...About The 2012 Presidential Election

You've undoubtedly heard some variation of this statement: "If [Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Rick Santorum, Cookie Monster] wins the [general election, Republican primary, Voice] then [the world will end, Roe v. Wade will be overturned, my taxes will go up]!!" Of course, anyone who gets worked up about the 2012 election is deluding themselves about whether or not these things matter (get with the program, the world is going to end before the year's out anyway) and yet it seems as though a number of people in the news media seem to think that this ritual is an important part of our democracy.

Which brings us to the central question at the top of this blog, and which I'll be asking about a new topic every few days. Why do (or rather should) WE, ordinary people, care? Granted, the question is facetious in this case, although it won't always be. We don't care about the 2012 presidential election. Maybe we should; in theory it is an opportunity to select the person running our country. In reality, however, it has a hilarious amount in common with the recent election in Russia that reelected Vladimir Putin and perhaps even more in common with the 2009 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran.

Like in Iran, voters are given the opportunity to choose between candidates that have been long predetermined by forces that they have absolutely no control over (in our case a small cabal of business interests, in Iran's an even smaller cabal of religious leaders). But wait, you suggest, if this were true we would have no primary system in which voters in the two different parties can select the candidate they want to represent them in the election. There is no such preliminary participation in Iran or Russia. The fact is, if these candidates had not been hand picked prior to their running, you would have heard from folks like Buddy Roemer or Gary Johnson, both successful politicians (Roemer is the former governor of Louisiana and Johnson the former governor of New Mexico) who were barred from debates due to views that were clearly anathema to various business and governmental interests (Roemer ran on a platform of strict campaign finance reform and Johnson supports the decriminalize ton of drugs and an isolationist foreign policy).

Obviously Johnson has a fair amount in common with Ron Paul, another candidate in the primary who has no prayer of winning due to a lack of support from anything other than actual voters. Coverage of Paul in the media, however, treats him as a sideshow in spite of the fact that he received more votes than Gingrich in almost every Super Tuesday contest.

But none of that even begins to touch on why this election is a waste of time. Our current president, the great liberal savior of the most free country in the world, who ran in 2008 on a platform to soften our government's stances on immigration and marijuana, has since deported more people in the last four years than Bush did in eight and begun prosecuting medical dispensaries that follow state laws to the letter. He has embraced and accelerated the erosions of civil liberties and doctrine of executive power that Bush began after 9/11. He has failed to prosecute any executives (or non-executives, for that matter) at banks that clearly committed documented fraud in the run up and aftermath to the biggest financial disaster since the great depression.

So go ahead, vote for Obama because you're afraid the other guy will take away the right to choose (never mind that at least three different Republican administrations have failed to overturn Roe v. Wade, possibly because it would be POLITICAL POISON). Or vote for Mitt Romney because... Well, to be honest Mitt Romney is considerably less likable than Barack Obama, and their policies are virtually identical (remember the health care bill that Republicans hated so much? It's concepts were introduced in a law drafted by a certain Republican governor in a blue state) so maybe you should just vote for Obama.

But I have a hard time believing that any of the others would do anything different, because anyone with an original idea has already been weeded out by the process.

NEXT TIME WE'LL PONDER WHETHER OR NOT WE SHOULD CARE ABOUT AN ENTIRELY HYPOTHETICAL IRANIAN NUCLEAR DEVICE