Election Torture 2012: Hold on, it's almost finished

Four more days. There are only four more days before Election Torture 2012 is done.

In four days, we’ll know who the winners and losers are, although in some cases it’s difficult to distinguish the difference.

It’s gotten so elections are like undergoing a root canal with no anesthesia while burning bamboo shoots are shoved under your toenails and you’re forced to listen to Taylor Swift sing a capella. I’m sure one of the rings of Dante’s inferno consists of nothing by politicians, political campaigns and political ads, something so frightening even demons avoid it.

To be honest, I’m not sure which are worse: Political attack ads in which a candidate makes an opponent sound worse Jason Vorhees and Freddy Krueger’s love child, or the ones that paint politicians as just normal, everyday folks like you and me in photos and scenes so staged they make the Sears photo studio backdrops look real. Seriously, I find both types so annoying.

It gets old hearing that Candidate X is a socialistic fascist commie who wants to steal your money, sell your children to nomadic slave traders, make your wife his house wench, put you to work making solar-powered wind tunnels to test eco-friendly grass sandals all while turning America into a country so poor even Ethiopia would have to send us aid. Or, how Candidate Z is an elitist aristocratic robber baron who wants to steal all your money, put your whole family to work in sweatshops and turn the clock back to the ’90s — the 1890s.

By the same token, it also gets old hearing how Candidate Y loves puppies and babies, enjoys long walks on the beach, takes the children to school and picks them up, really listens when people speak, thinks with your vote he can make the world all sunshine and cotton candy and once was endorsed by Mr. Rogers for senior class president (even has a photo of them together). What is Candidate Y going to do to address problems? Hasn’t got a clue, but will be nice and polite.

Maybe I’ve gone through too many elections in this business and gotten a little jaundiced by it all.

OK, a lot jaundiced.

All right, cynical and pessimistic.

It’s just that even with all the ups and downs, trials and tribulations, finger-pointing and name calling through the years, nothing’s really changed or is different. It just goes in cycles as people get all excited about candidates, then get disappointed when it’s business as usual, then get excited about other candidates who can replace the ones who disappointed them. Then, they get disappointed with those candidates and look for new ones. In the meantime, the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer and the middle class just keeps fading away like age spots covered in Oil of Olay.

Beyond the technological advances that have affected election nights, probably the biggest change I’ve seen through the years is the end of the smoke-filled room. When I started covering elections, smoking hadn’t been added to the list of deadliest sins. It seemed most folks smoked. I remember a couple of election nights at the Baxter County Courthouse waiting in the clerk’s office for the ballots to be counted and tallying up the results. People were smoking, and the later it got and the closer the races were, the more they smoked. Before the night ended, a gray fog hung in the air.

Future election followers won’t get to experience such an election tradition.

Actually, the way politics has become now, there are students in high school who have never known a year without political campaigning. Somebody’s been campaigning since they were born — and that includes those students and the candidates as well. One thing I have noticed about politics is how young some of the candidates are now. I’m not sure some are shaving yet, and I wonder how they got permission to skip class to go on the campaign trail.

By now, you no doubt have concluded I don’t hold politics or politicians in particularly high esteem. You’d be right. I trust most politicians about as far as I can throw the courthouse, although I must admit with my particular view I’m sometimes genuinely surprised when one does something good, decent and right. Those occasions raise my expectations, but usually they’re quickly squashed.

So, as Election Torture 2012 winds down, we can take comfort in knowing that Tuesday night it all should be over except for the wailing and gnashing of teeth. The dark side of that coin, however, is the next political campaign season begins Wednesday.