The Art of the Comic

As I get older, I never cease to be amazed by the fact that comedians often have a better grasp on the realities of American politics than most. This year, I find myself resorting to the art of the comic again to describe the pending elections.

Put simply, Matt Stone and Trey Parker (South Park) hit the nail on the head with their election episode from 4 years ago. For those who might not be familiar with it, the election came down to a choice between a giant douche or a turd sandwich. For the life of me, I cannot find a better analogy for the elections I need to make a choices on this autumn.

Starting with the Congressional representative election, the two main choices are Jeb Bradley (the Republican) and Carol Shea-Porter (the Democrat). I still have yet to figure out which one is the giant douche and which one is the turd sandwich, but that pretty much sums up my choices.

Bradley is a millionaire who claims to represent the working class. On top of this, he used to be the district's Congressional representative until he lost the seat to Shea-Porter two years ago in the massive Democratic sweep of Congress. Now, he's trying to win back the seat, running on a platform of "New Hampshire values." He's criticizing the Democrats for their attempts to obfuscate the pork in federal spending yet he attacked his opponent in the primary for being against any pork, especially every scrap that New Hampshire can garner. Great, just what we need, a guy who's against pork for anyone else, but out to get as much as he can for "his constituents". I don't know what he calls that, but I call it hypocrisy and that's not the kind of character I want in my elected officials.

Shea-Porter, on the other hand, is the incumbent trying to retain her seat. For those who don't recall, she ran a one-issue campaign 2 years ago and her "sole purpose" if elected was to remove the troops from Iraq. That was her campaign. Nothing about the economy, energy prices, health care, or anything else. Just "bring the troops home from Iraq". Well, it's been nearly two years since the election and last time I checked there are still US troops in Iraq. In fact, I believe the number of troops over there has actually increased. Great, she was sent to Washington to do one thing and she failed. On top of that, her voting record also shows that she voted right along with her fellow Democrats and their socialist agenda which features increased taxes and big government solutions which are destined to fail.

What incredible choices mainstream American politics have given me.

Fortunately, those aren't my only choices. There's another one. Bob Kingsbury is a Libertarian running for Congress. He's in favor of lowering taxes and reducing the size and role of government. He is against the Patriot Act and other attempts by the government to restrict individual freedoms in the same of "security" and believes that we need to foster the believe that the citizenry is responsible for its own actions.

Of course, I'm sure that many people will view Mr. Kingsbury as a "kook" and a "nut job" and, quite frankly, they might be right. However, I'd rather support a "looney" who acts on their convictions than someone deemed "normal" by the masses whose goal is to advance their own agenda under the guise of "the public good".