It won’t be a day too soon when the American election is over. Since the world is now so small electronically as to allow us to see everything live, we are paying for it with our time and taste. Of all elections on the face of this earth, the American presidency is one of global importance. Even a mountain goat on the backside of the Himalayas is interested in the outcome since it might mean certain death from carbon monoxide or life under a healthy ozone.
Regardless of the outcome of this campaign, the Bush Jr. presidency will provide a fertile field for historians. In the first election, he was responsible for 36 long days without an outcome followed by a Supreme Court decision putting him in DC, and then he will be cited for a campaign of spectacular daftness in 2004.
The issues on the table are real and serious enough. Take your pick from Iraq to Afghanistan through skyrocketing oil prices all the way to the American economy, which in turn fuels the world economy. This should be enough to fill the agenda of a few terms in office let alone a campaign to win one. What do we get? We get silly slogans that demean the process and insult the intelligence. “He can run but he can’t hide,” is the latest shot across our aural fields.
This is a phrase the president used to describe Bin Laden; it might have worked then in spite of the fact that Bin Laden is still hiding and still running and still doing what he wants to do. You don’t have to be a Kerry supporter to feel the ineptness of this dictum. Kerry is not a criminal to have to run, nor is he in need of hiding. What makes metaphorical use of the language acceptable and effective is the correlation between image and fact; neither of which the president achieves as he insists repeatedly on using the same phrase.
The polls indicate that half the population is with Kerry. That is half the nation the president governs. He should respect them if not Kerry. He also should try something other than “he voted for the war and then opposed it.” So what? The war is a fact and not a game of bingo. Right or wrong, Sen. Kerry is simply saying I gave you my consent and trusted you would do right with it. Now I see you mishandled it. The same can be said of a citizen who voted for candidate Bush in 2000 and now changed his or her mind. Are they running but unable to hide? Are they flip-flopping?
The world is watching as the candidates hit the home stretch. It is getting uglier and sillier by the minute. This is not healthy for all concerned. The winner will have some cleaning up to do when the dust settles down. Politics is a dirty profession as it is; real leaders and talented politicians are able to raise the mundane into the realms of sublime rhetoric. Bad politicians and unfit leaders are prone to demeaning the important and bypassing the issue.
What is going on in the final weeks of the campaign is not good for America nor is it healthy for the world. The reductive parlance we hear today is fit for Hollywood not for the hallways of power. Come to think of it, a show like The West Wing would not even use half the phrases used by the real politicians in power today.
