“I confess that as a liberal Democrat I'm amazed that Obama isn't 20 points ahead in the race. Yes, he had that one lousy debate, but what a truly vapid, uninspired candidate Mitt Romney is, standing for nothing, a glistening shrine to hackitude. Romney's been compared to Nixon in his mendacious duplicitous insincerity but Romney's actually worse: Nixon knew stuff, he did his homework, not like Romney, who has a vacancy sign on his brow whenever he's forced to discuss an issue--usually foreign-policy related--that he's had six or seven years to study up on if he hadn't been such a complacent, incurious sumbitch too busy admiring his fucking hair and winning smile in the mirror. I really thought he'd be smart enough not to glue himself to Tea Party positions that become a mite uncomfortable in the general election, such as hey let's send disaster relief back to the states or better yet privatize it, but no, he pandered like a fan dancer. His shape-shifting about the Detroit bailout couldn't be more spazzy. And he's the best the Republicans had!”

--James Wolcott, “The Good, the Bad, and the Soggy” on the Vanity Fair site.