Sequim Gazette Editorial and Letters to the Editor

Politics always has been possessed by an "Alice in Wonderland"-like quality. You go through its looking glass and things get curiouser and curiouser.

That's why I made politics my main course of study in college. Well, that, and the University of California at Santa Barbara didn't yet offer a surfing major.

While I made the dean's list for spending too much time catching waves, I made his other list for catching the subtleties of political change in the South, leading to the fall of the Democratic Party's Roosevelt coalition and establishing the Republican's Reagan majority.

You want to know about the ins and outs of the Japanese Diet? No, not their menu, Clyde. I mean their Legislature. Hey, I aced that class, even correctly predicting on the essay final that the Socialist Party would unseat the long-ruling LDP Party in four years.

While I adore surrealism in art, along with magical realism in literature, and film and theater, you can't beat the tweak to reality's nose that politics provides. This is especially true every four years when we elect a president in our wonderful country that we stole from its original inhabitants in the most aggravated case of armed robbery never brought to court.

You probably could tack on a few other charges, but I'm no authority. I stayed clear of the law in school - on several fronts.

Election 2008 is proving oddly abnormal.

The Democrats' national convention last week turned out to be out of the ordinary because it was ... well, so ordinary.

Not that it was without its moments of high political theater: Who couldn't be moved by seeing an ailing Ted Kennedy push aside a chair provided for him, then inspire the delegates one more time?

And no matter your political persuasion, you have to admit Barack Obama can slam dunk a speech the way Kobe Bryant glides around a basketball court.

Usually, Democratic conventions are full of knock down, dra g out infighting, undercutting and backstabbing.

Everybody is mad about something, whether it's a platform plank, the membership of a state's delegation or the kind of whiskey being poured in the hospitality suite.

But in Denver, everything seemed sweetness and light. Well, that is after Hillary Clinton released her delegates and told them to back Barack.

This week's Republican convention might be more interesting - if anybody shows up.

President Bush and the Penguin ... ah, I mean Vice President Cheney already have announced they won't attend - ostensibly because of Hurricane Gustav.

Even before the threat of another Katrina-like disaster to the Gulf Coast, several prominent Republicans had no intentions of traveling to Minneapolis-St. Paul to associate with a party headed by a president less popular than reruns of "Carpoolers."

It's like an early political Halloween for Republicans: They might as well be wearing disguises because they don't want you to know who they are.

Take Dino Rossi, who ran as a Republican for governor of Washington four years ago but lost to Democrat Chris Gregoire. This year, Rossi lists his party preference as GOP, which I guess means he's a member of the Grand Old Party Party.

Whatever. Rossi won't be in the Twin Cities, adding his name to a lengthy list of prominent Republicans (or Grand Old Party Partiers), which includes nine U.S. Senate candidates.

Also missing will be retiring U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R/GOP, Idaho. Apparently, he had qualms about flying into the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, which is too bad because he could have directed conventioneers to the nearest ... Oh, my boss says I can't go there.

Well, Craig could always take the bus. Somewhere.

Jim Guthrie's journalism career has spanned 41 years with newspapers in California and Washington. He is interested in playwriting and poetry and lives in Port Angeles.