A Midsummer Night’s Dream About This Year’s Presidential Campaign

Maybe the summer sun got to me, but I had this dream about the election campaign. I guess it was pretty bizarre.

First, the presidential candidates got together and decided what the election was not about.

For example, it was not about who has the best wife or the most loyal family. They agreed that Barbara Bush is everybody’s ideal grandma and that Hillary’s cookies are as good as her legal analysis. They all like dogs and kids and country music and pigging out on ethnic cooking. The election is not about who can act most like a typical American. (For this role, call Central Casting.)

They also agreed not to waste valuable time digging up prejudicial stories--true or imagined--about each other’s past.

A separate contest would be held in the off-year to find the 10 most blame-free citizens in America. The contest, judged by a board of clergy, would be open only to people over 40 who had never done anything they regretted or blurted out words that could be misinterpreted later.

Contest winners would be banned from all leadership positions as too unwilling to take risks. Perfect spellers would not be banned, but would have to overcome a presumption that they lacked creative imagination.

The candidates also agreed to stop talking about problems that a President is powerless to change, such as “family values.”

Like most Americans, the candidates believe their own family values are terrific, but other people’s need fixing. Since no one could think of anything a President could do to fix other people’s family values, they decided to concentrate on tasks a President could reasonably be expected to accomplish, such as making the federal government work better.

Their final stipulation was not to dump on government bureaucrats. Some successful business folks told them the worst thing a potential CEO could do is beef about the employees being bums and deadbeats doing unnecessary jobs.

The winner of this election is going to need all the support he can get to carry out his programs. He had better tell his future troops how important their jobs are and how much he believes in their talent and dedication--even if he intends to do a little downsizing after he gets in.

The business types also pointed out the stupidity of running down Congress; CEO’s who slam the board of directors live to regret it.

The candidates agreed that the country faces big problems--getting the economy moving again, balancing the federal budget, protecting the environment, improving the schools, fixing the health care system, defining America’s new role in the world.

A lot of people are mad at the government, but most are not sure exactly what the options are or what ought to be done. The election is a great opportunity for the public to hear different points of view and make judgments about who has the most workable solutions.

The candidates also decided to start by debating their plans for balancing the budget, since not much else can be done if the government is broke and borrowing most of the nation’s savings to pay its current bills. Neither wanted, if he won, to be prevented from being a world leader and a successful domestic President by a divisive and draining deficit. Both wanted to use the campaign to emphasize the seriousness of the problem, try out solutions, and find the ones the public preferred.

To avoid confusing the public with conflicting numbers, they told their staffs to agree on common projections of how big the deficit was likely to be in four years if nothing were done to fix it.

The debate started off with some clever computer graphics that showed clearly what the government spent money for, who paid the bill and how much was being borrowed. Then each candidate presented his plan to close the deficit gap.

On the first try, neither succeeded--they could not find enough spending to cut and did not want to raise taxes. But the audience egged them on. By the end of the program, there were two plans for actually balancing the budget--one with a Republican flavor and one with a Democratic one.

The press pundits who predicted the public would tune out were red-faced. Switchboards lit up, call in shows were swamped with people who wanted to give their own suggestions. Arguments about the budget broke out in bars and on buses. Everyone had something to contribute. By popular demand, there were more debates on health care, job programs, foreign trade and global warming.

The media’s political reporters had to take crash courses on policy issues so they could talk about substance instead of spin and gossip.

I woke up before I found out who won. But I had this vague feeling that I had seen a version of democracy that some country, somewhere, ought to try.