I find it very uncomfortable to live in this period between an announced combat and the election between contenders for the job of the most powerful executive in the world. We are in a “limbo” which is defined as “a place or state of oblivion for persons or things cast aside, forgotten, or out of date”. A further explanation is that it is “intermediate, transitional, or midway state or place” and “a place or state of imprisonment or confinement”. I have avoided dealing with it as a religious location between Heaven and Hell but “limbo” certainly describes being neither here nor there. I like to know where I am but this is in doubt.

We are in this limbo between democracy’s method of selecting its leaders and the policies we will follow for a strictly limited four year period. This is shoddy workmanship by the founders of our nation for, if things are going well we are likely to throw this period aside for something novel and untried because we are like that. We also have this reluctance to get rid of a particularly bad leader whose policies lead us into terrible trouble although in just four years we can oust him or her and install a new and better version. It is sort of like the way products are updated and become better because they are in a new box with different colors and promises written all over it. (There is a dance called the “Limbo”, but this does not concern us.)

Most of us know today that Mr. Bush didn’t win the debate and Mr. Kerry didn’t lose it. But there are almost half of the voting public who do not see it this way and they, too, are in a limbo which is to say, neither here nor there.  One of the problems of living this way is that there are a great many individuals who make their living by telling us what we should think and there is too much time between the beginning of the campaign and the actual day of election. Limbo is a long time.

I hate to say it but the parliamentary democracies have it a lot better because they are more swiftly reactive to challenges from without and within.  What we all forget is that democracies are not run by individuals and that an elected leader is just that.  We have an elaborate system of checks and balances that does not give the executive exclusive power to suggest things or to get things done. We readily forget this and put too much emphasis on the personality and quirks of the front runner who may or may not be our next President. Being in limbo is no help here.

So, I think we are in a limbo where we are held captive and are tormented by minions of an “Estate” who compete to persuade us to think one way or another. These are the familiars of old who are shadowy powers who create “truth” while Limbo keeps us in the dark until we are told to wake up to face a new (or made-over) face looking at us from the White House Balcony.