Interesting Post-Mortem

Interesting Post-Mortem - The Missourian: Editorials

Posted: Saturday, November 17, 2012 5:00 pm

Presidential elections are made for the political scribes, giving them material for years. One of the more interesting ones was in Time magazine, issue of Nov. 19. It was fairly balanced and comprehensive.

There are comments worth repeating. For instance, the story said the candidates for president spent not millions but billions “yet somehow, fairly or unfairly, both candidates wound up looking a bit undersized.” The story also said the results showed that President Obama “is a mortal again, having received roughly 9 million fewer votes than he won in 2008.” But in the next line it praised Obama as being a “very crafty, very skilled mortal, politically speaking: Obama figured out how to leverage a thumping victory from relative weakness.” Good insight.

This was enlightening from Time: Obama became the first re-elected president in more than a century whose share of the vote was smaller the second time around.

Americans will agree after the long, sometimes boring campaign, lined with negativism, the election settled little in the leadership in Congress and the White House. Time said, “Some $6 billion of campaign spending delivered another near tie to what has become a 50-50 America.”

This was a classic line in the Time story: “America went shopping for a new car and returned home with the same coughing jalopy.”

The story was critical of both candidates: “The men at the top were so bloodless, the number-crunching Romney vs. the aloof and analytical Obama.”

The story concluded by saying Americans refused to give a governing mandate to either party. “In the end each gave as good as he got, and Obama squeaked through. Ordeal? Yes. Uplift? Alas, no.”