Harry Potter and The Deadly Campaign

Is it just me or has the McCain vs. Obama campaign taken on the semblance of a confused battle of witchcraft and wizardry ala Harry Potter? "Spiritual Mentors" Hagee, Wright and Parsley may have acted more like the three witches of MacBeth, but throw in Rev. Jesse "I'd-like-to-cut-his-nuts-off" Jackson, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton into the brew and the campaign takes on a weird, almost fantasmagorical aura that leaves voters "bewitched, bothered and bewildered." These campaigns seem to have taken on lives of their own. Forget domestic policies. Forget rights. Forget abilities. Forget foreign policies. Forget the economy. We want to know about Obama's "true" religion. We want to know if McCain will be "raptured" after we declare war with Iran and all Palestinians. We want to know... Well, what DO we want to know? Are the campaigns giving us anything? We know they aren't giving us the whole truth. Neither of them. Obama's for "change" but he really hasn't detailed what kind of "change" it's going to be. McCain chants "experience" all over the place, but it waivers when asked "experience with what?"

The voters get to be mind-readers with this one. McCain's Straight Talk Express has landed him in some nice down-home heart-of-America places, but his record shows that he's sided with George W. Bush on most issues in the last 18 months. That's not straight talk - that's double talk. Obama has yet to clear his "liberation theology" past before talking about issues. McCain is concerned about Obama's foreign popularity (as evidenced in the latest ad - and the flack it's getting).


Instead of reading minds, however, we will have to look deep into the crystal ball of each candidate's past: political past, that is. McCain's should be easy since he has a voting record. He also has to answer some questions about being one of the Keating Five involved in a Savings & Loan scandal.

There's a lot to sift through without the media coming up every 20 minutes with some "new development." Maybe they should rate how heavily each item is relative to the campaign, but they can't do that because it's too subjective. Blah, Blah, Blah.

Let's just spirit ourselves to the voting booths now and get it over with. It doesn't look like it's going to get any better.