Quarreling Candidates and Surrogates Leave Wonder About Solutions

Stage Set for 2012 Showdown Between Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton?

September 4, 2008
By: Dave Rogers

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin definitely is a new political star, as she proved Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention.

She attacked the media with a self-described "pit bull" approach and showed a knowledge and keen interest in the nation's energy problems.

The media already is launching a counter-attack, with reports that waves of salivating reporters and photographers from the National Enquirer taking off from airports bound for Alaska.

Scandals are lurking in them thar wilderness areas and the infuriated Sherlock Holmeses will seek them out behind the igloos and splash them indiscriminately across the world whether or not they are entirely true.

What this pending Wild West shootout means to us, the ordinary voter trying to decipher this puzzling and interminable election race, is . . . more puzzles and more uncertainty.

We may never know before it's time to vote whether the Republicans or the Democrats have a cohesive plan that will win bipartisan support to save the nation from further economic disaster.

Every political pundit on the circuit is predicting a veto-overriding Senate with up to 60 Democrats, (although Mrs. Palin may be the tiebreaker), and a huge Democratic majority in the House.

That means four, or eight, years of gridlock on problems like health care, the deficit, the wars and international security, the industrial base, jobs, etc., etc.

The Republican speakers, especially Mitt Romney and Rudy Guiliani, threw sarcastic barbs like hot acid on the rollicking crowd that licked it up, disregarding the corrosive effects.

This is a country that needs to come together, not to be driven further apart. A likely McCain-Palin administration will be almost totally powerless unless they enlist Democrats to help them solve OUR PROBLEMS!

The positive campaign that McCain promised degenerated into a hissy fit convention and a cacophony of carping about their opponents.

Unfortunately, Obama and Biden have been drawn into the cat fight far too often.

The GOP declaration to "Shake up Washington" sounds like the promo for a McCain-Palin tag team on World Championship Wrestling rather that a statesmanlike approach to national governance.

Let's see what their tone is during the debates and in the last eight weeks of this marathon mudslinging. We can only hope that somehow we, the voters, can find out which party, which candidates, will pull the nation together and address the issues sensibly.

For young articulate Mrs. Palin, poking the media beehive may not have been the wisest strategy. As a wise politician once said: "Never get into a contest with people who buy ink by the barrel and paper by the ton." Or, who control the vast crackling universe of television airwaves, Internet blogosphere and other electronic communications of the nation.

Right wing radio, that controls about 90 percent of the nation's airwaves, will contribute to the senseless and mainly baseless kindergarten squabbling that passes for political debate in this country.

A "SaraCudda" in the White House is a distinct possibility in the next decade, either after four or eight years, or perhaps sooner in case of a health emergency of McCain's were it to occur. Hillary Clinton will no doubt be poised to challenge that in 2012 or 2016.

Polls already are pitting Palin and Hillary, first cut showing Clinton with a 52-41 percent lead. Also, serious money in Vegas has Palin withdrawing or being scratched from the ticket. Somebody must know something we don't on both scores.

So, unless the Alaska barracuda and her running mate, the feisty war hero Mr. McCain, become teddy bears with seriously positive goals and "come let us reason together" philosophies, we, the public, will continue to be spectators at an ongoing political pie throwing contest.

And, if that happens, the nation will slide deeper down the drain.###