Pre- post-mortem
Nobody with even nominal pundit status can withhold comment on the upcoming U.S. elections. And it looks to me like a pre-post-mortem for the Bush candidacy is due.
The Republicans are already finger pointing and asking pointedly where, and how, they went wrong. I don’t think any of them have figured out that, given a choice between big government and bigger government, bigger government simply sounds jazzier to the electorate.
In other words, if Bush’s point is that his visions for the scope of government differ from Al Gore’s by only minute amounts, then Bush really isn’t offering anyone much of a choice. Gore has his health plan. Bush, presumably, has his. Gore, an education plan. Bush, ditto. Gore, Social Security schemes. Bush, also.
Nobody seems to have a plan to get big brother out of my face, though. And this is the reason that most of my pals in the states are going to be tending their Coronas at happy hour on election day instead of making the trek to the polls. And these guys would have formerly been considered a mainstay element of the GOP.
Bush failed to strike a qualitative difference between his ideas and Gore’s. Playing the ever-so- slight quantitative differences game isn’t working. I suppose it’s the result of forming policy based on focus groups, surveys, and polls. But manufacturing statistically oriented plans for popularity was doomed to fail, given that Al Gore can easily whip anyone’s butt on that count. Bush is downright, well, bush league by comparison.
The issue, of course, has serious implications for the business climate here in the Commonwealth. The course of the CNMI’s now shaky relations with Uncle Sam will partially be determined by who the head honcho is in the White House. And it looks like the honcho is going to be Gore, who simply has to strike the word “Vice” from his letter head and restock the cigar stash in the oval office.
Don’t tell me that the GOP can’t totally blow an election. Remember, these are the same guys who offered up crypto-Nazi Bob Dole as a candidate. I’d sooner support a Cheech and Chong (remember them? The most famous party animals of the 1970’s) ticket than anything with Dole on it, and, more to the point since I never vote, most of my pals feel the same way.
If the U.S. GOP continues on its current path, the only ones left under its tent will be polyester wearing fundamentalist nut cases who live in southern trailer parks. The Democrats will have claimed every special interest group under the sun.
Meanwhile, the normal folks–the people who just want to be left alone to tend their own lives–will find themselves entirely marginalized. It’s happening before our very eyes.
