Politics

Summer is supposed to be a fun time of year. Warmer, drier weather. Outdoor activities. Baseball games. Reading books. Lots and lots and lots of grilling. Summer then leads us into my favorite season of the year, fall. Cooler temperatures. Stunning bursts of orange, yellow, and red that seem to pop up on every mountain, hill, and neighborhood street. Then, right around the corner are the black and orange and fun of Halloween. The NBA arrives, as well. And, of course, most importantly, football. 

Those are supposed to be good times for the vast majority of us. They often are. But, every four years, summer and fall take a dark, sinister turn. A cloud of dismay and disgust envelopes us. Anger and frustration float from person to person, wrapping around us like dense fog. All the vibrant colors seem muted into greys and browns. The normally crisp, invigorating weather never seems to come, instead everything seems damp and dark, leaving us sodden like wet cardboard. We all know it's coming; we all dread it's arrival, but know we can do nothing to stop it. Election year.

I hate election years with a consuming passion. I know I have a huge amount of "likes" with that statement. That alone should tell us something about the state of our country. Of course, it's not us that needs to listen to such a statement, it's our elected leaders. I know, I know. Fat chance of that.

Americans hate election years for one main reason: those running for office are, more often than not, people we can't stand to look at or listen to by the time November rolls around. Or August. Perhaps, May. This is not a good thing. 

Maybe I'm just an idealist, but I think an election year should be an exciting time. I think this for two main reasons. First, if our country is doing well (don't laugh, it's happened before), then an election year should be a chance to continue that cycle, by re-electing those currently in office who we think are doing a solid job. But, if our country is not doing well, then we have the chance to get those leaders who we feel are not doing a good job out of office and vote in those we feel would lead us to stronger times. But, neither of those feelings tend to happen for many of us. Why is that?

To me, the answer is simple and blunt. Most of our elected officials suck. That wouldn't be so terrible if we had faith in those running against the incumbents. But, that rarely happens. 

If that wasn't bad enough, the way politicians run their campaigns tends to disgust most of us instead of inspire us. Let's start with those insipid commercials. The ones that seem to air all day, every day. The commercials that cause so many of us to turn the channel, or watch a movie instead, or even (GASP!) turn off the television. Do these people actually think the average person believes anything in a political commercial? Apparently so. Otherwise, why continue to spend so many millions of dollars making and airing those things? Simple. It's not their money. One would think a smart man/woman would find a better way to spend than that money than on commercials, actually helping their constituents, perhaps. But, I digress. 

A close second in my hatred trilogy of election year standard operating procedures are political signs. The signs that clutter people's front yards, small sections of farmland that abut to freeways/highways, and everywhere else they can scrounge permission to place those things. Am I supposed to be swayed to vote for someone based on their sign? Really? What is the philosophy of putting the signs of a dozen candidates in the same thirty foot area along I-5? Am I expected to slow down from my cruising speed of 70 MPH to see who has the most impressive sign? It takes all my inner strength not to simply plow through them on my daily commute. 

What is the logic behind those things? Apparently, I'm supposed to be so impressed by one candidate's sign over the others that he/she earns my vote. Uh, not happening. (Besides, I think we've used up all the possible combinations of red, white, and blue. I'm as patriotic as the next American, but there are other colors. It's really okay to try something different.) I hate to break it to those hard-working, ethical campaign managers, but I've yet to have my vote swayed by a political sign. It doesn't work with me. 

Neither does the hard-hitting, in-your-face reporting of CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc, etc, etc these months leading up to the elections. For the love of God, two of those major networks aired the wrong information on the most important United States Supreme Court ruling in recent memory. Am I supposed to be impressed by any news network after that debacle? They're so concerned with being first, they forget it's more important to be accurate. I don't let my seventh grade students get away with that crap. Am I supposed to give professional journalists a free pass? Again, not happening.

Besides, I don't need to watch those networks because they are as predictable as watching Cupcake Wars. One network loves Republicans and hates Democrats. Another network is the opposite. I wonder if their stories, daily shows, and reports from the campaign trail might follow along those guidelines? Hmmm. I have to watch Cupcake Wars occasionally because my daughters love that show. Thankfully, they have no interest in watching political networks. Neither do I.

Since I can't seem to find a show or network that represents all sides fairly, I tend to ignore them. Instead, I look to other avenues.

Recently, I watched (again) the movie Primary Colors. I found myself longing for a candidate who followed the same strategy of one of the movie's characters running for president. No, not the Clinton clone, Jack Stanton, played so well by John Travolta. No, it was Larry Hagman's Freddie Picker. The man got thousands upon thousands of people to donate blood everywhere he went. Picker didn't pay for polls or air commercials. He even saved his main opponent from being grilled on national television by Geraldo. Nobody knew how to handle him because he wasn't playing by the rules. He was going to listen to people and act accordingly. Shocking. Genius. Fiction.

Sure, Picker was a former coke fiend who slept with a man during a drug binge. What politician hasn't? How else do they earn so many outrageous donations? Male, female, gay, straight, white, black, Catholic, Mormon, atheist, married, single, underage, overage, who cares when it comes to campaign contributions? To be fair, not all major donations involve sex. I'm sure some involve powerplays, extortion, promises for future favors and various judge and job title appointments, along with other such political mainstays. 

If they're going to do all that anyway, why can't they pull those pathetic commercials so Americans can watch reality television in peace? Lord knows, there's nothing real about campaign promises. What does it say about our political system that we can get more honesty on television from Howard Stern and Sharon Osborne than any presidential candidate? 

Why can't we have an election system that actually makes sense? Seriously, it's 2012. My iPhone does more for me than my elected officials. SIRI gives me more concrete answers than any politician. And yet, I'm supposed to vote for these people based on a paragraph in the voter's pamphlet. Really? 

We wait all these months, through the primaries, the nausea-inducing commercials, the fluctuating polls, the annoying clusters of political signs, the seemingly endless parade of possible scandals, before we see these candidates actually speak at a debate. By then do we even care? Have we been so bombarded by political propaganda that nothing said will sway our votes? Hard to say, really. And that is beyond frightening. 

On the plus side, at least the NFL and NBA lockouts didn't happen in an election year. That would've really scary.