As with any recipe the use of quality ingredients will have a direct result on your outcome. Start with half a dozen or so canned and homogenized candidates, making sure that each candidate is so full of themselves as to exude confidence. Then in a well-greased and corporately funded cable news network place the candidates in the media-mixing bowl.
It is important that the candidates are placed on the stage in order of corporate popularity. This makes it easier to focus the camera and the debate on the corporate approved candidates and as well to send a subliminal message that the candidates at the end of the rows are extreme or out of the mainstream or just plain unimportant.
Now we must focus our attention on preparing the audience, starting by using only an upscale prosperous white audience, pass out questionnaires and pour through a sieve. Condense and choose the questions to be asked by using only the questions the media would ask themselves anyway. Salt the audience with questioners to give the appearance of being at random.
Now with our candidates steeped and sautéed with corporate donations and arranged in the pan by order of corporate preference as we begin to stir the mix. It is critical that the stew never get far above room temperature, this is done by using hypothetical questions. “If you were President and Iran had a nuclear weapon and placed it on a rocket, what would you do?”
At this point the candidates will begin to bubble and bluster, those currently holding office will attempt to look Presidential while most of those out of office will become emotional and strident. But it was a trick question, “What if it were Osama Bin Laden?” You know we can’t cook anything in this country with out using a double heaping helping of pasteurized processed boogey man. Then in a scene reminiscent from the Lost in Space TV series the robot candidates go into Crush, Kill, Destroy mode.
Only the fringe candidates from the tin foil hat wing of the party call for the absurd notion of using law and the international courts. While the mainstream candidates of the peace party openly advocate more war however but only after prudent thought and quiet reflection first. At this point it should be mentioned if any of the candidates in your soufflé was married to a past President they should be quiet about it. Being married to a President or in the room when important decisions were made doesn’t make you look more Presidential. I was once at a Brave’s game and saw Hank Aaron hit a homerun that doesn’t mean I know anything about hitting.
Now with your candidates neatly arrayed in the pan discuss the issues of the day, the war in Iraq for instance. Which all who voted for while in Congress now assure us that if we only support them now they would get us out. Then the war on terror, then high gas prices and the crisis’s in Darfur. Careful now, Darfur is a flashpoint; it is easy to pontificate on an issue with no direct ties to the American public. The corporate chewy center maintains we must leverage China to solve the problem, what are we Denmark? We must ask our banker and lein holder to do our bidding for us?
Some even threaten that we should pull out of the Beijing Olympic games, sure why not? That worked so well for Jimmy Carter, and forgetting that the original purpose of the games was to foster peaceful competition and corporate advertising with product placement. Why I wouldn’t be surprised if Reebok, Coca Cola or Visa-MasterCard didn’t start their own uranium enrichment program over such talk.
An important reminder, as the candidates are full of themselves and hogwash it is critical that they not be left out in the light too long or shrinkage will occur. Eight Presidential candidates in a ninety-minute format to discuss the important issues of the day with the American public. Deducting the time for part time APAC employee Wolf Blitzer to introduce the random questioners and to add hyperbole to the hypothetical.
It works out to about seven minutes a candidate or about half the time you spend on a visit to Mc Donald’s and not forgetting that even God claims to have taken a week in creation and George Bush has had six years plus two to go to foul it up the time allotment seems sparse. But this is after all just fast food, with fries and a coke, all fat no meat just empty calories designed to amuse rather than inform.
But for all the sizzle and splatter they left behind they left most important ingredient out, the one ingredient that might have changed all this from sugar cookies to Christmas dinner. They jousted with spatulas and threw their verbal barbs and broccoli spears at apparitions of issues never once showing firmness of conviction or genuine concern for the American people. That’s the missing ingredient here, concern for the American people and by it’s obviousness to us on the outside and it’s unfathomability to those on the inside that promises us little meat in the stew.
Missing ingredients include, the death of the middle class, a realistic approach to the environment, an honest attempt to control illegal immigration. Falling home prices, genuine social security reform (not just screwing the middle class) Veterans affairs and the two million home foreclosures predicted this year. Mrs. Clinton all most burned herself on the stove eye when she said the P word (poor) but quickly recovered by adding in Africa. Obama tried to be cute with his one liner about the Yankee’s Red Sox game maybe Joe Torre could have asked questions about stem cells to rejuvenate the Yankee bats.
Joe Biden attempted to use emotion to inspire us as he used the same emotion when he helped George Bush to pass the draconian bankruptcy legislation last year. Governor Richardson used the fact the he was Governor of a state with the greatest problem of illegal immigration to thrust himself into the Presidency of a nation with the greatest problem of immigration. Kucinich tries using the same lines that failed to ignite the public’s interest last time around yet again. Mike Gravel from Alaska scores points by lambasting the other candidates until you hear his Libertarian Exxon Valdez policies of do nothing and everything will be all right
Hillary just tries too hard, she’s not stupid, she just tries so damn hard, she tries to score points on every line until you can’t take her seriously anymore. Obama with his aw shucks gee wiz Andy of Mayberry attitude is good but the star is John Edwards. Mr. Edwards is the crème du mint on the desert; charming, focused, good looking it’s easy to see how he became a multi millionaire trial lawyer. I bet he could have got Paris Hilton a pardon and a full apology. Edwards’s strength is his weakness, he comes off as plastic and phony, with strong statements of principle all with attached fine print he is the consummate lawyer and way too smart for our own good.
As with any recipe the use of quality ingredients will have a direct result on your outcome. Start with half a dozen or so canned and homogenized candidates, making sure that each candidate is so full of themselves as to exude confidence. Is it any wonder that it turned out gruel?
