Tomorrow evening it will all be over. The elections that is, and
over if the election officials of Broward and Miami-Dade Counties
in Florida can get their newfangled, hi-tech voting machines to
work properly and the reading-challenged voters of those precincts
don’t press the screen for Jeb Bush when they mean to vote for Al
Gore or whomever the Democrats are running this year.
Last week the frequency of radio and television ads nearly
crowded out all other messages. By tomorrow, we will have blessed
relief from their claims and cross-claims and be back to the normal
fare of acid reflux remedies, look-alike cars from various
manufacturers speeding across the salt flats, and Di-Tech mortgage
commercials.
Having been involved in and watched election campaigns for
several decades now, I see some patterns as immutable as the tides.
Among them:
• After tomorrow night a lot of candidates will Get to
Spend More Time with Their Families. This, after all, is the
oft-stated wish of political losers.
• No new real issues surface during the final week of a
campaign. The candidates try to repackage their earlier charges
about their opponents to make them seem fresh. They never are.
• A late and unexpected turn of events can affect the
results. No one could have predicted that following the untimely
death of Senator Paul Wellstone the Democrats would stage a
full-scale political rally when a memorial service had been
scheduled. The backlash in Minnesota cut Walter Mondale’s
several-point lead to a statistical tie with Norm Coleman, the
Republican.
• Candidates will try almost anything to rouse their core
voters and get media attention the final week. Consider the case of
Shannon O’Brien, the Democrats’ candidate for governor of
Massachusetts. In their final debate, Republican Mitt Romney said
some of her statements had been “unbecoming” (my dictionary says,
“unsuitable; improper”). He meant “rude.” She seized on this as
“sexist,” asserting afterward that he would not have used the word
had he been referring to a man. Apparently, she’s never heard the
military phrase, “Conduct unbecoming an officer …” Teapots have
had bigger tempests.
• Candidates shun the first-person singular, always
referring to themselves as “we,” as in “In the last week we have
closed the gap and are within striking distant of our
opponent.”
• The candidate who is ahead in a poll quietly sighs in
relief; the one who is behind issues a press release asserting that
polls don’t mean anything, and even if they did this one was
flawed.
• Candidates are fond of the unconditional conditional.
Example: Q. Do you think your opponent should support your
party’s plan for prescription drug benefits for seniors? A.
I would hope so. We are never told when or under what
circumstances he or she would hope.
• There is a certain rigid verbal protocol to campaign ad
messages. Farms are always “family” farms. Dad, Mom and the kids
all share the chores. All businesses are “small” — except the evil
ones from which Republicans take contributions (Democrats do, too,
but manage to never let on that they do). Seniors are always
“deserving” of whatever it is the candidate is proposing to give
them.
• Campaign events have a protocol, too. Candidates are
always “delighted” to be wherever they are while privately wishing
they were home, shoes kicked off and a whiskey-and-water in hand.
The person presiding at the event is always “My good friend …”
when the candidate scarcely knows him or her.
• Candidate finance committees go into overdrive during
the final 10 days of a campaign. They assure you that without a
contribution from you (or another one, if you’ve already given),
the opponent will surely win, thus hastening the demise of
civilization as we know it.
• Reporters live in the Land of Could and endlessly ponder
what could happen if this or that election upset were to occur (few
do). They loves gaffes (“gaffe” is a French noun meaning “a
blunder, howler”) to break the tedium of hearing the candidate they
are covering give the same “stump” speech eight or 10 times a day.
Occasionally, a candidate will say something truly stupid, usually
in answer to a news conference question or a voter’s question in a
“town meeting.” Town meetings, by the way, are carefully staged so
that only the candidate’s supporters get tickets.
• Democrats pray for sunshine on election day (and like
the idea of registering people at the polls); Republicans pray for
rain (and think you ought to go to the county court house several
weeks in advance to register).
• Think tank pundits, pollsters and television talking
heads hope you will forget all their incorrect projections and
predictions (you will).
So, tomorrow, pray for rain. In the evening, curl up by the
television with, say, a dry martini to sip while watching the
television talkers affect surprise, authority, resignation as the
results dribble in.
