Southern view

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica – Thousands of miles of terrain are enough to make the good ol’ U.S. seem worlds away from San Jose. Unfortunately, there are some things that living abroad absolutely has no power to stop. For example, the characteristic “Hillary smirk” that Clinton dons every time one of her challengers opens his mouth during a debate. CNN en Espanol unfortunately has little impact on the amount of election-related trash that graces the airwaves here. The world is watching how this mess pans out, and I often go through the day hearing just as much about Costa Rica’s current president, Oscar Arias Sanchez, as I do about “Senor Obama” or “Senora Clinton.” Still, U.S. electoral politics are nearly impossible to explain to any Costa Rican. Actually, come to think of it, they are just as hard to explain to a good percentage of the American population. What makes a superdelegate so super? And what makes people finally pay attention to New Hampshire, instead of discounting it as a few square miles of frozen tundra as they are accustomed to doing? \nStill, the absolute hardest thing to explain is definitely party politics. As Americans, we all occupy the same country, and so we all want the same things, more or less: a stable economy, decent health care and adequate schooling. On a quest for the same ends, why, then, is it necessary to whip out both teeth and claws for a good smattering of political irony in anticipation of November’s elections?\nEvery day, on the airwaves I hear political mud-slingers denouncing certain party members as “hardly a conservative” or “way too conservative to even be considered a Democrat.” I always expect these horrific accusations to be followed by charges of being a “pinko” and immediate blacklisting. And considering that we still have the better part of a year before all this madness ends, there is time enough that this still may end up being the case.\nSince when are “liberal” and “conservative” considered four-letter words? Can’t we all just accuse each other of accepting illegal campaign contributions or having illicit affairs like we used to in the good ol’ days? In dirtying the reputation of political competition, could we maybe choose something a little more interesting, at the very least so “Saturday Night Live” has some decent material to work with? \nWe’re not just fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we’ve let the derogatory politics of sectarian, low-aiming regimes spill over onto our soil. In turn, our soil has spilled over into the sight of the rest of the world and undermined both our credibility and any chance at creating a front of national unity. \nFor the next four years, we will have a president. Said president will do some OK things, but said president will also screw up. And said president will consequently be mocked. That’s just how it works. \nNeither party is attempting to bring down our country, and neither party has the capability to do so anyway. \nBeing abroad has skewed my sense of time. So tell me, is it November yet?