This Week’s Cartoon: All the President’s Men

No, this one isn’t about Romney’s video fubars. But I think it makes an important point that is ignored by most media and many voters. Viewing the election as a contest between two people named Obama and Romney is a simplistic approach at best, no matter how delightful Mitt’s personality tics and one-percenter utterances may be. A vote for “Romney” is a vote for sad sack Bush-Cheney neocons seeking a new lease on life, a vote for the Heritage Foundation, a vote for more Scalias, Alitos, and Thomases. Romney’s “character” — if it can be said he has one — has little to do with any of this; people should be talking instead about the cast of characters he’d bring to the White House.

Same goes for Obama: his extended network includes Planned Parenthood, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, more Sotomayors and Kagans, and countless invisible players behind the scenes. I’m not saying every last one of them is perfect, but when you look at the groups as a whole, the difference is stark. Harder to fit on a bumper sticker maybe, but these are the candidates you’re really voting for.