Depending on who you ask, being the President of the United States of America is either the most or least coveted job in the entire world. The responsibilities the job entails are innumerable and the pressures felt while in office have sufficed to grey the hair of many who have taken up the mantle. The presidency, however, at its heart, is still a job, and the president is essentially a manager working to make his salary and impress his boss, and it should come of no surprise to you that his boss is every other citizen of voting age in these United States.

For many, this is the first or possibly even the only instance in which they will be given this level of responsibility, but as the president’s bosses, the time has come for our quadrennial employee review, and the season is ripe for us as a people to decide if President Barack Obama’s tenure as the face of our collective institution should be extended or granted to another man who has shown up to his interview wielding a rather strong resume.

Although the multinational conglomerate that is the United States of America might not be the largest in terms of size or population when compared to other nations throughout the world, our success as both an industrial and economic machine is unparalleled in the history of mankind. We have had our ups and downs as the years have gone by, but they have always come with nearly cyclical predictability between economic highs and lows. Although when President Obama began his time here with our nation in the midst of the Great Recession, he earned his office with promises of hope and change for all of America.

Since those promises were made, the cycle of ups and downs that has occurred since the dawn of the modern international economy has been replaced by the greatest impediment to progress – stagnation. During this stagnation, we have incurred so much debt that the entire United States government has come within weeks of bankruptcy, potentially threatening the stability of not just our nation but the entire world in which we rely on to fuel our fantastic standard of living.

Jobs have been created and certain civil rights have been protected, but even more jobs have been lost, and the guys at the airport still reserve the right to either take naked pictures of you or fondle you before you board your flight. President Obama is a man of great resolve and courage, but when compared to what he promised us during his interview four years ago, the current reality that he has created as the leader our nation is a far cry from the assurances that got him both his current job and a Nobel Peace Prize.

The other applicant for the office of President of the United States is a man who comes to us with a resume that is impressive, to say the least. In the past decade alone, he has not only taken a defunct Olympics and turned it into a show of American prowess in Salt Lake City, Utah but has also transformed Massachusetts from a state ridden with debt to a debt-free state. Looking even further back in time, his time spent with Bain Capital saw the corporation become one of the largest private equity investment firms in the nation.

While his problem solving abilities have yet to take a turn at the national level, it would seem that these abilities have proven themselves at nearly every crossroads they have encountered. Although several of his personal beliefs may be averse to the current American popular opinion, his proven ability to eliminate the precursors to stagnation should be an intriguing to the economically ailing American populace.

There are over 300 million people who serve a role in deciding who gets the job this November, so it is the responsibility of the voter to dig deeper into each applicants resume to decide whom they want to vote for. Just looking back at the resume Obama gave us four years ago, it would seem that it was remarkably indicative of our current standing as a nation.

Robert Frye is a junior majoring in economics. His column runs biweekly on Mondays.