Sports are essential to school pride

It is not a stretch to say student enthusiasm for athletics at Miami University, outside of hockey, is quite low. Sure this is due to the fact that some of our athletic teams are underachieving, but what about teams that deserve the student body's support?

For example, the RedHawk baseball team turned a corner last year by going all the way to the Mid-American Conference (MAC) Championship game and finished 35-25 overall, its highest number of wins since 2005. This year, the team returns with 15 letter-winners and is predicted to finish second in the MAC East Division.

Now unless you are a member of the baseball team or surprisingly dialed in to the RedHawk sports scene, you probably would not know any of this. This is partially due to the overall lack of enthusiasm surrounding any sport except hockey, but more so to the fact that spring sports like baseball have thus far been ignored by the Miami University sports marketing department.

I understand resources are limited and are best put towards more popular sports which can bring revenue to the athletic department. However, the way to encourage a culture of excitement towards athletics at Miami is not to focus just on the sports that already have support behind them. Instead, it is to build an overall excitement around all of our Miami teams.

Sports are one of the best avenues towards building a better community and this is especially true here at Miami. The athletic department should keep this in mind when they decide how to allocate their resources.

It is easy to deride Ohio University for being our little brother when it comes to academics, but when considering the real point behind the Bobcat Perspective video, namely student support for sports, we have to concede that they have us beat in athletic enthusiasm.

Also think about the Ohio State University. Sure it helps to have a massive athletic department with nearly unlimited resources, but they've always had the community. There's a certain pride that people have when they say they went to Ohio State that is missing here.

Graduates of Miami are proud of the university and thankful for its excellent reputation, but there is not the same type of excitement about being a RedHawk.

I tend to think this is directly tied to the fact that there is little to no excitement for sports here.

Sports enthusiasm gives a graduate a level of pride for their school that goes beyond just the academics.

When all pride is centered on academics as it is here at Miami, an elitist air quickly develops around an institution. Without any real sports fervor, people will continue to just think of us as an elitist institution.

Sports build a community and they bring people together. Although I never expect fans of the MiamiRedHawks to rival the enthusiasm of an Ohio State Buckeye fan, it would be nice to see more effort put into building a true sports community, not just one narrowly focused on one excellent team.

Obama's Problem

When campaigning for the presidency in 2007 and 2008, candidate Barack Obama drove the most uplifting and inspiring message of any candidate in the history of politics. His landmark victory, at the time, seemed to promise a new age in American politics, one without so much partisan squabbling. One marked by a willingness to work together for the common good. The man appeared to be a transcendent and pragmatic post-partisan leader.

We then found out the sad truth about President Obama, he's just like everybody else running things in our nation's capital: cynically calculating and tragically detached from the rest of the country.

This political ethos has been on display time and time again throughout his presidency. During the campaign season last time around, he chose to opt out of the public financing system once he realized he could raise more money than Senator John McCain.

Early on in his presidency, he lost all of his centrist appeal and political capital when he pushed through an unpopular government takeover of health insurance and an $800 billion economic stimulus package. He then gave the post-partisan crowd another reason to distrust him when he rejected the common sense solutions laid out by the Simpson-Bowles fiscal reform commission he had formed.

Most recently, we've seen it on display in his decision to reject 20,000 American jobs and increased energy independence by rejecting the Keystone Pipeline in order to appease the environmentalists, an important part of his base for reelection. He's asked private Catholic institutions "not to be Catholic" by forcing them to provide contraceptives as a part of their health insurance coverage for employees — an act of ridiculous "one size fits all" liberal overreach.

And finally, not only does he have the audacity to hope, but he also had the audacity to challenge the Supreme Court to their faces in his 2010 State of the Union on their ruling in the Citizens United campaign finance reform case, but then decided last week to support a SuperPAC bankrolling his own reelection. The same SuperPACs, which, in his own words, "open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign companies — to spend without limit in our elections . . . I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests."

The president doesn't have a politically courageous bone in his body, if he did he would have advocated for a real balanced approach to deficit reduction (Simpson-Bowles), not just given lip service to the idea of one. He also would stop saying he wants fundamental tax reform, and then proposing more deductions that complicate our tax code further in the next sentence.

To be clear, none of these moves are wholly egregious for a politician, in fact almost all but the contraceptive decision have basically been politically smart decisions for a Democratic president trying, above all else, to please the left; but President Obama claimed to be a different kind of politician. He told us he was audacious and a majority of Americans believed him.

Simpson-Bowles and the SuperPAC issue specifically were opportunities for the president, opportunities for him to live up to his rhetoric from four years ago. Rhetoric like what he said to his supporters after Super Tuesday four year ago, "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that weseek."

While President Obama certainly has some notable accomplishments, he has refused to do anything on the domestic policy side that does anything but pander to his liberal base.

America was duped once into believing in the uplifting post partisan change rhetoric. This time Americans should remember, a vote for Obama is a vote for a conventional liberal politician, nothing more and nothing less. The one thing it certainly is not is a vote for a politically courageous post-partisan change agent. The candidate of change is no more than the president of business as usual, and it really is a shame.

Why Romney can't really win

Mitt Romney shellacked Newt Gingrich last night in Florida.  He defeated him with every major group of voters except the far right (a group Romney won't win until the general election), and finally came close to winning a majority of Republicans in a highly important swing state.

Congratulations to Mitt Romney, it's a great win for him, but his problems with conservatives are still immense and they're still not going away.  I'm not saying Mitt won't win the nomination.  Actually, Romney will be the party's nominee in November, it might take awhile since Newt seems to have more political lives than anyone who has ever lived, but in the end, it's going to be Mitt.

However, Romney will also lose in November to the President. Why?  One word:  enthusiasm.  Turnout last night in Florida actually went down 14% from four years ago when Floridians understood it was their turn to anoint the unabashedly moderate John McCain.  And the (Republican spin warning) “record” turnouts in the other contests so far have basically all been due to Ron Paul’s supporters turning out in droves.  Since these people, for the most part, aren’t really Republicans and will not turn out in November to vote for Mitt Romney it’s safe to subtract Paul’s vote from the turnout numbers.

Low turnout means low enthusiasm.  Republicans across the country aren’t stupid.  They’ve been given a horrendous choice between the flip-flopping I’ll say whatever you want me to say Romney, the erratic (to put it nicely), but visionary Gingrich, the crotchety old man Paul, and the far too socially conservative to ever win a national election Santorum.  There’s nothing exciting about any of these people. 

And though Romney might be the best positioned to win since he has the most effective staff, the most endorsements, and the most money, he can’t buy or beg for conservative excitement.  There’s none now for him and there never will be.

The conservative base will never like Mitt Romney, some will go vote for him in November, but they won’t have a sign in their yard, they won’t have a bumper sticker, and they most assuredly won’t ask their friends to go do the same. 

The counter attack to all of this is that conservatives will rally around their guy and turn out in the general election because they’re going to be so excited to beat Obama.  Yes, conservatives hate the stimulus, Obamacare, and pretty much everything the President has done, but in essence they plan to out enthusiasm the candidate who rallied up enthusiastic troops better than any candidate in history.  They plan to out enthusiasm the guy who got universal health care passed (a liberal desire since the days of FDR), made the order to have Osama Bin Laden killed, and is watching unemployment go down as we speak.

I know the economy is bad and Romney plans to use his business experience to nail the President, which could actually work, but all team Obama really has to do is define Mitt Romney as a flip flopping politician who fired people for 25 years before that in the private sector and he probably wins.

If the candidate of change can define his opponent much like George W. Bush did to another French speaking, Massachusetts elitist in 2004, while simultaneously rallying his base by running as a the defender of the common folk, it won’t even be close.

Romney’s only chance is to quit saying the word fired on the trail, and continue to attempt to define the President as a failure and himself as the man to fix it all like he has before in business and with the Olympics.  Unfortunately for conservatives, Romney just isn’t a quality candidate and it’s going to take a better candidate than Romney to kick out an incumbent, and all the good ones stayed home.