As it comes to the final few days of the campaign trail, the candidates are going to be tired and exhausted. Both Mitt and Obama have been campaigning for months now and being out on the road everyday must surely take it out of them. Come the 7th, one of them will be sipping from the cup of victory and the other will be left having to chew on the bones of defeat. But in defeat, who is to blame?
The blame game takes many forms and is dependant upon what your initial view point is. If Romney is unsuccessful I can imagine a number of things Republicans will blame. They could blame hurricane Sandy for allowing Obama to put his presidential cap on. They could blame voter fraud, despite most cases this election involving Republicans. They could even blame the Obama campaign for the numerous attack ads that unfairly portrayed Mitt.
If I were Romney, I’d be blaming myself. At the end of the day, it is the nominee who picks his staff, chooses his Vice-President and ultimately decides which direction their campaign will take. Whether it was the potentially poor choice of Paul Ryan as VP, or the numerous personal gaffes he has made, all of them can be traced back to Romney.
A similar line can be taken with Obama but not as much. Obama whilst choosing his staff and direction of his campaign, has also had to deal with foreign affairs issues such as the attack in Benghazi and economic issues such as jobs numbers. Admittedly, these can also be traced back to him, but the links are more tenuous as both are somewhat out of his control.
Who will be the sorest loser on the night? Well judging by the personal character of the two men, I would say Romney. This combined with my view that Republican voters will be the sorer of the two camps as well means that should Obama win, I imagine there will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth saying that “It’s unfair” and that “Obama didn’t deserve to win.”
Whether he deserves another term or not is a whole other matter but if the people of America decide to give Obama another 4 years as President, then those on the losing team will just have to shut up and deal with it.
Life isn’t fair at the best of times, and it certainly isn’t fair in politics