INKED! These are the best of times, worst of times

Election cycles always seem to bring out the worst traits in candidates, at a time when you hope to see the best of their personalities and positions.

The political pantomime never seems quite as nefarious in nonpartisan local elections, but the grandstanding that can occur at this level never seems to disappoint those in search of the absurd.

To watch a local candidate take a calculated swipe at an El Centro City Council decision earlier this week was the perfect type of bush league political theater that takes place when the candidate is either too inexperienced to know better or too bold to care.

I’m not sure which it was, but it’s never a good idea to do it when there is at least one member of the seated council who has no tact in dealing with the public and doesn’t mind calling bull when he sees it. It’s was pretty funny hearing about that councilman calling out the criticizing candidate on his political aspirations. I’m sure it was also a squirm-inducing moment for the audience and the would-be legislator.

Stump speeches have their place and their time. The middle of a council meeting is not that place.

Candidates do learn, though. Eventually. After multiple defeats. There’s one out there right now who has made his political career out of running on platforms that seem to intentionally go against the grain, just to do so, without any rhyme or reason other than to have a contrary position. It hasn’t served him well so far, and maybe that’s why he’s apparently ditched that tactic this time out.

It’s all part of the experience of massaging the message and softening the delivery to a manageable level of anger and intensity.

Sad, I know. It’s sad that it has to get to that point to get elected, for school boards to Senate spots. These seats are solar systems apart, but oddly enough they travel similar orbits of the necessary evils of playing the game to change it from the inside. Or exploit it, depending on your personality and agenda.

Watching candidates take their convictions and whitewash them for targeted consumption is troubling. Sometimes harsh truths need to be delivered harshly, and damn the fallout or who gets their feelings hurt in the process. That said, blame is like an ill-fitting coat; it will keep you warm and cozy, but it hangs like hell. I can somewhat understand that part of taking the zip out of a few well-placed zingers.

Politicians on every level just don’t seem to stay very true to themselves. Many probably don’t know how to, because there are few examples in those who have come before. Twisting and warping the plotline and manufacturing the ending has been standard practice for so long, there’s no one to look to as a political mentor that isn’t some bastardized version of himself already.

(If I hear another Ronald Reagan reference, I’m going to choke on my revisionist bile.)

Look at the political kooks vying for the nation’s highest office, including the president himself, a man who talked a big game and who almost had his supporters fooled. He sure as hell won’t have the voters eating out of his hand this time out, but he might just be the best choice when the option on the other side is the cavalcade of crazy.

When Ron Paul is seen as the most sensible man in the bunch (driving fear into the hearts of the Fox and MSNBC news desks), it’s time to go underground and wait out the apocalypse.

Rick Perry and Michele Bachman are in a steel cage match to see who will put the purity ring on the religious right. The trouble there is, Bachman’s eyes tell the story — she means the lunacy she spews — and Perry’s Yosemite Sam-on-crank act is so vaudevillian can anything he says be taken seriously?

Who else is running? Mitt Osmond? He just lost the Ponzi vote, or at least the state of Florida.

But I digress (purposefully).