Fun With Play-Dough

So Barack takes North Carolina, while Hillary will probably get Indiana. No surprise there; we’re all so bored that even my daughter, who is six, is wondering out loud when this is over with. Before I start beating myself up over having introduced politics to a first grader too early, she brings me her homework.  Mixed in with the assignments is an issue of Time Magazine for Kids, the “Road to the White House” edition. Ah.

“Candidates meet people,” it says, “they shake hands and kiss babies; they answer people’s questions.” Frankly, I’ve always wondered about that baby bit. Why do politicians kiss babies when they are on the trail? And do they stop this once they’re elected? What if they don’t win? Do they still continue kissing babies left and right; is it a hard habit to break?  And why would anybody want his or her baby kissed by a politician?  How do you know the candidate in question doesn’t have a bad cold?

Has anybody studied the effects of the baby kissing? One has to imagine there is some proven benefit to the whole deal; maybe a percentage point of gain among voters for every thirty babies kissed, something like that? Would it be the campaign manager’s job to whisper in the politician’s ear: there’s a good one on the left; skip the one in the green jammies, it looks like he’s got a rash!  Or would a candidate just sort of play it by ear?

There. That’s how bored I am.    

So, what’s going to happen now that May 6 is here? Now that the voters in North Carolina and Indiana will finally have their say? Oh, I know, I know!

Nothing.

Well, maybe not exactly nothing; just nothing new. We will continue to hear about delegates and super-delegates, popular votes and how many each candidate needs in order to win; and why neither can actually grab the nomination without the other one dropping out. There will be a little more bitching and moaning about mean pastors and whether race is an issue, as well as complaining about Obama being both too black and too elitist. I have to wonder whether Howard Dean will survive banging his head against the wall this many times.

If this stalemate continues until the convention, I’m afraid we’ll all die of boredom. This race should be decided with some melodramatic turn of events: a scandal, a secret rendezvous between unlikely lovers, a murder plot…something exciting that will give us a reason to care again. Like the characters in a really good movie you can watch again and again; Hillary and Obama need to draw us back in.  Right now, most people are walking out of the theater, and feeling sorry they bought a ticket in the first place.