This diary will be pretty short, and to the point, since it is an adaptation of a FB post.
Watching the above video was like a slap to the face. I was 10 at the time, so you can imagine that I wasn't completely aware of what was really going on when this happened. Seeing this now highlights to me how big a mistake Bush II was, and, given how Romney's proposing the same things, how big a mistake Romney would be.
[What follows is the general audience part, where it pays to admit to a candidate's shortcomings in order to prove that you aren't following them blindly.]
Obama's got problems. Most of them can be chalked up to his efforts to be a balanced "Washington centrist." The trouble is that, because of the pervasiveness of money in politics, being a centrist in Washington necessarily means that you're also a decent corporate tool who tries too hard to gets along with the main tools in the Republican Party. Specifically, Obama's center seeking efforts put him to the right of the nation as a whole on many matters, for example: the cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid called for by the chairmen of the failed Simpson-Bowles commission (Obama voices support in the debates), and the toothlessness and insufficiency in the Dodd-Frank banking regulations (example hole). Worse, it puts Obama in line with the Washington consensus when it conflicts with cold hard reality on issues like: the need for stronger action on climate change (carbon tax, please), the fact that clean coal does not now, and likely never will, exist, the insufficiency in size and design of the stimulus, and the need for a public option to truly enforce reforms in insurance. Finally, Obama ends up taking actions in contravention of some of our most basic laws and traditions like: warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detentions, having a Presidential kill list (Obama doesn't want to talk about it, and the use of signature drone strikes.
The most important part is that everywhere Obama's bad, Romney's demonstrably worse. :/