2012: what a year already! We lost Whitney and a Beastie Boy (R.I.P.), we get killed off by some ancient Mayans who apparently had extreme cases of ESP, we get an extra day of February, and most importantly (or at least neck-and-neck with the whole ‘offed by ancient Mayan prophecy’ thing in terms of importance) we elect a new president. This year’s choices are between last election’s golden boy Barack Obama and the GOP’s frontrunner Mitt Romney. Granted, I’m a teenager and not of legal age to vote yet, but my opinion and support still matters, right? Well, assuming it does, here’s my interpretation of the next presidential election to take place:

On one end of the spectrum, there’s Barack Obama. I remember the days when we treated this man like the second coming. Admit it: we all rode the Obama tidal wave. It was a fun ride too. But like all waves, it crashed and subsided. The once blasphemous statements of doubt, criticism, and even downright contempt for our president that could only be found deep in the recesses of minds of FOX News (on a side note: it’s amazing we still consider this organization as news, but I digress) reporters can now be found in every other comment on a Yahoo! Article that has anything to do with politics. Don’t believe me? Go ahead, run over and check really quick and come back to me…

See? I told you.

Quite frankly, I’ve grown to accept the fact that I’ve went from being an avid supporter of his to having an anxious-ambivalent attachment to his campaign. Sometimes, I’m proud to call him my president. Other occasions, I consider joining the Ron Paul bandwagon. For example: when we found and killed Osama bin Laden (let’s hold back the conspiracy theories for now), I all but saluted him. When he first released the stimulus package (a good idea that was misused by its handlers), I was pretty proud of him. When we officially got out of Iraq, he almost guaranteed my support for term two. Basically, his handling of foreign affairs (yes, even the whole daring Iran to come and try us debacle), has been outstanding in my opinion, and while he hasn’t brought us back to the good old days of $1.50 for a gallon of gas, he managed to halt the impending Depression. Besides, he said himself that he probably wouldn’t carry out all of his ‘changes’ in one term. I didn’t expect it either.
Now for his cons: My main issue with Obama is his inability to put his foot down. He’s being WAY too complacent with the way that the Republicans are attempting to sabotage his presidency (don’t fight me on this one, because I bet you couldn’t name one thing he proposed that the Republican side of Congress didn’t either reject or fight on). Another issue I have with him is the whole gay marriage thing. Before I am labeled a homophobe, let me first say that I have nothing against same-sex marraiges. It’s not my place to withhold rights from anyone. I just don’t like the way he had to be strong-armed into it. He’s been constantly roaming around ideologies when it comes to this problem under the guise of “My views are evolving on this issue”. Then he backed the civil unions while shunning marriage. All seemed well (or at least stable) until Joe Biden went and endorsed same-sex marriage. I imagine that the whole world collectively gasped at the potential conflict between the president and his second-in-command. Granted, Obama’s decision to endorse was a smart decision, since it gained him a lot of ground with this younger, more accepting of LGBT rights generation and avoided an internal conflict. But anyone can see that this was a ‘tail between the legs’ type of decision. I can’t possibly defend that one.

As for my opinion on Mitt, it will be considerably shorter than my observation on our current president. No. My answer is no. I wouldn’t vote for this man unless the spirit of Abraham Lincoln descended from Heaven to be his Vice President. He would be detrimental to the economy with his typical GOP ‘the middle class are on their own’ policies. And don’t even get me started on how I think he would handle war. This man just doesn’t have the mindset required to govern this country. He was born into money, he’s a multimillionaire with international investments, he directly injects his beliefs into his policies, and on top of that, we just found out he was a serious bully and homophobe in high school. This man couldn’t possibly run America with OUR best interests in mind. End of story.

The last political issue I want to address before I dismiss is this whole gay marriage debate. I’m so very surprised that people would invest so much time and energy into stopping this rather than using all the time, effort and funding to help find a solution to our dying economy. IT’S NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL!! And I don’t care about the religious end of it either. I’m a straight Christian male and I think that the opposition to this is ridiculous (that might be because I don’t believe homosexuality to be a sin, but that’s another article for another time). As long as heterosexual marriages aren’t affected and nobody dies, then it makes no sense to violently oppose same-sex marriage.

Now we can get back to the big picture: this upcoming election. In a perfect world, Jon Stewart would run as an independent and win by a landslide, with Stephen Colbert as his VP. But alas, this is earth. In reality, Obama inevitably wins, especially considering the whole gay marriage endorsement and Mitt’s past coming back to haunt him. Maybe now the GOP will stop trying to fight him since he got the 2nd term anyway and just work with him to better the country like we all want to see. But like I said, that’s in a perfect world, and this is Earth.

In all honesty, I feel like I am forced to make a "lesser of the two evils" decision here, and I don't like it. If I was of age to vote, I honestly still wouldn't. i would have to sit this one out. Let fate decide. It wouldn't sit well on my conscience to know I chose between a rock and a hard place in such an important election. Sorry.