It is depressing to see Fox News so desperately flogging the Benghazi attack in the last moments of the election. Is that really the best that Romney and the Republicans have at this point? It is a sideshow to the real problems facing the country, and the idea that the State Department under Obama is less concerned than heretofore about the safety of its personnel, or that our intelligence agencies are systemically less focused on preventing terror attacks, is fanciful. This should have been a campaign fanatically focused on the unsustainable growth in entitlement obligations, government spending, and debt, all of which are drags on the economy, and yet, astoundingly, even after the promising selection of one of the most eloquent analysts of the federal budget as VP nominee, the Romney campaign avoided any serious discussion of entitlement reform. Perhaps it is naïve to expect otherwise in a democracy, but I think that there is real value in an electoral mandate. If Romney didn’t have the guts to speak forcefully and honestly about the hard budget choices that will need to be made, and assuming that that reluctance stemmed from his pollsters accurately reading the national will, we’re in big trouble.

Hard to tell if the seeming conviction of virtually the entire Republican punditocracy in a Romney victory is sincere or mere cynical strategy to try to convince the undecideds to vote for a winner. If the pundits really do believe that Romney will win (and I know at least one who seems utterly confident that he will), they seem to be following the logic of so many matters of faith: It would be nice if it were so, therefore it must be so.