FTT Off-Topic: Actually, We Aren't All Doomed

And We're All Riding The Bus

As always with FTT O-T, it's a big wide Internet and this isn't going to be about sports. And before I make you all mad, have some Zach Galifinakis and Fiona Apple, which is to say, have some of two of my favorite people in entertainment right now.



Everybody happier now? Good. OK, I'm about to surprise and/or offend some folks. At least, I think I'm going to.

It's time, high time, really, to grow the hell up and stop expecting better Presidential candidates. Mostly because the two men who have any realistic chance at the job are actually fairly qualified individuals. (Yes, both.)

Here's the thing that the tiresome Pox On Both Their Houses people aren't getting: the world is chock a block,maximum occupancy exceeded, stuffed crust-filled jammed with, well, Idiots. And before you go and put yourself outside of that camp, take a good hard look at some of the choices you've made in this life, and see how, in the wrong situation, you and I clearly join them. (Most often at poker tables. Sometimes in job choices. Definitely in Thursday night NFL picks. And so on.)

For people on my side of the aisle: I've worked at seven different start ups, for well over a dozen CEOs, in the last 15 years. None of the men (and yes, they've all been men) are in Mitt Romney's class. How do I know this? Because four of those seven companies are just plain gone, two are on life support, and the only one that feels fairly hale and hearty is the one I'm currently at, and while I love my company and think we could really make a lot of money while making the world a better place, we're still, like any start up, six very bad months away from being Dead Start Up #5. The litany of mistakes and bad choices made by these guys dwarfs any Mitt Moment, and none of them have gone on to build the kind of personal fortune that Romney has, in their post-failure lives.

So, no, he's not Boob Of The Year / Century / Eon, and I'll go even further than that with my faint praise. I'd sooner vote for him than John McCain, Either Bush or Bob Dole... which is to say, I think he's the best Republican presidential candidate of my adult life. (And no, I'm not voting for him, and I think hes gonna lose by a lot, and I shudder to see what the Rs run out there in 2016, when you consider the runner ups were Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. But that's a problem for another day.) Counting the primaries, this basically means that he's the best of a group of literally dozens of high-functioning public figures and self-made men and women.

Now, to the folks who've got a problem with the current President. Believe it or not, you can disagree with him without coming off as unhinged, duplicitous or racist. All you have to do is steer clear of the moronic birtherism, the temptation to ascribe Eeee Vile to decisions where you don't agree with him, and acknowledge that people who don't go your way can still be, you know, smart and hard-working and caring about the country. It's really not that hard. (And if you want to come at him for failing to end the drone attacks, not putting bankers in jail where they belong, caring more about social issues than employment, or not doing enough to clean up media monopolies or fighting hard enough to rein in billionaire tax breaks... well howdy, we've actually found some common ground. Anyway, back on point.)

But tell me this. Has there been a candidate that the Democrats ran in your lifetime that you didn't hate? (Note: while he or she was actually running. No fair being all fuzzy about Clinton now, especially if you were one of those people that cared about blow jobs back in the day.)

The point is this: the process requires partisans to hate the other side. If are just kind of meh on the other guy, that doesn't ring the registers for donations. Hate creates viewers; moderation does not.

And so, for that matter, do Close Races. Even if one of these guys were down by 200 Electoral College votes, that's not something you are ever going to hear on The News. Because then you might stop watching.

So I'm going to vote for my guy, and I've got literally dozens of reasons to do so. I'm not going to hold my nose while I do it, or pule for the things that he hasn't done. Nor am I going to talk about the lesser of two evils, because to be honest, that's just about the dumbest trope on the planet. Getting up to brush my teeth is the lesser of two evils; the second being that my teeth will rot out of my head. Mowing my lawn, walking my dog, wiping after using the toilet, cleaning anything... these are ALL the lesser of two evils. The only people who don't get to choose, over and over again, the lesser of two evils are babies. Grow up.

Anyhoo... I hope you vote for my guy, too. But I'm not going to take you very seriously when you start pimping some third party waste of a vote, or act as if the country is utterly and irrevocably doomed or blessed depending on the outcome of the election.

Because, well, there will be another election in four years, assuming some much bigger problem doesn't arise, and as it hasn't happened for the past 2.5 centuries, that's how you bet.

And I couldn't do this job any better than either of these guys, and you couldn't either.

And I've never met anyone in my personal life who is as good as these guys.

So stop telling me awful they both are. Instead, tell me how good your guy is. I'm tired of the complaining -- even more than the endless campaigning.

Hard to imagine, no?