Election 2008 – the reality series

I’ve suspected for awhile that this year’s election was going to be quite different from any in the past but didn’t realize how different until I was watching, of all things, the CMT Music Awards. The opening sketch had a bunch of folks hitting up co-host Miley Cyrus for tickets to the sold-out show. One of the callers was Sen. John McCain, followed shortly by Sen. Barack Obama. What with that equal time rule, you just know who was going to be on next.

But what the hell are presidential candidates doing on a cheesy cable TV show—one that rewards lame videos about God, country and big-ass trucks? Shouldn’t this kind of thing be beneath the dignity of someone running for the highest office in the land? It looks like not any more. I tried to imagine Ike and Adlai doing a TV schtick with some Borscht Belt comic named Solly on the Ed Sullivan show. I can’t. Not even JFK would have bought into this.

But this is the new century, where new voters were raised on bad reality TV and electing the candidate you’d most like to have a beer with seems like a viable option. Of course, American Idol is probably better at getting an accurate vote count than the state of Florida did in 2000. At least we weren’t stuck with Taylor Hicks for eight years.