Uh Oh Politics: Summer Daze

I went to the White House this weekend for a New Jersey Community Leaders summit or something and it was actually a pretty good discussion. Speakers included various special assistants to President Obama including Liz Fowler, the architect behind the recently passed (and thank God they did by the way) health reform laws. To top it all off, I got to tour the White House itself after waiting outside in absurdly hot weather. The funny thing is though, I’m not actually allowed to go into much more detail than that seeing as I’m the press and not really a “NJ Community Leader.” Whatever, this was just the inspiration and jumping off point for the real point of this article: the lovable insanity of summertime politics.


Granted, I think the game of politics is fascinating all day everyday but there is something about this season that makes them this whole different thing. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s me having all this free time to watch more of "The Daily Show." However, I think the real answer is that summer is the perfect distance away from election time. Elections, for as important and climatic as they are, are similar. They aren’t boring necessarily but they can only play out in so many ways. One person wins, the other doesn’t. Sometimes the results are surprising or controversial but regardless, once the debates end and the dust settles all that remains are vote tallies and the wait for politicians to actually to focus on their jobs. Candidates change but the process itself is virtually the same year after year, except for when there’s a little more new media thrown in or something.

In the summer though, the election is just this looming, influential presence instead of the outright, dominating focus. This is when all the crazy arguing over specific issues can really come to a head. Just think of all the insanity we’ve witnessed as a country over these last few summers: Obamacare court ruling, the debt ceiling crisis, Lebanon and Hezbollah (or the Hezballas as I like to call them), people going nuts at health care town halls. Summer is the time for things to even more super get nasty and partisan and pandering before everyone has to get in line in time to ramp up for the convention in the fall (which I will once again be covering just so you know).

Free, annual, real-world entertainment and it is all part of this beautiful cycle.