Oh, Mommy, I know this campaign has not formally begun but can’t it be over already? Please, Mommy, make them stop!
Political junkies are salivating, cable hosts are visitbly chomping at the bit (“We can have great TV! More than ever we can get both sides to line up and yell at each other. This is going to be an ugly campaign. Great stuff!!!”), but to many other Americans it’s clear we are not heading into the “silly season” but an excruciating season where partisans grab at anything to try and shove down the other side.
And we’ve seen it the last 24 hours.
FIRST: there was the revelation (get ready, hear it comes and if you have a pacemaker make sure it doesn’t stop) that as a 9 year old boy in Indonesia Barack Obama tasted dog meat. This tidbit was served up (surprise!) to try and counter the story about Mitt Romney putting his dog on his car roof. No matter how GOPers try to squelch it, it has made life easy for stand up comedians and Democratic partisans. And analysts of all stripes. It’s “high concept.” So now we have people going back and finding a line or two in Obama’s autobiography about him tasting dog meat. So Romney as an adult putting a dog on top of his car who puked = (supposedly) Obama as a kid in Indonesia tasting dog meat. No joke. In yet another attempt to obliterate this narrative, Ann Romney recently said the dog liked it on top of the car. QUESTION: Will Democrats now unearth a photo of Mitt Romney in preschool picking his nose and therefore being a bad role model for American’s youth?
SECOND: there is THIS breaking story. At a local bakery Romney insulted…its cookies. Why, this must prove he’s out of touch. He only wants cookies made out of caviar.
What’s lost in the whole way American politics is now set up are the big issues: serious discussion on the economy, jobs, foreign policy, education. The issues are indeed raised, but they are lost in the day to day tactical partisan skirmishes and coverage of these mini-wars that almost obscure the bigger systemic challenges.
Any day now I expect one side to charge that the other party’s Presidential candidate doesn’t wear underwear.
Which will lead to demands for photographic proof from the other side and the news media.
And then a tabloid will prove it.
THE UPSIDE: The always excellent The Christian Science Monitor, a paper I was very proud to write from New Delhi and Madrid in the mid to late 70s, finds some teachable moments here for parents who can use the partisan frenzy over the dog issues to impart some lessons to their kids.
Photo via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.