I'll be honest -- I wasn't going to write about the Presidential campaign. No, I figured I had far too many trivial complaint columns still needing to be voiced: the lack of sandwiches at the Collis Cafe, the fascistic parking policy of the College, the inherent weirdness of Tai Chi ... well, you get the point.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the rant. I watched Sunday night's Presidential debate.
Oh dear.
I guess when push comes to shove (as it invariably does at 3 a.m. on Webster Avenue), I'm a liberal at heart. But I'm a pretty superficial one -- quite frankly, my political convictions are most likely only what they are because I was raised that way. When I give political issues serious contemplation, I find myself unable to espouse anything other than aphoristic banalities about "compassion" and "social responsibility" and whatever else I picked up in the latest issue of Newsweek, which is why, of course, I feel so at home writing for The D.
But this debate struck a nerve. Bob Dole is an idiot -- nay, he's an idiot raised to the power of a moron multiplied by a factor of putz. This characterization emerged most clearly when the nine hundred-year-old man began rambling about "holding a crack baby in your arms." Indeed. No doubt Bob Dole has held dozens of crack babies in his arms -- I've heard tell that after sucking down PAC money on the Senate floor for twelve hours, Bob Dole liked nothing more than to wind down by chatting it up with local crack addicts. Yes, that Bob Dole, he's a man of the people, through and through.
Senator Clueless addressed his closing remarks to "young people." "Just don't do it," he said, and I, for one, was overwhelmed by how tuned in he was to the youth of today. Forget the billions of dollars wasted on a hypocritical drug policy that legalizes an indisputable cause-of-cancer but makes illegal the dreaded substance marijuana (which has, in all fairness, been largely responsible for the marked increase in late-night pizza-orderings over the last twenty years), because Bob Dole's got it all figured out. Perhaps the Methuselah of politics could see the problem more clearly if his head wasn't lodged so firmly in his rectum, but that is neither here nor there. I will not vote for a man who uses crack babies he's never seen as a political prop.
That left Bill Clinton, the cherubic lothario who's steered national policy for the past four years. Backwater Billy likes to pepper his speeches with personal references -- that is, supposedly average American people he claims to have met in his cross-country travels, all of whose trials and tribulations apparently determine El Presidente's political decisions. You probably thought that those serpentine advisers who clog the White House like grout were responsible for influencing the National Sax Fiend, but that's just not true. You see, Bill Clinton cares. He cares so much he signed that draconian welfare bill -- it's tough love he's givin'.
The two Babbitts became almost heated in discussing economics, throwing contradictory statistics at each other like confetti -- as if any of this has any impact on anyone outside of university Economics departments. Even ostensibly professional economists have yet to agree on what's good for the economy; they can't even agree on a definition of "good." Either Bob Dole's massive tax cut will be a boon to the American pocketbook and allow us all to live in mansions and drive BMWs in a fat Utopian cashpool, or it will balloon the deficit to such an extent that the American economy will utterly collapse in a miasma of national penury, or neither of these outcomes will occur, or both -- who knows? Has the economy improved or worsened over the last four years? Depends on whom you ask. Statistics are too vulnerable to manipulation to be useful as argument. I refuse to be impressed by the patent generalization of an issue that is so obviously perspective-contingent.
I suppose I could vote for Ross Perot. I could also vote for Charles Manson, as long as I'm considering delusional wackos as candidates.
Mark Twain once noted that "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics." Well, we heard them all during Sunday night's Presidential bombast stream. I know, politicians have always been crooked liars; it's the nature of the beast, Machiavelli and so forth. And Thomas Jefferson did say something about the need to overthrow the government every generation or two.
So, anybody want to become an anarchist?
