Nothing Left to Say

I don’t really know when it all started. They say 22 months, but really, it is hard to think back to a time when this election was not underway. To some, it probably started the day after we mistakenly offered George Bush another 4 years to undermine the country. And in a very real sense, the Democrats have been trying to wrest control from Bush ever since he and Katherine Harris and the SCOTUS out weaseled Al Gore and took Florida.

But really, the election started the day Senator Obama tossed his hat into the ring and decided to take on the anointed candidate, Hillary Clinton. Really, they were both great candidates, and the toughness of the primary season may in fact be what prepared Obama so well for the tougher campaign to come. But 22 months? So much has changed. Is it really a job worth having? I wonder if the pursuit of the office is all that is left anymore. The job itself will seem anticlimactic, or worse, impossible. Good luck to whoever gets the keys to the White House.

I wonder if next time around, the election will begin 24 months in advance. Like the Christmas season seems to arrive in retail stores earlier and earlier each year, it makes me wonder why they ever bother to take down the holiday lights anymore. Christmas in July? How about Christmas in April? And so it shall go for the elections. Someday, perhaps, the day after inauguration day will be the day when all the candidates for the next cycle openly declare. A permanent state of electioneering. That would never get old, would it?

With all this time to fill, we have really seen the candidates from every angle. The cable news shows, and the network talking heads, the commentariat, and all those that need to fill air time, or columns in newspapers, must find something to say everyday. I pity them. That is why we analyze a poll that shows a move of 1% even though it has a margin of error of 2.6%. In other words, the movement is trivial, illusory, or even, imaginary. It is like discussing a baseball player raising his batting average from .321 to .323. It is only significant if you talk about it. They follow candidates around the battleground states, where they say EXACTLY THE SAME THING as they said at the last stop, or yesterday, or last week. And yet somehow, it needs to be made news.

Oddly, though, with all the information we have and all the facts, lies and innuendo, there are still so many things I have never heard discussed. They may not seem relevant, but how much of what we have heard has really been relevant to the presidency anyway. Why does it matter whether Obama’s aunt is a legal resident? Should he have turned her in? How can he control who he sits on boards with or who’s at a birthday party he attends, and what does that have to do with anything anyway. All the falderal about Reverend Wright was interesting to me because I wonder if bad stuff was being said in churches I attended from time to time. I must say, I sometimes did not focus on it, often preferring to check out the stained glass, or the structure holding the roof, or the exiting strategy. 6 years of architecture school will do that to you. Would I really want to be held responsible for what was said? No one indicated there would be a quiz. We might have been urged to do something untoward....I don’t really know.

In any event, there are things I’d still like to know. What size shoe does Obama wear? What is McCain’s waistline? Do they drive a manual or automatic...can they even drive a stick shift? What are their pet’s names? When they load their dishwasher, is it on the right or left. Do they ever load the dishwasher? What was their favorite childhood book? Ginger or Maryann? Which was their favorite “Angel”? What kind of beer would we find in their refrigerator? What is their favorite movie? What is in their Netflix queue? What is on their Ipod? Which side of the bed do they sleep on? Curly or Shemp? Scooby Doo or Felix the Cat?

As you can see, despite the time that has passed, there is still a lot we have yet to uncover. Perhaps a few more weeks campaigning and we could really get to the bottom of all this.

A Weak Week

I am prone to distrust the polls and though I find myself watching them constantly, I frankly wish they weren’t even available to observe. It boils this election process down to little more than a horse race. You can bet on the outcome. You can watch the daily fluctuations and wonder why one pollster can have Obama up by 2 points, while another has him up by 13. And then there is John McCain, suggesting he has a plan, and that he will win and show everyone what idiots the pollsters and pundits have been. I wonder if the pollsters will offer some of their fees back if somehow their predictions and analysis has been...flawed. I mean, they have had Obama up by so much for so long, how this can be overturned....and if it is, will it be the will of the voters or some more sinister force. One hesitates to go down that road.

With a week left, there will be attacks, if possible even more acidic than last week, or the week before that. Vitriol will flow from candidate’s mouths to their supporter’s ears, and what they say will become fact, regardless of how ridiculous. The undecided will sit in their Lazy Boys and ponder whether they really need to decide at all. I hope they do, but I can see how they might want to turn off the cable news shows and watch some sports....the World Series is on Fox...nope scratch that...we’ll have to wait for that 3 inning spectacle for some night when winter has not made its presence known.

Still, it is our obsession with sports that prepares us to dissect the pre-election data. Every candidate’s strengths and weaknesses laid out like a batter’s tendencies against left or right handed pitching. How many sacks has he endured? How many fumbles? How many home runs? This has in fact been an election with few home runs, McCain was thought to have homered when he picked Sarah Palin, but upon further review, that looks more like a ground rule double...at best. In fact, because of that pick the McCain campaign has apparently started to point fingers. Like the Yankees...all that star power and no playoffs. Or worse, the Raiders....a rudderless ship bouncing from rock to rock in search of a safe place to anchor.

On Election Night, we will have game time. All the stats from the “pre-season” will tell us which states to watch, and we will be familiar with each candidate’s strongest spots on the map. But just like in real sports, upsets occurs. The team with the best quarterback, or ground game, does not always win. Sometimes, the other team just wants it more. Sometimes you play a better game, but don’t score enough points. Sometimes the ref makes a bad call that costs you a touchdown, or perhaps a state like Florida. Sometimes, there is a little known player on the other team, “Hanging Chad” who comes out of nowhere to steal the show.

President Bush came to power under the most suspicious circumstances, and his presidency, in some circles, was played more or less under protest. That it has ended so badly is either his just reward, or a punishment for our country for allowing the election process to be co-opted by those unimpressed by democracy. Beyond any other need, our country badly needs a good positive election...about things that matter, and without a whiff of tampering. We need a president installed by the majority, with a mandate to be above all, successful. To lead us, and restore our faith in the system. At the end of the day, this is what George W. Bush has deprived us of....faith.

There is not much pithy to say about the next week. I fear the October surprise...a tape from OBL, a terrorist plot, another plot to assassinate a candidate. Why can’t we all just get along, I wonder. Too late for that, I guess. So instead....lets not spend time looking for the silver bullet or the “gotcha moment”. Instead, this is a request that the candidates stop talking of their opponent and speak only of what they will do, how they will do it, and why we should give them something as valuable as our vote.

McCain't

Where is the outrage? Back when the Republican Party handed their nomination to John McCain, I thought they were brilliant. John McCain had a well regarded record as a “tweener”, not closely tied to the ridiculous far right, and enough of a centrist to actually pull votes from the Democrats in a year that Republicans are radioactive. Now, as his campaign twitches involuntarily in the last throes of life, there are many in his own party that want to condemn his campaign staff, his tactics, his running mate....really everything about him....and yet, doesn’t that all but miss the point?

John McCain will not be president of these United States in 2008 because George W. Bush was the worst president in the history of our republic. Do we really need to let history be the judge? Can’t we pretty much close the book on this guy now? Has anything he has done as president left this country better off? Has he succeeded in any small facet of leadership? The failures are underscored more heavily now as we anticipate him riding off into the sunset....during the financial crisis, he has been all but invisible, appearing every now and again to mumble some nonsensical drivel and then sneak away to play pong or Pac Man or whatever he does with his time these days. Then this weekend, he finds time and reason to bomb Syria. Has he no restraint? Do we need to relieve him of his duties before January 20th just to make sure he does no more serious harm?

I will admit when he came to power, my expectations were very low, I felt he was an unintelligent man, with no vision and no real reason to be president other than it was a job others said he should pursue. To his credit, he far exceeded my worst fears.

But there were many that liked this guy...enough in fact to re-elect him (WOW! How crazy is that given a few years of context?) I can assure you I had nothing to do with his re-election...but I am constantly surprised by the lack of outrage by his supporters, and by the nation in general. If we impeached Bill Clinton for the rather trivial offense of a misdeed of the flesh, what might the punishment for a president who led us into two wars (one unnecessary and contrived), and who failed to act responsibly to pay for said wars in a logical matter. He ran up a debt heretofore unimaginable under a Republican administration. We could talk about all the other blunders and missteps made by the administration, but the list would take up far too much space.....and the real bottom line is that despite the simmering dislike in the form of low approval ratings and such, where were the folks on the right now calling for McCain’s advisors to be fired? They let Bush slide, and now they act surprised by the results. The Republicans brought this on themselves because they let their clueless leader lead them to the edge of a cliff and like lemmings they followed right along over the edge. Republicans don’t believe in dissent. They find it un-American. And now, they find their quiet compliance to be a ticket out of Washington. A little outrage folks, might have kept you around....

Yep.

From Mike Allen’s Playbook at www.politico.com/playbook/:

“Sen. John McCain on Wednesday blasted President Bush for building a mountain of debt for future generations, failing to pay for expanding Medicare and abusing executive powers, leveling his strongest criticism to date of an administration whose unpopularity may be dragging the Republican Party to the brink of a massive electoral defeat. 'We just let things get completely out of hand,’ he said of his own party's rule in the past eight years. In an interview with The Washington Times, Mr. McCain lashed out at a litany of Bush policies and issues that he said he would have handled differently as president, days after a poll showed that he began making up ground on Sen. Barack Obama since he emphatically sought to distance himself from Mr. Bush in the final debate. ‘Spending, the conduct of the war in Iraq for years, growth in the size of government, larger than any time since the Great Society, laying a $10 trillion debt on future generations of America, owing $500 billion to China, obviously, failure to both enforce and modernize the [financial] regulatory agencies that were designed for the 1930s and certainly not for the 21st century, failure to address the issue of climate change seriously,’ Mr. McCain said in an interview with The Washington Times aboard his campaign plane en route from New Hampshire to Ohio. ‘Those are just some of them,’ he said with a laugh, chomping into a peanut butter sandwich as a few campaign aides in his midair office joined in the laughter.”

Hard to add anything to that assessment...Thanks Senator McCain and to all the congressional Republicans for providing such great oversight during the Bush years. As you wander around looking for new jobs, maybe you should consider including on your resume that for the last 8 years you leaned on a shovel smoking cigarettes while our democracy crumbled.