Tae Yoon: Life from 2006-2021

"The choice is clear. The Romney-Ryan ticket represents a constricted and backward-looking vision of America: privatization of the public good. In contrast, the sort of public investment championed by Obama---and exemplified by both the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Affordable Care Act---takes to heart the old civil-rights motto "Lifting as we climb." That effort cannot, by itself, reverse the rise of inequality that has been under way for at least three decades. But we've already seen the future that Romney represents, and it doesn't work.

The reelection of Barack Obama is a matter of great urgency. Not only are we in broad agreement with his policy directions; we also see in him what is absent in Mitt Romney---a first-rate political temperament and a deep sense of fairness and integrity. A two-term Obama Administration will leave an enduringly positive imprint on political life. It will bolster the ideal of good governance and a social vision that tempers individualism with a concern for community. Every Presidential election involves a contest over the idea of America. Obama's America---one that progresses, however falteringly, toward social justice, tolerance, and equality---represents the future that this country deserves."

From The Talk of the Town section of the October 29 & November 5, 2012 double-issue of The New Yorker.