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The Long, Hot (and Ridiculous) Summer Days of Presidential Politics

Posted by TONY CAMPBELL, Columnist in At TMV.
Jul 13th, 2008 | Comments

OK! Enough already, everybody get out of insanity wave pool. It is a fair claim to say that we have hit the low of this campaign as far as media coverage of campaign surrogates. The big political news over the past week or so has not involved important domestic and/or foreign policy ideas but has revolved around the mumblings of Phil Gramm and Jesse Jackson – two men who never had a realistic chance to become President of the United States. In fact, Gramm and Jackson have probably received more airtime now than they ever did when they were actually running for President.

Here is a suggestion: Everybody has to take a mandatory two week vacation from the campaign. This layoff, which would be environmentally friendly (less paper to print and less fossil fuels to burn), would include the candidates, their staffs, the traveling press and the political writers (yes, me too), and hopefully, their surrogates as well. During the time off, perhaps we can persuade the Presidential candidates to register their surrogates in a political communication course at either Harvard or George Washington University.

I believe that my suggestion would have a positive long-term impact on the general election campaign this fall. Imagine the dialogue we can have on issues that matter.

All we have to do is limit the brain dead comments to once per week…wow, that would be a definite improvement.

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Silhouette

Sometimes people label comments as "brain dead" simply by virtue of the fact that they don't agree with them and not that they don't have merit..

So far all the comments I've seen are about who is fit to lead, or not fit to lead the democratic party and why. That is the precise reason this website exists, to discuss such and related matters affecting moderate voters.

Are you suggesting really that the website shut down lest more astute and keen observations about the presumptive nominees cannot find their way to public eyes?

This is an election, an important one. I imagine that every single day between now and November would be best served taking an ever closer look at each potential candidate's fitness for the job. If we pick the wrong person, you cannot imagine how terrible of a blunder that will be. When you get a minute, read up on the 1930s depression. The FDIC can only cover so much..

One candidate running has a history of balancing our country's budget to the biggest surplus in our history. I know you don't like to be reminded of that and hence the reason for this article pleading we just take a vacation talking about such stuff..

StockBoySF

Sil, on the one hand you say this, which is absolutely true and I couldn't agree with you more: "This is an election, an important one. I imagine that every single day between now and November would be best served taking an ever closer look at each potential candidate's fitness for the job."

This suggests that you want to move the dialogue forward. Good, great! Let's do it!

But then on the other hand you always come out with these sorts of comments, "One candidate running has a history of balancing our country's budget to the biggest surplus in our history. I know you don't like to be reminded of that and hence the reason for this article pleading we just take a vacation talking about such stuff."

Reliving the past ad nauseam and insisting on talking about Hillary as though she has a chance of becoming president this year is more counterproductive than all those brain dead comments that everyone has to listen to.

I don't know why you just can't take your own advice and discuss the issues at hand without pining for the good old years...

By the way, you must be drinking the same kool aid that Bush and his team is drinking because Hillary has absolutely no history of balancing our country's budget to the biggest surplus in history. That was Bill Clinton. For the record I was a Bill supporter all the way to the end of his presidency and I want to scream at how Bush has ruined our country and taken away certain of my rights under the US Constitution, but I try to live in this reality and look at the candidates we have. If Hillary were running then she'd have my support. But she's not running so you need to decide who to support (and if you want to stay at home in Nov. too, that's fine). So get over it and get back to reality.

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