The politics of pppppandering!

Pander as a Verb

-to pander (third-person singular simple present panders, present participle pandering, simple past pandered, past participle pandered)
-(intransitive) To offer illicit sex with a third party; to pimp.
-(intransitive) To tempt with, to appeal to (improper motivations etc.); to assist in the gratification of.
"His latest speech simply panders to the worst instincts of the electorate."

The Iowa Caucuses are not until January. Already, we had to live through a least 100 Presidential Debates. Or it seems that way. Most of the candidates have been fund raising since Gutenberg invented movable type.

I am suffering from campaign fatigue. Obama, Hillary, Mitt, Rudy and the rest of the wannabees are overexposed, overanalyzed and are over-reaching. We continue to hear from the talking heads on cable news that this campaign started way too early and money raising will ultimately define who will win the nominations in either party. Yet, the same nitwits invite these money vacuums on to their shows for interviews and dissect the good and the bad of the various campaigns ad nauseam. At the same time they bemoan how this new era of Presidential campaigning has become a circus of sound bites, fundraisers and gotcha moments. It is a never-ending cycle of fawning, castigating and then more fawning.

Frankly, most of what all the candidates are saying on the stump or during their contrived debates is irrelevant to the grit and reality we are living in right now. The Democrats and Republicans pander to their base voters who actually will go to the caucuses in Iowa and vote in the primaries. These people who watch these debates and are actually paying attention to what these candidates say reside in a parallel universe. They have no children, trouble falling asleep at night or no mortgages to pay.

In a recent poll of so-called evangelical white voters, the top two issues were Iraq and health care. Same sex marriage, immigration and abortion were at the bottom of the list of concerns. Yet, if you watched any of Republican debates or stump speeches, all the candidates climb over each other to express their hatred of illegal aliens, gay people and their love for the so-called unborn. These folks in the conservative base of the GOP apparently will only vote for candidates who love fetuses and hate any foreigners south of Texas, homosexuals north of Mexico, and anyone else who doesn’t believe our ancestors rode on dinosaurs.

The Democrats pander in different ways. Although they don’t play the race or fear card like our Republican counterparts, they make proclamations that are unrealistic or downright stupid. Almost all Democrats want out of the Iraqi morass and regret deeply the present condition of our foreign policy and standing in the world. Barack Obama, John Edwards and others proclaim if they are elected they will withdraw from Iraq immediately. There is no way in hell we can pick up and leave Iraq within 3 months, 6 months or a year. Their policy people know that and yet the candidates pander to our naive wishes. It is pandering. Perhaps not as bad as the seven dwarfs on the GOP side but it still is pandering to the very narrow corner of the Democratic Party that will take an active role in the upcoming primaries.

Let’s commit ourselves to ignore the next three months of Presidential politics. We have Halloween candy, Thanksgiving Turkey and Christmas cookies to focus on. Personally, I prefer to learn more about salacious details regarding Larry Craig’s wide stance, Paris Hilton’s difficulty buying an airline ticket to Rwanda, or why Ellen DeGeneres can’t house train her dog. These are real stories, affecting real people with real pathos. That Presidential political stuff is all puffery, posturing and pretense.

“People in Hollywood are not showmen, they're maintenance men, pandering to what they think their audiences want.”
Terry Gilliam, movie maker and original member of Monty Python.