Vote of approval

Everywhere I go I hear people say, “I’m sick of this stupid election campaign. I just want the whole thing over with.”

To which I sympathetically clap them on the shoulder and say, “What? Are you nuts? What’s wrong with you?”

I love election campaigns. How can you not be fascinated by watching history, in all its grand pageantry, as it lurches drunkenly forward? What’s the matter? Is the election pre-empting “Entertainment Tonight”?

Frankly, I’m upset that only a few weeks are left. It was only yesterday that 317 candidates were traipsing through Iowa, speaking at church potlucks. Now, we’ve burned our way through a couple of dozen primaries, two conventions, three debates, and every candidate except two. (Or 2.1, if you count Nader). Nothing remains except a handful of three-day tracking polls and then, Election Day.

What are we going to do for fun after that? Read 14 stories a day about the Scott Peterson case? Watch local news stories about guys who found rat parts in their TV dinners? Do the Jumble every morning? Life, post-election, will seem so … lifeless.

Elections are the best part about living in a democracy, and I don’t mean that in a civics class we-must-be-grateful-for-our-citizenship kind of way. I mean it in a selfish, this-is-our-one-chance-to-stick-our-nose- into-history kind of way.

Let’s face it. Most of the time, we just have to stand by and watch other people make history. In an election, our role actually ends up in the World Almanac, under “final vote totals” (except if you live in Florida).

Now, a lot of Americans love reality TV. So they should look at an election like reality TV, only better. It has characters you love and characters you love to hate. It has scheming and backbiting and shameless attempts at deception. Characters get voted off. Every week, a new subplot develops. You never know for sure who will win.

And the best part is, the stakes are higher.

On “Survivor,” what are the stakes? A lousy million bucks and a tiki torch? On “Survivor: The Election” the stakes are: Who gets to shape the fate of the world? And by “the world,” I am referring to the one we actually live in.

If you can’t work up any interest in that, well – maybe you should just go watch “My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss.”

Here are just a few of the things to love about election season:

The debates – Put a couple of high-powered pols together on stage, pose some questions designed to make them squirm, and watch how they handle the complicated task of avoiding the questions. Even if long stretches shed no light from an actual policy perspective, they always shed light from an amateur-psychology perspective.

The polls – Lordy, how I love polls. It’s like watching a baseball game and seeing the box score at the end of every inning. The Red team is ahead by four runs in the fourth! But can they hold a lead? Do they have the bullpen? Oh, no! The Blue team just hit a grand slam. The game is tied. It’s all up to the closers.

The ads – Yes, I know, this is what drives most people insane about elections. We are subjected to an endless stream of ads that warn us, in the most portentous of tones, about a lying, incompetent, worthless snakelike opponent. Yes, these ads can be aggravating, deceitful and confusing. But what would you rather watch? An ad in which a man with a guitar “defends his chicken”? Or an ad for Coors Light, nonsensically billed as “the coldest-tasting beer in the world”? At least candidates don’t claim to have the most “conservative-tasting health care plan in the world.”

Election night – Forget about the Super Bowl. This is the night that people should get together for chili and beer. The results don’t come in as slowly as they did back in the old century, which tends to cut down on the suspense. Yet there’s still plenty of drama, as the poll-closings creep across the map from right to left.

And if you like suspense, look no further than the 2000 election. That thing went into overtime.

Yes, that was a classic. I doubt if this election can match that excitement. Yet as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t have to. Any election is better than none.

I’ll tell you how far gone we are at our house. We got all pumped up for the primary.