Self Portrait

I decided to clean out my closet this morning and listen to the radio. The closet part gave me a sense of having done at least one useful thing today. The radio part was a really bad idea.

Most of the people I know are so sick of election campaigning that they've lost their taste for the whole thing. Every day the news is full of this lie or that gaffe or the other accusation. We're fairly "lucky" in California because it is a solidly Democratic state so the only reason either candidate comes here is to have private fund-raising parties so they have enough money to blanket the hapless Midwest with commercials. Whatever happened to campaigns that lasted no more than a couple of months, and candidates who could be civilized to each other even if they were of opposite parties?

Two things I've read recently seem to sum it all up perfectly.
1) The two party system is ruining our government. Not because it is
intrinsically bad, but because things have become so polarized that
nothing gets done. The checks and balances built into the system by
the framers of the Constitution have been nullified by powerful
heads of committees and the lobbyists.

2) A gaffe is really just a politician saying what he really thinks. Nobody
really believes anything any candidate says anymore. Mitt Romney
seems to make a gaffe a week, yet the polls are still saying it's a
close race.

OilMan says we should be governed by a benevolent dictator, which should be him!