The Daily Reckoning: Obamney vs. Robama

The Daily Reckoning Presents

Obamney vs. Robama

Joel Bowman The portmanteau monikers are not ours, though we are fast warming to them. They spring, instead, from the minds of an increasingly cognizant non-voter class. And the message from the non-voter class is clear: The presidential race is at best fertile fodder for mockery. At worst, it is a sinister distraction from all that really matters in the lives of good, honest Americans. But the truth is, it’s both. Last Wednesday night’s rhetorical soft- on serves best as a reminder of the former. The two candidates dueled with all the ferocity of a couple of sleepy-eyed puppies, rolling around on the rug before returning to their respective teams’ campaign teat for a lazy afternoon feed and some overdue ego petting. The first presidential debate for 2012 was an evening of canned responses, cardboard grins and catchphrases so dull and predictable one could have used them to build the instructions for a drinking game even before the event kicked off. And indeed, many did. One such meme found floating around the Internet the morning-of encouraged viewers to take a swig of their preferred libation every time a candidate trotted out one of their dog-eared canards (a specific selection was even provided), addressed their opponent in the third person, ignored a question to instead speak to the “American people”...and a slew of other directly and indirectly intoxicating platitudes and quarter-hearted gestures. Those following the rules of the game closely, regardless of their professed constitution, should have passed out in their armchair even before the microwave popcorn was ready. And a good thing, too. A smattering of comments from below a YouTube post of the debate summed up the overall impact of the gabfest rather well: “Is this American idol??” wondered one commenter. “Two demons spouting different lies at each? other. Sweet,” observed another. A third, “You are being crooked America, they are crooking? you.” And, in reference to the Nobel Peace Prize winning candidate’s ongoing and ever expanding dehumanization of war: “Where is a? drone when you need one...” Not exactly the unbridled, chest-thumping enthusiasm one would ordinarily expect from the main event at the greatest political circus in town. Still, we can hardly blame an apathetic votership for failing to fall for the feigned pleas and ploys of the political/mobster class. On the contrary. We applaud their mockery of a process H.L. Menken once wryly referred to as an “advanced auction on stolen goods.” Many past voters have seen enough to know they don’t want to be part of the whole sordid affair. They voted for the “aww shucks” candidate before falling for his hopey changey alternative. And now they know: it’s just like the street vendors say in Indonesia and Thailand, “Same same...but different.” That is, except for the “different” part. Even the perennial “throw the bums out” crowd is beginning to grow weary...realizing that, in the end, there’s nothing to choose from but bums anyway. In the case of the current race, both candidates are pro-war and the military industrial complex that thirsts insatiably for it. Both are pro-Federal Reserve and the vampire banksters who feast on the bloodletting of would-be savers. Both are pro-bailouts. Both are pro-big government, whether at home (Obama...followed closely by Romney) and abroad (where the roles are ever so slightly reversed). One gets the feeling that anyone who actually musters enough delusion to carry them to the ballot box will be doing so only because, in the words of Thomas Sowell, they prefer “disaster to catastrophe.” But when you strip away the veneer, the varnish...and the deafening vacuity...there’s really nothing to inspire the trip. The suits are there, lapel pins affixed just so...the mouths are moving...the teeth are flashing...but there is...nothing. President Obama, for his part, appeared tired, perhaps vaguely uncomfortable at the prospect of defending a four-year record of near-unmitigated failure. Forty-plus months of above 8% unemployment. Trillion dollar budget deficits projected out as far as the decade is long...and beyond. Additional debt equal to that added by no fewer than forty previous presidents, combined. And a not-insignificant twenty million Americans added to the food stamp lines (the “bread” to the debate’s “circus”) since he first set foot in the White House. So enervated was Obama’s performance that Governor Romney, a man who dedicated much of his own campaign to earning the description “pretend human,” appeared almost lifelike beside him. Almost. Sensing weakness in his opponent, the Romneybot honed in on the president’s key soft spots...only to betray his own affinity for many of those same positions. Romney is not against the Dodd-Frank Act, for example, only some parts of it. A free market needs regulation, he proclaimed, evidently unaware of the exclusive and contradictory nature of the terms. (You know, it’s free up until...uh, it’s not?) He is not against Obamacare per se, only some parts of it...the parts that may or may not be common to his own state’s enormously costly program, Romneycare, by many measures the most expensive in the entire nation. If these issues were highlighted, as was supposed to be the case, to cut a great philosophical divide between the two parties, one is left to wonder about the conspicuous absence of other issues such as, oh... extrajudicial assassinations of American citizens abroad, the exponentially increasing scope of America’s deathly drone operations both on foreign soil and in “The Homeland,” the relentless mission creep of Orwellian agencies like the TSA, FDA, DHS (etc.) or the fact that, with less than 5% of the world’s population andnearly a quarter of the global prison population, the “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” is now unquestionably deserved of its new tag line, “Land of the Fee, Home of the Slave.” And on... and on... and on... Anything on those “dividing” issues? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. There are, of course, some key differences between these two suits. One chose for the evening to wear a solid blue tie; the other a faintly striped red number. Look for a flip-flop in the next debate. Gradually, the non-voter class is wizening up to the fact that the act of voting is more akin to kissing one or the other cheek on the same bloated derrière than exercising any quaint, propagandized notion of “civic duty.” After all, a buttock smooch will not change the chief function of that end of the political anatomy. No, Fellow Reckoner, the soft seat of the body politick is built for expelling one thing and one thing only...as the candidates dutifully and effortlessly displayed.  Regards, Joel Bowman for The Daily Reckoning