As shocking as it may (or may not) be, I, a columnist at a student newspaper in Boston, support the reelection of Barack Obama.

I have many reasons for doing so: I believe the healthcare industry was in dire need of regulation, I believe in equal rights for all regardless of gender or sexual orientation and I believe his policies abroad have made the world safer than those of his predecessor. I do not have enough room in this column to discuss all of these issues. Instead, I will allocate this space to discuss the most important and controversial issue of this cycle: the economy.

The biggest condemnation of Obama’s first term is the lack of progress made on the economy. It is true that the economy is neither as strong as it should be, or as Obama predicted. But instead of jumping to write Obama off, we need to assess two questions: What was Obama supposed to have done and what would Romney do better?

In my own humble opinion, Obama did exactly what he was supposed to. He passed the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, colloquially known as the Stimulus Bill, which many studies – including one by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office – found added up to 3.3 million jobs, prevented further economic free fall and restored positive growth.

To add to his list of economic achievements, Obama has opened markets in South Korea for American products and has taken steps towards a similar deal with Columbia. He also cut the payroll tax and saved the American auto industry.

Yes, these steps have not been enough to put the job market back to where it was before the economy collapsed in the fall of 2008, but there has been steady (albeit slow) progress. The unemployment rate in September dipped below eight percent, the level it was at when Obama took office.

Although it seems like a trite statement, one that has been made by the Obama campaign countless times, economic recovery takes time. The job market always lags behind the rest of the economy since it is based around employer confidence. Obama has done what he could with an extremely partisan and even more so obstructive Congress (may I remind you that Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said, “The single most important thing that we [Senate Republicans] want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president”). I truly believe Barack Obama has done the best job he could on the economy given the circumstances. But would Romney be better?

No. Romney believes in trickle down economics. Whether he would call it this or not is irrelevant. Romney has proposed a tax policy, in which he would cut taxes for the wealthy and pay for it with unspecified cuts in tax deductions, which mathematically would have to, at least in part, hurt the middle class. Romney’s grand idea for the economy is to allow the wealthy to be wealthier. While there are ideological debates to the merit of this to be had, the numbers show that job growth does not correspond with low tax rates. In fact, prosperous times such as the post-war boom and the Clinton years have coincided periods of higher tax rates for top earners.

Obama will cut taxes for the middle class to increase America’s spending power, while raising taxes on the upper class so not to add to the deficit. Romney would have to cut tax deductions such as those for homeowners, and programs beneficial to the middle class, like Pell Grants, if he doesn’t plan on adding to the deficit with his upper class tax break. Even if his tax policies did help spur economic growth, a scenario that there is little evidence to support, America’s income divide would continue to widen at the expense of the middle and working class.

Obama has a clear, sustainable goal for the country. The President, if Congress would allow it, would invest in education, science and technology in order to give America a competitive edge in the global economy. To transform the economy into one that is stable and lasting, the government has to invest in the country, and such investments have to be paid for. A Romney administration would not be able to do this without hurting the middle class. But after all, it’s not his job to worry about those people anyway.

–Nick Jacques can be reached at [email protected]