in an editorial titled Obama is the wiser bet for crisis-hit US (free registration for limited access to the site) they are not enthused about the President, for example describing him as having
often been curiously aloof. He has been notably cool toward business. The self-proclaimed agent of change has at crucial points failed to exercise leadership.
And yet, they chose him over his Republican opponent, of whom they write
Mr Romney’s foreign policy proclamations have been far less reassuring. He has been needlessly belligerent.
But the key part of the endorsement can be read in these two paragraph:
The more serious objection to Mr Romney is that he has gone through so many contortions to win his party’s nomination that it is hard to see how he would govern in practice. His wishlist includes an aspiration to raise Pentagon spending by a fifth while cutting everyone’s taxes and still somehow balancing the books. Such fiscal alchemy is an exercise in evasion, not a recipe for sustainable economic recovery.
Mr Romney’s latest positioning as a pragmatic centrist appears to fit far better than his earlier incarnation as a rock-ribbed conservative Republican beholden to the Tea Party. The trouble is that it is impossible to be sure. His protean persona relies more on market research than any innate political philosophy.
They find Obama "the better choice." In this they join the other British economic publication with international reach,
The Economist
Thought it worth sharing.