‘Do you feel lucky, Democrats, well do you’?

In the US an ad for the car manufacturer Chrysler, aired during the Super Bowl has unwittingly stirred up a political furore. The two minute commercial dubbed ‘It’s Halftime in America’ features veteran actor/director Clint Eastwood delivering a sort of pep talk to the country. Pundits across the political divide are debating the commercial’s intentions and subsequent ramifications.

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Staunch Republican supporters have derided the ad claiming it to be a thinly veiled affirmation for the Obama administration while Democrats have dismissed any political undertones. Eastwood, a well known libertarian and past Republican supporter along with the Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne have emphatically denied any political agenda.

With an election race looming on the horizon and the economy in the doldrums tensions are fraught and a supposedly innocuous commercial which can alternatively be politically construed, is just the spark to ignite political accusations and mud slinging.

Perhaps the controversy would never have arisen without the presence of a credible personality. If the ad used an unknown actor would it still have garnered such a reactionary response? Even without trying to recognise any inferred political rhetoric the commercial is blatantly nationalistic so at the very least Eastwood and co could be guilty of gross naivety.

This year’s Super Bowl viewing figures were unprecedented. In excess of 111 million Americans tuned in to watch the game and half time entertainment, no wonder the likes of Karl Rove are fuming.   Whether the commercial is truly non-partisan is up for debate but one thing is certain, Eastwood has certainly made President Obama’s week.  

But let me be a little less cynical. We Indians are not very rich. But our elected representatives spend hours slinging mud at each other instead of feeling concerned about how costly each session of the parliament is. Taxpayers cant complain, can they? They have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Politicians do not feel the need to consider the good, bad, and the ugly aspects of any bill. Instead they refer to the comments of another person. I think the parliamentary language should be changed to read.. I feel this is not right because this is what it is , and this the reason I say so, rather than saying my learned friend here has stated blah blah blah. But that is beyond the point, or is it?

Mr. Narayan Murthy noted it right. And I am glad he noted. Indian politicians spent those hours hitting out at each other while Anna Hazare, the 74 year old man with frail health fasted. So irrelevant was the fast to them. So irrelevant was the life of an Indian citizen was to them.

I could understand if they were debating on the contents. That discussion went into private chambers. But mud slinging was all there out in open for the world to witness.

I wonder what would happen on voting day if all the candidates used the one man’s technique and simply promoted themselves to the public, the way campaigning should be? I would bet that there would be a much greater turn-out at the voting booths, and a lot fewer undecided votes. Probably more people would be willing to stand up and be counted at the polling places, fully understanding their candidates and the issues they represent. Yeah, I know…That’ll be the day.

I am not bashing Democrats with this writing, nor am I uplifting my own Republican party, because both have their black stains of error and/or incompetence. What I am bashing is the bashing itself, and the political correctness that seems so overbearingly common in this day and age. As recently as fifty years ago or so, women were rarely seen in political situations, and never holding a position as important as the Governorship. I have always wondered if the world was even ready yet for a woman in political office. I’m certainly not against women, after all, I am one, but I have noticed in a lot of cases that the women who hold important political offices are frequently held in higher suspicion than their male counterparts.

My state has a woman Governor, and her gender alone does not condemn her in my eyes, but the past four years of her Governorship has, since she has not performed well. She is a democrat, and this also does not condemn her, but her way of doing business does. Thousands of jobs have been lost in my state since she came into office. Perhaps this is not her fault, but she is the person in command of the state, and as such she should have been listening to the voters and feeling their pain at least a little bit. Instead, she has ignored the voters in favor of the democratic hardline. She allowed the building of a new prison facility in this state, then just a very short time later, closed it down in order to save the state money. Meanwhile, that prison was one of the biggest employers in its area.

Later, when the voters cried out for her to do something uncharacteristically brilliant and bring back their jobs, she finally re-opened the prison but only for "out of state" prisoners, so the state can make some extra money from the other states who send us their prisoners. Like my state doesn’t make enough of its own law breakers, we have to have them shipped in from all over the country. I wonder if those people who used to work at the prison got their old jobs back, or did they have to sit there and watch other people get hired in their places? I don’t know if a Republican Governor could do any better or not, but I for one, am definitely ready for a change, and quick.

Campaigning itself is becoming more and more difficult to comprehend all the time, especially for those people who are not particularly interested in politics, and there are a lot of intelligent people out there who fit into that category. It is almost as if the new candidates from both sides are trying to confuse their voters, and it would not surprise me in the least to discover that even fewer people go out to the polling places when the time comes, simply because they are so mixed up on who is doing what and who believes what.

You see, this year the candidates are trying something brand new. They are experimenting, if you will, with their political commercials, trying new things and hoping to gather new interest. It is not working tthe way they had planned, but is serving to only annoy people more than usual. The new plan? To make commercials that do not promote the candidate as either Republican or Democrat. You will not see a political commercial on television these days, that will tell you which idiocy the candidate belongs to. As a person who will only vote Republican, I find this extremely aggravating, especially when they tentatively tippy-toe around the "delicate" issues like abortion and gay rights.

I like it when the candidate gets these delicate issues right up front so I know immediately who to vote for and who not to. When they beat around the bush hoping to get people to vote the "other way" and elect that particular candidate, they are only managing to make voters look elsewhere for a candidate to elect, if they can find one. And if they actually do manage to find someone, then the bashing gets in the way and once again, the viewing audience is annoyed rather than convicted. There are other methods of self-promotion besides face slapping and foot stomping. That one man had the right idea, just promote your own goods and leave the bashing for the two hulks in the boxing ring.