Candidates need to get focus back

Hillary Clinton sips from a shot glass. Barack Obama doesn’t loosen his necktie to go bowling.
Both events — hanging out with locals during a campaign stop — were carefully choreographed photo opportunities aimed at helping candidates look like regular folks, and therefore appear more electable. Time will tell who will win the Democratic nomination, but endless vote pandering and tiresome mudslinging by candidates make real regular folks across the country the ultimate losers.
Many regular folks don’t want to hear what questionable rhetoric a pastor is preaching. Only a small number of voters probably care how a candidate will fight for the rights of Guam residents, based on census statistics showing 173,456 Guam residents compared with 300 million people in the entire U.S. Another state, another primary and another different message are troubling themes in this year’s presidential campaign. It must be difficult to tailor a message for Guam one weekend and North Carolina and Indiana the next.
Messages from candidates change with the wind, but many troubling themes continue to face regular folks. People want to know if their mortgages are safe, if they will be laid off work, if they will have to chose between buying groceries or gasoline. They want to know if — or when — they will be able to finally retire.
It is hard to imagine candidates earning millions of dollars connecting with regular folks who now pay close to $4 a gallon for gasoline and twice as much as they did a year ago for flour, eggs and other food staples. These insidious price hikes seem like only 50 cents here and $1 there, but put all this cost-of-life inflation together and it starts adding up to real suffering for regular folks. Candidates insulated by television cameras and campaign handlers seldom get a sense of what real life is really like.
So candidates, cut out the bickering. Stop the pandering.
Put down your drink and take off your necktie. Roll up your sleeves and cancel your next pointless press conference where you were only going to complain about your opponent anyway. Too often we know more about what a candidate is against than what a candidate is for. It is time to hear how you will make life better for regular folks.
Obama tried to look regular by going bowling. Clinton tried to look regular by sipping from a shot glass. Republican nominee John McCain proposed a gas tax holiday. They should start thinking like the regular folks, who wonder if they can even afford a night of bowling this week or a night out at the bar with friends.
Presidential candidates aren’t regular folks. They are multi-millionaires, who are neatly packaged advertisements for their parties. It is odd they call themselves parties, since life lately for regular folks has been anything but a party.

Members of The Star News editorial board include Publisher Carol O’Leary, General Manager Kris O’Leary, News Editor Brian Wilson, and Reporters Donald Watson, Luke Klink, and Mark Berglund.