The worst form of government except for all those other forms

When Barack Obama becomes President of the United States — there’s no point saying “if,” because if he loses, then what John McCain will be president of won’t really be the United States any longer — things will start to get better. Almost certainly not fast enough, and some things will have to get worse before they get better, but at least things will start to get better.

However, nothing can fix the fact that in 2000, the American people did not revolt when the Supreme Court halted a legal recount and handed the presidency to George Bush on the flimsiest of pretenses. Nothing will change the knowledge that in 2004, after things had already gotten terrible, America re-elected Bush because they were persuaded by repeated insinuation that John Kerry was a flip-flopping coward from France. And there’s no erasing the fact that Obama is running almost neck-and-neck with a lying, hateful, ill-informed, septuagenarian, unhealthy, misogynist warmonger and his lying, vindictive, ill-informed, unpatriotic, thieving, scandal-plagued running mate.

America, WTF? Yes, we’ve all imagined our own versions of the strangely familiar feel-good comedy that ensues when McCain croaks and Sarah Palin has to step into the Oval Office to become the sassy, brassy commander-and-working-mom-in-chief. She’ll give the world some tough love and a dose of what it really needs, right?

Wrong. If you really want to see that, that’s what we have Hollywood for. The election is about people’s lives. It’s about the fucking qualifications.