Why We Don't Cover the Presidential Campaign

American Digest articulates my aversion to “events” on the campaign trail. Not having a television makes it that much easier to ignore what’s going on.

In any case, we won’t be saying much about the American presidential race until a month or so before the election.

Here are Mr. Vanderleun’s opinions on the current state of affairs:

[Change / Hope / Experience] seem to be the dueling political memes of the moment. Somebody’s winning, somebody’s losing, somebody’s going, somebody’s coming….

[…]

…don’t know about you but to me this whole pile of yabble is just that, yabble. Yabble to fuel the pundits and political junkies. Yabble that keeps underemployed newscasters running around the screen sticking microphones in people’s faces. Drudge and a thousand fellow travelers aside, I don’t think anybody is going anywhere, much less out of the race.

Because none of this, absolutely none of it, is about “change,” or “hope,” or “experience.” This is politics and politics is about one thing and one thing only -- w i n n i n g. It’s about the biggest win you can get. And the prize is using Air Force One as your private plane for four or eight years. Better than hitting the Lotto, that one.

New Hampshire doesn’t, for Hill or Bill or Barack, decide who is the winner. That’s for later, much later. Some lower level flotsam may become jetsam today, but it won’t be the above...

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I also suggest a perusal of his Saturday Drive-By, which is full of things you’ll not find aggregated elsewhere. If for nothing else, see his link to “Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks,” or the list, “100 Items to Disappear First in an Emergency.” The 100 items were compiled by a Sarajevo war survivor.

Somehow stocking up on new google tricks and putting things by for an emergency both seem like practical uses of our time. For the latter, all I have is a case of garbanzo beans, some flashlights, and a wireless radio. Ninety-seven to go…