Attention candidates: Don’t make me take your socks!

Watching the presidential primaries unfold, I’m beginning to understand how my parents must have felt when my brother and I were growing up. For most of our childhood, we could not be left alone in a room without attempting to kill each other. Any game or toy quickly became a weapon in our vicious sibling rivalry.

My Aunt Judy became notorious for confiscating our socks whenever we visited her. She had learned the hard way that, in the absence of all other options, we would ball one sock up inside the other, creating a whip that could leave some serious welts. Needless to say, our behavior frustrated and embarrassed everyone around us, but we were too caught up in our supposed hatred for each other to notice. We didn’t understand that sharing DNA was supposed to put us on the same side.

This seems to be where the presidential candidates are now, desperately clawing at one another with any means available in a pathetic attempt to get a bit of an edge. This behavior is somewhat expected from children, and I suppose one could argue the same for politicians who are just two weeks from the Iowa caucus. But shouldn’t we be holding our future president to a higher standard?

There are some incredibly powerful and accomplished people in this race. What does it say about their ability to lead that under the slightest bit of pressure, they revert to the behavior of 12 year-olds, calling names and making up elaborate stories about each other. Both parties are guilty, but I’m particularly concerned with the Democrats. First of all, the current administration is the bad guy, not your fellow liberal. Secondly, shouldn’t we be focusing more on what’s wrong with this country and how we can fix it, and less on who did drugs or disclosed their finances or took a private jet?

I’m tired of it. Enough is enough.

Yesterday Joe Leiberman stepped across party lines to endorse Senator John McCain, a move that surely surprised some and outraged more than a few. While I consider myself a dedicated liberal, I have to say that I commend Senator Lieberman’s action. By endorsing Senator McCain, Lieberman is refusing to condone the petty behavior of the candidates he may have been expected to support, choosing instead to throw his sway behind someone who has refrained from joining the circus that is this primary race.

My hope is that this move will serve as a wake-up call. We liberals are in this together, but we can’t afford to keep alienating our supporters. How long will it take to realize this? How many elections must we lose? How many party members will declare themselves “independent” before we grow up, stand together and present the strong, united image that the voters are dying to see?

My brother and I only stopped arguing after he moved out. Once we saw less of each other, we realized that we had spent years fighting the wrong battle. The real opponents had been our parents, and had we presented a unified front, my brother and I would have gotten a lot more things to go our way. Instead, we defeated each other’s causes, out of nothing but mean-spiritedness and jealousy, and most of the time, neither of us got what we wanted.

This is my greatest fear. In this election, we don’t have the luxury of waiting until it’s over to realize our mistakes. By then, the future of our economy, our healthcare, our environment, our international integrity, will all be in the hands of someone else. And we’ll be left to wonder nostalgically how different it might have been if we had just worked together.

I keep waiting for the Democratic National Committee to put its foot down. To lay down the law and get these politicians to start acting like adults. But the clock is ticking, and I’m thinking of putting in a personal call to Howard Dean. Perhaps I can put him in touch with my Aunt Judy. She’s a little older now, but she still knows how to scare the socks off a misbehaving kid.

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