Alvy Singer: It’s mental masturbation!
Annie Hall: And you would know all about THAT, wouldn’t you?
Alvy Singer: Hey, don’t knock masturbation! It’s sex with someone I love.
- from Annie Hall
While millions of Americas will be watching tonight’s Presidential debate, I plan on avoiding it like a social disease. If I could be certain that it was an actual honest exchange of and discussion about issues it might be a different story. When the news stories are about Romney’s staff preparing “zingers” that the candidate has been practicing since August, it’s really just bad political theather. Two hours of verbal vomit. Two hours spent waiting to see if Mitt Romney says something phenomenally stupid, insensitive, dismissive, or dishonest. Two hours spent wondering if the President will respond to Romney’s elastic grip on facts and the truth, or whether he’ll let Mitt dig his own grave with his tongue. Two hours of my life I’d never get back. Why would any sane, rational person willingly subject themselves to that?
While potentially of some middling entertainment value, I can think of at least a thousand and one things I’d rather be doing…and so I’ll undoubtedly pick one of them, though “getting a tattoo of Tom Brady on my left butt cheek” will probably have to wait for another time. Besides, I’m partisan and self-aware enough to know that I’d be watching the debate hoping for Romney to say something stupid and/or dismissive of those less fortunate. I doubt I’ve have to wait long, but I’m not certain what the point would be. No, I’ll undoubtedly catch one of the myriad sources of breathless analysis to catch up on the rhetorical body count. That way, I can get the highlights (or lowlights) and save myself both time and aggravation.
There was a time when Presidential debates actually mattered. Now they’re so carefully packaged, negotiated, and manipulated by campaigns for their own benefit that the whole process has become an exercise in minimizing the odds a candidate will say something stupid. It’s not about discussing policy, comparing and contrasting where each candidate stands. It’s about spin and sound bites and damage control and…pretty much everything except what matters.
Mitt Romney, the man whose campaign has made it clear they won’t be governed by fact-checkers, has said that he will use the debate to “fact-check” the President. The Obama campaign has been blessedly silent about their plans, which leads me to believe their strategy will be to allow Romney to hoist himself on his own petard. Whatever happens, there’ll be more than enough instant analysis, spin, and self-certain consternation filling the airwaves and the Internet. My absence from that gangbang will cause nary a ripple…and I kinda like it that way. Do we really need another blogger and self-appointed political expert tossing his opinions into the mix? If a tree falls in the forest and doesn’t get any page views, does it even make a sound??
I’m counting the days until November 7th (35, including today), when I can awake on that blessed Wednesday morning to a world absent of conjecture about the 2012 Presidential campaign. Four years ago, I was at a victory party at the Johnson Space Center in Houston that was sponsored by the Harris County Democratic Party. This year, I just want it to be over and done.
Then again, I just saw a story on a network news programs about how the 2016 campaign has already begun…and I found myself fighting the urge to play Frogger on I-205. It never ends, does it??
If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the bathtub with a revolver and a bottle of Wild Turkey….
