Too Bad He's So Bad

Definitely a glass-half-empty kind of guy, I'm hardly convinced President Obama is gonna win this thing, current polls notwithstanding. But I am concerned that Mitt Romney (who could have seen it coming?) is turning out to be such a crappy candidate. Because I'd like this election to be about the issues at hand, about the real choice, the real direction in which voters want to see the country headed. The way it is now, teabaggers and teabaggRs can blame it on Mitt if he loses, and not on their message.

And, who knows, they might be right. Because, other than the fact that he was the only sane one in the bunch, and that the alternatives were even worse, he's the worst candidate up with whom they could have come. He's charismatic as an empty chair, as comfortable around regular people as a spider around shoes, as willing to lie as a guy facing a third strike law (well, in that he was among similars), as committed to his positions as someone who's not committed to his positions.

To watch The Rominee work his magic, with anything but Foxian blinders, is to cringe. Were he around, the Marquis de Sade might throw an arm around Mitt's shoulders and say, "I feel for ya, guy." He's becoming more pathetic by the hour. (Check out that link. Really.)

So it'll be too easy to blame his loss, assuming it happens, on his bearing Mittness. People didn't reject teabaggerism, they'll say, they rejected the man who changes positions like dirty underwear. (Do those things actually get dirty?) They rejected the guy caught on tape saying what we really believe; the guy who got caught hiding his money all over the world, like we wish we could.

I'd much rather the Rs had found, among the ruins of their party, a person able to carry their standard proudly and with conviction, and with something greater than the attractiveness of spoiled food. (Admittedly not an easy task, of late.) The country needs the debate, held honestly, among honest exemplars of each side, the issues laid out clearly, the choices for what they are.

Of course, to the extent that Mitt seems to be blowing it, I'm delighted, because I'm of the mind that, addressing the actual issues, the actual facts of what Obama has done and hasn't, and of what Romney claims he'd do (who the hell knows?), the choice is pretty obvious. Unless the goal is to pay as little in taxes as possible, damn the consequences. Or to discriminate against gays; or to degrade education to the point that, other than whatever value publicly-funded bible school might have, it's a white-flag-waving signal to the rest of the world to pass us by.

If Obama wins, I'd like to be able to think it's because a majority of voters see the danger in what today's Rs are proposing. But, sadly, the very fact of Mitt sort of negates the whole idea.