Here Be Monsters

In the closing days of a campaign, every day is Halloween, because the hobgoblins are all real and they genuinely are trying to scare you.

Campaigns are paranoid places to begin with, so when you add the terrible pressures of the final days, it is little surprise that both candidates and their staffs are so jumpy. First, the campaigns are running out of time, which is their most precious resource. Second, by this point each side is totally consumed with rage at the various despicable maneuvers--both real and imagined--of its opponent. Finally, somebody is ahead and afraid to lose position, and somebody is behind and desperate to catch up.

So what happens? Campaigns freak out at every rustle or stirring they hear coming from the eerie political forest. Each side is very quick to see a massive conspiracy behind every day's small kerfuffle. "Why is the poll dipping where we are now spending much more money on television ads? The other side must be making zillions of dirty phone calls under the radar. Quick, triple our nasty phone calls. And double up on the nasty!" This is the main reason campaigns go negative late in the game--when you see a demon lurking behind every shadow, it is only natural to haul out the big artillery and start blasting away.

Meanwhile, as things wind down, Murphy's Law takes over: If something can possibly go wrong, it will. In the final days of one of Bob Dole's presidential campaigns, a GOP superstar was scheduled to appear in a splashy "turn things around" rally for Dole and make a surprise endorsement. The phone rang late the night before--the superstar was canceling the appearance, citing a "dental emergency." At least give that shirker points for creativity. Candidates know that national politics is a brutal Serengeti, and the animals that roam there have highly attuned survival instincts. When they start to flee, it is a sure warning of coming trouble.

But the biggest and scariest monster of all is the Frankenstein of Massive Voter Fraud. Both campaigns are so worked up about it, they are doing what worried campaigns always do: howling like banshees to the media. Each hopes to create a yowl of media attention that will prevent the other side from doing its worst, although each side assumes a level of villainy from the other that is probably more a product of final-campaign-week neurosis than reality. Still, each campaign is obsessed that the other will "steal" the election. In this paranoia, they are perfect dancing partners, since their worst fears are ironically codependent.

While the Republicans and Democrats both fear the lurking fraud monster, it could exist in reality only if they jointly created it, since each party's monster is a direct response to the anticipated actions of the other. Republicans think the Democrats--aided by ACORN, the AFL-CIO, organized crime, the Comintern and the New York Times--are going to stuff every urban ballot box from Miami to Chicago with fraudulent ballots cast by phony, made-up repeat voters. The Democrats fear that the Republicans--aided by the League of Snarling 'n' Sweaty Southern Sheriffs, Wal-Mart, Fox News, Dick Cheney and the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover--are going to use legal shenanigans, menacing hired goons and a vast army of pseudofascist Christian activists to deny millions of innocent Americans their right to vote.