Insight on Romney – potentially the next President of the US

Posted by Guest Contributor on Jun 4, 2012 in Alerts | 1 comment

By Muhammad Hassan. The writer is currently doing his A Levels from Beaconhouse ALGC.

After a hard battle, Mitt Romney has now finally won the Republican Party’s nomination for this year presidential elections in the United States. Interestingly, Romney is a Mormon, a branch of Christianity about which many mainstream Christians are apprehensive about. And since Pakistan is so “close” to the US, I thought it would be a good idea to get some insight into the man who might well become the next President of the United States!

Romney earned a joint Juris Doctor and MBA from Harvard in 1975 and joined the Boston Consulting Group. He later joined Bain & Company in 1977, went on to become the CEO and later helped bring out the firm from financial crises. In 1984, he co-founded Bain Capital which went on to become one of the largest firms of its kind in the US; he also headed the Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics. In fact, Romney did not try his hand at politics until 1994, when he ran against Ted Kennedy for a US senate seat from Massachusetts and faced defeat. In 2003, he was elected Governor of Massachusetts and served till 2007 after which he ran for the Republican presidential nomination for the 2008 elections, but lost out to John McCain.

Romney has been severally critical of President Obama for announcing a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops and says that he will withdraw US troops only after an assessment of the “conditions on the ground .“ He also claimed that the US enjoys political leverage over Pakistan and Afghanistan and shouldn’t be afraid to use it. From his remarks, it can only be concluded that Mitt Romney might well scrap the withdrawal timetable and decide on continuing the US occupation of Afghanistan.

Evidently, Romney supports more aggressive diplomacy as proved by his demands to declare China to be a currency manipulator and will probably take a tougher stand on issues such as Pakistan’s alleged links with Afghan militants. Incidentally, in 2007, when Obama said that he would go for a unilateral strike if Osama was found inside Pakistan, Romney said his words were “ill-considered” and “ill-timed”. After Osama was killed, he reversed his position, saying that the US always reserved the right to go after Osama, but such opinions should not be voiced out loud.

Summing it up, I’ll say that Romney’s presence in the White House probably won’t change much in Afghanistan (or Pakistan). He likes talking tough to get votes from a frustrated public, but at the most’ he’ll keep US troops in Afghanistan for another year or so. In the long run though, things will go on much like they have for the past ten years.