It is easy to get caught up in the hype associated with this election seen as how the media seem to have a vested interest in making it dramatic, and with apparent bias. Diane Sawyer who is the Anchor at ABC Nightly News clearly favors Mitt Romney, the GOP candidate, as does Mark Mathews the political commentator at the local ABC Affilliate. I wouldn't vote for Romney and generally dislike Republicans and candidates with backgrounds in business because I think the political economy of the GOP from 1982 until 2008 is the reason for the Great Recession and why the rebound in growth and jobs is so slow, Obama's budgets have little to do with the maliase. It is mostly to do with the boom-bust cycle created by deregulation under a sucession of Republican administrations and their general belief that unregulated Capitalism can do no wrong. Mitt Romney is the poster child of that suspect thinking, but he is worse than a simple spokesman for a political theory. Someone I know with advanced degrees in Psychology has convinced me that Mitt Romney is a sociopath, a lier, and someone who will say whatever the particular audience he is speaking to wants to hear, while he lusts for power and control. Lest I seem to get carried away, I think there are too many outside factors that limit the importamce of the election and the stock we seem to place in electing a President. This is very much part of an American hubris, and false sense of importance, the very flaw that drives Romney and people like him in power, in business, in politics.
The abuses and follies of the American political system and the destortions of information by special interests and the candidates are all self limiting, just as the impact of human activity might have led to the environmental diaster of the very large strom that ravaged the East Coast during this week and threatens to overshadow the election and its outcome. Indeed it is uncertainty that could be created by both events that threatens to undermine human pride and averice. The storm will cost in excess of $20 Billion in direct loses and maybe that much again in additional costs. The election might result in nothing but contention and even a true crisis.
I support the President Obama,even though I know he is far from perfect and far from reflecting my sense of where the country should head. He is still far better than the alternative, but here again, I hope he wins.
It is possible to let the divisiveness go too far. Mitt Romney criticises Obama for not delivering, but he doesn't tell you that the GOP in Congress has been a staunch obstruction to Obama's policies. If Romney wins the election he may make people as angry at himseelf from within his party as they are appearently angry with Obama, because unlike some past GOP leaders Romney is not an idealogue, of if he is, he is not consistant about it. This will drive other Republicans crazy. Even if Romney toes the ideology of the Tea Parties and the SuperPACs he will find himself checked in the way most past Presidents have been checked, and he is no Ronald Reagan, for no matter what you think of Reagan, and I think that he led us down the path to the ruin that came in 2008, Ronald Reagan was an effective leader. Romney really isn't, but one thing that is promisiing about Romney is that he is independant enough to be a problem for his staff and the think tanks of the GOP to have trouble controlling, as they were able to control George W. Bush. Romney could fade into obcurity like most Presidents due to a sheer failure to lead, to create political consensus, and importantly to be trusted. It is trust that will go first. The factions in his own party will fall out of trust to start, and he will be unable to form a bipartisan coelition as well bcause, if my friend is right, he will be unable to stick to a consistant position, changing his mind to suit whomever he wants to impress at the moment.
It is said that the markets abhore uncertainty. This is true in the health of the political system, a more intense replay of the 2000 election with either a very close count or with substancial accusations of fraud or a delay in its conclusion would be corrosive to the system. It could trigger a Constitutional crisis especiallly if the three branches of government lose credibility. I would be very pleased if all the media types who are saying it is very close are wrong and Obama shows an early and decisive lead. It would be bad if there is uncertaintly for a long time or there is misconduct in the government over the result. The Supreme Court does not have the trust it had in 2000 because it ruled in 2010 that corporations deserved the same free speech as individuals and paved the way for the SuperPACS with their anonymous donors to spend huge sums of plutocrat funds to leverage the election. They may lose credbility if they get into the middle of a despute even like they did in 2000. This election is much more hotly conteneded and tomorrow may send this nation into a new and dangerous direction as the Constitution is threatened by uncertainty. No branch of government has enough credibility to weather that storm a second time. We will have dodged a bullet if there is a clear winner. This is something like a doomsday scenerio envisioned by Robert Reich four years ago.
Yesterday and this morning I tried to upgrade an upgrade. I had done a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10 about two years ago, but it fell out of support last year. So last week after making room for a big, 66 GB boot partition I upgraded it to Ubuntu 10.4. But this week I got the unwelcome news that this installed version was now out of support.I thought that going to the next release would be easy since I had more than enough space this time. But alas the install failed twice and with the same vague message fron the Update Manager that either my install was prerelease or I had unsuppported packages installed. So I filed a bug report this morning at Launchpad. With about 6500 packages installed I am going to need help to find out what is bad.