Deliver us from this tiresome campaign!

Although I have tried for the last year or so to ignore as much of it as I could, I have already had a bellyfull of the 2008 presidential campaigns. This season is too long and its very length encourages the sort of picayune weirdness we have seen thus far, like the embarrassing accusations about kindergarten essays and wild stories about flying into danger zones with Sheryl Crowe on the left, and the mortifying “find the real Christian” hijinks on the right. Times are too serious for silliness and kneejerk media shilling.

Christopher Hitchens says the Iowa Caucus is a scam. Friends and relations quietly grumble that the damned season began in November of ’06 and all it has managed to do is so over-expose most candidates (and so exhaust the populace) that in the end all everyone wants to do is write in “none of the above,” put a bucket over Chris Matthews’ head, hit it like a gong, and hope for the best.

But of course…that won’t work. Dammit.

Dick Meyer at CBS writes that he’s had a bellyfull of the season, too, and he’s daring to address the idea of a third party, “third way” ticket for ’08.

[…] The pre-primary process has not produced clear leaders or sharpened the nation’s understanding of its challenges. It has shown that an African-American can run a credible pre-primary campaign in the Democratic Party, which isn’t trivial. I can’t find another virtue.
[…]
A third party ticket in ’08 will avoid the cat-fighting of the pre-primaries and primaries. It can be the first modern independent race that has more funding than the parties. A Bloomberg-Nunn or Bloomberg-Hagel ticket could win with a plurality of the votes.

Do read and consider all of what Meyer has to say. I am not sure I agree with him about Mike Bloomberg – the NYC Mayor seems precisely like one of the overmanaging social scolds Meyer has groused about in the past, and I don’t know if I believe a third party ticket can gain a winning plurality of votes in a country where 30% on the left and 30% on the right seem to be certifiable – that’s a shaky remaining 40% to go after. I have nightmares of a 33% tie across the board and a post-election debacle that could make the 2000 controversy look like a happy waltz.

Still, I believe Meyer has given voice to a gut feeling many of us have, that politics, political campaigns, political coverage and all the rest of it have become so phony, so focus-grouped, so hackneyed, so cynical and so overspun that the whole nation feels dizzy. We’re stumbling around trying to get our bearings while a circus full of clowns, illusionists and announcers seem determined to keep us off-kilter. And all that’s going to do is get us killed.

There has got to be a better way. I don’t know if Meyer has identified it, but I certainly do believe that Jefferson, Adams, Washington and Madison would look at the surreal campaign of 2008 and find it an alien afterbirth to the Republic they so carefully delivered.

Betsy Newmark has more thoughts.