Distant Sound of Thunder

By Al Horn

With the Presidential elections still seven and a half months away, we are hearing all the noise of a far off storm. A squall that will surely have us covering our ears days, if not weeks before it actually hits. We will weather the coming storm but at what cost?

Both candidates have shown early that this will be no gentlemen's contest. The mud has already begun to sling back and forth. Honestly, that part doesn't really bother me. I'm sure that neither one of them will be offered sainthood any time soon. It's they way the mud is being tossed around and who is doing the throwing that does bother me.

As they continue to attack each other's past, very little is being said about the future. Granted they both tell us they will make the future brighter, with all of our help, but they don't designate a clear path. As such, the only thing they can be judged on is their past and present actions.

Forget the past, I say. Bush has made decisions based on his advisors not on any prior experience. Kerry will do the same. Both candidates are part of political machines that control them more than they care to admit. Their previous leadership roles will serve them fine in dealing with issues in general and in how they interact with other world leaders. Even there, the political machines will help to guide them. They will be choreographed for the worlds viewing pleasure. The only thing that will get one of them into trouble is opening their mouth and letting the wrong thing pop out while on display.

That is what brings us to the present. Both political machines have a slew of Simon Cowells sitting on the sidelines to grade the latest comment that comes from the opposing candidate's public comments. This race will probably not be decided by records but by the hired guns on the side.

Both parties have set up radio and to some extent television personalities that support their agenda. These people will be looking for anything being said that can be twisted and put the candidate into a bad light while blowing anything positive by their own candidate out of proportion to it's actual significance. People will discount what the guy in the next cubicle has to say if it disagrees with a celebrity who dashed his own comments onto the airways just moments before. Any verbal misstep by either candidate will produce a strike of lightning equal to ten times the magnitude of the real damage. Many will be blinded by the afterglow and will suffer from a temporary loss of their ability to hear reason.

This election will not be decided by brains or brawn or even by the power of the pen. It will be won or lost by the mouth able to shout the other party down. Keep the migraine medicine handy.