SHORT AND SWEET
The election will finally be held Tuesday (let’s pause to say in unison, “Thank God!”) As a poll worker, I’m not going to make any partisan statements here, because I agreed not to. But I think there’s one thing we can all agree on: The presidential races in this country go on FAR too long.
You could have built one of the cathedrals of Europe in less time than it takes our presidential election to work its slow peristaltic journey through the body politic. Do you realize that it was in February 2007 when both Barack Obama and John McCain announced their candidacies for president? And we’re not getting better at this presidential race thing as time goes on; we’re getting worse! If memory serves me correctly, Ronald Reagan didn’t announce his candidacy until about November 1979; and I believe Bill Clinton was on about the same timetable in 1991. Somehow, the campaign season is growing like Topsy.
If we could figure out a way to shorten it — even back to the length it used to be — not only would it be easier on the voters AND the candidates; it would save untold amounts of money now spent for an endless round of campaign travel, TV political ads, and the like. Maybe that would be a start on paying down the unbelievable amount of debt we’re now facing.
To give you a comparison from another western democracy, when an election is scheduled in the United Kingdom, the queen dissolves parliament, everybody goes home and campaigns for THREE WEEKS — and then the election is held. That’s how you spell r-e-l-i-e-f.
Political commentators tell us that most Americans don’t pay much attention to the presidential race until very late in the campaign. So what are the candidates doing for the 18 months or so that goes before?! Is all that travel and speechifying just for their health?
Maybe Americans should start a big national referendum, a huge petition with millions of names signed to it, saying, “We want shorter, simpler presidential races!”, take it to Washington, D.C., and present it to the Congress. If our legislators really took heed, and did something about it, maybe several senators every four years could spend most of their time doing the jobs they’re being paid to do — instead of spending 21 months auditioning for the top spot.
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The other half of this column is closer to home — as close as the Old Madison website where we all post.
I started to say, “Post comments,” but all too often it would be more accurate to say, “Post slurs,” “Post insults,” “Post sarcasm,” ad nauseum. I know, I know, most public blogs are like that on the Internet. Anonymity makes people very, very brave about sneering, and ridiculing anyone whose opinion they don’t share.
But do we have to be just like everyone else? Doesn’t anyone want to march to a different drummer anymore? Is everybody we disagree with a (doofus, racist, idiot, Muslim, redneck — fill in the blank)? Those are some of the favorite pejoratives I’ve seen on here. What happened to agreeing to disagree?
Not to personalize these comments, but there are a couple of people who post regularly — I’ll let you guess who they are — who have found another way to make people mad. One way is by calling them names, as I mentioned above. But these two people’s way is to never give up or quit posting until you’ve proven that you’re right and the other person is wrong. Sort of like some of the spinmeisters for the respective presidential candidates when they appear on TV.
These two people remind me of an old fairy tale by Andrew Lang, entitled “Prince Prigio.” It seems this king and queen tried for years to have a baby, and finally were rewarded with the birth of a little prince. They invited many people to the christening, including nine fairies who lived in the kingdom. But the royal couple slipped up: There was a tenth fairy who they neglected to invite. She found out about the christening anyway, and came late, mad as a hornet.
Each fairy stepped forward in turn, bestowing great qualities on the baby prince: Good looks, intelligence, charm, courage, and so forth. Finally the tenth fairy’s turn came. She looked into the cradle, smiled maliciously, and said, “My child, you shall be very clever; TOO clever.”
As the baby grew into childhood, then became a teenager and finally a young adult, Prince Prigio, all the qualities bestowed became obvious — and the most obvious was the tenth fairy’s. He was always three steps ahead of everyone else’s thinking; he corrected all and sundry whenever he felt like it, cracked clever jokes at people’s expense, and made himself thoroughly obnoxious.
Now let’s fast forward to the (happy) ending of the fairy tale. Given the chance by one of the fairies to change himself in any way he wishes, Prigio thinks and then says, “I desire to SEEM no smarter than other people!”
Maybe those two posters could try occasionally to seem no smarter than us mere mortals.
Old Corporal <corporalko@yahoo.com>
Shorter and sweeter, – Saturday, November 01, 2008 at 20:02:17 (EDT)
