Matt Taibbi: Is This the Most Boring Election Ever?

[kpete]

Is This the Most Boring Election Ever?

.............

..............this campaign, relatively speaking, will not be fierce or hotly contested. Instead it'll be disappointing, embarrassing, and over very quickly, like a hand job in a Bangkok bathhouse. And everybody knows it. It's just impossible to take Mitt Romney seriously as a presidential candidate. Even the news reporters who are paid to drum up dramatic undertones are having a hard time selling Romney as half of a titanic title bout.

.....................

Obama versus Bush actually felt like a clash of ideological opposites. But Obama and Romney feels like a contest between two calculating centrists, fighting for the right to serve as figurehead atop a bloated state apparatus that will operate according to the same demented imperial logic irrespective of who wins the White House. George Bush's reign highlighted the enormous power of the individual president to drive policy, which made the elections involving him compelling contests; Obama's first term has highlighted the timeless power of the intractable bureaucracy underneath the president, which is kind of a bummer, when you think about it.

Then there's one more thing – Obama versus Romney is the worst reality show on TV since the Tila Tequila days. The characters are terrible, there's no suspense, and the biggest thing is, it lacks both spontaneity and a gross-out factor. In Reality TV, if you don't have really sexy half-naked young people scheming against each other over campfires in the Cook Islands, you need to have grown men eating millipedes or chicks in bikinis drinking donkey semen. And if you don't have that, you really need Sarah Palin.

This race has none of that. Biden is the best character in the series, but for exactly that reason the Obama administration would be wise to bury crazy Joe in a salt mine until the election is over. (The networks have skillfully teased the Frasier-style future spinoff show from this election – the inevitable Hillary-Biden race in 2016 – but they're keeping most of that action under wraps for now). Romney will no doubt stoop to some truly appalling attacks before the election season is over, but he'll do so out of sheer, boring calculation. He's not insane, which is a tremendous insult to a Republican politician.

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Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/is-this-the-most-boring-election-ever-20120507#ixzz1uETLdVpy

[Bjorn Against]

1. Don't know that I would call it boring, the GOP primaries were quite amusing

This may be the funniest Presidential campaign season of all time, of course it is unintentionally hilarious and from a policy standpoint that is certainly not a good thing but it is not boring either.

[Drunken Irishman]

2. I think it could play out very much like 1996...

Which was probably the most boring election in modern American history.

[MarianJack]

6. I've long believed that this election would be very 1996ish.

bob dole's nomination was essentially a concession of the election.

The tepid support of the mainstream rethugs and the stridency of the paulistas are just some of the signs of bain romney's weakness.

I expect that President Obama will, as President Clinton did, ,ildly improve upon both his electoral and popular vote margins in an election that is never truly in doubt after Labor Day. Of course, we STILL have to work our arses off to make it so. Just ask president dewey.

PEACE!

[bemildred]

8. Excellent analogy. nt

[n2doc]

3. It's only boring if Obama wins

If he loses it's terrifying.

[enough]

4. You said it. (nt)

[NS2012]

5. I'm actually worried.

Hopefully I've just fallen victim to media-hype. I don't share this optimistic appraisal of the situation. I'm worried Romney will win.

Believing he may not requires faith in the inevitable prevalence of human rationality, and I lack that faith.

[abolugi]

7. This might make you feel better...

Electorally it is very wide open for President Obama to win and very narrow for Romney.
MSM has got to keep up the hype

[link:http://www.270towin.com/2012_election_predictions.php?mapid=juB|

[Zoeisright]

9. BORING? Please.

If Romney wins, say bye-bye to what's left of the U.S. economy. And women can wave bye-bye to any chance of keeping abortion legal.

That's hardly boring.

[Sarcasticus]

10. In fact . . .

it's something to be about!

[abolugi]

11. I dont even think Romney

is trying anymore, quite frankly.
Tonite he said deserves "a lot of credit" for saving the auto industry...





[link:http://news.yahoo.com/romney-taking-credit-auto-industry-success-031025566.html||