Waiting For The Candidate To Arrive: An Election '08 Correspondent Application

The room is buzzing while I wait for the candidate to show up. The smell of my coffee and the freshly laid carpet fills my nose and mixes with a few dozen perfumes, colognes and body sprays. The historical smell of cigarette smoke has long been banished. Red, White and Blue is everywhere.

Fluorescent lights illuminate the room with their blue harshness while the yellower light of camera spots shine on the backdrops of frail, quickly constructed alcoves positioned here and there. People joke and discuss while others are petulantly quiet. Some are sweating from the rise in room temperature thanks to the press of the gathering throng. The clicking of computer keyboards underlies the murmuring din.

I look around and see faces mostly unknown to me. There are a couple of recognizable media personalities, but mostly the big names are absent as they have their own little arrangements for meeting and talking with the candidate. To keep my mind alert I scan the names and logos of the media orgs present.

I'm wearing tan dockers, a button down shirt and a tie along with my trademark jean jacket and fedora styled hat. I dress like regular folk because that's what I am, that's where I come from and that is the niche I write to. I am no fancy suited business professional.

I'm here because elections are important to me and to the folks I care about; regular Americans who are often to busy earning enough money to keep their heads above water than to troll through the miles of text and the hours of video each and every candidate produces. I'm here because I want my cultural and societal neighbors to know what the candidate stands for, what promises they make and what the lesser-privileged can expect.

I listen to see if the candidate has had a shift in position or still stands for policies they've claimed they will craft if elected. I'll then write about how those policies can be expected to effect the lives of the majority of Americans.

I'm here to ask what questions I may, take notes on all the answers I hear, and then piece it together with historical contextual background. I craft articles on what it all might mean to regular working folk.

I've read the press releases, watched the pertinent news clips, and paid attention to the goings on. This election cycle is tumultuous. The current administration has filled the country with the caustic rhetoric of fear and derision. They've stirred up the nation mightily by slathering partisan labels on the populace: the immoral left and the righteous right, pro-war patriots versus the anti-security cowards, the self-aggrandized rationals versus the mislabeled moonbat radicals.

I am a moderately non-traditional independent with centrist beliefs. I care about unity, truth, justice, freedom, liberty and viable, equal opportunity for ALL Americans.

The buzz in the room has risen. The candidate has arrived.

More later.


Peace -


Bill


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05 October 2007

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Bill's Spirit is an Artist, Writer, Poet, Philosopher currently wordsmithing from a humble forge in small town Ohio.

The works of the man behind Bill's Spirit have been published in small alternative and amateur presses since 1986. Before that, they just filled notebooks, took up space on walls and gathered dust in piles and boxes.

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