I often hear people lament the loss of the "high road" in the election process.  I've now concluded that it has been eradicated from the maps which are in use during elections.  Unfortunately it appears that the Quadrennial Crap Slinging Festival we proudly refer to as "Democracy In Action" (AKA the Presidential Election Process) now requires that the path to the White House must be at least DEBATED, if not actually DECIDED, in the outhouse.

We wonder why our best and brightest don't run for office and lament the "choices" we are offered.  This massive campaign negativity is one of the biggest reasons why.  Who would ever want to be vilified for everything you did by at least some segment of  millions of people and have to hear about it constantly.  Who'd want their families to have their lives confined to a fishbowl and be forced to hear horrible things everyday about their parents and loved ones?

Civility?? - forget that!  It was kicked out of the process long ago - maybe it also caught the last train for the coast on the day the music died.  Who knows - I only know that it's gone.

It seemingly doesn't matter if the election is for President of the United States or the Dogcatcher of Duckboro, all participants and supporters seem immediately compelled to spew negativity and invective - while offering little or nothing of substance about how or why they feel they'd do the job well and why they are possibly uniquely (or even nominally) qualified to serve.  

School board races devolve into fist fights and public hearings and debates between candidates for county highway commissioner jobs become riots.  We are also teaching our children that this is the way it's done.  Maybe we should just make rival candidates get into the ring together on television and just fight it out to the finish - last man or woman standing gets the job.  We could get Vegas involved and we could actually bet on the outcomes.  Now. there's some fun and we could tax the winnings - possibly a budget balancer!

This has gotten worse every year that I can remember.  My first election memory was a "We Like Ike" button and even though I didn't know who Ike (Eisenhower) was at the time, I wanted to like him too.  Now that button making company has been outsourced to Shijiazhuang, China where little kids are making buttons that say things like, "Candidate X's Mother May Have been A Filthy Prostitute" and "Candidate Y Kills Babies For Sport".

This shows no signs of abatement.  The 2012 installment is the worst in my lifetime.  Race and religion are playing into this heavily with extremists on both sides urging voting along color lines.  I have heard actual human beings state that they'd never vote for a #$%^^$# Mormon as well as others saying they'd never vote for a *&^^^!*@# black man (or certainly far worse terminology).

Similarly, we also complain that public officials are making (or already have made) too much money, but then we wonder why they don't want to serve. We don't want our politicians to be too wealthy, but if they don't have $$$s already, they want to stay in the private sector and make some.  If we actually want our politicians to be poor, are we not actually saying that we want them to not be very good at earning a living?  REALLY??? Is that what we want?

There has to be a way to change this, but it requires that we change the fundamental reasons we select the people we choose to vote for and it won't be ever be solved by "he said - she said" ads.  PACs should be called what they actually are - PACs of LIES!

Running the government is (like it or not) running the the world's largest business and doing so should require awesome (and well-demonstrated) management and decision making skills.

Unfortunately, our electoral process does not require that our President (or any other elected official) be a great businessperson, nor demonstrate any significant skills whatsoever that would indicate his or her ability to serve, but rather just be able to be a person who can get elected - regardless of skills and experience.  Maybe the real criteria today is simply, "How far will you go and and how low will you stoop to get elected?"

I say, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!  If we ever want to see this be different, we must fight for and vote for meaningful changes.  sadly, for 2012, it's way to late.  You'll just have to decide who you want to vote for based on your tolerance for the odor of excrement and garbage.  If you are willing to dig through the layers of effluent, you may just find out what the two guys who are running actually stand for or at least say they stand for.

However, now is the time for dialog and action that can change this process so the election of 2016 can actually begin the process of being different and the world we are teaching our children to run is not debated and governed from astride a porcelain throne with a convenient handle on the side to flush away failed promises and programs.

Stay tuned for more!  I'm getting off my own lazy backside and vowing to try to do something to change this instead of just whining about how bad it is.  Rest assured that I'll likely ask you to get involved as well.

For now, I'm having my gas mask and HazMat suit serviced to be ready for the Presidential debates - they ought to be just wonderful!

P.S. Just in case you care, Shijiazhuang is a real city of over TEN MILLION PEOPLE in China (more populous than than NYC) and it's only the 12th largest city in China.