I can’t wait for the American presidential election to be over. The lengthy campaign is taking over my life.
My addiction to the campaign has progressed to a point where I tune in to the internet to read the latest Trump gaffs on Huffington Post, CBC News and The National Post before I measure coffee into the basket or microwave a bowl of oatmeal.
At 11 a.m., I turn on the TV to hear what’s uppermost on CNN. Whatever the topic, it will be reported six different ways, and analyzed by at least four teams of eight commentators, a relief team every hour, before supper news ... all on CNN. That’s not counting CBC, CTV, and Global.
Each time a commercial interrupts election coverage, I surf to another station as though the campaign is oxygen and I need a constant supply.
By early evening, I’m hunting for fresh commentary in The Globe and Mail, The New Yorker, Maclean’s, and on truly stressful days, even The Washington Post.
My addiction has gotten so out of hand I passed up the third new episode of The Big Bang Theory so I could listen to guesses as to which topics the American vice-presidential debate would cover and what the two parties’ strategies might be.
All that I’m missing is some form of betting on the outcome.
The campaign had been going on for months before something snagged my attention. It might have been Trump’s claim he would build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to stop illegals from sneaking across the U.S. border.
The complexities of fulfilling that promise made me realize how far Trump is from reality, especially when I read that some sections of the current “wall” are held up by mesquite.
That’s when Trump and his campaign talk became funnier than the sitcoms I would normally watch.
Since then, I keep a close watch on his campaign speeches to catalogue his followup shenanigans. While I’ve not stooped to pad and paper, I have a fairly reliable and lengthy list of his pronouncements and boggle at his flipflops, sometimes within hours of uttering the first version.
Must be he either has a faulty memory, or doesn’t take himself seriously.
How could any voter trust a word he says? Yet many do. Hook, line and sinker.
If Trump chooses to sink himself in a sea of deception, fine. But to have surrogates, such as Chris Christie and Rudy Guiliani, twisting themselves into knots trying to give a better spin to his words is sad.
Following the Twin Tower attacks, I had a lot of respect for Mayor Giuliani. But no more. Giuliani is saying things I doubt even he believes all to ride Trump’s coattails to a plum high level position.
Last week’s vice presidential debate was entertaining in progress and will come back up like a radish when Saturday Night Live presents its take.
One thing I know for sure – political campaigns are ruinous to candidates’ health.
We saw that with Harper’s 2015 campaign. He went from a fairly trim man to someone with a pronounced belly.
And so it is with Hillary Clinton. She has gained possibly 50 pounds during this 16-plus month campaign. She’s wearing tops especially designed with wider shoulders to give the illusion of narrower hips. To accommodate her bulging hips and abdomen, her tops have deep side slits.
In a video of her as New York senator 10 years ago, she was slim in a red suit. Come November 8, Clinton will have a job losing her campaign pounds. So will I.
Claudette Sandecki keeps her TV remote close at hand from her home in Thornhill, B.C.