This is really well written: Dan Harmon on the presidential race

[foolsguinea.livejournal.com]

Dan Harmon (formerly of NBC-TV's Community) has a tumblr.

http://danharmon.tumblr.com/post/33234881965/i-think-romney-doesnt-actually-want-to-be-president

He offers up a relatively meaningless, certainly familiar, dare I say traditional squirt of political diarrhea that all of his kind squirt three times a term, something about not being in anyone’s pocket, specifying that his campaign “isn’t run by lobbyists.”

Then you hear an exasperated, high pitched voice from off camera say, “come on, that’s not true, Governor.”
...
What’s weird is Romney’s reaction. Or maybe it’s not weird at all, maybe it’s uncomfortable how normal it is, having watched clips of this guy for six months acting like a puppet on a Canadian kids’ show about the metric system. The second he hears someone accuse him of lying, Romney lowers himself to the reporter’s status and just boldly whines right back at him. They instantly become a couple bickering in a grocery aisle. Lots of “can I finish” and “is that what I said, Eric? Did I say that?” kind of stuff. We’ve all been there. Perfectly relatable and therefore forgivable on both sides.

Until you remember, with embarrassment and horror, that this guy that sounds like he’s being given a hard time by his girlfriend about Grape Nuts after a long day at work is, in reality, a billionaire being given a not-so-hard time by a subordinate pseudo-reporter about a run-of-the-mill lie he’s telling while running for Motherfucking President of the God Damn United Fucking Nuclear Armed Fucking States. He’s running for Abraham fucking Lincoln’s job. He wants us to pay him to oversee the fucking planet and he’s breaking a sweat going toe to toe with a kid that I’m pretty sure interviewed me at Comic-Con.
...
If you saw how I talk to my partner when I’m not getting what I want, you wouldn’t want me to be your friend, let alone your partner.

But here’s two really important things about me: I don’t do it in public and I DON’T WANT TO BE FUCKING PRESIDENT. And if Romney says he does, he’s either lying or he’s an even more twisted mind than all my politically invested friends would have me believe. Because I know a person that knows they’re bad for a job when I see one talking, and he is one. And darn-tootin’ he can hear himself, and knows a shitty, dangerous employee when he hears one talking. So if he truly “wants” to be President, knowing what he knows about himself, then he “wants” America to suffer. And that would KIND OF MAKE HIM A TERRORIST, an accusation which I’m proud to take incredibly lightly as an American.

But honestly, I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think Romney hates America. I just think he’s lying when he says he wants to run it at this point.... I submit that he’s not allowed to say: “Folks, it seems very unlikely I’m going to win, and I have to say, I don’t think I fully want to win, because I am learning that it’s hard to even ask for the job without getting very irritated and told I’m fucking up a lot, so it seems like a huge waste of a lot of people’s money and the President’s time to follow through on this, and we’ve got a deeply troubled nation to get out of a real bind together, so I suggest we skip the remainder of the circus and I concede.”

Maybe Romney should concede, and then we can talk about the multitude of other races that are going on at the same time.

Anyway, the post goes on to deplore the two parties as really being One Thing in their power-sharing arrangement, and that's kind of interesting. But the point that Romney is going on, and the media are pretending his candidacy makes sense because it's the expected thing, that's really cutting. I suppose that really the GOP is going on with its passel of bad candidates, and the media is pretending that a) they're a reasonable alternative and that b) the Democrats are an effective counterweight, because it's the expected thing.

Maybe this is the prelude to a realignment, if we're smart enough to take it.

Comments

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Maybe if you could hide (parts of) the article behind a cut, you know...

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I suppose not.

[foolsguinea.livejournal.com]

It was a little long, so I hid the excerpt.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[oportet.livejournal.com]

I'll agree he seems uncomfortable in front of a camera, or with people, or both - but before I go along with the idea that he doesn't really want to be President, I'd need to know what it is he does want. I'd need another option, as to why a guy who has enough business sense to make 100-200x a year more than the President would trade down for that job.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Delusion, I think. Somehow, otherwise pragmatic guys tend to let the bug of messianic pseudo-visionary sense of a mission in life sneak into their brain. At least temporarily.

That, or just the attention whore syndrome. Or he doesn't like losing (twice).

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Everything I'd read about Romney prior to this campaign was about his ambitions to go farther in politics than his father. It was stated nicely but that was the gist.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure his father even came in the top 10 for the nomination - and even if we all agree he had much better competitiion (Nixon, Reagan vs Perry, Bachman) - it seems Mitt has already surpassed his father's political accomplishments.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

I'd need to know what it is he does want

Money and power.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

Power is an acceptable answer, but that doesn't really separate him from any other President, or candidate for President - ever.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

yeah. so?

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

I believe that Mitt Romney sincerely wants to be President. What I have yet to see is any compelling evidence that he understands what the JOB is.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

The interesting thing about Harmon's piece is less its supposed thesis that Romney has lost interest in the job — I don't think even Harmon really believes that — but the observations about the weirdness of the electoral process that he makes along the way.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Well, there is a serious case of "emperor's new clothes" about the electoral process in the US, and a thorough analysis of this mock process, and he touches on that..but it's not a new observation, the charade has been going on for some time.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Well we got a taste of what he doesn't think his job is lol

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

In Romney's circle, when people use the word "job" it has something to do with prostitution.

[muscadinegirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, Romney definitely wants to be president, but he doesn't want to deal with, you know, We the People.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

A Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll on Tuesday found Obama and Romney tied among likely voters at 45 percent each, ending a month during which Obama led the survey.

Other polls also reflected the Romney surge. He led by 2 percentage points in Gallup's daily tracking poll and 4 points in a Pew Research Center poll. (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/09/usa-campaign-idUSL1E8L9KPB20121009?type=marketsNews)

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

That "Obama's uphill battle" joke post from a week or two back seems premature now.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

but think about it. It took a lackluster performance by Obama to get Romney to this point -- and there's evidence to suggest that the post-debate bounce is already receding and Obama's back up, before there's even a second debate, as the truth about Romney lying his way through the debate continues to come out. And, of course, the state polls don't quite show the same turnover for Romney that the national polls do. It's not one election, it's 50+ individual elections.

So, who knows? The conventions made me think Obama really wanted it. The debate made me think he seriously misjudged Romney's willingness to misrepresent himself. There's two more debates, as well as the one between Ryan's widow's peak and Biden's grin. I still think Romney doesn't have it.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it's certainly not the joke-worthy snooze-fest it was looking like a few weeks ago.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

I never really thought it was going to be. For all of Romney's foibles, he still has 45% of the country voting for him.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

If the Romney campaign's proven anything, it's that the least rotten apple out of a barrel full of bad apples is still a bad apple.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

While I can agree that The System needs to change and that it's mostly due to people's expectations, his "analysis" of Romney is silly at best and conspiracy theory level idiocy at worst.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

This is the darkest timeline.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Oh, that Biff Tannen is at it again!

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

"Why don't you make like a tree and get out of here."

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, either this

http://www.alternatehistory.com/foralltime/

Or this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000

are the darkest TLs. ;)