I've been to the future and am filing this report.
Mitt Romney proved to be a better (i.e. more believable) liar than Newt Gingrich and convinced enough teabaggers that he was one of them, swinging wildly to the right, to win the Republican nomination. He cemented his bagger credentials with his pick of Nikki Haley as his running mate.
Then, having gotten his place on the ticket, Mittens lurched leftward, back to the center, as he gained ground in the race against President Obama.
When election night came enough people had been confused by Romney's zig-zagging that he actually won the thing. The next day President Obama told the nation "the American people have spoken and have asked for a new course. I feel the only responsible thing to do is to immediately take up legislation that will be compatible with the vision of President-elect Romney." Progressives howled, asking "what about bipartisanship?!? If you wanted to do what the America people asked for, why didn't you push the Democratic agenda in 2009!?!" More moderate Democrats, however, applauded the President's announcement, marveling at the grace and class in his approach.
Of course President Romney was a disaster but, thanks to Citizens United and the American media, the people (that's us!) were told that the new administration was a big success. With a full 88% employment America was back to work! The minimum wage law had been done away with, however, so some of those jobs were "biddies", or jobs that went to the lowest bidder. The good news for these workers was that social security no longer took anything out of paychecks, having been done away with in 2013.
By the time 2016 came around the name of President Obama was hardly mentioned by Democratic candidates. He had become almost a non-person, Soviet style. He had cashed in for a year, giving speeches praising the American spirit and wishing President Romney well, but after more losses in 2014 he began to shun the spotlight.
Many years later, when the United States was no longer an entity, historians were divided as they looked back. Some felt "the era of Bad Presidents" consisted only of Bush II, Obama, Romney and Haley, while others thought the beginning of the era started with Reagan. In any case, once the United States went broke and the assets were auctioned off, it didn't take long for the disintegration of the country to be complete. At first people tried to carry on as if nothing had happened. Folks living in "The Pacific Northwest, presented by Nike" had a good trading relationship with "Disney's Wonderful World of California", for example. But the money continued to dry up and even these confederations collapsed.
Of course, when the entire Earth caught fire in 2195 it didn't much matter.