New Yorker's "Empty Chair" Cover: Nobama … But Also More Than One Romney

Well, you can’t say Obama didn’t bring this upon himself. Most painful is the fact Jim Lehrer is more present than Obama.

What’s interesting, though, is how Barry’s Blitt’s brilliant cover still speaks to the overarching question of the campaign, which is: who is Romney? As the political chameleon he is (on Wednesday night, the Massachusetts moderate), Mitt shows up here in a powerful way, but not as himself but as Eastwood (a more credible Eastwood, one might argue, than the Eastwood who does political stand up — because Obama actually was there). So how brilliant is this: not only does Blitt offer up a brilliant reprise of the RNC empty chair sketch, the illustration a wonderful example of fact following fiction, but we also get two Romney’s — in this case, Denver’s bleeding heart centrist in the guise of the right wing gunslinger.

(illustration: Barry Blitt for The New Yorker)