Why is Politics So Quiet

You’re right. This political campaign has been quiet, even sedate.

Republicans are taking comfort in that. They jump on every poll which hints people don’t hate them.

But the reality is quite different. (Buy the Exploding Penguin here.)

The reality is we have something approaching a consensus. We’re so accustomed to narrow divisions we don’t see a consensus when it’s in front of us.

The consensus is that our present course is a disaster.

Howard Dean has said that Katrina ended the Presidency of George W. Bush. It exposed him as a fraud. He is absolutely right.

This doesn’t mean Republicans stopped being Republicans or Democrats stopped being Democrats. We’re just agreed that the present direction of world events is unsustainable.

This is the real reason why it sometimes seems that Republicans have lost their marbles. They go down the road they’ve been traveling for decades, and the road doesn’t lead anywhere, so they look for another, more extreme road to walk down. Make all taxes sales taxes. Put up a fence to stop immigration. Nuke Iran. These are ideas which, at a sober time, are simply raving lunacy. Yet they are being purposely proposed by the Party in Power, because otherwise they got nothing (except alliteration).

Democrats and independents, meanwhile, have to fight to find something to disagree about. Mainly it’s inside baseball stuff. What role should corporations or political pros play? Who cares? Fact is we agree on the big issues — Bush is an ass, Iraq is a quagmire, global warming is real, the economy needs to lift all boats and not just Paris Hilton’s.

It’s like the Monty Python Election Special sketch — the Silly Party vs. the Sensible Party. Only in the sketch the silly party won. (Hence the penguin.)

The mystery to me, driving around Georgia, is why I still see so many Bush-Cheney stickers. While complaints about these things were made a year ago, and answered with the fact there were still a bunch of Kerry stickers around, the Kerry stickers are now all gone.

The Bush stickers remain. Usually on big pick-ups and SUVs.

Why would people do that? I think most are leaving a marker. They’re going over the falls and want to go further. Christians with Bush stickers really think the Rapture is upon us. There are loonies who really believe in "the fair tax," who call estate levies "the death tax," and who want to drown government in a bathtub. (We did — it’s called Lake Pontchartrain.) If there are still Communists around, why can’t we have Republicans, too?

But even these people don’t really think things are fine, or that the country is really headed in a direction that will lead to anything good for the vast majority of people. They’re just in that great Egyptian river, Denial.

If this is an honest election, it will be the biggest blow-out in political history. But this may not be an honest election. Bush seems intent on bringing the temple down on his head. And we’re stuck in it with him.

So what is there to talk about, to argue about?

All we can do is hold our collective breath.