Mitt Happens

No, I did not catch the premier of Clint Eastwood's new one-man show, "Angry Old Clint Eastwood Yells at a Chair." I have better things to do with my time, such as reading The Hobbit and wondering why my left earlobe swelled up to the size of a Goodyear tire last week (it's shrinking now, thankfully, and I'll spare you the details because I understand if you're about to eat lunch or something). But I can appreciate why Republicans liked that better than they did their own freakin' candidate.

Watching the GOP try to convince themselves to love Mitt is about as funny as it was on my side, back in '04, when our pretty-boy rich-guy candidate made even wearing a Red Sox cap look awkward and unnatural. John Kerry has a smidgen more charisma than Mitt, however, and it helped that his wife was batshit crazy. Ole Mitt just can't win in the personality sweepstakes.

That being said, the guy could win. White people don't respond well to a black man in the White House (yeah, I said it!), and to be fair, Obama hasn't exactly done what he said he'd do (though the GOP kinda forgets that they're the reason why). I can see Mitt winning in November...and I'm okay with that.

Doom-and-gloom predictions are fine when you're young, or when you're convinced the other guy is Nixonian in his lust for power (Richard Nixon is the most fascinating president to me because he's clearly the most evil. Granted, all the facts about Rutherford B. Hayes aren't in yet, but I doubt anyone past or present will ever top Tricky Dick in the Asshole Presidents Hall of Fame). But I just don't see that this time around. Mitt is like Dubya minus the accent; he's about as comfortable with real, living and breathing people as a serial killer is with a woman who isn't his mother or a prostitute. The dude just doesn't have anything to him that merits being concerned, because his political philosophy is "whatever you say, dear."

Mark Hamill earned my fandom yet again (after all, he did send up himself in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) when he compared Mitt to "the Thing," an alien that can imitate humans without itself being human. I agree with that comparison whole-heartedly, minus the whole "destroying mankind" bit (though I would imagine Mitt would be uncomfortable around Kurt Russell if Kurt's brandishing a Petri dish and a flamethrower).

I can't honestly say that a Romney presidency would be a bad thing, on the whole; as much as I don't want it to come to pass, I wouldn't leave the country if it did. In my lifetime, Dubya is the only president who ever came close to being a dickhead of Nixon's caliber, and he only got that far because, with Dick Cheney next in line (and probably in charge), no one was gonna take a shot at him. It's important to study history because then you realize that we've had some mediocre presidents. Here, I'll name them:

Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
John Tyler
Rutherford B. Hayes
Martin Van Buren
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
William McKinley

So, if Romney gets in, I'm betting he gets on the Mediocre list (Nixon and Harding are on the "criminally bad" list, Reagan makes it as "actor-in-charge bad," and Dubya is in a category all of his own). That's my hope, anyway. With a douche like Paul Ryan in the co-pilot seat, however, it could end up being a lot worse.

If you'll excuse me, tickets for Eastwood's new show are going at a pretty penny. Gotta place my bid now.