COLUMN: Is Too Much Virtue a Vice?

By Tobin Barnes
Anybody, besides me, think the way we pick a President is crazy?

Raise your hand.

There. I thought so.

We’ve been at this for about a year now, and we’ve got nearly a year to go, for crying out loud. On the other hand, European campaigns take about a month or two. Why does it take us two years or more? It’s not like Americans enjoy political campaigns. Most would rather have a mold problem in their walls. Heck, about half of us don’t vote anyway.

Just thank your lucky stars you don’t live in one of the “hot” primary states. Those people must feel like they’re getting lobotomies with all the polling, pamphleteering, advertising, and speechifying.

Problem is, if you live in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina, one campaign’s electioneering probably starts sounding like another. Only difference might be that Republican candidates talk about who’s more Christian than the other guy, and Democratic candidates talk about who’s got a better health plan than the other guy, or girl.

The differences oftentimes seem almost ridiculously minimal. It’s like no one wants to take the bull by the horns, or call a spade a spade, or take a leap of faith, or even mix a few metaphors. Instead, they’re all tip-toeing through the tulips, trying not to rain on anybody’s parade.

Biggest thing seems to be avoiding making the big goof that will K.O. the candidacy.

They don’t want to appear disquietingly over-enthusiastic, like Howard Dean when he went into his “I Have a Scream” speech, as some wags call it. He had taken a disappointing third place in the Iowa caucuses and tried to make it sound like a good way to win the Presidency. Now he’s the subject of “scream remixes” on the Internet.

Yeah, evidently self-parody isn’t good for a political career. Howard Dean’s misstep slipped his once promising candidacy into a big toaster adjusted to the dark setting.

And candidates don’t want to appear too girly-man, like Edmund Muskie when he shed tears amidst New Hampshire snowflakes because a conservative local paper had targeted his wife as way of attacking him. The paper alleged that his wife drank and used off-color language. Muskie’s defense started as a chivalrous moment and turned into a mushy bowl of Malt-O-Meal.

So get rightfully upset at nasty newsmen but appear too human and your campaign is “one foot out the door and the other on a banana peel,” as my golfing buddy likes to say.

Of course, there’s innumerable other blindside-yourself ways of committing political hara-kiri, some yet to be invented. Stayed tuned. Their debuts may appear in the not-too-distant future.
But once again, is this any way to pick a President?

The evidence indicates that we’re demanding vanilla robots who never make a mistake. Are we electing great leaders or National Honor Society Presidents who have always kept their shoes shined? No pranks, no screw ups, no detentions.

By present standards, at least half our past great presidents wouldn’t have gotten past the Sunday morning talk programs. Their duels or illicit affairs or missteps or angry outbursts would have tossed them into the dust bin of history.

Besides as Abraham Lincoln has been attributed to have said: “It has been my experience that those who have no vices have very few virtues.”