Published on: Thursday, September 09, 2010

By Brian J. Karem

After spending time this election season moderating three candidate forums, and spending time grilling candidates on two other televised debates, I have come to an inescapable conclusion:

I’m scared.

You may want to beef about our current office holders, and believe me you’d have great cause to do so, but don’t expect anything better out of any challenger I saw at any level – from county council candidates to U.S Senate challengers.

They all stink on ice.

The most cogent candidate I interviewed was a bow-tie wearing Libertarian who has as much chance of getting elected as I do of being voted Miss America.

The rest of the contenders for office sounded more like the barkers on the midway of the county fair. They want me to try the ole’ ring toss for a prize I know I’ll never get.

Mind you, I’m not slighting anyone’s intentions. To stand up and be counted and judged by your fell citizens as to whether or not you should hold a public office is admirable. You have my respect for doing that, but I’m not sure anyone of you will get my vote.

I’ve interviewed far too many of you at this point to be able to single any of you out for your combined pomposity, immaturity and inanity.

I do remember the one candidate who told a crowd of people with a straight face that his first job was when he was three-years-old and he picked up rocks on his parents’ farm, which either sounded like so much blather or child abuse – you take your pick.

Otherwise, I’m absolutely positive that my 21-year-old politically neophyte son has a better chance of getting elected than most of the candidates I’ve seen.

The answer to why is very simple.

The republican candidates are too busy preaching to their far-right wing brethren than trying to appeal to democratic voters. The Flat-Earth-Holy-Roller society may have its place in the fringes of our republic where you can burn Beatle records, the Koran and the Bible with equal aplomb, but for the rest of us your appeal is limited and quite frankly unappealing.

The problem here of course is that the republicans have to appeal to the fringe element of their party in the primaries, because those nut jobs are the ones who give money and keep Republican candidates viable – in their own party.

After that any attempt at an appeal to the democrats is lost in a very short campaign season.

Meanwhile, the democrats have another problem.

They own the playing field, sure enough and put their best and brightest, presumably, in a position to win elections.

But there is very little chance for legitimate democratic contenders to emerge from a field saturated in money, organization and internal politics. The machine will put who they want into office and if you don’t want to wait your turn, I suppose you could switch parties and join the Flat-Earthers over in the regressive, err, I mean Republican Party.

You have very few choices for real contenders or anyone with an original idea to emerge from this squalid and rather turgid mess.

I guess you could go with that bow-tied Libertarian, but those guys have absolutely no money and no seat at the big table. That party, while actually appealing to many voters, is poorly organized, poorly funded and poorly represented.

There is no doubt that as I go to the polls this year I am wondering to myself, “Is this the best we got?”

We occasionally get lucky when someone of real imagination and leadership seems to emerge from the two-party muck with real ideas and a real sense of character.

But they are few and far between, and instead we get stuck with the mind-numbing prospects of this year’s challengers to elected office. Inerudite, ineffective and invisible.

Welcome to Montgomery County politics.

Somebody get me a sedative.