EDITORIALS : Boredom with balloons
Posted on Thursday, May 8, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/225075/
YOU CAN almost feel the tedium
by now. Even if it is masked by the
kind of pointless commotion signifying nothing that only a hopeless political buff would stick around to watch. Normal people tuned out long ago in search of something, anything, more intellectually challenging. Like gin rummy. By now the Democratic presidential campaign has settled in for some us, like arthritis in the joints. This campaign just goes on and on, much like the drone of Fox and CNN. The endless speeches remind us of HEAD-ON, the headache remedy whose pounding commercials are sure to give you what they claim to cure.
The coverage on television has much the same effect when applied directly to the forehead. Boring but excruciating. All the more so when dressed up with fancy electoral maps and fancier political speculation. Anything to fill up all that dead air.
As one primary comes after another, election nights begin to sound like replays. Each one billed as decisive turns out to be not. But the grand march to anticlimax must continue. It’s what democracy demands, and the old Republic with its aristocratic airs was long ago replaced by this New, Improved substitute. If either of the still standing contestants in this Democratic dance marathon had swept both North Carolina and Indiana this week, the end might have come into view. No such luck. Barack Obama did his part—more than his part—by winning big in North Carolina, but he was edged out in Indiana. And so the band plays on, if at a less exciting tempo, and what’s left of the crowd continues to drift away in search of a real idea.
DANCE marathons, aka
walkathons, were all the strange rage
in the ’ 20 s, but they might mercifully end in weeks. This one’s gone on for months. It started last year and shows every sign of continuing forever, or seeming to. The last two contenders on the floor—in accordance with the current politically correct, diversity-mandated mode, one each black and white, male and female—continue to hold on to each other like boxers in a clinch, unable to break free, neither a clear winner, both capable of dashing the other’s hopes. But the dance to exhaustion must continue. It’s the democratic, and now Democratic, way.
For the moment, the two Great Thinkers in the Democratic race have been reduced to debating whether the federal gasoline tax should be lifted for the summer. That’s the Great Issue now. This is what the republic of Jefferson and Adams, Washington and Hamilton, has come to.
One of the candidates, Barack Obama, is still capable of expressing dissatisfaction with the level of the campaign before succumbing to it. The other seems to be back in her natural, war-room habitat. Hillary Clinton almost glows as she repeats every threadbare talking point with new enthusiasm.
Mrs. Clinton does seem to have solved or at least minimized her biggest problem: What do you do with hubby ? Bill Clinton has been relegated to the back of the platform on election nights, where he looks on silently but beneficently, or tries to. During the rest of the campaign, he’s assigned to the boondocks, where he can still draw a crowd without drawing too much media attention to the gaffes that have made him an embarrassment. There is a certain pathos to the whole spectacle, like an aging matinee star reduced to playing a bit role.
But the show must go on, however ploddingly. You can almost hear the great god Demos, aka The People, drumming its fingers on the table as the Democrats’ demolition derby goes on. But to where ? Why, to West Virginia next week, and to Kentucky and Oregon the week after that, and then—ta da!—to crucial, decisive, climatic Puerto Rico come June 1, followed by all-important Montana and South Dakota two days after that. In short, to inconclusion.
In the old undemocratic days, which begin to seem an almost Periclean Age in nostalgic hindsight, the party bossesthey had names like Daley and Farley and Pendergast and Tweed—would convene in some, yes, smoke-filled room and pick a nominee. Sometimes they’d hit on a winner (McKinley, Harding ) and sometimes not (James M. Cox, John W. Davis ) but matters would be settled. And everybody would be happy and united, or pretend to be, as they surely will do again at the end of this long trail a-winding.
But who will settle things this year ? Why, that would be the allwise super-delegates, of course, this era’s bosses. But what an unsatisfactory, indecisive substitute they are, the way a plural executive can never be as efficient as a single commander-inchief. But first the campaign must conclude, or rather peter out, and the more civic-minded among us, that is, the most masochistic, will follow it to the dull end. Duty demands.
AS FOR THOSE of us condemned
to write about the never-ending
Campaign of ’ 07- ’ 08, we’ve started to think of it as one of those Waiting for an Asteroid times. We take the term from the incomparable Florence King, essayist and reviewer extraordinaire, whose specialty is penning great reviews of awful books. Assigned some indigestible tome full of post-modern prose that fully deserved deconstruction, if not complete demolition, preferably with dynamite, she would be utterly disheartened. But then she’d spot one of those occasional news items about a Giant Asteroid bearing down on Earth. The report would fill her with hope. All was lost. Maybe she wouldn’t have to finish reading the damned book after all. We’re starting to feel the same way about this fun-filled campaign. The other day we caught ourselves searching the night sky. Alas, not a giant asteroid in sight.
Oh, yes, about those election results out of North Carolina and Indiana that this editorial was supposed to be about, dear Gentle and more than Indulgent Reader, what can we say ? Who won, who lost, and what do they mean, if anything ? Answers: Nobody won, except possibly John McCain, who’s starting to look like the adult present in the background while Hillary and The Kid slug it out. But nobody exactly lost, either.
Barack Obama’s inexperience has started to show; Miss Hillary has managed to put The Kid off his stride. His old crowdpleasing speeches (Hope ! Change !) aren’t pleasing as many crowds. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton’s experience shows, which is even more dismaying. If the New Politics doesn’t sound so new any more, the old politics refuses to leave the stage. And so Obama-Clinton ’ 08 threatens to go on indefinitely, like Bush-Gore in 2000. The country is reaching the point where people are less interested in who wins than in getting the thing over with. So politics can get serious again.
It’s not that there aren’t great issues this troubled year. There’s the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and on terror in general, and whether to rely on the free market in this uncertain economy or try to tax-andspend our way out of tough times. But who’s talking about real issues ? Instead we get applause lines, not thought.
No wonder we’re getting identity politics instead of the real kind. White women, working stiffs, assemble over here. Black folks, the college educated (or rather the college-trained in these technocratic times ), step over there. Who cares what the candidates say ? It’s what they look like that counts.
Strength. This thing’s got to end some time. Doesn’t it ?