Fiddling with the Governor

I had the rare pleasure of listening to two different governor debates last night. The first was in Michigan: Jennifer Granholm (incumbent Democrat) vs. Dick DeVos (Republican). The debate began propitiously with Granholm blasting DeVos for showing TV adds "with dead children." The rest that I heard was the usual litany of taxes, job creation... DeVos kept hammering her on the state's horrible economy. I’m sure #3 knows this, but for the rest out there, DeVos’s family is one of the founders of Amway (started in Ada, MI, a suburb of Grand Rapids, MI). Had I been Granholm I would have just asked DeVos, “So, Dick, what sort of pyramid scheme do you have for the Michigan economy?”

Then, as my car sped out of the Toledo area and onwards toward Cleveland, at 9:00 PM I picked up the Ohio Governor's debate: Ted Strickland (D) vs. Ken Blackwell (R). This proved to be one of the more entertaining things I've heard on the radio in a long time. Blackwell's strategy might be compared to a team in the 4th quarter that is down by 20 points. What do you do? Throw the Ave Maria. Or perhaps it might be more like a mini-bike ride where you've removed the governor and are speeding out of control. In this case he accused Strickland at least two times of knowingly having a sexual predator on his staff. Blackwell, a member of the Republican party, also kept bashing the current governor Taft, also a Republican. But the best of all was Blackwell's claim that a vote Strickland cast was applauded by the "North American Man-Boy Love Association." He kept repeating it -- "And my opponent cast a vote that even the North American Man-Boy Love Association praised!" Hell, who needs National Lampoon when you've got Ken Blackwell?