Likens: Americans unsatisfied with presidential candidates

Surveys are always a fun way to find out new and disappointing things about society. According to the most recent poll by Pew Research Center, a whopping 40 percent of registered voters are “not too/not at all satisfied” with presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Of course, this poll does not include citizens who are so dissatisfied with the candidates they couldn’t even bring themselves to register nor does it include those who passed through the line multiple times in fake mustaches.

So that everyone knows where my own biases stand, allow me to clarify that I consider myself a true moderate--something that can only obtained through a complete lack of faith in any existing parties and several nonexistent ones. Why? Essentially, I find Republicans to be morally repulsive and Democrats to be on a level of incompetence that makes small children cry.

But why is the rest of the country so put out about their candidates?

Well, the Republican Party has earned itself a reputation among audiences as being an elitist coven of Sith Lords. The actions of self-declared conservatives across the nation have left voters jaded with the Republicans, and  whatever your feelings on the man, you’d be lying to say that the Bush administration didn’t coast out of Washington on a reputation riddled with more bullet holes than a Somali ice-cream truck. Barack Obama was to be the palate cleanser, a satisfying change of pace that built an entire campaign around the concept of renewal.

Painted up to be a political messiah figure, the skin and blood man behind the hype could hardly satisfy a nation that was desperate enough for change to invest the last of their enthusiasm in him. Of course, this was also largely owed to government’s usual display of tried and true junior high cafeteria logic. With a Republican controlled Congress, Obama could have moved to outlaw koala rape and would have met hell passing it.

For better or worse, the ‘change bus’ hit a hard wall made up of compromises and realities. Last election had the highest approval rating in several years and has now taken a dead drop to the lowest since 1992. It was a disappointing term for many, though less disappointing in a way that reaps sympathy and more in the way of a 17 year-old that just now figured out Santa Clause isn’t real.

The past several years has resulted in presidential elections no longer feeling to voters like choosing the most promising candidate for their interests. Instead, we choose between the lesser of two evils. A crotchety old cowboy isn’t going to vote for Romney because he thinks he’s an upstanding, self-made man he can identify with, he just doesn’t want to vote for a liberal whose ideas he doesn’t agree with.

Unfortunately, voting for anyone who isn’t either Democrat or Republican is commonly considered to be a wasted vote, which is disappointing considering how many different, exciting kinds of evil there is out there, just waiting to get into power.

One may recall the great Simpsons episode in which two aliens take the forms of presidential candidates. Even after they are publicly shown to be conspiring together against humanity, America still winds up enslaved to the alien species, as none of the voters were able to break the habit of voting only Democrat or Republican.

This childishness is the very reason we are so disappointed in our government in the first place. We are fixated in the two-party system to the point of insanity. When you go out to eat somewhere, you don’t pick out the same two items over and over then complain about how horrible the food is. You either pick out something else for a change, go somewhere else to eat or strap a helmet to your head and try to ride out your miserable, stupid life by not walk into any more lampposts than you have to.

On a side note, I would like to clarify to any young children reading this that Santa Clause is in fact very real, and is expected to arrive on schedule this year, no matter how many soul-crushing jokes I make at his expense.