The rhetoric between the four candidates in the Republican primaries is very angry and very apocalyptic, and that leads people to wonder why Barack Obama fell from the graces. That’s just what happens, guys! Everyone wonders why the pendulum of American political opinion swings to one party or the other every four years- how did the nation go from being a God-loving bunch of red-blooded patriots in 2001 to a liberal-congress electing group of cheese-eating, peace mongering pussy socialists in only five years? I can tell you why- it’s because the average American simply can’t accept the fact that part of the job of being a politician is making promises you can’t keep. If a candidate ever ran for president with a realistic agenda of “yeah, chances are I’ll get two, maybe three bills passed that fundamentally change people’s lives,” they’d be lauded by the media as unambitious. Obama was certainly no exception- he campaigned on a platform of Change and Hope and that’s all well and good, but anyone who actually expected it to happen is as full of shit as the Republicans who think he acts as a mere puppet to the eternally-living, voodoo-powered severed head of Vladimir Lenin he keeps in his closet. Presidents can’t radically change the structure of America- their office itself was designed specifically so they couldn’t. And even if they were in full control of the government, it wouldn’t matter. If one shitty leader could have made Rome fall, we wouldn’t remember it enough to use it as a metaphor. That’s not to say we should just let any drifter roll off the street and into the White House, but having expectations for Barack Obama that were too high or low is being unfair to the guy. If he does too much, he’s a revolutionary, if he does too little, he’s lazy. I’m not one of those who say that being President is the worst job in America. The illiterate Latino meatpacking sanitation workers that make up most of my fanbase would be offended. But having everything you do either damned or praised 24/7 would definitely get annoying. The only mistake Obama made (other than leaving Guantanamo Bay open) was not being able to live up to his own hype, and because of it, we have to live in a world where Rick Santorum is a genuinely viable candidate.
Continue reading →
Of the five profiles of politicians I wrote this year, only one was able to reach the Golden Nightmare Ratio of Political Success and Batshit Lunacy (see below) that makes someone the scariest politician out of a whole election- that’s right, Rick Santorum. Let’s just hand him the award and be glad we as a society all dodged the speeding bullet that was his Presidential campaign.
