Originally published in the Indianapolis Star on 1/18/2012

It looks like Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for president even though his inability to enthuse voters is well known.

Why the dissatisfaction? The 2012 presidential election is a referendum on "big things," and there's a pervasive sense that our candidates aren't up to the task. Worse, our president and the presumptive Republican nominee give the impression that the big things are more of a distraction than the reason they are out on the stump.

President Obama has a multiyear habit of avoiding talking about America's fiscal straits. When forced last year by political realities to speak about the federal deficit, he did so with the impatience of an Olympian deity descending from the heights to sort out the mess the humans had made. Unlike Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels and Paul Ryan, men seemingly called by history to take on big issues, Romney gives many the impression that he has run for president since at least 2006 to be president rather than to slay the dragons that threaten hearth and home.

Voters sense a mismatch between the candidates and our times. They don't want mellifluousness or "management." They want tough leadership.

Most of us sense that we are stuck in "cycles of doom" that are grinding down our economic vitality, even if we don't know how to escape. Bad decisions by policymakers combine with the bad habits of the rest of us to form these cycles, and without tough love, smart policy and courage from our leaders, we won't break free. Here are three examples:

Health care(lessness). You and I contribute more than so-called greedy insurance companies to the wildfire of skyrocketing health costs every time we go to the doctor, slap down our co-pay, and have no idea what our care costs. Rather than contain the fire, Obamacare has sprayed fuel all over it. Forty years ago, federal health spending was 1 percent of gross domestic product. Today, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it stands at 5.6 percent and will climb to 10 percent in 2035. Meanwhile, all other federal spending has remained at 17 percent for 40 years. Repealing the health-care law is necessary but insufficient if we are to control costs. The health insurance marketplace needs to work more like auto insurance (when's the last time your auto insurance paid for your oil change?). We need leaders strong enough to push for radical measures, which will create some discomfort.

The granny state. Medicare, which is bound together with our health-care problem, is set to rise 72 percent in the next 10 years, from $563 billion to $970 billion. William Voegeli, in a forthcoming City Journal essay previewed by the National Review's Reihan Salam, shows that since 1965 national defense spending has risen 45 percent and general "housekeeping" costs such as infrastructure and law enforcement have increased 81 percent, while welfare state expenditures have grown 600 percent. As entitlement spending on baby boomers accelerates, that figure will get frighteningly bigger. Only courageous leaders can say the things we don't want to hear, such as: We are not drowning in debt because of the foreign aid budget or the richest 1 percent's refusal to pay more taxes, but because of the entitlements we expect from our government. The "We are the change we seek!" meme from 2008 won't be as fun to say in this context, but it will be truer.

Republic of rules. Regulations have now caught up to taxes in the National Federation of Independent Business' index of inhibitors to growth among small business owners. The number of regulations that cost the economy in each instance more than $100 million annually has more than doubled in the past five years. Regulations, which pull $1.75 trillion out of our economy each year, are easy to despise in general, but our shared preoccupation with safety has made them hard to despise individually. Who doesn't want the best hygiene at the dentist's office, or fewer toxins in our food, or fewer injuries on the shop floor? For the sake of job growth, we desperately need reform, but expect spinelessness to overcome a timid president the first nanosecond he upsets one well-financed interest that scares up anxiety among the rest of us.

American citizens have an obligation not just to vote but to demand that our leaders rise to the challenges of our times -- and then show a little courage ourselves when they do. The 2012 election may well be the most consequential in a generation.