Last week, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama both answered Scientific American’s 14 science questions. Being somewhat of a science nerd, I was excited to read their responses.
Sadly, my excitement faded around question six.
Romney’s answers reminded me of a student who did not read his or her homework, but was required to write a full page on the assigned reading the next day. He often rambled, provided information irrelevant to the question and made too many unnecessary jabs at Obama’s policies. While Obama’s questions were often short and unspecific, he focused little on attacking the other side and more on his own solutions.
I was interested in the vaccinations and biosecurity questions, as I figured most of the green energy and research-funding questions were going to have rather predictable answers. However, both answers to the pandemics and biosecurity” category were short and vague.
For instance, Obama said that he “will continue to work to strengthen our systems of public health so we can stop disease from spreading across our borders.” Romney attacked Obama’s policies, and vaguely noted that he “will empower the private sector to pursue breakthroughs.”
Neither candidate made mention of the avian flu (H5N1), which can be infectious and deadly in humans and has no known successful treatments (think back to the movie “Contagion”). Furthermore, H5N1 has always been controversial in research and how much of said research should be made available to the public. This was also missing in both candidates’ public policy answers.
Unsurprisingly, Romney found the room in his public policy answer to scrutinize Obama for his “Utility MACT rule.” Romney claimed that under this rule, Obama would “bankrupt the coal industry” and destroy thousands of jobs.
This was a common theme in Romney’s answers — he proved to be a large advocate of coal. Romney cited coal in four different answers, while Obama brought up “clean coal” once in his answer to the energy question. Furthermore, Obama seemed less interested in offshore drilling than Romney, and focused more on wind, solar and biofuels as clean energy for the U.S.
Obama’s want and need for progress was also apparent in the space question. He noted that he has “extended the life of the International Space Station,” has a goal of sending humans to Mars by 2030s, and the $2.5 billion NASA Curiosity rover not only was a sign of leadership, but provided 7,000 jobs.
Mitt Romney, however, claimed that America’s leadership in space is “eroding,” and that “NASA does not require more funding, it needs clearer priorities.” If Mitt Romney doesn’t think the fact that there’s currently a robot on Mars and that there are people living in space is completely awesome, then maybe it’s him who needs to get his priorities straight.
Clearly, neither candidate’s answers were groundbreaking and you will likely still vote for the candidate you originally picked. However, if people were to base their vote solely on these answers, I would hope that most would vote for the candidate who is capable of recognizing America’s achievements and is able to start investing in energies other than coal and offshore drilling.
Reach the columnist at OBrunaci@asu.edu or follow the columnist at @obrunacini
