Ducks and Pigs

Old Joke.  A man walks into a bar with a duck under his arm.  An old geezer sitting at the bar has had more than a few.  He yells out to the newcomer.  "Hey" he slurs, "Whaddaya doin in here with that pig?"

The fellow very politely replies, "This isn't a pig. This is a duck."

The boozer shouts back. "I wasn't talking to you buster, I was talking to the duck."

Lots of vitriol going back and forth as we near the end of the campaign for president here.  Some of it as gratuitous as the dig from the geezer to the man with the duck.  The campaigns have long since eschewed even handedness and are now jumping on any misstep by the opponent to say "Gotcha See there what a fool my opponent is."

It is so easy to begin seeing the candidate you don't like monolithically.  As I read through the comments on social media your guy is presented as great and the other as the devil.  Not likely to be the case.

A question I have is how often do the candidates realize that they have become someone other than who they are.  Romney has certainly morphed from the guy who campaigned to the right of Ronald Reagan. And Obama must wonder now and again if he isn't pouncing too much on some of Romney's faux pas, which reflect less on Romney's innate character and more on some foolish thing he has said which renders him vulnerable.

The guy at the bar knows the fellow has a duck under his arm. He is just being mean.  It must be tough for the candidates not to get mean after 6-8 months of nonstop battling.  It would be nice, however, if combatants for public office could just resort to identifying how the two are simply different ducks and leave the pig out of it.  It would also be a relief to see their supporters do the same.