The Democratic National convention kicked off with flurry of lights and celebrity speeches last night at the Pepsi Center in Denver. It reminded me of a scaled down version of the Olympic opening ceremonies with the vast crowd waving mass produced signs and chanting in unison.
[spoiler alert] I’ve seen this movie before. Candidates will make bold promises and break them later. And muckraking campaign aides will expose the secret transgressions of their enemies. If the campaign is particularly close down to the wire, the candidates will throw feces at each other in a live debate and then embrace in a stilted compulsory hug afterward.
Promises made. Promises broken. Why do politicians chronically set unrealistic expectations. Think about it. Can they really fix the complex problems we face? The inconvenient truth is that they cannot fix global warming because that would require consensus by all nations. Nor can they promise peace. When they stifle a war in one place another conflict pops up somewhere else. It’s like playing a game of whack-o-mole at the carnival except that governments use bunker busting bombs instead of a mallet. Can Obama or McCain truly promise us a single day of worldwide peace?
They cannot solve the health care crises. Humans have a built in desire to live forever. The medical cost required to squeeze the last second out of our degenerating bodies will continue to rise exponentially until and unless scientist can explain why we age and reverse it. Sorry candidates. You cannot stop the aging process (though I concede that McCain appears to be cheating it somehow).
Does anybody really think that politicians can permanently fix the economy? Are you kidding. Inadequate oversight and wanton government spending got us in this pickle in the first place. Of course, we can expect to hear both McCain and Obama vow to shake up Washington and abolish log rolling and wasteful spending. Promises. Promises.
I wish I could “opt-out” of political campaigns.
I wish that there was a national registry where I could “opt out” of the political campaign. I hung up on Hillary when she called me during the primaries begging for money to keep up her good fight. I called McCain headquarters (twice) already and told them to stop sending me unsolicited campaign mail.
Wouldn’t it be great if each candidate was constrained to a single website with say 20 MB of data storage? There they could crisply describe their grandiose plans to fix war, poverty and health issues. And I could visit their sites when and if I choose to listen. Throw in two national debates at a time slot that doesn’t interfere with my regular TV viewing and you’ve got an efficient campaign framework that doesn’t disrupt my life.
If I sound jaded it is because I’ve got twelve presidential cycles now under my belt. After about 8 or 10 of those cycles, this game gives you a headache. Maybe if I just stop listening to the promises made, then my heart won’t be broken later.
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footnotes:
- There’s a few PM Lessons buried in this post. Find them. Discuss.
- I want to personally thank the makers of Tivo for giving me alternative programming choices over the coming months.
