Soft Rock the Vote

I've been a little underwhelmed by both candidates this election cycle.

What happened to all the showmen? The rock and roll candidates? Rick Perry was a total nutter, but at least he kept it interesting. Herman Cain, you were marvelously entertaining.

At best the entertainment factor of this election has been in line with the jobs report. Dismal. If you're looking to be entertained, the Parties are where the parties are at. They're keeping it nice and spicy on both sides. You know, like in terms of crazy talk. FOX NEWS. LOOKING AT YOU.

But the candidates.
Beh. Reasonable, viable options. Almost zero crazy-talk soundbites floating around there this time. Boring.

Obama. Where's the pull-myself-up-by-my-boot straps bravado? Where's the spunk? The Children's choir singing original praises? Boring. Boring. Boring.
Et tu, Romney.

Since the entertainment value of this election season was pretty much annihilated after Mitt's nomination, it has to become about something else.

Now we are presented with a choice between two articulate, wealthy, fairly measured men, who at the end of the day are more moderate than their party wants them to be, who at the end of the day attest that they mostly both want the same thing - strong families, strong healthcare system, strong middle class, strong economy.

"I'll create jobs and improve the economy."
"Me, too."

"I'll help the middle class."
"Me, too."

"I'll provide affordable healthcare.
"Me, too."

Ad infinitum.

Two candidates who certainly don't agree on everything, but who do have a lot of eerily similar goals yet employ very different strategies.  They have very different, complex plans to get to there, but clearly, all roads lead to Rome. Not all roads will actually get you there, but that's where they're heading at the very least. So it really comes down to a few things:

1) Who you believe
2) Whose road to Rome you like better

So there it is. Whose plan, whose hypothesis, do you like better? Because that's all they are, hypotheses. Theories. I smirk when I hear both men make promises that they have no business making. Safety is not guaranteed. Nothing is. And past performance, though important and worth looking into, is not indicative.

Obama and Romney have both been closer on issues that their parties are comfortable with. They've both weaved in and out on policy in fiscal and social issues. They both have marvelous successes and failures under their belts. As I expect. They are POLITICIANS. I think people forget that. That's all they are. Not saviors, not Gods, and not ravenous demons either.

However, what these candidates have done is not as important as what they will do should either win the election. Just because Obama and Romney employed certain tactics and yielded economic "failures" and "successes" in years past, does not mean they will in the future.

Nothing is perfectly replicable. Even if the strategy and tactics are the same, external conditions (socially, economically, politically) have changed. The experiment will yield different results.

So we rely on who we believe and what hypothesis we believe. They have their hypotheses, their educated guesses, and that's what we have, too.

The choice of a guess.

Yes, I'm a bit I'm aggravated by my lack of choices (we have 200 cereals to pick from in the supermarket, but fundamentally 2 presidential candidates?) That's a discussion for later.

Back to:

a) who you believe
b) Whose road to Rome you like better

I believe both of them. Both of them are telling the truth (and lying, and spinning with the fervor of a doped-up Armstrong). Truth is, in spite of their utter boringness, and specific brand of un-truthtelling, both of these men are men I can respect. I could believe in either. Neither of them are the terrible, uncaring human beings their parties or any media might have us believe they are.

Obama is not the out-of-control-Neo-Keynesian, irresponsible socialist I've heard people swear he is. And Romney is not the feeble, uncaring, out-of-touch plutocrat. This is insultingly reductive. And you should be insulted, too, that you, as a political consumer as expected to believe such reductions. We are smarter than these stereotypes we're being fed, America.

And I will try to support and respect either candidate should they win.

But since I have the choice, I have gathered as much info as I can get ahold of (and attempted to verify, which is increasingly difficult in a world that scarily parallels the movie Network), and I will use my educated guess as to how I think we might get to Rome.

And I guess Mitt Romney.

I guess.