Will 2016 Be a Pivotal Election?

An equity partner of mine reminded me today of a conversation we had some months ago.

He recently bought a home in the French countryside and has a few business dealings and relatives in France. During the run-up to the election between Hollande (the Socialist Party president) and Sarkozy (the former president, whose party is supposedly "center-right"), my friend suggested that it might not be a bad thing if Sarkozy lost the election.

Since I always thought the guy leaned slightly to the conservative side, I was a little surprised. But his thoughts ran something like this:

Sarkozy, although ostensibly a "conservative", is really a big-spending, big government interventionist, sort of like Nixon or George W. Bush. Given the choice between those two, it might not be a bad idea to let the unambiguously leftist candidate assume office, badly fuck up a number of things (which he obviously will), and thereby set the stage for the emergence of a real reform candidate. A series of fiscal and financial crises will apparently be needed before it becomes clear to the French public that the country is in dire straits.

To be sure, Obama is a moderate centrist (yes, really!) compared to Hollande's French Socialists. They pushed the top bracket tax rate on ordinary income to 75%, a progressive's fantasy. (But not surprisingly, that's already backfiring.) Worse than that, they decided they wanted to shove the top-bracket capital gains tax rate to 60%. (Yes, 60% -- that wasn't a typo!) I can just see it now: A bunch of effete French government officials sitting around a conference table musing about why nobody seems to be selling anything.

But the point is that there may be some obvious parallels, at least with respect to direction rather than magnitude. My equity partner friend thinks so, and I find it hard to disagree.

Given Romney's legendary duplicitousness, there's no telling what he might try to do if he somehow manages to win the election. But I think there's a very high risk that, like Sarkozy, he won't be equal to the task, and that his presidency will look like a train wreck by 2014. Is that any better than seeing the country go through four more years of flapping in the wind with Obama, who obviously will offer no presidential leadership?

As a nation, we're like an alcoholic who needs to "hit bottom" before summoning up the will to seek treatment and recovery.

As a nation, we're like an alcoholic who needs to "hit bottom" before summoning up the will to seek treatment and recovery. Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

I'll drink to that!

I'll drink to that! Originally Posted by WTF

YUP.

I think the theme of this thread is the significance of the 2016 elections .... plural ...

... the direction and intensity of 2016 will be determined in 2012.

This country must make a course correction to starboard ... if it is not taken in 2012 ... the sense of urgency in 2016 will prevail and those kinds of corrections, during urgencies, are more radical and disruptive to the overall balance of the "vessel" as well as substantially reduce headway.

We all know the result of the Titanic. We're all on board.

I think the theme of this thread is the significance of the 2016 elections .... plural ...

... the direction and intensity of 2016 will be determined in 2012.

This country must make a course correction to starboard ... if it is not taken in 2012 ... the sense of urgency in 2016 will prevail and those kinds of corrections, during urgencies, are more radical and disruptive to the overall balance of the "vessel" as well as substantially reduce headway.

We all know the result of the Titanic. We're all on board. Originally Posted by LexusLover

Agreed.

Although it seems like there's no sense of urgency now, I think there's little doubt that there will be one within four years -- no matter who wins this election. One should remember that fiscal and financial crises aren't kind enough to announce their impending arrivals a year or so in advance so that you can start putting your house in order. Things seem just fine until all of a sudden it's clear that they are not.

Everyone knows that Obama has no worthwhile plan, but my concern is that the Romney/Ryan team doesn't have a politically practicable, sustainable plan, either. If they win the White House, they're likely to say to their advisors, "Uh-oh! Now we have to answer some of those questions we dodged during the campaign. What now, guys? How do we do what we said we were going to do without getting our party landslided out of office?"

I posted this an another thread a couple of months ago, but here's a short article that points up the phoniness of the rhetoric and the enormousness of the task:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/op...dget-plan.html

The author fought these battles thirty years ago and understands the challenges as well as anyone. He knows whereof he speaks.