{"id":3894,"date":"2012-10-31T06:59:21","date_gmt":"2012-10-31T11:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=3894"},"modified":"2024-10-06T19:53:56","modified_gmt":"2024-10-06T23:53:56","slug":"election-almost-guarantees-4-more-years-of-bad-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/31\/election-almost-guarantees-4-more-years-of-bad-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Election Almost Guarantees 4 More Years of Bad Government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/articles\/the-conservative-vote-a-symposium\/#bovard\"><strong>American Conservative<\/strong><\/a> requested a few hundred words for a web symposium on the election, and here&#8217;s my cheerful thoughts on the subject:<\/p>\n<p>If I vote, I\u2019ll either select Gary Johnson or write in Ron Paul. <strong>This election has almost guaranteed that America will have at least four more years of bad government.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Obama\u2019s economic policies are a disaster, and pissing away a few more trillion dollars won\u2019t make America prosperous.<\/strong> \u201cHire more teachers\u201d is perhaps the most wearisome refrain of the entire campaign. Obama\u2019s faith that expanding government payrolls will make us all rich is sufficient proof that he has learned nothing from the lamest of recoveries.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Romney would be the most pro-war draft-dodger to ever win the presidency. (<\/strong>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\u2019s failed economic and social policies.<\/p>\n<p><strong>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\u2019s radar. Americans cannot expect to have good presidents if presidents are permitted to make themselves czars.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>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.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The American Conservative requested a few hundred words for a web symposium on the election, and here&#8217;s my cheerful thoughts on the subject: If I vote, I\u2019ll 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\u2019s economic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-3894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-attention-deficit-democracy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Election Almost Guarantees 4 More Years of Bad Government - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/31\/election-almost-guarantees-4-more-years-of-bad-government\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Election Almost Guarantees 4 More Years of Bad Government - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The American Conservative requested a few hundred words for a web symposium on the election, and here&#8217;s my cheerful thoughts on the subject: If I vote, I\u2019ll either select Gary Johnson or write in Ron Paul. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism &amp; Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism &amp; Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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