Political silly season is in full fall swing

If it's the second week after Labor Day in an election year you can see a few leaves start to turn for the fall. Some brown, some orange and if you're lucky, a bright red one. Those special leaves share their color with the faces of more than a few elected officials during "Silly Season."

Of course dumb comments aren't anything new in politics, no matter what temperature it is outside. But in the fall election season, the mainstream press usually acts like a bug zapper. Political figures are drawn to its warmth and light and as they open their mouths then, bzzt.

Sen. Barack Obama was its victim this week when he used the phrase "lipstick on a pig" to criticize Sen. John McCain's policies as just "more of the same."

Within minutes a YouTube video of the remark appeared and ignited a fire storm of media attention focused on Obama's alleged insult to Gov. Sarah Palin who made a memorable lipstick joke as she accepted her party's vice-presidential nomination.

But as usual, the fire storm about Obama's affront to female voters who supported Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary was really just a lot of pundits and operatives blowing political smoke.

Also not helping the Obama campaign is Gov. Rod Blagojevich going out of his way to back up the Alaskan governor against criticism that her 20 months in office makes her too inexperienced to be vice president by saying, "It's an executive position. And it's a position that is like what you're going to do when you're president. Legislators, they do different things. They debate and they pass their bills back and forth."

That's an odd comment coming from a governor who has had no problem subverting the state legislature with his numerous amendatory vetoes that effectively rewrite bills. Nevermind that Blagojevich is closer to indictment than re-election.

However, not all silly comments deserve to be bashed. At Thursday's Board of Trustees meeting, Chancellor Richard Herman said that one of his goals was to get 100 percent student voter turnout. That's a great thing to shoot for, and we'd love to see it happen considering the major impact young voters look to have on this year's election. But unless the draft is reinstated or free beer is served at campus polling places, that probably isn't going to happen.

No one knows from where the next verbal misstep will come or which side will try to take underestimate voters' intelligence next. It's likely that so far both Democrats and Republicans have yet to show us how low they can sink while trying to win the highest office in the land.