Debate #2

I watch the second debate by myself while icing my leg in the television I bought with the funds from my paper route.  My Sega genesis is plugged intravenously into the occiput of my bedroom television.  Before the debate begins it is almost unanimous that Ross Peort dominated the first debate and that his VP only a heartbeat away presidential running mate seemed completely out of touch with not only the American people but also to reality in general. 

It is an open town hall debate.  The candidates are seated on barstools. All the questions provided in the debate are fielded from audience of politically ambiguous voters. All questions are fair game. The candidates do not know the questions in advance. The candidates are free to interrupt each other in the name of rhetoric.

There is a moment in the debate when the election changes.

The debate is town hall format. They are seated on barstools. They are vulnerable. Bush's peanut brittle countenance is taking every shot attacking Clinton’s character with right-wing pincers. Perot is charming. He holds his own. He knows his shit. He is buying time on network television to show the American populace how he plans on reducing the National deficit  in half-hour segments. He is jettisoning all lobbyists. He is paying for the campaign with his own money and has publically stated that he refuses to accept salary and seek a second term if elected.

The debate is informal. The candidates look like they are loafing behind the invisible counter of a see-through bar jiving political theory while nursing a draught beer. The audience in Virginia consists of 209 undecided voters. When Bush goes on his character rant the mediator cuts him short, saying lets focus on ways augment the economic growth of the country. Clinton is patenting the phrase that the only character we should think of is that of the character of the office of the president. Making references to Arkansas in terms of exponential economic growth when compared to the contiguous United states is like feeling the need to compare and judge bowel movements. It happen after the moderator asks the audience what they think about the clime of the campaign so far and it is meant by an chorus of silent boos.  It happens after Bill Clinton jousts Bush and states that he is lying alluding to the oh-too ubiquitous "read-my-lips-no-more taxes" bromide. It happens after Bush goes out of his way to brand Clinton as a duplicitous Benedict Arnold insinuating that not only does he govern a backwoods hillbilly state but he also can't keep his dick in his pants to save the life of him. It happens after Ross Perot assures the audience that his campaign isn't financed by lobbyists or special interest groups but from his own pocket and if elected he won't make a dime as president and only serve one term. .

 

 

Then it happens.

 

 

She is modest. She could be Rosa Parks in another lifetime. She is standing up. She is asking a simple query hoping to find a political adjuvant to the economic tumor plaguing the middle class. She stands up gracefully, humbly, perhaps even though she is apprehensive at first. She then asks her question demurely, with grace as if she is reading a psalm in front of a congregation on Sunday morning. 

 

She stands for what she feels is right.

 

“How has the national debt personally affected each of your lives, and if it hasn’t how can you honestly find a cure for the economic problems of the common people if you have no experience in what’s ailing them?”

 

Somehow when a question is plucked from the audience Perot seems like the nerdy kid in math class whose arm shoots up and he just has to be called first.  He warbles about leaving the affluent niceties of his billionaire armada to personally greet the needs of the working middle class. He doesn't sound like he is completely out of it. He just sounds semi-out of it. When Bush responds to the question he turns into an oligarch. He seems offended that he is being accused of being out of touch with the working middle class. He waffles with his response. He asks that the question be elucidated as if with plutocratic cliffnotes. He becomes defensive. He makes an inane reference to his grandchildren before stating that just because you haven't had cancer doesn't me you don't know what its like; just because you weren't born with a silver spoon in your lips wiping your ass with two dollar bills your entire life doesn't mean you don't know what it's like to be opulent.

Then it happens.

Clinton sneaks in his remark much in the same manner as Peacock seems to skulk between runners around the mile and a half mark. He is caring. Perhaps he is serving the same schtick benevolently blathered while volunteering in coup kitchens on thanksgiving. He talks about being the Governor of a state where if a factory or business goes belly-up there's a good chance he knows the people personally. Somehow he sounds sincere when he talks about financial polarity; he talks about tax breaks for the rich while the middle class is working harder than ever and being paid less.

There is a candor of comfort when Clinton assays that what he wants you to understand is that the national debt is not the only cause that everyone is getting fucked over at work. There is a gentle genuineness as Clinton asserts that under the mired megalomania of the Regan-Bush rule of terror America has not invested in their people. There is a breath of hope as he looks at the woman who garnered the strength to stand up  that American has not grown. That it has went from stagnant to sullen. That we have gone from twelfth in the world in wages where most people are working harder than ever now for less money.

There is almost a pride when Clinton makes assurances, when this draft dodger dope smoking philander whose  past fuck toy is spreading her legs in Penthouse released a week before the election; there is a beauty when Clinton, the man hard-core Christians loathe and whom my mother despises because of his rogue wife and the facts that he is for crucifying young embryos in the womb with a Hoover vacuum cleaner; there is an authentic chime when Clinton stats that he thinks its far past time that we invest in America. In American jobs, in American education in harnessing the burden of Health care costs, and somehow, welding the American people together once again.

 

At the end of the debate there is a survey of undecided voters in Columbus, Ohio. A woman stands up and says that she is a card-holding Republican. When asked if she plans on voting for Perot she says that she just doesn’t think she has the courage to enact on the temerity swallowing in her gut.

 

The courage to stand up and sing a question that nobody wants to hear.