What If They Held an Election and No One Came?

Is it just me, or is there something repugnant about the unnervingly early start to the campaign for President of the United States? I remember Congressman Phil Crane announcing in July of 1971 that he would challenge President Nixon for the 1972 Republican nomination. Rep. Crane's announcement was seen as both clever and amazingly early. In those days, candidates still did not officially announce until the beginning of election year.

So what are we to make of this ridiculously early start? Remember that a little over one hundred years ago, it was still considered rather rude and inappropriate for a man (no women need apply) to actively seek the office. These were the days when one could still run a successful "front porch" campaign. Is it possible that the big money interests realized this time that the weakness of the Bush Presidency was leaving a dangerous vacuum in the political life of the country? Did they realize that the public had to be distracted from increasing globalization, from the impending (and now actual) fall of General Motors from world's largest to world's second largest car-maker? And from the fact that Toyota would not be the world's largest car company without those factories operating on U.S. soil? That they had to be distracted from more and more jobs being sent overseas, especially the good-paying jobs? That the wizard's tricks were being exposed by the little dog pulling back the curtain?

While I try not to disdain the Democratic candidates for President it is rather hard to take them too seriously this long before an election. It is a further difficulty to take them with equanimity in the face of a failed Presidential election in 2004, one marred by Republican dirty tricks of a high order, and lost by a man who claimed the misdeeds of 2000 would not be left unchallenged if repeated -- but were virtually ignored after all.

It is time to treat this Presidential campaign with benign neglect. To treat it as legitimate at this point in time is laughable. Let us allow these men and women (surely there is more than one woman?) all their rights to tramp about the country with little clue about what people truly need both now and eighteen months from now. Let us wish them well, but let us be wary. And most of all let us be wary of that vaunted lemon-fighter, Mr. Nader, for his unseemly egoistic, spoiling, windmill-tilting.

Let us be willing to listen respectfully if in bewilderment. And let us be willing to perceive keenly then act to preserve, as we must, our rights. Let this be done without violence and in a near time, remembering a well-worn but still-useful cliche: the pen is mightier than the sword.