In an editorial written for the Des Moines Register, onetime presidential candidate H. Ross Perot endorsed Mitt Romney for president on Tuesday:
Our country faces a momentous choice. The fact is the United States is on an unsustainable course. At stake is nothing less than our position in the world, our standard of living at home and our constitutional freedoms.
That is why I am endorsing Mitt Romney for president. We can’t afford four more years in which debt mushrooms out of control, our government grows and our military is weakened.
For the past four years, we have squandered one opportunity after the next to turn things around. The longer we delay acting, the steeper the price we will have to pay.
Perot discusses Obama’s economic malaise and wild spending at length, describing them as related contributors to the growth of the national debt, which he famously described in 1992 as “the crazy aunt in the attic” that nobody wants to talk about. Auntie Debt is now roughly the size of the Cloverfield monster, and is about one credit downgrade away from entering the same mood.
Perot concludes that Romney is the right choice to get things under control, citing his ability to balance budgets without tax increases, and get things done with a divided legislature:
It is for these reasons that I am endorsing Mitt Romney. He has spent most of his career in the private sector. He understands how jobs are created. He understands how government can get in the way of that process. As a president, he would do what this administration has been unable to do, which is reform our federal government, pare it back, and — most critically — keep it from acting as a brake on economic growth.
Equally important, as a governor, Mitt Romney balanced the budget of his state for four straight years without raising taxes. Writing in all caps is called shouting, and that fact is something that deserves to be shouted from the rooftops. I should add that Gov. Romney accomplished this feat while working with a legislature that was overwhelmingly under the control of the Democratic Party in one of the most liberal states in the country. In short, although he is a rock-solid conservative, he knows how to reach across the aisle and make common cause with those with whom he disagrees.
“These are leadership qualities that are sorely needed in Washington today,” Perot concludes. It might not be a game-changer, but Perot was the closest thing we’ve seen to a successful third-party candidate in our lifetimes (well, okay, my lifetime – trust me, children of the late Nineties, it was a big deal Back In the Day.) He still has some sway with independents and deficit hawks. His editorial is a nicely-written addition to the Romney resume.
