Column for May 8, 2008

I am so glad now that the primary election is finally over

The primary election has finally come and gone here in North Carolina and I, for one, am glad it is over. I do believe that this has been one of the most vacuous elections, totally devoid of any substance, that I can remember. The first election that I can remember as a youngster was Gerald Ford versus Jimmy Carter in 1976. I was all of eight years old and it was the first time I started to pay attention to any election. At that time, I remember simply thinking that Carter should be elected because Ford already had a turn at the helm. Though that is not the case in this election, since George W. Bush will be leaving office because of a term limitation, it might as well be the same mindset that elects the next President.

All week long, my telephone has been ringing with recorded messages for and by political figures. I got a call from North Carolina Governor, Michael Easley on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign. When getting a call on behalf of Hillary Clinton, I figured that the caller ID would show a number of (666)666-6666. I was surprised to find that the caller ID actually showed a South Carolina phone number. I also got calls from Leo Daughtry, from political pollsters, and some for the campaigns of candidates running for state senate, the Barack Hussein Obama campaign, and who knows who else. My answering machine has a cute female default voice with a generic message, so I hope that their machines had fun talking to my machine.

Since I work for a large media company, I have been able to hear some of our sales scuttlebutt. Normally, we do very little primary election advertising revenue. This year, we have a ton of such ad revenue. I have seen more newspaper, heard more radio, and seen more television ads for Governor, President, State Senator, Lt. Governor, and County Commissioner than I have ever heard, read, or seen in a while.

The crux of most ads have little to do with actual issues. The issues that are stated usually have zero Constitutional relevance or practicality. The promise of suspending the federal gas tax and funding this proposed tax cut by absconding profits from oil companies is one issue that I have heard on some ads. Wow. Does the promise to steal money to cut taxes really appeal to people? Keep in mind that if it is fine for government to steal from a company, it is also fine for them to steal from ordinary citizens, since a corporation is an artificial entity.

I have heard more negative ads this campaign season than I have heard in a long time. There were plenty of accusations about support of amnesty for illegal immigrants by one candidate and a direct response by the other. Many of the non "mud slinging" ads I have heard were rather generic, were pandering to particular classes of people, and totally vacuous.

What has been rather frustrating for me is that I wanted more information on some of the judicial, state, and county office candidates. I looked to some of the usual media outlets for candidate information. I was familiar with these outlets, having participated in and cooperated with them in the past myself. I found very little in the way of candidate information, especially about the issues. I do believe that I have been more frustrated in this election cycle than in any other in terms of searching for candidate information. I even went to the few web sites I could find for some of the candidates. Even those web sites published by the candidates themselves were lacking in content as to what the candidates stood for and why I should vote for them.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am an issues oriented guy. I do not rely on what party someone belongs to for a measuring stick, though it does tell me to which ideology someone subscribes. I could not care less what the color is of someone's skin or whether the person was born with XX or XY chromosomes. I do care about the character of the individual, the world view of the person, and the stances on the issues. It does not matter to me that Barack Hussein Obama is Black or that Hillary Clinton is a woman. It is their views on the issues that I find repugnant. It is his perspectives on the issues that repel me from voting for John McCain. It is his views on the issues that will cause me to vote against Bob Etheridge. Unfortunately, I could not find the views of some of our candidates and what they believe are the issues at hand.

For these reasons, I do believe that I have been the most unenthusiastic, the most resigned to mediocrity, and the most exasperated that I have been for any major election for which I have had the capacity for remembrance.

One thing I believe for a certainty is that the American public deserves a break when it comes to the exercise of a presidential primary election. We ought not stretch this process out any longer than we already do. This is the first time a North Carolina vote has had any real bearing on a Presidential election in a very long time. However, I would have much rather seen our election happen back on "Super Tuesday", along with the rest of the nation's states, all on the same day. If we can all manage to vote on one day in November, why can we not all manage to vote on one day in this primary process? It would spare us all the seemingly incessant, vacuous pablum with which we have been bombarded.