Elections: The More You Know; the Less You Know...

It’s worrisome….

A year or more before the Primary,
The guy—or gal—who raises the most money
Stands the best chance of survival….and incidentally
Winning the election!

How about that?

This is the prevailing thinking out there and it forces us, the hapless voter, to wonder what it’s all about but at the same time, not wanting to appear misinformed.

Of course, the fundamental question becomes why do we allow ourselves to be subjected to such exquisite torture unless we get something out of it i.e. like finding out who the candidates are and where they stand on the issues.

But of course, the campaign staffs will tell you right off that that is what this period is all about.

Really?

Here is the problem we face: How can the American people commit themselves to a specific candidate during the time they are supposed to acquaint themselves with the candidate? This is illogical..

Ah! That is the conundrum is it not?

So, what are we left with?

What we have is a cause and effect scenario that suggests that he or she who raises the most money is the best qualified candidate running. The interesting thing is that nobody questions that deduction; and in our culture that tends to always correlate money with being right, it is the natural order of things.

And when push comes to shove, who really wants a poor president anyway who is always sucking around asking for favors.

And if he isn’t rich in the first place, doesn’t that mean that there is something wrong with him or her?
…
Unfortunately, that seems to be what the tea leaves are saying.

Therefore, unless you have the wealth of Midas, solved the problem of string theory, deduced a solution for Global Warming, developed an alternative fuel that runs on grass and you have entered the Election contest, you are history, old buddy, before you even start.

Don’t worry about anyone getting to know you; they won’t!...And they won’t care which is insulting at least.

Right now, there are literally dozens of potential and real candidates running around to all of these fundraisers and nobody knows them. They don’t even know them in the diners in Iowa or New Hampshire. But candidates being candidates do not see that as a problem but an opportunity even though for the most part, they are blowing smoke…

There is only one way any unknown candidate can emerge from this maelstrom: All of the other more likely candidates have to self destruct!

And what are the chances of that happening? Unless some Moslem terrorist straps himself down with explosives during the debates and nobody’s left standing…or the candidates start howling like Howard…

The one thing that candidates mothers tell the candidates when they are being groomed for this job when they are six years old is not to blow it i.e. read do not self-destruct!...

What’s more, as we’ve discovered, serious candidates are seriously concerned about giving too much away about where they stand. Therefore, in the ultimate test of hubris, they expect you to buy into them without knowing where they really stand on the issues…

As it turns out, the most successful candidate is the one who gives away the least; therefore, the less you know about the candidate, the better his or her chances of winning…

This not only makes life difficult, it entitles you to participate in the grab bag that these elections have become…

A year from now, a contributor may say to himself, “Gee, I thought so and so really stood for A; but now I learn that they stand for B!”

Oh well, by then it will certainly be over…..and all of the donors will have little trouble carrying their much lighter wallets home…


There is no time to get to know a candidate these days even though we are beginning the process earlier and earlier..

I am convinced that the only way to get to know the candidates is to move to Iowa or New Hampshire and spend a lot of time in diners.

People in diners in Iowa and New Hampshire get the inside scoop.

We get about five minutes of it interspersed with Viagra and Great Abs commercials and a big dose of opinion that usually doesn’t say anything you can go to the bank with….
We wind up knowing more about Katie Couric than we do about Mitt Romney and is that the way it’s supposed to be.

I guess that would be okay if Katie was running and Mitt was doing the news… But Mormons can’t do the news because they’re not good at dwelling on objective facts and retelling bad news…so there you go. You would need a stand up guy like Giuliani who would have fired everyone on the news cast and told America that he is necessary to do the news and that CBS should extend his contract for six months….

The media is so concerned about taking sides against the current party in power that they bend over backwards to present the distaff side whether it’s valid or germane….

It will continue to allow them to seek access and send them rushing all the way to the bank on Fridays…

It’s really hard being a voter and trying to get the facts.

In fact, you have to go through piles of speeches to get anything of substance out of the exercise.

The trick in elections, one learns, is to say nothing; be noncommittal. Make it seem that you are trying to please every voter by first saying one thing and then saying the opposite. This is the Molotov Defense best known for confusing the opposition.

There are certain things most candidates have to be very clear about.

They have to be clear about values, religion and patriotism in that order.

Your values have to be at least as good as your opponents. And today, you cannot afford to get into the finals unless you wear your religion up front—which of course has to be Christian. There is no much of a market for an Islamic or Jewish presidential candidate in a country that likes to think of itself as Christian yet readily violates anything that Jesus would have stood up for in his short life. It is okay to use the word “Jihad” as long as you use it against those invisible terrorists.

Bear in mind, that you can not keep Americans docile unless you convince them that in order to do away with terrorists, you have to put the Constitution and individual freedoms on hold indefinitely.

Definitely, you do not mess with patriotism. If anyone is being groomed to be a patriot, make sure that you start early with the good old red, white and blue. And that does not mean of course that they had to sacrifice themselves going to war if they were too busy like our Vice President or had taken the easy way out with a short term stint in the Reserves. No, you don’t have to demonstrate you are a patriot to act like one or demand it of everyone else..

And when push comes to shove, if you can have one of those Southern preachers, like Billy Graham’s son singing your praises, well, you’re just so much more ahead of the curve.

We must leave that up to others who invest literally many thousands in the belief that their candidate will do what they want them to do—irrespective of whether that’s good for the American people or not….

It’s a strange way of thinking unless you are so convinced of what you are doing and the ‘rightness’ of your mission, that to not do it would be illogical. And that is the Zen motivator de jour.

There is another secret to being a good candidate: It’s to always be on the Offensive.
Never give the other guy a break. Keep pushing yourself by demeaning the other guy, not directly but by indirection. Sometimes the best response is just to smile differentially which would indicate that this guy you’re running against is such a dodo bird that even responding would be beneath you. It makes you look diplomatic and sensitive to awkward situations. What’s more, you wind up looking smarter and the other guy dumber when he comes after you with both barrels. Then you can get away with calling him a sorehead and misunderstanding the drift of what you were trying to say—which, of course, was a compliment.

All of this smoke and mirrors makes it all very difficult for a voter to sort things out. The voter is really caught between a rock and a hard place. He is forced to make a decision based upon very little useful information if any and then will be held to task for his decision for four long years. It is a mind-racking conundrum that not all of us are up to. As a result, you may find many of us hunched over our newspapers or listening to NPR for a hint or a whiff of a clue of what our candidate really stands for beside apple pie, the flag and mom.

But in the end, we all throw up our hands and give up and go with our gut instincts.

In the interim, we struggle along doing our best to appear sagacious despite the fact that most of us wind up guessing.

And so in the end, the American elections where this year it is expected that candidates may spend more than one billion dollars will wind up being an elaborate guessing game with nobody knowing any more than the next guy but thinking they do.

There will be hand-wringing, insults, and nastiness through it all and little information or clarity and in the end, 50% of the American people will be joyful and 50% will be either angry or resigned.

And so it goes. Elections in the new millennium, where all of the candidates are above average and all the issues and where the candidates stand ultimately unknowable. This despite the investment of a billion dollars to convince you that you are doing the right thing.

I say forget it all and visit a Fortune teller; you will probably get more out of it and at least it will be about you….

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon
www.lesaaron.blogspot.com