Saw Romney on Kudlow last night. Best I've seen him: rational, confident, precise, exuding executive prowess and competence, just enough personality on display - with his resume, if he carries that performance through to November, assuming current malaise continues [and some are predicting things to actually worsen] any person who votes for Obama given all that is either an idiot or an inveterate liberal trapped in an ideological stupor. Regardless, if Obama manages to win given the above dynamic it will be very hard to avoid conclusion that American democracy is broken because a marginally dominant plurality will have chosen to act against the rational best interests of the country in order to serve needs that are to be generous grossly naive, to be harsh ruinously short sighted - in other words, if Obama indeed does manage to win, there'll be no positive way to spin it without digging deep into delusion and what one can only describe as willful ignorance.
[Wall Street Journal poll released this morning points directly at what I'm talking about - strong majority view the economy as deeply troubling, country heading in wrong direction, hold Obama responsible, see Romney as best suited to fix problem - and yet Obama leads by significant margin because he's better liked, meaning no doubt that a lot of people still enjoy having a black guy as president because it makes them feel good - any reasonable person not suffering from ideological dementia should read a poll like that and shake their head in sad disbelief at the utter foolishness of the species and wonder how it is democracy can possibly rise above its own shortcomings to meet the challenges ahead.
That being said, right up to a mere couple of weeks before the election it looked like Carter was going to beat Reagan - yet, when push came to shove, enough idiots realized they could no longer live in absolute denial of reality and made the right decision. Still, I think you could go down a list and not come up with one single compelling reason as to why Obama should be reelected and yet it will not surprise me at all if he is - and, sorry, I just find that sad, depressing]
