A Tedious and Disappointing Sideshow

Little wonder my American friends confide that they're sick and tired of the burlesque of the Democratic Party presidential primaries. This is a far cry from how they felt a mere several months back. When the candidates appeared fresh and original and promising.

Now the excess of outdoing one another for poll advantage has settled over the electorate like an unpleasant-smelling big black bird, leaving excrement over their hopes for the future.

People felt so elevated, so electrified by the possibilities; at long last it seemed possible that a woman or a black man would be acceptable to the great American public to lead the country. Their credentials appeared impeccable, their determination to succeed obvious, their abilities to enthuse the electorate palpable.

But when no clear front-runner emerged convincingly enough to guarantee an end to the terse bickering that gradually evolved, second thoughts began to blight the procedure. Not that the candidates themselves didn't keep stepping in cow-pies they should have been professional enough, intelligent enough, scrupulous enough to avoid.

But it seems that when things get down to the wire and the contestants, once amenable colleagues, embrace antagonism as a tool to surmount their difficulties, they simultaneously leave their cerebrums high up on a shelf somewhere to be retrieved at a later date.

They turn, mind-numbingly, to their advisers, their highly partisan, self-serving political tacticians who know all the little tricks of the trade. And who advise their candidates, knowingly, to leave the person they are in a nice safe resting place.

And to haul out instead, the changeable persona of the candidate for all seasons and all reasons, suitable to whatever constituents they happen to be facing at any particular time.
So speech after speech in smoke-stack-destroyed states with depressed unemployed are promised that things will be different when they're in a position to make the big decisions.

To begin with, the North American Free Trade deal would be scrapped or re-positioned. Unions love that and the unemployed feel vindicated. No mention made that so much of the world's manufacturing has chosen to re-locate. Bring the jobs back from China where they've been outsourced.

But that's not quite as immediate as the NAFTA solution. Meanwhile, if energy costs and steeply rising costs of raw materials impacting in production costs keep spiralling, it may well be that some of those manufacturing jobs will see no great benefit in remaining in China.

Hillary Clinton is so hard pushed by Barak Obama's popular appeal that she has taken to outdoing herself as a teller of tall tales to reflect on her past experiences at the highest levels of governance - at a remove. Having, ultimately to admit that what she related "didn't jibe with ... what I knew to be the truth."

Embellishing experiences doesn't bode well for sober-minded decision-making at critical times.
Still, that's hardly comparable to Mr. Obama's foreign policy adviser Samantha Power's description of Mrs. Clinton as a "monster".

Nor does his ongoing relationship and cleaving to the former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ cast a warm glow on his own decision making. Nor the company he chose to keep among former members of the Weather Underground, among other unsavoury characters.

No matter who ultimately wins the very tired nomination for the Democrats, they've each given their Republican adversary John McCain, ample ammunition with which to question their likely ability to lead a nation.

Pity, that.