I am using cooking terms as a metaphor for the way we put labels on the contenders for the top job in the universe, Presidential Candidate of the winning party.  David Brooks, whose passion for Bush Republicanism goes unabated, headed his column today; “Debate, Declaim, Debacle.”  An inset in his article says this: “How would you save the world Sir: You have 90 seconds.” Brooks did an excellent job in encapsulating the desperate efforts of both campaigns to say what needs to be said succinctly, exactly and arrestingly.  In effect, both campaigns smooth out a lot of history and boil it down, condensing its great moments and reducing difficult concepts to agreeable pap to be devoured by an awaiting and needy political force.  Just think of all the waste in such a process.

Instead of being allowed to see for themselves and evaluate coldly and without emotion, the electorate is molded, kneaded and allowed to rise like dough before it is punched down several times before resting and then baking.  The voting American public is not a product being cooked up for a performance on election day yet it is treated as such by power brokers, parties, special interest groups and THE MEDIA in all its forms and imaginations.

Mr. Brooks got it right when he boiled down the caricatures of Kerry and Bush for these are the images we have thrust into our alimentary canals for over a year now. What the makers of Presidents and their hosts of helpers have done is to create curious combinations of features that do not display the realities of the person they represent and finally produce a product that is supposed to represent to us as presidential material as THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

What is most galling is that the name on the product gives you no hint of the realities inside.  Most of the inside is ripped out and discarded or hidden from view as unnecessary to sum up the real person being considered.  Thus we are asked to buy a half baked C- scholar instead of an over-cooked spokesman for the Liberals whose actual record is pretty bland.

Reality tells us, for we have been through this before that two pretty wrappers with colorful slogans have to be the way we can tell the difference between two opposing candidates, but also what is really inside them. When finished being boiled down, condensed and reduced for public consumption, nothing much is left that is real or will actually tell us how either will work out as a leader. Our world is not much amenable to leadership in the sense that a Kerry or a Bush will be able to do all the wonderful things proclaimed about them in their time in the kitchen being boiled, condensed and reduced to sell them to us. The world has consumed a lot of this before and we are the worse for it.