Log In | Register
If until now the tenor of the presidential campaign has seemed shallow and adolescent, that's because it resembles a similar human activity that generates just as much fervor among its devotees: a sports contest. Although it lacks the practiced synchronicity of football, the balletic qualities of basketball or the strategy of baseball, it does resemble these games in other ways and actually has many of the characteristics of roller derby and professional wrestling.
The campaign is, of course, far more important than any sports event, but the candidates and their surrogates wear partisan hats and clothing and scream inanities, make sweeping promises that are usually unfulfilled, and deliver their share of trash talk, just like professional athletes. And like sports figures, politicians often break the rules, lie, and are sometimes caught, although crooked politicians seem to be a larger percentage of their profession and to escape punishment with greater frequency than almost everyone else.
The dithering that we saw in Washington this week, when the importance of solving the country's pressing economic difficulties took second place to political grandstanding by both campaigns, seemed to pit one inept semi-pro team against another. The play was unpracticed and sloppy, and only the importance of the game guaranteed a decent crowd.
So, if politicians are most comfortable acting like professional athletes, perhaps the Constitution should be amended to make the process more entertaining than the vapid jawing that passes for public discourse these days. Selection of the events would be something of a problem, since one assumes that Obama is a fitter physical specimen than his opponent, but maybe it could be appropriately handicapped. An added benefit is that the mountains of money being collected to finance the current spectacle would be superfluous and could be returned to donors at a time when the economy could use the capital in a more productive way.
But an athletic death match wouldn't do much for bipartisanship, however, and as a nation it's time that we came together politically to solve our many problems. So perhaps the ideal alternative to angry, empty campaign rhetoric is to force the two candidates to work together, just like we do to small, whiny children at play. And the procedure is this:
---send Biden and Palin home
---fill the Rose Bowl with spectators
---both candidates stride to the 50-yard-line, accompanied by the Chief Justice holding a coin
---one candidate---it doesn't matter which one---calls the coin toss
---the candidate who wins the toss chooses to be president or vice president
---he who loses the toss serves in the other office
---and two years later, at mid-term, they switch offices
No lies, attack ads, boring speeches, unseemly pandering or empty promises. No political action committees, 527 funds or rubber chicken dinners. No lawsuits, recounts or do-overs.
But, undemocratically, no voting. The electorate won't have much to contribute, but as has been the case in nearly every previous administration, our opinion counts for very little after January 20th anyway.
Start Tracking
Stop Tracking
Thanks. As much as an extremist as I am---and as we all tend to be on some subjects, especially as we get older---I find it useful to cut to basics, something we all learned as brand new soldiers.
