Where's my Candidate?

Today is voting day – not the big November voting day, but the other voting day – the primary. I am sick to death of the campaign signs and posters littering the landscape, weary of finding the brochures taped to my front door, stuck beneath my windshield wipers or in my mailbox, and tired of screening my phone calls only to have an automated voice leave me a message on my answering machine begging me to vote for so-in-so.

The signage is an eyesore and a traffic hazard. Every street, commercial or residential, is lined with printed campaign promises, some of the signs as large as a compact car. Republicans and Democrats jockeying for the most prominent position on the roadway; the subtleties of their language breaking down. I fully expect to see, “Don’t vote for the other guy – he’s a bastard,” written in red, white and blue.

Then there are the brochures or pamphlets. They litter my lawn and invade my house via the U.S. Postal Service. The slick faces of politicians and their families beaming up at me between the gas bill and my Oprah Magazine; each piece of paper informing me of their strong character and moral values. As if anyone believes that crap anymore. Perhaps a more effective campaign slogan would read, “Vote for me and I promise to be discrete when I commit adultery with my nineteen year old intern.”

By far the most annoying of the barrage of politicking is the automated phone call. Even if I remember to check the caller I.D. a voice comes through on my machine. The good-old-boy voice telling me I want a conservative Republican (isn’t that a redundancy?) in Washington. How dare these politicians presume to tell me what I want? Shouldn’t they at least ask me first? The catch-words for this election are: “pro-everything” (life, family, church, public schools, home schools), “transparency” (if I hear that word once more I may stab my eardrums with an ice-pick), “positive change” (as opposed to negative change?), honesty (sure), integrity (okay), and my personal favorite, “common-sense-conservative Republican” (oh, dear God).

I especially enjoy the ads which list each and every contributor to a candidate’s campaign. Do they seriously think we real all 1,242 names and say to ourselves, “Oh, if Horace Peabody and Jackson Gulch gave him money then I must vote for him.” That’s called peer-pressure, you idiots. Remember telling your teenagers not to succumb to peer-pressure? And can someone please tell me what an “A” rating from the NRA means? Never mind, I really don’t want to know.

I have yet to see the candidate who speaks to me. I want a candidate who says, “I’ll try to be nice and do the right thing for all people, everywhere,” Even though there is no such person in the running I will go vote today, eager to get all this political hullabaloo and brouhaha behind me. Oh, wait – it continues until November, by which time I will be buried under an avalanche of slick brochures trying desperately to ignore phone calls from common-sense-conservative Republicans telling me what I want.