At some point (probably not too late) Tuesday evening, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney will give a gracious enough concession speech congratulating President Obama on his re-election and wishing him the best of luck in his second term. Thus we will insincerely conclude yet another nasty, slimy, mean and at times downright uncouth presidential race. I wouldn’t want them any other way.

This edition featured Romney surrogate, former N.H. governor John Sununu, calling the president “lazy” and saying that Gen. Colin Powell only endorsed him for racial solidarity reasons. There was the appearance of Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood) at the Republican National Convention, where he had a fake vulgar conversation with an empty chair that was supposed to represent the president. We also had Dirty Hairy (Donald Trump) move from the birther (President Obama was not born in America) to the schooler (President Obama was an affirmative-action case who was not smart enough for Columbia or Harvard, despite being president of the Harvard Law Review) movement.

And of course, for the larger part of the last year and a half, the entire group of Republican presidential contenders except Jon Huntsman were painting the president as some sort of mysterious basketball-dribbling Islamist Khrushchev who has thrown our Eternal Leader Bibi under the pansy-ass electric (because climate change, like biology, is just a theory) bus.

A video has gone viral in recent days showing a little girl having a tearful breakdown over election fatigue. This has been a long, brutal (and to anyone with a TV, computer, smartphone or radio) inescapable ordeal, but those of us casting ballots should never forget that nothing else on Earth provides the type of endurance test that pushes head of government candidates to their limits and weeds out pretenders that our crazy electoral process does.

It’s the greatest job interview the world has ever known. There is a certain silly pageantry surrounding it, but the obstacle course of public (and secretly recorded private) appearances that we make our candidates go through inevitably exposes them to their 300-million-strong hiring committee in revealing ways.

Mitt Romney’s worst moment of his entire campaign came when he was surreptitiously recorded at a fundraiser saying 47 percent of Americans “don’t want to take personal responsibility or care for their lives.” These comments were obviously not intended for public consumption, but he was forced to put himself out there at this event to raise money for the long haul of campaigning. Even one of the aspects many of us dislike most about our process, the constant fundraising its high cost demands, provides its own opportunities for candidates to slip up and be a little too honest.

We’ve seen President Obama and Mitt Romney in the type of uncomfortable situations with everyday people that no leader of any other country would willingly put him or herself in. There is a word for countries that have orderly elections that take place in quiet rooms. Undemocratic.

Our bristly electoral process filters true lightweights. This makes it so even our presidents who were relative failures in the Oval Office have unsurprisingly achieved success elsewhere.

George W. Bush may have turned our economy into some kind of real estate casino and got us into two awful wars, but he also saved over 1 million lives in Africa through his PEPFAR program. Jimmy Carter, who presided over a disastrous hostage crisis and interest rates that would make Greeks blush, has done great work through his Carter Center in helping to buttress fledgling young democracies.

Even our political candidates who never made it past the first few primaries are not exactly bumbling morons. Rick Perry is a three-term governor of one of the largest states in the union. Herman Cain is a very successful businessman who impressively turned around Godfather’s Pizza. Newt “I cheated on my wife because I love America” Gingrich is a world class shameless rationalizer.

We only think of such people as clowns because the endless parade of debates, rallies, interviews and speeches we run them through inevitably catches up with them and gets them to say some pretty crazy things, as well as increases the likelihood of people coming out of the woodwork with damaging information.

No true incompetent could become the president of the United States. The long and brutal interview process weeds them out. All American politics is local, and all American political incompetence is relative.

Our system is certainly not perfect and there is always room to make it more honest and more competitive, which only benefits the American people. For one, the amount of money spent in this first post-Citizens United cycle by outside groups with almost no transparency in funding is astounding and troubling.

Former Newt Gingrich and current Mitt Romney superdonor Sheldon Adelson has given over $50 million to those campaigns this year, hoping to turn that money into billions of tax savings under a Republican administration. Adelson is already worth $20 billion.

Sheldon can do whatever he wants with his money, but it is kind of a shame that the most involved outside political figure in this year’s election is primarily concerned with his own fat pockets and helping the Likud party in Israel. Being a resident of Nevada, the state with the highest unemployment rate in the nation, it would have been a higher and better use of Adelson’s cash to assist desert families in need—and not just in the Negev.

Also, the Romney campaign’s decision to treat facts like rental car drivers do yellow lights set a deeply concerning precedent and we should all hope that a Romney defeat makes his interpretive truth strategy a historical afterthought. At least George W. Bush had enough respect to invent false facts, like the yellowcake uranium in Niger and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Romney just rolls over actual ones.

Shadowy donors and shadowy truths are damaging to our democracy, but fiery language and emotions only add to its vitality.

This past Wednesday, President Obama toured the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy on the Jersey Shore with the Garden State’s governor, Romney surrogate Chris Christie.

Christie is a tough Jersey guy who had not been afraid to throw barbs at the president, blasting him just last week by asking “what the hell is he doing asking for another four years?” if he admittedly could not change Washington from the inside.

After the highly destructive storm hit Monday night, the two men immediately began working together as if they’d been business partners for years. Both men praised each other, putting politics aside to help people in need in non-rhotic America. Last week’s salty language was quickly washed away by the storm surge.

Having two leaders who are equally comfortable insulting and boosting each other is a great sign that whatever problems they are working through will be solved. With limited decorum comes real accountability.

There can’t be hard feelings, and the thickly calloused skin American presidential candidates must develop makes them more effective and decisive leaders both here and abroad.

Romney has accused President Obama repeatedly of “apologizing for America.” This is a president who gave a righteous defense of the freedom to blaspheme at the U.N. General Assembly, told an audience in Cairo to stop denying the Holocaust and delivered the “America wears the big boy pants” case for war when receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. What an apologist.

There’s one quote from the president’s U.N. address that gets to the heart of his ease, and that of those that came before him, in speaking inconvenient truths to insulated audiences.

“As President of our country, and Commander-in-Chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so.”

I like to think President Obama realizes the value of the tough love that he had to navigate on his way to winning the job. As long as the president of the United States stands firmly behind the right of Americans to treat him with all due disrespect, we’ll be OK. Everything we know about human nature and power leads us to expect the opposite, as it is in most other countries on Earth, but the nurture of our noisy democracy has thankfully made our leaders gluttons for this kind of punishment.

This election season has certainly not been short of disrespect. Campaign ads on both sides have hit below the belt, and both the vice-presidential debate and the second presidential debate were full of real finger-pointing, mocking animosity. This is a great thing, and we should never let overly sensitive hand-wringing over the loss of civility overshadow the freedom we have to be uncivil. The remarkable strength of our republic is forged by the superheated criticism of those in power.

Clint Eastwood brutally asked (in a role he chose to reprise at the RNC), “Do you feel lucky, punk?”

As Americans on Election Day, we all should.

Read more of Neon Tommy’s coverage of the presidential election here.

Reach Editor-at-Large Matt Pressberg here.