On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) is one House Republican likely to lose his shirt in tomorrow’s election. And if you’ve been watching any television recently, any politician running this term is clearly just as concerned.
You don’t have to be terribly civically engaged to realize there’s an election going on outside your door. In fact, the saturation of approving this or that message (or if you’re former Admiral Joe Sestak, You’d “authorize” a message) on network airwaves has left people exhausted. This weekend, some three-and-a-half minute commercial breaks have been entirely comprised of political ads.
It is easy to see how some would start to care less about the outcome of these races as long as They’re not bludgeoned with 30-second packages on Weldon’s ethics charges, Lois Murphy’s liberalism, Bob Casey’s lacking attendance record as state treasurer and how Ed Rendell is raising your property taxes. In just a few hours, we can return to commercials for Swiffer and beer again. Ah, the simple life.
When you see so many of these things, you start to analyze, extrapolate and compare for sheer cinematic achievement. In some sense, disregarding the democratic system almost preserves or restores our faith in it. When we look at how dirty politics has become, or has been, we tend to lose faith that we can have a civil dialogue.
Alas, amid the ocean of negative ads, I leave you with one last ad, as if to serve as a lingering reminder of who we voted for and who we didn’t. I choose it not for the candidate or the ideas he espouses, but the sheer hilarity of it. May you remember Election 2006 by Rick Santorum wrestling the bad guys:
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