The Last Debate is Over. Hurray!

So. The debates are over at last. Thank goodness. I watched last night’s, mainly because I felt like I really should, not because I really wanted to. I have to think a lot of other people felt the same way. Twitter and Facebook seemed fairly subdued compared with the other debates–on both sides. There were a couple of people taking pot shots at the other side, but their hearts just weren’t in it this time.

As for the narrative of the debates, I think the insistence to find out who “won” is pretty silly. “Who landed the most blows?” “Who got in more jabs?” “Who had the best zingers?”Blah blah blah blah. It’s like after the first debate, where everyone agreed Obama did horribly, everyone expected replays of the same sort of scenario. Someone wouldn’t show up to play. Someone would make a huge mistake in what they said.

I for one am extremely grateful my life isn’t played out like one of these debates, where every little sentence is parsed and analyzed, every stammer is put under a microscope, and the world is waiting to point fingers at you and laugh. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you would have to be mentally not all there to actually want this job. Yuck.

As for my response to the debate, here’s the video clip I used to sum it up:

Essentially, it seemed to me like Obama was there to argue, and Romney was there to sidestep and focus on the economy. Neither approach necessarily appealed to me that much. I definitely don’t like nasty, and that’s how Obama came across repeatedly. But I also would like substantive discussions about key differences between the candidates. Romney seemed to agree with an awful lot of what Obama said. So in the end, they were arguing over the same things, over and over.

Two more weeks. Two more weeks until the country can just go back to ignoring these yahoos, since nothing gets done in Washington, anyway. You want a prediction about the outcome of the election? It’s going to be really close, one side is going to celebrate like it was a slam dunk, the other will cry foul, and we’ll go right back to a deeply partisan government full of gridlock and hand wringing while the actual country suffers as a result.

I’m not jaded by politics, am I?

But for the next two weeks, we’ll keep pretending like any  of this makes a difference. Joy.

At least the debates are over.