Stratford Asks: For This I Miss “Deal or No Deal”?

This year’s Democratic National Convention has a theme of “America’s Town Hall.” In fact, I skipped attending tonight’s scheduled town council meeting at our own Town Hall just so I could study this quadrennial bloodsport and get a feel for what to expect through November. With today’s Dow dropping 242 points, every now and again I need to focus on national politics as well as local. I turned to CNN out of habit and settled in for the show, a Pepsi in one hand and my newspaper in the other.

I lasted about an hour before I finally had to turn the volume down. Maybe it was too soon after the wall-to-wall Olympics from Beijing, but watching CNN’s coverage of the Democratic National Convention has become unbearable. If Wolf Blitzer calls his team “the best collection of political experts anywhere” one more time, I’m going to hurl my laptop through the TV screen. Remember when they used to lambaste Fox news for tooting its own horn like this?

With the volume down, every occasional glance at the proceedings consisted of a B-list celebrity (Matt Modine is on right now) speaking with a Kennedy. There were a few rock star sightings as John Kerry poked his head out from behind some scaffolding and Ted Kennedy made a rare appearance, but precious little in the way of substance. CNN isn’t covering the convention so much as covering itself covering the convention. It’s all pillow talk until Barack’s wife makes her speech, which in and of itself hardly seems to merit such a buildup. I don’t remember Nancy Reagan or Barbara Bush getting this type of star treatment, but then again they were the grandmarms of their party. Michelle is a hottie (for that matter, so is Obama), so I guess she reaches a larger demographic.

Ironically, at 9:30 on the very first night of the convention, CNN.com leads with this headline under Latest News: “Have Dems botched convention so far?” I didn’t know you could botch a convention so quickly, but with a horde of journalists hovering like vultures in every hallway in Denver, CNN seems ready to weigh in.

It just reminds me of why I respect local politics so much more than national campaigns. It’s obvious that most everyone in Stratford’s political offices truly cares about the town. I hope the candidates avoid making the mistakes the national campaigns of McCain and Obama have already made: too much flash, too much dazzle, not enough of the simple explanations that outline how they will fix things.

Under my own Latest News bulletin about the convention, I would have to write this: “I can’t wait until Monday Night Football returns.”