Democracy, Coliseum style

In my previous career I commanded a substantial portion of a multi-million dollar operation. My peers and I routinely had almost daily meetings in which we played tug of war for employees, equipment and vehicles. The competition was a necessity as our performance against business plan was made public and depended heavily on our ability to control (I mean manipulate) labor budgets. Many times I wished that those meetings would be reduced to physical battles. I imagined the meeting room door being locked from the outside and the three of us fighting it out until only one man was left standing. That man got to use whoever he wanted, however he wanted and the other two guys had to make do with whatever was left.

I think Bush was thinking the same thing last night. He was looking across a stage at a man who has called him a liar, an idiot, a buffoon, and worse, accused him of taking the country to war for personal reasons. Bush was doing well to restrain himself. If he was imagining giving Kerry a kick in the groin, a quick fist to the throat and then kneeling on Kerry's chest, who can blame him?

Kerry, with typical campaign audacity, claimed that he, Kerry, would bring a new credibility to the presidency. Whaaaaa? He also claimed that he had held only one position on Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Whaaaa? Unbelievable. Americans by the millions, literally, watched the debate, watched the recap of the debate or read about it in the news this morning and are now considering Senator Kerry in a slightly more favorable light than they did yesterday. WAKE UP!

Kerry's claims are so ludicrous it's hard to imagine a response that doesn't start with, "There you go again."

I'm suggesting that from now on we utilize a Coliseum type approach to the debates. We give both candidates a sword and we release a lion into the room with them. If candidate #1 has told a bunch of lies about candidate #2, then #2 might not be inclined to help #1 if the lion starts to eat #1. If they've both been ugly then maybe they team up and kill the lion and then fight each other to the death. There are so many possible scenarios but only one outcome. Then the American people don't have to wait for a messy election (and the DNC lawsuits that are bound to follow) to know who's going to lead the nation. That's right, the last man standing.