#214 - The End Is In Sight - At Last

We're in the final death throes of yet another ugly Presidential campaign. Since television became the major medium for communicating with the masses, it seems each campaign has tried to outdo its predecessor when it comes to mudslinging, half-truths, and just downright overall nastiness.

It is now six days until we either unleash Armageddon or jettison our remaining American traditions (depending on which candidate you support and assuming the other person gets in). I am discounting all of the third and fourth-party candidates because they, sadly, have no chance of being elected under our current system.

I do not like, admire, or respect Donald Trump. I admit that off the top. (It is difficult for me to respect or admire someone who brags, as Trump does, about avoiding taxes.) Nor do I tend to believe much of what he says. However, in one respect, I think he is right on the money, although not in the way he intends.

Trump has used the word "rigged" on several occasions during this campaign, hinting that the results will be rigged if he fails to win the White House. In that regard, he is mistaken. I do believe that the process is rigged to eliminate consideration of third-party candidates and to ensure that either a Democrat or a Republican is elected.

If memory serves, no third-party candidate has been invited to participate in the Presidential debates since Ross Perot in 1992. That is, in fact, the only time a third-party candidate has ever been invited to participate in a Presidential debate.

I suspect the 1992 election sent shock waves through the corridors of power, seeing how popular Perot's message was, and the money men on both sides of the political divide (despite some gains by women in terms of access to power, I suspect men still pull most of the strings) took steps to ensure no future "fringe" candidate ever got as close as did Perot to the Presidency.

Given the strong feelings against both of the major candidates, this election cycle might well have benefited from the participation of the Green Party"s Jill Stein and the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson. If nothing else, the answers to some of the debate questions might have had a better chance of staying on-topic.

Every four years, we go through this madness. Every four years, we complain about the candidates, saying this candidate will set back progress in some area 50 years or that candidate will destroy traditional American values. Every four years, we realize it didn't happen because the system is set up to protect the only traditional values that matter to those who actually control such things - power and money. Everything else is just window dressing.

I have no answers, no possible solutions. When I began writing this, I thought perhaps an election system similar to Britain's, in which third parties seem to be more valued, might be a possibility, but I'm not sure it could work here.

Instead, I suspect this "grand experiment," as America was once referred to, is slowly grinding to an end. America could well dissolve in the next few generations into a number of smaller nations based on shared geographic and cultural values. We have simply become more divided than we are united. Perhaps we have always been so and it ha simply become easier to recognize in this always connected world in which we live.

The good news is: the election is almost over. The bad news is: regardless of who wins, the vast divide between the two major political parties will continue to make it all but impossible to accomplish anything. That, and the fact that the next Presidential campaign will likely begin within a week of this election's conclusion.

We have the 24-hour news cycle and the 365-day political cycle. The noise no longer stops; it just becomes a constant hum in the background of our everyday lives.

#213 - I Tried, Really!

Sunday night, I sat down to watch the second Presidential debate. At least, that was the plan.

I watched in hopes of getting an idea of specific policy points from the candidates, specific arguments in support of their stands on the issues. You know, an actual debate.

What I saw instead was more akin to an elementary schoolyard war of words: "Did not!" "Did too!" "I know I am, but what are you?" "Takes one to know one."

Beyond that, Sunday night's debate seemed an attempt by one candidate to browbeat and bully the other candidate (as well as the moderators) into submission through the use of continued interruption.

After 40-minutes, I'd had enough and could no longer watch. I knew I would get nothing of substance from the debate. Instead, I would only get more of what passes these days for political theater or reality TV. If I wanted either of those, I would watch an episode of Madam Secretary or Survivor. (For the record, I concluded that Clinton's non-answers were closer to being on-topic than were Trump's, as he seemed to only be interested in talking about emails.)

I also had a pretty good sense of how the day-after debate news cycle would run. Trump supporters would declare him yet again as the debate winner while hammering the moderators for being members of the "liberal media" and Clinton supporters, something Trump himself set the stage for when he complained about the debate being "three against one."

From the vantage point of my easy chair, it seemed the moderators were only trying, with limited success, to do their jobs. They have basically four responsibilities: ask questions; try to keep candidates on topic; try to get candidates to keep their answers within predetermined time constraints; and perhaps most importantly, keep candidates from interrupting while another candidate is speaking.

I give the moderators a B-plus for effort and a D-minus for execution, although the lack of execution is not really their fault given that they have no power to truly control the candidates' behavior or actions during the debate.

Donald Trump has taken Teddy Roosevelt's "bully pulpit" and inverted it, turning it into a pulpit from which to bully those who disagree with him. His behavior during the debates seriously suggests Trump would be unable and, perhaps worse, unwilling as President to listen to or consider opposing viewpoints and scenarios from advisers.

A President has to be able to consider all options before becoming locked in on a course of action and must be able to change tactic when a specific action is clearly not working. Trump's actions, words, and behavior during the campaign suggest he would be unable and unwilling to make such changes and would instead "double down" on the action or tactic already shown as not working.

I do not think Trump is capable of or is willing to change his behavior and demeanor before the third Presidential debate in one week's time. At least not without some help in the form of a change to the debate rules.

This leads me to a suggestion I humorously made on Facebook but one which I think deserves some serious consideration. This will require some real strength of spirit on the part of moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News and debate organizers. I don't expect such strength, but in the spirit of hope springing eternal, here goes.

First, enforce the two-minute limit of candidate responses. The two-minute clock located in the candidate's line of sight is clearly not working in and of itself. How to remedy this? At the two-minute mark, the moderator says "fifteen seconds" to give the candidate a chance to wrap up their remarks. At the 2:15 mark, the candidate's microphone is turned off and not turned back on until it is the candidate's turn to respond to another question.

Second, keep candidates on topic. How can a moderator do this, you ask? Especially when candidates seem to think (based on past Presidential debate history) they can simply take any question in whatever direction they want to go? Enter the microphone strategy again.

If/When a candidate begins to veer completely away from a question's topic, the moderator should remind the candidate once to return to topic. If/When that fails, the candidate's microphone should be turned off (I think you're beginning to see a trend here), and the moderator should say, "If you are not going to answer the question, we will move on" to either the other candidate's answer or to another question.

Third, keep candidates from interrupting one another during answers. The first offense should result in the moderator politely asking the offending candidate to refrain until it is his or her turn to respond. The second response should result in a candidate's microphone being turned off, with no further warning, until it is his or her turn to speak. This process should be automatically repeated (i.e., the microphone turned off without warning) for the remainder of the debate whenever a candidate interrupts.

While these proposals are designed specifically with Donald Trump and his verbal-bullying tactics in mind, they should be applied equally to Hillary Clinton should she transgress. I have no hope of these ideas actually being implemented, but they would, even if artificially, restore something sadly lacking in the debates and in the overall campaign, civility. (Of course, they could also result in some truly entertaining political theater should Trump storm off the stage because he isn't being allowed to rampage through the debate like a bull in a china shop.)

Based on the 40-minutes of the debate I watched Sunday night and the numerous Internet memes I've seen on Facebook, I'd say civility is something we are sadly in need of in this election year. However, I think it is safe to say that one has better odds of winning the lottery than of witnessing anything resembling true civil discourse during the remainder of the 2016 Presidential campaign.

#212 - Making The Best of a Bad Situation

I've been thinking about this post off and on for a while, eight weeks to be exact. That's how long it has been since my last post.

Part of that delay is not knowing exactly what to write about. Part of it is due to everyday life getting in the way, but part of it is knowing I needed to write this while dreading it at the same time.

I don't fool myself into thinking that I have many readers of this blog. However, I'm pretty sure that the few readers I do have are not all aligned politically, culturally, religiously, or any other -ly. (Which is why I normally shy away from writing about politics, in particular.) So, I suspect whatever I have to say in the following paragraphs will not be agreed with or appreciated by all.

It has taken me until this day, exactly six weeks before election day to firmly decide which candidate for President would receive my vote. For several months, I had convinced myself that I would vote for one of the third-party candidates, a refusal, if you will, to vote for the lesser of two evils.

Having lived through a number of Presidential elections now, it seems that too many of them have been a choice between the lesser of two evils, regardless of which side of the ideological spectrum you stand on. This coming election may yet be the clearest example of that.

On the one hand, you have Hillary Clinton, the first woman Presidential nominee from a major political party. She is shrewd, clever, intelligent, and also calculating, possibly devious, and perhaps a bit disingenuous. I firmly believe she moved many of her positions to the left because of the candidacy of Bernie Sanders.

I don't really trust Hillary Clinton to do many of the things she says she will, even if Congress were inclined to go along. I suspect she will only do what she thinks she has to do to win and stay in power.

Now, before I am accused of being misogynistic, let me say that two of my favorite bosses during my working career were women. Let also say that, in spite of my misgivings and mistrust of her, I will be voting for Hillary Clinton in November.

The simple reason is that, on the other side of the ticket we have Donald Trump, a man who wouldn't know a fact if it bit him in the ass. Just as I firmly believe that Hillary Clinton is a politician in the worst sense of the word (I know some don't think there is any other), I also believe Donald Trump is a liar and a cheat (his good points) as well as a racist, a bully, and a misogynist. Not to mention a complete and utter egomaniac.

Trump has changed direction on various issues and topics so many times over the years, I'm not sure he could find north on a compass if someone pointed it out to him. (Others have documented some of these reversals and apparent "lapses of memory," so I won't bother here.) He speaks for whites afraid of losing their all out of proportion privilege and power and promises things he knows he can never deliver. (Just how will he "make" Mexico pay for his proposed wall, anyway? Does he plan to declare war on that country?)

Donald Trump is a bit like this century's version of Joseph McCarthy, he of the Communist witch hunt fame from the 1950s. Trump makes wild accusations, which he then fails to back up and says he did and said one thing when the record clearly shows he did and said the exact opposite (President Obama "birther" issue, anyone?).

Donald Trump is like a David Duke wet dream, promising to restore an America that thankfully died long ago, one where white men were in complete control, women knew their place, and minorities were treated as the second-class citizens he seems to believe them to be.

Trump plays upon the fears of whites who see the world changing in ways they don't understand, of gun owners who believe their rights are being taken away (even though that won't happen), of tinfoil hat wearers sure the government is out to get them, of and of individualists who believe we can return to the days of the open West when people were free (supposedly) to do what they wanted and make their own way, including those opposed to federal government regulation of any kind.

This latter group fails to understand that clean air and water are too important to leave to individual states and fails to accept that what one state does can and will impact its neighbor, if not now, somewhere down the line. After all, air and water to not recognize artificial boundaries drawn on a piece of paper.

For some time, I considered voting for Jill Stein of the Green Party. Her views, especially on the environment, align with mine closest of any of the candidates. Since I live in Idaho, I figured my vote would not help elect anyone anyway, especially since I never had any intention of voting for Trump, his numerous robo-calls (especially at meal times) not withstanding.

In the end, however, I decided I would hold my nose and, despite my misgivings about what exactly she stands for, vote for Hillary Clinton. Because, while I'm not sure what Clinton might do as President in terms of policy, I feel confident that I know exactly what a Trump Presidency would lead to, and that vision scares the hell out of me.

#193 - Something Else That Starts Much Too Soon

In my last blog post, I wrote in response to my local newspaper's posing of the question "What are your thoughts about whether the Christmas/Holiday Season starts too early these days?" My answer was, as I suspect it is for anyone over 30 or 35, "Yes." In fact, the only other thing I can think of that starts much too soon is the Presidential campaign we must endure every four (or perhaps it's now only two) years.

By the time the 2016 race for the White House ends, we will have been subjected to more than 18 months of half-truths, innuendos, accusations, bold promises, temper tantrums, ego-stroking, and braggadocio. And that's all from one candidate. (I'll let you guess which one.)

I'll make no secret of the fact that I support Bernie Sanders for President. Opponents ridicule his ideas for expanding Medicare and offering free college tuition as giveaways. I prefer to think of them as investments in the true infrastructure of America, its people.

However, this is not a post about Sanders or any other specific candidate. It is, instead, about the interminable length of the Presidential race, the duration of which makes it impossible for anyone without access to tens of millions (likely to so be hundreds of millions) to run for the office. From where I sit, this seems to ensure that the political process will continue to be controlled by the wealthiest of Americans for decades to come.

Regardless of which candidate you support (please tell me it isn't Mike Huckabee), I think most of us - with the possible exception of comedians and late night talk show hosts who benefit from months of material without really having to work hard for it - can agree that the process starts much too soon and lasts much too long.

I'm not entirely convinced that this is simply due to the evolution of or the complexity of the political process. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think this is some sort of insidious plot by those who wish to control the process.

Somewhere in some smoke-filled room (cliche, I know, but isn't that where these kinds of things get done?) someone or some group of people came up with the idea of extending the Presidential election process to the point where it becomes almost like "white noise" and gets tuned out by the majority of the electorate. How else would you explain the continuing decline in voter turnout in many areas? (I'm sorry, but quality of candidates is too easy an answer.)

The added benefit for these puppet masters is that this "white noise" filters down below the Presidential level to state and local races, reducing voter interest and turnout, making it easier for the candidates they support to win election and re-election time and again. For me, at least, this is the only way I can explain poor people in Kentucky voting to elect a governor who openly promised to end the one program that gave them access to affordable health insurance. (Your mileage may vary.)

The political process has reached the point where the joke is that a newly elected official must begin work toward getting reelected the day after getting elected in the first place. Running for election is all but a full-time job in and of itself. I think it is safe to say that the only thing with a longer shelf life than the electoral process is fruitcake, and I'm not sure we want anything competing with that.

#184 - The Circus is Back in Town

(imagine calliope music in the background)

Step right up folks! See the amazing tap dancing presidential candidates. Watch in wonder as they spout platitudes and verbally slam one another with half-baked innuendo and overwrought criticism.

Yes, the political circus is back in towns all across America as the political machine gears up for the 2016 presidential campaign. Yes, I know the election itself is not for another 18 months or so, but the pollsters, strategy architects, and political pundits have to justify their existence somehow.

So far, the race is shaping up to be some Republican against Democrat Hillary Clinton, a polarizing figure even to many in her own party. Not that any of the GOP candidates so far are great unifiers.

Entered into the fray thus far for the Republicans: Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who is categorized as pro-life, anti-same-sex marriage (leaving it to the states to decide), anti-gun control, against the Affordable Care Act, anti-IRS, pro-Israel, and anti-net neutrality. Cruz is also widely seen as one of the main forces behind the 2013 government shutdown, in large part because of his efforts to include de-funding and removal of the authorization for the Affordable Care Act in any stop-gap funding measure. He also support abolition of the IRS and believes in climate change, though not in the role of humanity in global warming.

We also have Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a pseudo-libertarian who nonetheless wants to restrict a woman's right to an abortion (something of an oxymoron there, someone who wants to reduce the influence and reach of government yet wants to increase it, at least in this area). He has also proposed gutting the Department of Education and eliminating the Department of Housing and Urban Development, played a leading role in blocking a treaty with Switzerland that would have allowed the IRS to conduct tax evasion probes, and been accused on a number of occasions of plagiarizing speech and article material from other sources. Like Cruz, he is opposed to gay marriage but would leave the issue to individual states to decide, and he is against all forms of gun control.

Then we have Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Like Cruz and Paul, he is pro-life. He also supports raising the age for Social Security benefits eligibility and opposes same-sex marriage, suggesting (like Cruz and Paul) that it be left to individual states to decide. He supports extension of the Bush tax cuts as well as elimination of both capital gains taxes and the estate tax. Unlike the other two announced GOP candidates, Rubio held elected office prior to becoming a U.S. Senator, serving nine years in the Florida House of Representatives.

These are the three GOP candidates announced so far. They have one thing in common aside from many of their political views - they are all considered Tea Party activists. Both Cruz and Rubio are under age 45.

Other likely and potential Republican candidates include retired surgeon Ben Carson (expected to announce May 4), largely identified as a conservative who opposes same-sex marriage and does not believe in evolution but who at one time stated that for-profit insurance companies should be eliminated and has said that semi-automatic weapons should be better regulated in large cities and high-crime areas.

The GOP field could become even more crowded if former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, current New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorino, U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker decide to run.

Then there are the usual Republican suspects, who have run before and could decide to run again: former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, and business magnate Donald Trump of New York.

So far, the circus is primarily restricted to the GOP, as the Democrats have only one announced serious candidate to date: former Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, and First Lady Hillary Clinton. Unlike her GOP counterparts, who appear to have always been politically conservative, Clinton was not always a liberal. She campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and was president of the Young Republicans for a time while a student at Wellesley College. At the time, she was a moderate Republican but left the GOP after the 1968 national convention.

Clinton has supported repeal of the Bush tax cuts (announced as temporary when first enacted), release of oil reserves, exploration into alternative energy sources, including hydrogen-powered vehicles (along with tepid support for nuclear power), campaign finance reform, and a retention of the Social Security tax cap (unlike many of her fellow Democrats), and health care reform somewhat similar to the Affordable Care Act.

She has also faced criticism for her role as an advisor to her husband while he was president (perhaps an argument by some that a First Lady, much like a child, should be seen and not heard) and for sitting on the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart. Unlike her GOP challengers, Clinton is identified as pro-choice. While initially opposed to same-sex marriage (but in favor of civil unions), Clinton appears to have changed her view over time. She also supports net neutrality.

I'm not going to get into the entire Benghazi thing as that has been beaten to death by so many others and will no doubt come up again during any presidential campaign.

It is still possible that Clinton could face challengers for Democratic nomination. Former Rhode Island Governor (and Republican U.S. Senator) Lincoln Chafee, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, and former U.S. Senator (and former U.S. Navy Secretary) Jim Webb of Virginia (another former Republican) are all said to be exploring a possible run.

Other possible candidates who have expressed interest or who have been speculated about include: current Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders (who runs as an independent), former Vice President Al Gore, former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, current Delaware Governor Jack Markell, and current U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

All in all, it promises to be another overwrought, over-analyzed, over-advertised, overreaching, over-attacking, over-criticizing campaign, generally lacking in substance from either the candidates or those who report on them. In the end, the nominations and ultimately the general election itself will likely be decided by which candidate wins the most favor with the Super PACs and garners the most money in campaign contributions from said shadowy political organizations. This truism is perhaps never more true than when it comes to political campaigns; "money talks."