From the moment it came on television, I hated the game show “Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?â€
Anybody who has ever tried to help their kids with “new math†and then new, new math, or whatever the heck they’re calling it these days, knows what I mean.
But there was some genius in the show’s premise.
Once a year, I speak to fifth-graders at Green Pines Elementary about writing.
They ask the best questions.
This week, one stumped me.
“What is your least favorite thing to write about?â€
In all the talks I’ve given to students, to college classes, journalism groups and service organizations, it’s not a question I ever remember answering. So I hemmed. I hawed. And I settled on the painful answer:
People are also reading…
Politics.
It’s painful because I’ve been writing about politics — and enjoying it — for most of my career.
November’s election is about two weeks away, and I don’t want to write about it.
It’s not that the topics aren’t important, or interesting.
The U.S. Senate race between Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill and Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley is among the most watched in the land. The race is made even more interesting by the oft-ignored independent in the race, Kansas City attorney Craig O’Dear, a lifelong Republican who joined a national movement of independents in part because of the toxic nature of today’s political divide between the two majority parties.
Fact is, all three candidates are really smart. A race on the issues between three intellectual powerhouses would be fascinating, but that’s not what this is, not to most people at least.
Hawley, despite degrees from Stanford and Yale, two of the most elite universities in the country, wants his voters to believe he’s just a Bible-thumping, Obama-hating rube who will turn life in America into a 1950s Ozzie and Harriet rerun. McCaskill, despite generally having the courage of her convictions more than most politicians, is so intent on limiting her damage in President Donald Trump-loving rural Missouri that she is running her own race-baiting television ad touting her as the toughest U.S. senator in the land when it comes to controlling America’s border with Mexico.
This is in many ways, with an infusion of millions of dollars in dark money from out-of-state billionaires, a race to the bottom, with social media operatives picking fights over every nugget of news, and every mention of Trump being used as a distraction.
In reality, like everything in American politics today, the race is a referendum on Trump.
If you vote for McCaskill or O’Dear, you’re against him.
If you vote for Hawley, you’re for him.
But just by mentioning the president, I’ve lost half my audience. Maybe more.
That’s the nature of politics today. It’s not a new phenomenon.
More than 25 years ago, I interviewed former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart, once a Democratic front-runner for president, about the declining nature of camaraderie between the two major political parties. Hart came to the nation’s capital following Watergate, when the nation was intent on cleaning up after a major political scandal. Now it seems, there is a Watergate-like scandal coming out of the White House nearly every day, each one diminishing the shine on the office.
That’s why no less than GOP stalwart George Will, the conservative Washington Post columnist, is urging voters, for likely the first time in his career, to vote for Democrats to while “quarantining†Trump.
Indeed, it’s an astounding time in the nation’s political history. Will is hardly alone. Fellow Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson is making similar arguments. So is lifelong Republican author Max Boot, and, of course, former FBI director James Comey, : “Policy differences don’t matter right now. History has its eyes on us.â€
How depressing. Policy differences don’t matter.
Comey’s not wrong, in the context of much of today’s political discussion, but it makes writing about politics a mind-numbing exercise in which facts no longer matter.
By the time today’s fifth-graders are of voting age, I hope that changes. It all starts with a single vote. See you at the polls Nov. 6.