PEA RIDGE — At this writing, the Republican Political Convention is approaching its peak. The outcome of the high drama has been lost in the results from the individual state caucuses and primary elections.
Now Mitt Romney will try to live up to all the expectations of the Republican Party with a rousing speech, accepting the well known, and widely accepted, fact that he has been ordained to challenge the current president on the campaign trail and into the November election.
The Republican Party has brought out a whole host of heavy hitters expounding the success of Republican governors in numerous states and promising the same techniques will work in Washington. Hopefully, they are correct because the Republican candidate has a 50 percent chance of winning. It might be lost on the rest of the United States, but our Democrat governor has accomplished the same goals without a lot of fanfare. We haven’t faced some of the obstacles of other states such as Wisconsin, but I believe leadership qualities aren’t political party specific.
Leaders are made and not born. We either accept them as leaders or follow them based on name recognition and a lack of knowledge about their abilities. The final criteria should be “do they do what they say they will do?”
The familiar faces on the podium came to give us hope in a man we will never really know but who might be theman elected to try to bring us out of our dismal economic state. It was encouraging to me personally to see the governor of Wisconsin share his situation in dealing with the teachers union because I raised two sons in the Wisconsin school system and now have six grandchildren attending schools there. The union was/is very powerful and I still have friends who teach there, although most of them are retired now. The school issue was up front in our concern because my younger son was personally involved in trying to find compromise in the district his children attend. If teachers in Arkansas knew all the advantages his district offers they might want to move there.
The efforts of numerous governors and non-governors was intended to set the stage for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to share his program with all of America.
Mrs. Romney was eloquent, open and a great spokesperson for a man who aspires to donate his services to a nation that he truly cares about. That doesn’t mean our current president doesn’t care, just that Mitt Romney has spent more of his own money in this campaign effort - not just this campaign, but overall.
It has never been my privilege to meet either President Obama or Mitt Romney.
However, of the two, I feel I know Mitt Romney much better than the current president. The years of working in corporations where men and women actually started companies and saw them flourish makes one believe our nation can benefit from that kind of background. When I think of Sam Walton, I think not of a retail giant but a fantastic judge of human character. To me, he best exemplified the ability to see the very best in others and recognized when they and the Walton stores could best benefit by coming together for a common purpose.
The founders of corporations that I had the privilege of meeting were possessors of the same insight as Sam Walton. Not one of the people I met over my career actually started the business alone.
They had help - a family, a partner, a first employee, a spouse - but it was not the government. It was my privilege to meet and work for a man who is now deceased, but who left a lasting view of what wealth can do when it is in the hands of caring people who truly desire to share their success with others. I saw first generation start-up companies, second generation companies and third generation companies. Not all third generation companies are blessed to have the same goals as the first generation and that is somewhat sad. But, what we still have here in Americais the ability to start from scratch - if we are willing to work very hard and share our success with others.
As I mentioned, Mitt Romney would probably fit more into the mold of a successful person than President Obama, in my view. Whether Mitt Romney has $50 million or $500 million doesn’t matter to me. The fact that he could tackle the legislative challenge of Massachusetts and provide for a balanced budget and a healthcare plan that appears to work, is amazing to me. After living there for two years in the ’50s, I believe everyone accepted the status quo.
We will have an opportunity to compare the promises of an enthusiastic group of Republicans with a group of equally enthusiastic democrats when they start their convention next week.
Regardless of personal political affiliation, we saw how insignificant we are in the big picture by the number of visits we had from the two party candidates up to this point. That is not likely to change since we don’t have a lot of electoral votes to throw around.
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Editor’s note: Leo Lynch is an award-winning columnist. He is a native of Benton County has deep roots in northwest Arkansas. He is a retired industrial engineer and former Justice of the Peace. He can be contacted at [email protected]. The opinions of the writer are his own, and are not necessarily those of The Times.
News, Pages 4 on 09/05/2012