Bob CollinsWell, it’s over.
In the two or three days before the 2016 election cycle begins, let’s kick this question around:
What did you learn from this year’s campaign? What issues were clarified for you? More importantly: What things that matter to you never made it into the discussion?
“It’s always the same questions and always the same five headlines,” ultra-liberal TV talk host Bill Moyers said as he posed a question to Bernie Sanders, the Socialist senator from Vermont.
“Oh, my God,” Sanders responded. “You see, this is the issue. I mean, I’ve been on a million of these shows. They say, ‘Here’s the story of the day. What do you think about the Secret Service? What do you think about this? What do you think about Ebola?’ All of those issues are important.”
Ignore the party labels you may or may not agree with. In your heart, you know he’s right. There, I just included a Republican reference. Happy now?
While driving home last night, I caught this story on All Things Considered. Host Robert Siegel talked to Dr. Katherine Morris about assisted suicide. She assisted in the deaths of patients in Oregon and has been party to a lawsuit in New Mexico for the right to assist another. This, of course, comes in the wake of the death of Brittney Maynard, who took her own life in the last days of an awful illness.
I didn’t hear any discussion of end-of-life issues in any campaign in the country. And yet, here the country is: having a side discussion on these issues while political TV ads tell us the name of a candidate’s dog of the length of another’s hair.
I’m not under any illusions that the people who pull the strings attached to politicians could handle such a discussion, but a person can dream.
What issue would you have wanted to hear debated?
