Time to Hide

The conventions are coming! The conventions are coming!

From today (or so, depending on Hurricane Isaac) through Thursday we put up with the Republicans from the Gulf Coast of Florida in Tampa.

Then, with but a few days respite to come out of our hiding places, the Democrats kick-off on Labor Day in North Carolina for four more days to get four more years.

I am already sick and tired of this year's election. I CAN wait to see what each party has up its sleeve to get the other.

I remember, with some degree of nostalgia and probably blindness, the old days when I was an interested political science major. The conventions excited me. I looked forward to the floor reporters and Cronkite or Chancellor or Huntley and Brinkley in the high rafters giving news and insight.

That's not what we get anymore. It's not news, it's a well-choreographed movie aimed at slanting reality one way or the other. While I tend to agree with the reality-slant of the Democrats, neither of them will be doing anything but playing up to what they feel they have to do and say.

No, I don't want the back-room politics to return. (Though I am not sure it is truly gone. Just a hunch, what with all the PACs and BIG money Super PACs.) Somehow or another, I would like to see more reality and honesty and openness.

But then I've always been a dreamer.