The election

Well, we have finally reached election day, although no doubt the legal challenges and recounts will extend the agony for a few days more. If there was ever an example of how dysfunctional our political system has become, it is this election. Set aside the vast amount of money (apparently something like a billion dollars on each side) wasted in nasty, negative, largely untrue or distorted advertising by each side.

What is most notable is that even while our nation is faced with a number of very significant problems (growing federal debt, climate change, Iran's nuclear ambitions, high unemployment, a turbulent Middle East, etc, etc), neither presidential candidate offered any concrete plan at all to address any of these issues.  President Obama spent much of the year demonizing Governor Romney for being a successful business man, while Governor Romney flip-flopped on just about every issue of significance (though in his defense, he probably had to do that to even win the primary).

The press coverage was, predictably, stridently partisan and remarkably devoid of any serious analysis. An analysis I read today reports that the overwhelming proportion of press coverage was negative, even nasty, and often quite unfair and untrue.  And this applied equally to both parties.

And in the end we seem faced with an impossible choice - a Democrat who shows no signs of being willing to address the swelling federal deficit and debt and a Republican who is hamstrung (whatever he may believe privately) by a party captured by the religious right. And whichever one wins will probably face a Congress as bitterly divided, as dysfunctional, and as gridlocked as it has been the past few years.

This is not a hopeful scene, whatever the outcome of the election.