By David G. Walley

Trick or Treat:
It's the perfect time to write my November column, right after Halloween, right before the elections, eight days or so and counting, before the balloon goes up or the boom comes down (I can never get that part of it straight) when we'll sow what we've reaped all these interminable months. Maybe the American people will get what they deserve, even if we don't ever, really.

This trick's neat:
Can anyone, even at this late stage, figure what the candidates are about after the many millions spent on television ads (attack and lampoon), make-up, posters buttons, teeshirts, hats, bus transfers, hotel bills, telephone bills, polls, polls, focus groups and yet more focus groups? How can it be possible that though there were three debates, nothing was debated, rather platforms were re-stated? Would these confrontations have been any better or more palatable if they were staged in a working-class bar with a jukebox playing country songs and the two candidates dressed like jes' plain folks? Somehow I don't really think that's the ticket either. Or maybe it's just that truism that politicians in election years seek the lowest common denominator when dealing with their opponents, no need to get flashy, or even contemplative (gosh that's a big word to use in an election year when contemplation is the last thing that spin doctors want voters to exercise; they're all for impulse buys in the political supermarket). Of course it's too late to contemplate how different things would have been if McCain was the dubbed Republican- at least the viewers wouldn't have died from boredom.

The subversive part of my conscious brain has been asking throughout the campaign season whether it was all some kind of plot by Saturday Night Live to get back their ratings. Afterall, there was a candidate, an empty hat really, whose face -whenever asked a question which involved a modicum of reflection within the structure of a compound complex sentence- assumed that look of the sleepy undergraduate caught in a hot classroom at 8:45 ahem, "Would you repeat the last part of that question?" he might have said if it would have been allowed. This is acceptable behavior?

Tricks for teeth?
I've been patiently waiting for the campaign to catch fire, for there to be issues for which there were real discussions, discussions which would lead to dialogue to which the American people were privy to instead of just the political handlers, pundits, and talking heads. I've been waiting too, for the newsies of all stripes to get off the fucking bus already, and stop eating those campaign danishes. Damn I would have given anything for a good idea to sink my mind into instead of soundbytes. No, things seemed to be stuck in neutral, and since we're dealing with essentially a closed system (the two major parties will NOT third or 4th party initiatives to share the wealth so to speak either). And as long as the primary system stays the way it is, there will never be more than two parties fighting it out for the heart and soul of America with the same old stuff which was observed at the start of the campaign season about Gore's wonkiness and Dubyah's fratrat tinhorn charm buffed very nicely by other people's money. I really loved the idea that Bush was trying to portray himself as a populist against Al Gore's "insider" status, then again, how many populists do you know who've gone to Andover, Yale AND Harvard. And while we're in this pew, when was the last time we had a president who went to Ohio State, Notre Dame, or LSU (where the good ole boys really go, Dubyah), somewhere in the great midwest breadbasket of America? Do we want our leaders to be better, as good as, or just like us? The real question is are we truly prepared?

Tricks are neat---
There's a very good reason why less people will be voting in this election, and it's something which neither candidate has touched. According to political scientists like Clinton Rossitor, the percentage of the electorate participating in national elections is directly linked to whether the electorate is satisfied. When the electorate is dissatisfied, when there is strife -economic, political and/or social- the electorate gives a good goddamn enough to make its voice heard. I've yet to figure out what voice the American people speak with, or better what accent it has. Who's on first? who's left? what's right? Ever notice how during the conventions, Republicans get more conservative, Democrats more left-wing? And then after the election things go back to normal? And by normal I mean that both Democrats and Republicans bickering in Congress and in the Senate while the country more or less runs on autopilot, which is what it's been doing for a while now.

Treats to beat?
What's normal? Not much of the Nineties where we saw an almost impeachment of a tremendously popular president for zipper indiscretions. It was almost a coup, and what was it trying to prove? It's been a most prosperous time until recently when the bottom's been falling out of the over-aerated tech market, driven by boosters who lamely attempted to change market rules. Who's the electorate really? How does it think? If we go by those interviews of the proverbial "The Man on the Street", we're all in deep trouble. Because "The Man on the Street" when a microphone is thrust in front of him, parrots exactly what's been fed out to him so it's really a closed system. And of course there's those man-on-the-street interviews which don't make the cut, because they're unexpected and cause the news editors too much think time. The guys in the booth have a point of view which they're selling too. And yet our papers have been full of these spurious "stories" about what pollsters have found out, though in reality, it only shows one the power of money and how statistics speak with forked tongues. It's like Mark Twain said long, long ago: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." Guess what's fueling this election? Do we care enough to do something? Like Warren Beatty said, "We don't need a third party, we need a second party." And when's that going to happen when the primary rules are skewed in favor of the Demipubs and Republicrats.

Thick and neat?
I've been thinking that this present election is a little like that fabled season of the television show Dallas, where a whole year turned out to be a dream, that none of it actually happened. That we'd have a better chance, a different bunch of candidates. A friend of mine suggested that there be another line for the presidential ballot "None of the Above." If a majority of voters went that way, both parties would have to go back and start again and find newer candidates. But then again, let's be reasonable, who would want the job? The pay's shit, there aren't any real perks like with true corporate power. And who in their right mind would want to be put through the meat grinder of American electoral/media politics where it's not the strongest, the smartest, or the most perceptive who survive, but the most media synthetic. I mean whatever you do, you're damned; if you kiss your wife in public, it's shocking, if you don't, people want to know why?

Is a potential leader supposed to know how to deliver a joke or take one on the chin? Will going on Letterman or Tonight or MTV make a difference? And indeed if that's really the case, then television critics should change jobs with political reporters and pundits, the publisher of TV Guide should be getting schmied by both parties, lots of perks, road trips, hotel room hookers. Are we running a country or a fraternity house rush? If that's the case, is our president is going to be our faceman? So where's the beer, buddy? Where are the sorority sweeties for us rushees, eh?

Make mine neat.
How does one handicap a race where both candidates are running the race with extra added weight in their saddlebags? By that I mean the baggage of pollsters, focus groups, alpha dog handlers, color coordinators, media doctors, fixers, speech impediment specialists, political psychologists and their ilk. The closest we got to any sort of honesty was when McCain was running in the primaries (for his life I suppose) against Dubyah, and that war hero hauled off and smacked the vocal right wing of the Republican Party figuratively across the chops. Look what happened to him. Put it another way, maybe it has to do with consumption: that the real problem is that Americans are fatally habituated to mixed political drinks, that the sales of political rye whiskey and bourbon are down, that drinks with fancy named Cosmopolitans, or Suffering Bastards, or Washington Iced Tea or Hard Lemonade is the cat's whiskers or the bee's knees. It could be that, in truth, Americans have lost their ability to take their politics neat, no chaser, and because of that, they aren't supposed to have definite opinions. In economics, you can't have guns AND butter, but in politics races are won and lost on that issue. Americans somehow still refuse to acknowledge and realize that no candidate can be all things to all people, and that maybe it's better that way in the long run.

Somehow the American system has muddled through the second half of the twentieth century if only barely: we've survived the Sixties, endured the Seventies, expanded in the Eighties and damn near lost dot.com's in the Nineties. We've had wars, been the tough guy on the block, given arms to the contras and the Iranians, sowed and reaped, played terrorist games with the Middle East and tried to pick the winners. But the world knows the difference between Americans and America---Americans are nice people, they give a damn, have good instincts, try to be noble; America gives aid, takes it back, uses its muscle instead of its mind to solve world problems, they never know when Halloween time comes around what they're going to get when they ring the front doorbell. Here's where the proverbial political rubber meets the road, but has either candidate addressed themselves to how we meet the world? Only briefly and then they retreat to trading caricatures of each other positions. And so for all the fuss, tickertape parades, tv shows, up-close-and-personal features, attack ads, interviews, sidebar think pieces, we're still no closer to figuring out what these two guys in their politician costumes stand for. This is what Washington, Jefferson and Madison had in mind? Are you kidding?

Trick or Treat?

But mostly trick.


(C) 2000 - David G. Walley