[Grovenet] Who Stands Behind the Wizard's Curtain?

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

I see in the news that Senator Clinton has forgone public funds for her
campaign so she doesn't have to live with the campaign funding limits. The
report says she intends to raise $75,000,000 in 2007 alone! 

Senator McCain has also said he'd forego public funds for either the primary
or the general election so he can raise whatever he can to match his
opponent. 

The next President may be a great statesman (or stateswoman), or not. Money
doesn't care about that. Money is useful for building a fantasy, an image,
that gives the illusion that one candidate is talented and qualified and
that the opponent is dangerous and incompetent. 

Like all fantasies, it has little to do with reality and even less to do
with who is the most qualified candidate for the office.

I don't blame the candidates. They want to win the election. We voters have
set the rules by which they must play. The die-hard party faithful don't
matter. They'll vote their party line regardless. It's the rest of us who
choose the President. But it's those party die-hards who set the stage with
the huge fund raisers to provide the capital their party's candidate can use
to spin the fantasy and create the illusion we are told is reality.

Sot it begins: a fantasy campaign about fantasy candidates and fantasy
issues promoted in the best Madison Avenue methodology. Don't belittle the
power of advertising to make people do the irrational and unreasonable. It's
perhaps a surer way to sway an election than trying to rig the vote. All it
takes is enough money.

At this point in each campaign I, and others who feel as I do, sometimes
wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just join one party or the other and vote
the "ticket". Why try to peer through the smoke of disinformation and
half-truths to see who is standing behind the wizard's curtain? It'd be so
much easier, so much clearer, not to care about anything but my chosen team
"winning" on election day.

All we have to do is agree to vote the ticket. Let the big money behind the
party have our votes to do with as they will, choosing and promoting their
candidates, while we live in blissful, hopeful faith that all will be well
in the end. That, somehow, we will find ourselves better off than before. 

It's tempting. But I can't. We can't. As citizens we inherited a solemn
responsibility to vote our conscience. We can't give away that
responsibility or our conscience, much less sell it for a comforting
fantasy. 

Ron D'Eau Claire