Well, kiddies. Did you stay up too late to watch the overproduced GOP and Demo conventions?

Have you caught up on your ZZZ’s?

Did you come away with a strong sense that your favorite will surely win on Nov. 5? Did you find the candidates and their surrogates give you the answers to the burning questions of the moment? Or did the two political circuses, filled with political double-speak and bright balloons, make you scratch your noggin and wonder what the heck was happening?

Welcome to modern presidential politics, where the messenger is the message and both sides have millions of campaign dollars to turn into ads to shove into your TV set and ping into your smartphone.

The Demos presented a convention filled with what they called Joy. This time, they eschewed scolding schoolmarms lecturing us on what we should think and do and tried to focus on patriotism, love of military service, veterans, and the police. Will it work?

On the right, the GOP mantra was all about blaming the Demos for everything from toe fungus to inflation, lack of border security, foreign policy failures, and mandates to get rid of the internal combustion-powered autos/trucks.

Both sides had to scramble their scripted playbooks after Grandpa Joe said no mas, using the words of boxing middleweight Roberto Duran, and exited stage right. On the Demo side, the Veep scrambled to shore up support for her bid to succeed the boss. The GOP scrambled too, for they bet the farm and allocated a chunk of their war chest on ads attacking Grandpa Joe and, suddenly, he was no longer in the picture.

I wonder if they have a warehouse filled with Brandon-themed stuff that will wind up in the dump, or in the hands of collectors who want to display it alongside McGovern/Eagleton buttons from 1972.

If you don’t understand that reference, you could look it up or wait a week or so, and Heather Cox Richardson, the Maine Coast’s explainer-in-chief, might stick it in one of her detailed political posts.

But don’t expect to see detailed and long candidate interviews in the NY Times, WaPost, and WSJ, offering detailed reasons behind their positions.

Once upon a time, political office seekers sought reporters and editors in hopes they would write stories explaining their positions to the voters. Others, like the founders of this great nation, would pen missives, sometimes using fake names, to help them gather support for things like the Constitution.

Today, candidates can ignore them all and go over the heads of the reporters using TV ads and internet posts to reach the voters.

Why? In 2021, Pew Research Center said 48% of U.S. adults get their news on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter (now X). I guess reading is now passe.

Looking at the Sunday political chat shows, you see reporters asking questions of candidates or their myrmidons, neither will answer questions. Instead, they spout the latest version of the campaign talking points.

I wonder, are follow-up questions verboten? Dodging questions is their stock in trade, as is attacking the other side.

Both political parties have plenty of money to attack the other side because attack ads work. In the next 70 or so days, you will find plenty to tweak your fears. Demos are likely to accuse the GOP of trying to get rid of Medicaid and Social Security and polluting the atmosphere while giving tax breaks to wealthy fat cats. On the converse, the GOP will claim the other side permitted us to be overrun by criminal/drug-addicted terrorist illegal immigrants while kowtowing to China, Korea, and Iran just because they are radical, liberal, commies.

Both sides seem to only play to their base voters while ignoring the uncommitted, and that is just the beginning.

But you can relax until after Labor Day when we gear up for the Sept. 10 debates. We can settle into the last weeks of summer as our TV sets migrate into the good stuff – the National Football League.

Still, there are plenty of things in the world to keep us up at night, including wars in Ukraine and Israel. But world strife is not news to the senior set. In 1958, Sheldon Harnick prophesied it all in a tune he called The Merry Minuet.

“They’re rioting in Africa, they’re starving in Spain.

There's hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain.

The whole world is festering with unhappy souls,

The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles.

Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch,

And I don’t like anybody very much.

There’s rioting in Africa, there's strife in Iran.

What nature doesn’t do to us will be done by our fellow man.”

Till next time, be well.

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