The American Conservative requested a few hundred words for a web symposium on the election, and here’s my cheerful thoughts on the subject:
If I vote, I’ll either select Gary Johnson or write in Ron Paul. This election has almost guaranteed that America will have at least four more years of bad government.
Obama’s economic policies are a disaster, and pissing away a few more trillion dollars won’t make America prosperous. “Hire more teachers” is perhaps the most wearisome refrain of the entire campaign. Obama’s faith that expanding government payrolls will make us all rich is sufficient proof that he has learned nothing from the lamest of recoveries.
Romney would be the most pro-war draft-dodger to ever win the presidency. (I am surprised the Obama team did not make better use of that 1966 photo of Romney at the Stanford pro-war rally.) His saber-rattling towards Russia is appalling, and he seems likely to seize any pretext to start bombing Iran. His de facto disavowal of all his prior foreign-policy declarations in the final debate with Obama was weasely even by Clintonite standards. If he wins, I expect he would perpetuate most of Obama’s failed economic and social policies.
Both Obama and Romney apparently believe that the president is entitled to do as he pleases, the law and the Constitution be damned. This election has made clear that few Americans give a damn even when the government claims a right to assassinate Americans or to detain them without charges in perpetuity. The NSA and Patriot Act surveillance scandals never showed up on either campaign’s radar. Americans cannot expect to have good presidents if presidents are permitted to make themselves czars.
Is American democracy in a death spiral? The belief in American exceptionalism blinds many people to the growing political decay. Perhaps the follies of both Obama and Romney will help Americans recognize that no politician will be able to redeem Leviathan. But that lesson should have been stark many elections ago.
James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy.
Almost guaranteed bad government??? Jim, you wild and crazy optimist, you.
Almost.
Well, I suppose you could be right. Aliens could land and change everything, I suppose.
Or maybe the latent pro-freedom spirit in the American heartlands will erupt and force the feds to begin obeying the Constitution.
On the other hand, if the latent pro-freedom spirit in the American heartlands erupted, they might just send in the drones and open up the FEMA camps.
Has anybody heard whether the TSA will be protecting voters from terrorists at the polls on election day?
I probably won’t make it to the polls to vote. There is some really good TV shows I don’t want to miss – Leave It To Beaver, Sanford and Son, etc.