BARACK OBAMA ran for president four years ago promising not just to cure the economy and cut the deficit in half but also to tackle problems on a bipartisan basis. Four years later the economy is stagnant, the deficit has grown and he has racked up almost as much new debt as all previous 43 presidents combined. He also has proven to be one of the most polarizing presidents in U.S. history.

No wonder so many Americans are hoping for change come January.

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BARACK OBAMA’S ELECTION was an inspirational moment for most Americans, one whose historic significance was impossible to deny. Yet he was quick to dash those hopes once in office.

During his first two years Obama had a Democratic-controlled House and Senate to pass any plan or idea to help the tattered economy. Instead, he made his overriding priority not job creation but the radical transformation of this country’s health care system, which though far from perfect is the best in the world for a country so large. That government takeover of health care, if left in place, will deprive millions of Americans of their present health insurance and degrade the quality of care provided for all of us. His preferred model is socialized medicine along the lines of Great Britain and other European countries.

That’s fitting, because his economic policies have this country following Greece and Spain toward bankruptcy.

This is a president who seems fundamentally out of touch with most mainstream Americans and sees Main Street America as something to be scolded. He routinely villanizes the private sector and pushes policies that punish profit. As he chided successful Americans this summer, “You didn’t build that!”

On foreign policy, he has treated our enemies like allies and our allies like enemies. Despite — or more likely because of — his serial apologies to foreign leaders, he has cost us respect around the world. His administration’s ludicrous assertion that an obscure YouTube video in California sparked anti-American riots across the Middle East on Sept. 11 has now been proven a deliberate falsehood. And when a U.S. ambassador was murdered in the line of duty for the first time in 33 years, Obama’s response was to jet to Las Vegas to party at a fat-cat fundraiser. The cruel murders of the ambassador and three other Americans that day? Just a couple of “bumps in the road,” he callously said.

Obama’s America is a place where unemployment rates above 8 percent are routine, where food stamp enrollment has hit an all-time high and where the number of Americans who have given up hope of finding work would have had a familiar ring to Franklin Roosevelt.

Barack Obama has had four years to offer a plan for saving Social Security and other entitlements. But that “plan” apparently consists of “Do nothing. Something will come along.”

Mitt Romney would slowly raise the retirement age, means-test wealthier Americans but not raise taxes or do anything to affect present seniors or those nearing retirement.

Barack Obama has compiled a wreck of a record, and yes, “He did build that.”

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OBAMA’S OPPONENT on Nov. 6 is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The economy is the overriding issue in this race. So which candidate is best prepared for the job? Barack Obama, who has next-to-nonexistent experience in the private sector, who has overseen four years of economic stagnation and who has learned nothing about the business world? Barack Obama, whose answer for every economic or budgetary question is “Higher taxes”?

Or Mitt Romney, who compiled an admirable record in the private sector and knows how and why jobs are created? That answer is obvious. Romney will push for lower tax rates, which will have the counter-intuitive result of increasing revenues and spur job creation. President Romney’s policies will lift the economy just as President Reagan’s did.

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MOST PRESIDENTS running for re-election run on their records. Not this one. Why not? Because it is so unpopular with so many voters. Instead, Team Obama has mounted a relentlessly negative campaign. Forget “Hope and Change.” This time around it’s “Fear and Smear.”

Leadership? Obama’s forte is “leading from behind.” You can look around and see where that’s gotten us.

Romney’s resume, on the other hand, is dotted with leadership successes — at Bain Capital, overseeing the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, and his term as the Republican governor of one of our most Democratic states.

This is a country desperate for change. It’s a country badly in need of an economy that produces jobs, rather than spits people out of jobs. A country where the growth of the private sector outpaces that of government, rather than the other way around.

This is a country that needs a leader who leads, not a leader who follows. A leader who will enhance the things that make us the most dynamic country in the world — not one who pushes redistributionist policies designed to transform us into another socialist Europe.

We need a leader who believes in “peace through strength,” military and otherwise, not a leader whose guiding principle is “peace through weakness, and keep your fingers crossed.”

We need Mitt Romney — and he needs your vote on Nov. 6.