Less a pathological liar than entirely unmoored from any but a utilitarian concept of truth, his ethical bobbing and weaving remind one as nothing so much as Nixon press secretary's Ron Zeigler. This walking moral vaccum, when Nixon shifted course in increasingly desperate and pathetic attempts to stay afloat, would simply assert that previous statements were "no longer operative." Whether the previous or current version was true was not at issue; it was utterly irrelevant.
Similarly, there just seems to be no moral centre to Romney. There is no there there. This creepy Frankensteinian amalgam of right wing republican greed and Reader's Digest hardhat populism is deeply Nixonian. Yet at least Nixon was identifiably nasty. He was bigoted and venal. He drank too much, was deeply paranoid and vindictive. He was very much a crook. He was all too human.
This Nixon 2.0 is just creepy. It is as if an alien race, having studied earth for a few decades, has made a slightly skewed attempt to produce a robotic version of the leader of the free world. It looks real enough, if far too perfect. As Andy Borowitz notes, it can even fake human warmth and empathy, sometimes for an hour or more. But during the debate, I was worried that perhaps the batteries would run down and robocandidate would have to be recharged before the debate could continue.
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