Endorsement.

The Economist will most likely reveal its endorsement for America's 2012 presidential election today.  I need to decide and record who I support, and why, if only to prove to myself that I'm not The Economist's mindless stooge.  So while I reserve the right to alter my view based on what they or anyone else might say, I want to reveal my own 2012 endorsement here, now.

It's Obama.

Let's get this out of the way: I'll freely concede that I'm drawn toward Romney by the tribal instinct to see a fellow Mormon in the White House.  A President Romney would probably be too circumspect to ever invite President Monson over to the Oval Office, but I want that to be a possibility.  I want to see the photos of Secret Service details in white suburbans outside the temple in Chevy Chase.  I think it would be a fitting capstone to the unprecedented visibility Mormons have enjoyed in the public eye over the last couple years, and it could (just maybe!) help more of the public at large to feel some spark of pride for America's scrappy homegrown religion.  Which is mine.  Which I love.  I even think that affinity could nudge me, subconsciously maybe, to overlook some of Romney's biggest weaknesses.

The problem is that I don't know which weaknesses are his and which he has imported wholesale from the debilitating groupthink of the Republican party as currently constituted.  I haven't really studied his whole record, but I suspect that I would have little to object to in a Mitt Romney circa 2004 running for President.  But in 2012 I have to deal with his disavowal of universal health care, his refusal of the 10-to-1 spending cuts to tax increases hypothetical, and all the wacky things he's said about China and Israel, among others.  Climate change.  Immigration.  Which of these things would he really stick to as president?  I hope none of them, and if he thinks he can get elected he must be betting on many moderate voters hoping the same thing.  But I don't know, and that uncertainty is bad for America's relations with the world's governments and businesses.  It also just makes me feel yucky about the state of our political discourse.  I hate that Romney has to base his election strategy on the the belief that people will assume he's lying.

Maybe Romney would preside over the country similarly to the way he governed Massachusetts -- as a wonky pragmatic centrist.  I pray such will be the case if he's elected.  If he's not, I pray that it'll jolt the Republicans into an overhaul of the system which has nominated electable moderates like Romney and John McCain only after forcing them to transform into chest-thumping far-right blowhards.

Obama is not a perfect candidate.  He's been ineffective at collaborating with Congress (mostly not his fault, but a reality) while being frighteningly adept at expanding executive power.  I can think of terrifying things about a second Obama term.  None is scarier than the prospect of the GOP maintaining its status quo.