A friend mentioned to me the other day, in complete disgust, how angry he was that there were no good candidates for the Presidency this year. Without thinking, I certified his argument by asking, "Yeah, and when was the last time any GOOD candidates ran for office?" Well, after a few minutes of base animalistic howling and clawing about the American political process, the two of us had screwed up enough confidence to think we could run the country better than those clowns in Washington.
This happens every time.
Like a rare flower that blooms once every four years. This year's pistil is once again ready to jam itself into the unsuspecting stamen of the American public. And as is the way of nature we bitch about the candidates and what they say and don't say. We moan over the abortion issue again and then typically let it fall by the way side just months later. We bicker about military costs, and keeping America strong, and making sure those evil foreign nations out there can't invade us and take away our MTV. And then after all the complaining is over with and all our opinions are exhausted we wait for Election Day so we can NOT vote because it really doesn't matter what WE think anyway.
Now this isn't a "get out there and vote, dammit" article. This isn't even a political statement, really. I prefer to get to the point of the matter. Which is exactly what my disgusted friend pointed out earlier. Where have all the good candidates gone?
Well, this is a difficult question to answer. Clearly the men still running for office think they are good candidates. And I'm sure a few of the sheep following all of them agree with their political messiah. But have you ever wondered why some people DON'T run? People like the Dali Llama or Ghandi.
Well, Mr. Llama obviously can't run since he isn't American. And Ghandi. Well, Ghandi is dead. I don't think even the Reform party could get a dead man to run. Well… maybe. But this is my point. There ARE no good candidates. And the few and far between men and women who actually could do a good job are either too busy fighting their own personal causes to run or pushing up daisies. Right? Well…
I have to admit. I've racked my brain about whom I think would make a good president. After about 30 minutes of deliberation I could only come up with one name.
Harrison Ford.
This disturbs me. We live in a country of almost 300 million. That's a lot of people. Simply by the law of averages we should be able to find at least TWO people who could decently duke it out for sovereign warlord of America. But isn't it troubling to know that the last president we actually liked was also an actor? Now, America has never been big on tactile education. We are more like a huge guild of artists than a nation of hard educated individuals. Math scores are invariably low but we can draw that stupid little turtle on the National Art College application almost by memory.
I think that's where our problem lies. Men and women who run for president are not like us. They are the hard educated, stoic people who knew the Dean by first name in college. They weren't the beer guzzling bong monsters in Delta House. Well, not all of them anyway. And to think about that, the beer guzzlers get elected more often than the staunch aristocrats. In short, there are no good candidates because we can't readily identify with any of them.
Think about it. Why did we elect Bill Clinton? Was it about his stance on tax reform or the subsidization of Midwestern agricultural organizations? No. It was because he played the saxophone. Another example is Jesse Ventura. The guy was a grunt in the military. He was a wrestler who appealed to, dare I say it, lower America. These are candidates we like. On the other side of that coin however, these are also candidates who don't do very well once elected. So eventually we don't like them anymore because they screwed up the country.
But who really did the screwing here? Bottom line is we need to look at the candidates with a different set of eyes. We cannot expect candidates to be like us. That camaraderie is nice but the president isn't a bowling buddy. He is a national figure and spokesman. He needs to not be like us. He needs to be bigger than us. Better than us. And that is why we don't like the people who run for president. Because they ARE better. It antagonizes us and we strike out at them. Literally biting the hand that wants to feed us.
Sure, Harrison Ford would make a good president. Kevin Cline made a decent one in the movie, DAVE also. But those are movies. In real life we can't say, "cut" and re-direct the president to do the scene over. Nor can we simply recast the role if the audience reactions are less than positive. We can however bitch at the screen, just like in the movies.
And that was what my friend was really doing. He was yelling at the political screen. Calling the actors idiots. Silly me, I thought he was making a political point.
So when you're looking at the candidates this year. Do something different this Election Day. Vote for the guy you like the least. The odds are he'll be the one to save the country.
Of course if he doesn’t, don't blame me.
I voted for the other guy.
-Hy