Poliics

Just got back from a weeklong camping trip in New Hampshire. If lawn signs are anything to go by, the Conway/Glen area is solidly behind Romney (also, the repubs are running someone with a name from a Moliere play for governor), while at the other end of Rte. 302 in the Bretton Woods area, opinion tends more towards Obama. What I found interesting, however, is the way the signs are displayed. The Romney-ites go for big-ass plastic signs, six or eight feet long (I certainly didn’t get out and measure one–it’s b’ar huntin’ season up there). The Obama signs, on the other hand, are largely home-made. Typically they consist of a letter-size pre-printed “Obama 2012” sign glued into the upper righthand corner of a piece of poster board, with the owner’s political opinion scratched out around it in shaky ballpoint pen. Instead of clear political slogans like “Show Us the Returns!” or “Romney: Not One of Us,” the Democratic signs explain at length and in almost agonizing detail the thinking behind their decision. “While I would have preferred a more substantive approach to health care reform, I feel that so-called Obamacare–a name I now choose to embrace–is at least a well-intentioned try at providing thiis essential…” Well, you get the idea.

I just can’t help picturing fleets of 18-wheelers identically blazoned with Romney logos and stacked with neatly shrink-wrapped palettes of oversized Romney signs fanning out from Romney Central to carefully-chosen Romney campaign headquarters sites in carefully-calculated Romney numbers to maximize the impact of the Romney message, while Obama supporteres get a Fedex envelope full of “Obama 2012” signs and a note–here, pass these around–and then head off to the local Staples for some poster board and markers and the Home Depot for some cheap lath.