A Campaign Too Far--Far, Far Too Far

It shudders the soul to think that two years from now we Americans will flagellate ourselves with another presidential election the length of the one now on. Or worse, discover that a year from now another presidential election has begun complete with candidates good, bad and ninnies rasping our nerves with campaign gabble and shenanigans for the 2012 balloting.

We have brought the masochistic delights of the present campaign upon ourselves by not having a national primary–one primary, let’s say for argument’s sake. on the Tuesday after Labor Day.

If the candidates want to start stumping the nation two years before that, let them. Who cares, until the one and only primary pends? Some fool pounding on the doors of TV stations and newspaper editors and filling the internet with elect-me piffle 24 months ahead of time will be lucky to draw audiences of winos by serving free lunches along with the election pitches
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Further, we won’t have the yawners we have now of candidates picking the scabs of each other’s past: Your minister ain’t polite or your husband ain’t nice about skin color, and nah-nah-nah and so forth.

Candidates know the pressies cursed to follow them around under the present system are bored witless by the campaign speech or speeches. After all, what new can the news wretches write to placate their bosses about a speech they’ve heard and reported a dozen times before? That’s why candidates, generally through henchmen and women, toss bits of meat to the reporters, meat ripped from an opponent’s hide: Anything to stay in the news.

A set primary in the election-year fall would not stop candidates from dropping flapping canards, but it would at least shorten the suffering of the rest of us, who have to listen and read and kick the snivels, cavils and whispers out of our way.

It might also spare us the ennui of the modern political conventions by making them more useless than they are now. That alone justifies a national primary.