Romney for President?

Dear Mr. Romney:

This week, I’ve received 3 separate mailings from your campaign, thanking me for my generous support of your candidacy for President; however, I do not yet support your campaign either philosophically or financially because I am not sure what you will actually do when you are elected.

You stand back from your achievements as a businessman, allowing your opponents, as well as the media, to turn your personal success into political shame. In the same way that I am appalled by the younger generations’ hue and cry about all the “old people” who have money in savings accounts, who pay their bills, who live within their means, I am appalled by anyone who is successful down-playing not only the success, but the sacrifice it requires to be successful. I do not receive my retirement income as a government entitlement; I earned it by working long hours day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year -- for 35 years in my career field. I am pleased that my life-long dedication to being able to pay my own way after I retire is paying off for me. I don’t feel that I owe anyone coming behind me anything more than I put into my career: long hours, hard work, and the determination to succeed. If they want what I have, they, too, can earn it, just as I did. Why pretend otherwise?

Secondly, you are a successful businessman, so present the public with a business plan for success. When a candidate says s/he has a plan, share the plan. My specific plan to be ready for the overwhelming influx of senior citizens who require medical care is one I devised prior to the last Presidential election. Create a Health Care Corps, ala John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps, using all the empty malls and big box buildings as community clinics that provide the basics: annual screening/health check-ups, lab work, baby wellness, and physical therapy for the elderly. This can be created by providing appropriate health care education to future providers, similar to two years’ of compulsory military service in other countries. Two years of intense training requires a payback of four years of service, and then the educated worker, who also now has job experience, can move into the private sector if s/he so desires.

Take all the empty shopping malls and big box megastores and repurpose them as community health care centers. We certainly do not need to build new facilities right next door to the ghost towns of commerce past! Putting our tax dollars to work for the citizens benefits the citizens who work. Stop providing generations of families with welfare, subsidized housing, food stamps, and free medical care by requiring that they become educated, productive workers in the health care system. Create jobs for the unemployed, hiring them for the construction required to repurpose the empty buildings, to provide equipment/furniture for the health care complexes, to staff the offices, to work as custodians of the property, to monitor the parking lots/garages, to provide security, to staff a daycare so the mothers can go into the doctor’s office without carting numerous crying, mischievous children with them. It would take time to get the process moving, but once it starts, it can become a driving force for change America can believe in, change that actually serves Americans, rather than the politicians in Washington, DC.

Mr. Romney, if you want my support, earn it. Don’t believe for even one minute that I am going to donate my retirement dollars to someone who thinks he deserves it because he says he represents my political perspective. You have to earn my support and my donation, just as I earned it, saved it, and now have to decide the most effective use for my retirement income. I don’t need a color photo of you and your wife glad-handing at a political rally: I need your business plan in black and white, with details, specifics, time lines. Send me that and I’ll send a donation to your campaign.