Political Beatdown 2008

Hello friends and neighbors. I have a pop-quiz for you:

Who among us now, when seeing yet another political ad pop up on the old television screen, does not immediately begin looking for the mute button faster than Congress can spend a dollar?

I would be very surprised if there are even 1% of us normal citizens that sit in awe and wonder at another mud-slinging, name-calling, finger-pointing hodge-podge of politically mindless drivel. I would also be amazed if there is anything, including light, which can spend money faster than Congress. We are in yet another season of the political beat-down. As a result of having been through a few of these, I have a couple of observations.

The first is that no matter how many political polls there are and how fast they are produced on a daily basis, if you take the average percentages you will find that we are still a divided nation almost to the 50/50 level. The pollsters are even now engaging in an argument as to how they conduct their polls, and by doing so demonstrate how hard it is to predict an election in this country. Depending on which way a particular poll swings, the democrats can be up by a lot or they can be up only within the margin of error. I suspect that people that talk to pollsters, in the first place, have an axe to grind, as most older people that I know, and most “9 to 5ers,” are annoyed when another phone robot calls them to ask about their opinions when they are sitting down to dinner or a good football game. I have a good out for that this year, as I am a candidate for office and they do not want to know what I think.

There is a very good reason that the pollsters are having a hard time, and that is that the overwhelming majority of us, by now, have made up our minds by several months now. My own grandmother, a child of the depression and of the Democratic hey-day has voted Obama. I, a child of the Reagan years and the prosperity of those years, have taught me to look at things a bit differently.

Point two is this: Every year that there is a major election, the parties happily engage in mud-slinging of all stripes and then turn around and accuse of each other of dishonest advertising. Of course, they are correct. All of them. There are varying degrees of being dishonest, and they can be subtle, outright or both of those things. One contender here in our area is blasting the populace with a commercial that has ominous ‘spooky movie’ music in the background, while the announcer lies through his dentures about the opponent. That same opponent has a commercial that portrays him as a folksy, ‘farmer Bob’ type and the music in the back of that little masterpiece is a fiddle playing a song from the turn of the last century.  If you fall for the first ad, the contender is the Devil and he is going to eat your children. If you listen to the second ad, then the contender is Thomas Jefferson and he wants you to invite yourself over for a home cooked meal.

Who believes any of this stuff?

We are a people that have lived with consumerism since we were small, and we do not need yet another analysis from some talking head telling us that this candidate or that candidate is throwing stuff at our collective wall to see what will stick. We know this, and we know it at a deep level. We are told that this kind of advertising is used because it actually works. If that is true, then why is this country, at every election, so close to being evenly divided that we have election counts that come down to a few thousands? How is it that we are so willing to follow this political ideal or that and yet we are divided almost in half no matter what anyone does?

That is because we are a nation that is suspicious of everything. Rightly, I think.

We have been sold a bowl of pottage for our birthright for so long that that is what we expect of political dialogue. We expect, for right or wrong, that other nations have the same expectations. They, ladies and gentlemen, do not. They have their own bowls of pottage that they expect, and they are willing to fight for them.

While this politician or that is boring their way into your mind with yet another mindless or volume-enhanced advertisement, you have to remember that in many, if not most, other places on this globe, their kinsmen are being shot, held in prison, their families grouped into prison barges and the rest starved to death.

Obama claims to be a child of the world and wants to be a citizen of the world. Can we examine that for the moment? Do we really want our political process to look like any part of the rest of this sorry planet? Do we really want to look like his supporters when they come from South America? Does the name Chavez come to mind? Do we really want our children to come under party scrutiny if they criticize the party? Can I remind you that criticizing the party in most countries results in death? Can I remind you that the Obama party just ostracized papers that were openly critical of his candidacy?

Perhaps in this beat-down we can remember one thing. We are Americans first and foremost, and it is our duty to remember that we are a nation that can disagree amongst ourselves. It is not our duty to vote along the political ideals of those that do not have our best interests at heart.