Maybe we should pass a constitutional amendment similar to baseball's designated hitter rule.  The designated hitter rule allows a team to use a 10^th player to replace the pitcher at the plate when it's the pitcher's turn to bat.  Lots of pitchers are terrific at pitching, and not so good at hitting.  Don't ask me why because I really have no idea.  I'm sure there are statistics proving the point, since sports fans are even more dedicated to statistics when it comes to player performance than political pollsters are when it comes to elections.

But I digress.

The purpose of the amendment would be to end the nonsense we just dragged ourselves through in the recent presidential election.  No matter what else you want to say about Barack Obama (and there have been hundreds of thousands of words already written on that subject) the man was a superb candidate, or to continue the baseball analogy, a great pitcher.  Even though Mitt Romney got close (let's say he was at bat with three balls and two strikes by the last week of the campaign and it was the bottom of the ninth with two outs), Obama struck him out.  Now you may say that the umpire was blind, or he secretly supported Obama's team or whatever else crosses your mind, the simple fact remains that Obama's last pitch was scored as a strike.

Mitt Romney appeared to have the potential to be a great hitter, but he wasn't such a great pitcher.  He allowed too many walks.  He failed to pitch high and inside and force Obama to back away from the plate. 

So we had a battle between a great pitcher and a great batter. And the pitcher won.  Unfortunately we desperately need a great batter in the White House, and Obama doesn't have a designated hitter he can call up out of the dugout.  So he may have won this particular game, but he's got a real problem in the payoffs (or the real world if you prefer).  And so do we.

Jim Yardley is a retired financial controller for a variety of manufacturing firms, a Vietnam veteran and an independent voter.  Jim blogs at http://jimyardley.wordpress.com/, or he can be contacted directly at james.v.yardley@gmail.com