April 22, 2008...1:14 pm
By the Way, There’s a Presidential Primary Today
I just thought everyone should be reminded that there’s a tiny political contest going on today in the Eastern time zone. You may have heard a bit about it over the past five or six weeks despite your best efforts to focus on other things, such as the NCAA Tournament, Major League Baseball’s opening day(s) and the start of the NBA and NHL Playoffs.
I’ll surely keep an eye on tonight’s tallies from afar. Yeah, it’ll get a glance during the commercials of whatever else I’m watching, but that’s it. I don’t have the stomach for “wall-to-wall” coverage with spit-firing Chris Matthews or the great mumbling Brit Hume. And it’s a little ironic to say that since one of the alternatives to this week’s political coverage is the spit-firing Stephen A. Smith and the great mumbling Charles Barkley, each mouthing off about hoops.
And just like the NBA Playoffs, the Presidential primary process takes way too long. So, since we often compare pro basketball to college hoops, why not compare politics to college hoops? Just like we have an NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, let’s have a Congressional committee choose the field: Eight candidates seeded 1-8, with head-to-head matchups in a survive-and-advance scenario.
Here’s how the bracket may have looked last fall. (And, no, I’m not so naive to think that I’m the first person to have thought of something like this.)
1. Clinton
8. Kucinich
4. Biden
5. Dodd
3. Obama
6. Richardson
2. Edwards
7. Vilsack
One round each week, and we’d be done in less than a month. There would be some full-press campaigning going on throughout the week. The public – and big business — would save millions of dollars because they wouldn’t have to keep pumping money into the enormous fundraising engines that define politics today.
We could even have Jim Nantz and Billy Packer call the results on the final night.
“The Clintons are starting to get tired, Jim.”
Or better yet, it could be the blogging world’s favorite play-by-play man, Gus Johnson.
“Obama does it again. The slipper still fits!”
Whatever the case, it has to be better than what we have today.
1 Comment
April 27, 2008 at 10:09 am
I love the Gus Johnson line about Obama. I would assume Billy Packer would call the election early, only to later find out that absentee ballots ultimately will determine the winner. There apparently was more than a little discouragement among sponsors of the National Championship Billy said the game was over early in the first half. I would think CBS would be the entity most offput by that observation, which of course turned out to be completely wrong. Politics is all about spin and the Clintons are Numero Uno in that department, which the media just eats up. The fact of the matter is Clinton should have destroyed Obama in Pennsylvania and barely won by double digits. The attention our state received was good for the first two weeks…the last five were pure agony…I keep hearing how Obama outspent Clinton 3-1 but when you have the entire Democratic machine in the state out campaiging for Clinton, you kinda have to…
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