AC

<!--pagebreak--> Two mobile apps released this week offer insight into the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama. “ Mitt's VP” has some intelligent design behind it, but it ends up a riot of styles and is ultimately ungenerous in the extreme. At the same time, “ Obama for America” is clean, Appley-looking and unconfusing. But what the two campaign apps really shed light on is what apps—anyone's app—ought to be in 2012. At first glance, “Mitt's VP” uses rustic, Americana lettering as if it were a haberdashery window in the age of Grover Cleveland. That's pretty great. Any hint of Barnumism in a campaign seems like a healthy sign that someone is not taking the venture too seriously. But that vibe turns out to be only pixel-deep. The app is quickly revealed as a banal, noxiously safe, wavy-bunting-on-the-dais bit of silliness, like a campaign website from the '90s. The nineteen-nineties. The...