holoblomo day 8: no way

note: “holoblomo” stands for Horribly Local Blogging Month, my response to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) that happens every November. The NaNoWriMo challenge asks writers to compose 50,000 words in a month; I chose 10,000 as my goal. Enjoy.

So here we are.

And I’m not gonna make it. I’m not talking about my HoLoBloMo challenge. I’m talking about not being able to make it through the next twelve months. It’s exactly 364 days (including Leap Day) until the 2012 presidential election, and I tell you now, I’m not gonna make it. 

I’m spent. I can’t take all the noise anymore, and I’m only passively following it all at best. Every damn day for at least the last 14 months, it’s all we’ve been hearing about, and now there’s yet another year of ridiculousness ahead of us. Debate after pointless debate... and since when do we have so many debates so long before the first primaries? Since when does it make sense to start talking about 2012 mere moments after Election Day 2008? (It happened. You know it did. Can’t we ever just live in the now?)

It makes me long for the days I wasn’t even alive for, when candidates came out of those smoke-filled rooms at the conventions. That is saying something, when one is nostalgic for party bosses and puppet regimes. But at least there wasn’t this kind of cacophony in 1920.

I propose a law: that there should be no campaigning of any kind until exactly one year before Election Day, for any and every political race. Candidates must stay totally mum before then. They can do whatever they have to do to build their teams and war chests ahead of time, but they have to do it “silently” (meaning without any press releases or coverage). Then they all announce their intentions on the same day, in a big prime time special... you know, like when they announce who’s on Dancing With The Stars. And no one else can enter the field after that. 

It would reduce fatigue for everyone, politicians and constituents alike, no matter what their party affiliation. It would condense the entire process and force the candidates to use their time, money, and words wisely. Concentrated campaigns could become more exciting, perhaps even drawing more people to the polls. A single year is plenty of time to shake out all of the skeletons and scandals... and it’s certainly more than enough time to get to know the players’ true personalities before you start to hate the sight of all of them.  It would also allow any candidates who may already be holding office to actually do those elected jobs for a longer period of time before they go out on the trail and leave their assistants in charge. 

I know, I know... whatever will the 24-hour news networks have to talk about during those odd years where there are no Congressional or Presidential elections? 

Hmmm... the rest of the world, maybe? Or puppies. 

And that’s 3304 words.

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.