You just knew it was going to happen this way.
The front-loaded primary season created so much excitement so early that there was no way it could last. For nearly two months there was a contest almost every week, generating actual news, if only of the horse-race variety. But once we hit this dry stretch leading up to tomorrow's Pennsylvania primary, we were in for an extended "silly season," the same kind of nonsense that normally plagues the general election from Labor Day to Election Day.
The candidates' positions are a;ready laid out. And unless there is an incumbent in the mix, nobody has the ability to do anything of consequence, so the only potential "news" of any kind is what the candidates say and polls based on nothing but distant discussions (like this) about the last poll and what somebody said.
And so, in the last six weeks, we have been entertained by the spectacles of Geraldine Ferraro and Jeremiah Wright; small-town bitterness and Bosnia; bowling and Crown Royal shots; endorsements, retractions, finger-pointing, whining about whining, and white folks wondering what's up with that shoulder-dusting thing.
It would be amazing if any of this actually changed anyone's mind when they vote in the primary.
What it has done is sold newspapers and exposed more viewers to erectile-dysfunction commercials and given big-time supporters more opportunities to put candidates in their debt. In other words, it was fun for a while, but this extended theater of the absurd has done little to enlighten or engage the citizenry in our campaign to select our leader. More likely, it has done the opposite.
There is something to be said for an electoral process that allows the voters in all states to have a say. Ironically, this year's primary season was designed for a quick coronation, with the favorite candidate planning to have things wrapped up by a Super Tuesday that came a month earlier than in the past. Instead, it has shown that an orderly procession of primaries and caucuses, aided by advanced communications technology, can allow for comprehensive voting within a much shorter time frame.
Extended periods of time for whistle-stopping and baby-kissing are nice but not necessary for an informed electorate. The added time needed to cultivate financial supporters can be eliminated with fully publicly funded campaigns. So much of that money goes anyway into television advertising, which besides being deceitful and manipulative by nature is clearly obsolete. Few if any campaign commercials were aired in Pennsylvania until several weeks ago, but voters in that state were hardly kept in the dark about candidates' positions and voting records. In fact, the most famous commercial of the campaign, the 3 a.m. While House phone call, was seen by millions more people on news broadcasts, on the Internet, and in comedy parodies than ever saw it aired as an actual commercial.
The truth is that we can make good choices without wasting all this time on campaign filler, the oopses and gotchas that having nothing to do, really, with running a country. The way it works now, the campaign itself becomes one more thing that works to disenfranchise us.
It could almost make you a little angry, a little frustrated--maybe even a little bitter.
