ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL Well, the coming recession has become the campaign issue du jour. Yesterday it was the price of oil… or was it the war in Iraq…. or illegal immigration? It doesn’t take much for the candidates and mediocre media to push an important national problem to the archives. Have you noticed how shallow the debate questioning has been? It’s as though the mediocre media moguls believe that the public can only pay attention to an issue at a time. I heard a talk show host respond to a caller’s question about illegal immigration by saying, “it’s not the most important issue.” Well, we have the capacity to deal with ALL of the problems at the same time. I, for one, do not want another president who can only address one problem at a time. As I have postulated before, a large part of the American electorate chooses not to vote under the belief that no matter who wins, we will get a “just ruler.” This is the same belief that causes citizens of non-democratic governments to accept them. But, many Americans felt that Dubya became an unjust ruler, and that the “just ruler” principal is no longer reliable, and voted to shift some of the power in Congress to the Democrat Party. Good start. Could it be that by marginalizing many legitimate election issues, Americans will not become “…mad as hell and not take it anymore!”? Could it be that the political parties can better run their campaign by relying on a familiar data base, rather trying to figure out how to identify newly motivated voters? Could it be that the mediocre media pollsters can better generate reliable results and protect their fragile credibility? We the electorate can take control of this election cycle by actively keeping all of our problems front and center and demand discussions and solution options from all candidates on all important national issues. If we don’t, it won’t only be mediocre media that we get.