Unplugging from the presidential race

Its not often that I type this, but 50 Cent was right. This election is getting boring. In fact, I’m about ready to delete CQ from my bookmarks, skip over CNN, and buy the Washington Post only for the metro and sports sections.

This probably comes a surprise to many of you. Is it because I don’t really care who wins? Nope. I’m invested in an awful lot of issues (morally, personally, and financially), and care quite a bit about who wins. From a professional standpoint, I also think its important, because this race is changing the way we think about national campaigns. Plus, our generation has never been this empowered in a presidential election since 18 year olds got the right to vote.

So why am I thinking about unplugging myself? Because we aren’t talking about any of those things!

The media coverage of this election so far has been completely nauseating. Faced with month long gaps in-between primaries, 24 hour media outlets have been forced to create controversies over flag pins, comments from pastors (ignoring that whole bit in the constitution prohibiting religious tests...), and bowling skills. Nope, not making this up, CNN’s Political Ticker used space to discuss whether Obama’s inability to bowl shows that he’s “out of touch in the heartland”.

Hunter S.Thompson had described covering the 1992 presidential election as “better than sex”. This is *not* better than sex. It’s not even better than, I dunno, “first awkward-as-hell kiss when both parties still have braces”.

The idea of ‘being an elitist” as some sort of negative campaign issue isn’t new...Republicans have been using it the last 20 year or so. Its come to a head in this cycle with the now famous Obama “bitter’ remarks, where he had the audacity of pointing out that people in the rust belt were bitter about their economic situation, and were at risk of clinging to things like anti-immigrant and anti-globalization sentiments.

The media, not to mention Clinton and McCain, went nuts. How dare Obama call small town rust belters bitter? This just goes to show our he isn’t in touch with “American Values” Pundits went out of their way to talk about the remarks, and how this would surely alienate Obama from voters, because everybody would be so offended. Hillary ran off to find the grungiest bar she could find, and threw back some shots, just to show how “in touch” she was. This, my friends, is the real reason a Mormon can’t be president.

Look. Anybody who has ever lived in the Rust Belt knows that while Obama didn’t exactly express his idea in the most elegant manner, he didn’t lie. People in the rust belt are pissed. Their towns are falling apart, their schools suck, meth labs are exploding everywhere, and the smart, educated, motivated people are moving away. How we can fix the Rust Belt is a very important issue, and one we ought to be discussing this election season (I have a few ideas), but first, we need to stop playing the blame game, or taking shots at anybody who calls attention to the problem. The people who are really out of touch here are media officials and pollsters, who think that rust belters are so stupid that we’ll ignore anybody who points out what we already know.

And whats so bad about being elite anyways? I want my president to be smart, experienced in positions of responsibility, and be a quality administrator. I might love the guys I go camping and bowling with back home, but that doesn’t mean I want them deciding if we go to war with somebody.

But even having this discussion seems stupid, when there are many huge issues. We’re in a war (sort of), and we need to decide the direction we’re going to go in that war. We have a gazillion dollar, boondoggle powder keg in Iraq. We have the industrial Midwest turning into a decayed husk. We have deteriorating infrastructure, inefficient health care, and skyrocketing costs of food, fuel, and education. There is no shortage of important things to talk about. The fact that we discuss religious preference, flippant comments that are the equivalents of verbal typos and flag pins instead of these just makes me frustrated, and saps my desire to continue to be involved in this process.

So from now on, I’m thinking I’m switching to the NBA when a Clinton ad shows up. Wake me up in July.