What is going on? This morning I am growing more and more frustrated with our “big two” candidates reducing the huge issues of our lives to political tools.
This time it started in the morning with (as best as I can tell) a request from Senator Obama’s people to put out a bipartisan statement from both Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain about the rescue/bailout plan and the economy.
A little while later, Senator McCain was in the media saying that he was suspending his campaign and was not going to participate in the debate scheduled for Friday.
Then we saw Senator Obama saying that a president has to be able to do more than one thing at a time (ouch).
Then Newt Gingrich was seen praising how responsible Senator McCain is being (of course not mentioning that no senator has missed more votes than Senator McCain this year but Senator Obama is not far behind).
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (a Democrat from Maryland) then makes the point that their presence is not going to help with solving the problem they will just take what progress is being made and complicate it with politics by just bringing the political campaign into the halls of congress.
Senator Chuck Schumer (Democrat) called this an injection of presidential politics.
Then we start to find out facts like the fact that neither has been participating in votes all year and that neither is on the committee involved in this debate.
Now we are finding out that they are both scheduled to meet with the president to discuss this.
I understand that these men are in effect top leaders in their respective party, but can they really be of help to this negotiation process. The truth is that we are not expecting the people on that committee to be there to help one candidate or another, but to be helping the economy, the people, the financial institutions or whatever.
Have you ever been driving with a passenger in the car and right when you are about to change lanes or something like that that person starts trying to get your attention. Why is it a bad idea for you to look away from the road?
Both of these guys have neglected their jobs to campaign (really what it takes to run for president) and now suddenly each acts like the economy messiah ignoring the fact that each has been in a powerful political position all this time and have yet to save the world.
If these candidates wanted to be helpful why wait until the car has died and the mechanic is working on it (in the service station) to begin to try to fix it. There are people already working on it and their debates or lack thereof, starting or stopping commercials and so on will not have any effect on the outcome.
The current job of both of these men is to try to get American people to like, trust, and respect them. The problem here is that there are serious people, wresting and fighting to find a realistic solution to our economy troubles before the economy collapses. If I were one of these people (Democrat, Republican, and otherwise) I would be angered by the handling of this by both candidates.
If the economy is now the big issue we should be hearing far more about these Bernanke and Paulson fellows and what they think and far less about what these Obama and McCain fellows think.
We have moved from a period where the economy is a key topic to a terribly desperate moment. The candidates have been discussing their theories and what each would do in the (near) future if elected. This is important to know, but is not worth a hill of beans as far as what is going on right now.
The debate does not need to be put off, some of our focus needs to be put somewhere else. Their theories are important as one of their mindsets is our future, but there is a whole lot of people doing stuff that will make or break us right now, we cannot allow the nonsense of the candidates to divert our attention from that or to further complicate the process of figuring out a solution.
The whole rock star status of Senator Barack Obama is proven true. He may not be the most qualified candidate ever, but he is definitely popular in many places.
I am a bit confused however about how the votes from Brazil count in the presidential election of the United States.
Brazil must count, because the name of Barack Obama is on the ballots of eight or more local elections in Brazil.
The truth is candidates can put any name they want to on the ballot as their name as long as it is not offensive. The name Barack Obama seems to be a popular one this year and several people apparently seem to think that this name alone is all that is needed to get elected.
That was the way many felt here until the Republican National Convention and the Sara Palin meteor that seems to have crashed into our atmosphere at a million miles an hour in a spectacular display and now seems to be burning out in a fiery explosion of media scrutiny.
The question that I see here again is, why people “like” or “vote for” the candidates they vote for. These candidates in Brazil seem to think that a popular name is all that is needed to get elected. I wonder if this is not at least in part the truth.
For a week straight we heard no mention of John McCain unless it was tied to the name Sarah Palin. Many people suddenly decided Senator McCain was qualified to be president because they either liked Sarah Palin or liked the fact she was a woman.
Need I even say why many of the voters who like Barack Obama are voting for him…
If only there was a way to just get the relevant facts about candidates and not know who they were until after we voted, the world would be so much more logical. But then, what would all of the bloggers have to write about?
Again we see that one or the other of these candidates is clearly not ready to be president. This time it is Senator John McCain (the one who once upon a time would admit the economy was not his strength).
This time he jumped into the media in a rant about all kinds of officials and entities and finished with a comment about the idea that the president should “fire” the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Chairman, Chris Cox.
This in an attempt to clean up the idea that he was out of touch with the economy with his resent statements about the economy being fundamentally sound. Now he wanted to appear tough and in tune with what is going on.
The problem now is that not only does Senator McCain seem out of touch with the economy, but now he seems out of touch with the roles and authorities the president does have and does not have.
This is the next fuel for the negative campaigns that is about to hit the press. I wasn’t sure about this, but ABC news confirmed what I suspected…
The President cannot fire the SEC Chairman.
It is a little late in the game to be making mistakes that give the appearance that you do not really know what the president can and cannot do. Especially when you are just starting the downward part of a bounce that only went up for a week and a half.
I am not sure that while there is so much of an obvious economic crisis swallowing up the lives of the American population that we really should be forced to endure so much attack campaigning, but if you are going to do it, at least know what you are talking about.
We began our presidential primaries with a tremendous showing of how much our country has advanced. We had a female candidate, an African American candidate, a Mormon candidate, an actor as a candidate, a candidate who is advanced in years, and a bunch of other people.
But, somewhere our great nation took a left when we should have taken a right (not the revered of course).
There was the issue of Senator Barack Obama’s former pastor that brought out this huge race issue and revealed to the world that as a nation we have ignored and never closed the door on our ongoing race issues dealing with people of African heritage and/or their deep resentment of their treatment at the hands of the laws and people of this nation from it’s inception.
Then we revealed to the world that with all of our pious talk of equal opportunity for women in our country and how advanced we are in terms of gender equality there was suddenly a rush of both accusations and some demonstrations of chauvinism and hyper-feminism. This showed the world that we are clearly not as far along as we let on.
Then we decided it was time to demonstrate to the world that we had no dignity or class at all. We suddenly saw images of members of our senate who were realistic hopes for leadership of our nation using such things as bowling, taking shots in bars and chugging beer, and describing our nation as people who cling to religion and guns because we are angry used as serious campaign strategies.
On the Republican side there was this McCain fellow, another prominent member of our Senate, stating that the American people were basically on their own and the government would do nothing to help (probably not exactly what he meant, but that was what came out of his mouth) and that the solution would be a “Gas Tax Holiday” which was immediately reamed by economists and the media worldwide.
And, let us not forget the images we saw on Martin Luther Kings birthday of Senator McCain somewhere in the south in front of a largely African American crowd apologizing for having fought so diligently against any official acceptance of the Martin Luther King Holiday and trying to explain why he did with the background being a huge chorus of boos.
By this point, people the worldwide laid their only hope in the American public and the media to sort this all out.
Then the statistics and interviews started to pour out that either clearly stated or hinted to the fact that much of the population of our nation that votes, does so for the most ridiculous reasons imaginable. One of the most important positions a human being can hold on this planet and this person is chosen because he or she is: a woman, not a woman, is African American, is not African American, is like movie stars (such as Paris Hilton), is a “maverick” (which is synonymous with the word reckless in the minds of many the worldwide), a member of the party the individual is loyal to (no matter how ridiculous or idiotic the individual may be), and so on.
Now the entire planet is concerned with our election. Not only because it is definitely the best reality show on the planet, but I suspect that there is such concern because many around the world recognize the influence this position has in the world and there is a genuine concern that this years vote will be so screwed up that it may mark the beginning of the Apocalypse.
Then just when it seemed it could not get any worse, the conventions proved that to be just the beginning of the stupidity. There were great speeches and suddenly this woman shows up and describes herself as being like a pit-bull wearing lipstick (the hokey mom that said the only thing between hockey moms and pit-bulls was lipstick). Within a weekend the direction of the votes of the American people (according to the coverage) shifted into the direction of the person who is in reality only running for Vice-president.
I receive emails and responses to my blogs and from people around the world that show a deep concern and interest in our elections this year and the scary part is that the people in this nation are not that deeply concerned.
Over the last week the most important political conversation and coverage that was consistently heard had to do with putting lipstick on pit-bulls and pigs. Seriously folks, have we collectively lost our minds!
The conversations and correspondence I have had with people here has greatly discouraged and almost angers me. People here are acting like we are voting for who is the better football team. I am loyal to my team because they are from my area, they have more people like me, they have better media coverage, because they play a little dirty, they don’t play as dirty, they have better fans, etc.
Although there has been a lot of calls for the facts and less campaign nonsense the truth is when different forms of media have offered both the facts and the nonsense people have drawn in droves to the nonsense. No matter what people say as a group, the fact is that the nonsense and negative tactics have once again shown that they work as evidenced by the polls.
In one conversation I had, someone made a very good point: “You have to vote for someone so I guess you are going to have to do the best you can and vote for the lesser evil.”
At that point it hit me. It is like asking me to vote for the Apocalypse I would be more comfortable living through. Or maybe like the guy in the mafia movie about to be killed and asked by the guy about to kill him if he would rather be shot in the front of the head or the back.
The truth is that the entire planet is deeply interested in and can watch our government in action and we are blowing a great opportunity. I am not the only person who thinks we have a pool of the worst candidates we have ever had, there are many prominent members of the media and political community that agree. And have we all not seen the petty and childish actions that have been the basic normal operation of our government as a whole for the past few years. These things have doubled during this election.
If you are American, please take a second and imagine how all of this would look if you lived somewhere else. Is it any wonder that over the past few months all of the nations who hate us have ramped up the rhetoric and worldwide less and less people like us?
