exemplified by a stubbornly high unemployment rate and a shrinking middle class. Our economic problems seem intractable; for the most recent four years, federal revenues have averaged 16 percent of GDP, federal spending, 24 percent. The resulting $5 trillion in debt has severely limited our government's ability to assure America remains the greatest country in the world.

When I was...

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