The Mystery Box

Every four years in early fall you can hear it said around water coolers, lunch break areas, and dinner tables in America, "Oh, they are both terrible, we only have a choice between the lesser of two evils."  Of course this is often followed by a hedonistic mauling of two dozen donuts and a bitch session on health care costs.  People, as it turns out are a fickle lot.  We will change policy and fiscal opinions at the drop of a Dolce and Gabbana hat, it is no wonder we are rarely happy.  We are a moving target of mutually exclusive wants, all demanding to be met at once.   We will decry debt one moment, then support tax cuts and unnecessary wars costing trillions the next, and how dare anyone ask us to pay the bill in real time.  As a collective, we are often the bad drunk at the end of the bar begging the bar keep to keep the credit line open for one more before pissing ourselves in the car on the way home.

We pine for the next golden child, the leader who will give us everything and ask for nothing in return.  George W. Bush had a masterful understanding of this, give the people what they want and that matches with personal ideology.  Do anything you want, even if requires reselling an obviously failed theory of trickle down economics, a lie about the threat to the US by Iraq, and the belief that high school graduates with a part time jobs should be encouraged to enter into loans for $150,000 homes.  Mitt Romney has upped the ante, his apparent theory is that one has to have no constant ideology or principles at all.  Just tell the people whatever you think they want to hear and hope they never realize others are being told the opposite the next day.  It may be the closest thing to pure political sociopathic behavior we may ever see.  It makes you wonder if each of Mitt's sons has been told in private they are the favorite.

Never answer a question on what Mitt's position is on regulation, taxation, social security, medicare, or abortion as you may well be proven wrong before the clock can strike midnight.  As maybe the most illustrative example, during the first presidential debate Mitt took both pro AND con positions on recent financial regulation legislation, saying it was a sweetheart deal for Wall Street as too soft AND that is was so overbearing that it is hurting banking businesses.  Huh?  I mean what the fucking HUH?  There is another path often, and probably more wisely taken.  Don't tell the people anything of real substance on an issue, just mention the good stuff.  This is the case with taxation.  I suppose it is meant to be a surprise, like Christmas morning.  Hey, maybe we will all get a dancing pony.  From what almost every economist that doesn't share economic ideology with Bob Jones University graduates informs us, we are much more likely to get the shit from a thousand dancing ponies owned by the super wealthy among Mitt's constituency.

By a certain age, most Americans can tell when a salesperson is being transparently dishonest.  For some it might be 18, for others it might be 58.  This election season Mitt Romney is offering a whole generation the opportunity to learn that lesson at their current age.  This is a clear choice, believe in President Obama's policies which are relatively straight forward and consistent, or oppose them and hope something in the mystery box turns out well for the country.  Basic logic tells us Mitt will win with certain one issue voters, those who want women getting abortions to be sent to prison, at least with his most current stance.  We know those who oppose the civil right of marriage equality will vote for him.  We know he will win with voters who have a strong bias against black people.  We know he will win with millionaires not affected by income tax policy either way.  We will have to wait a few more weeks to see how many of the remaining Americans will vote for the mystery box behind Mitt's curtain number 3, I mean 4, I mean 5, please don't quote me on the curtain number, Mitt might change that also.