All politics are local

We're now barely a month away from the November general election and I'm noticing the same thing here in Missouri that I noticed in 2012: if I use yard signs as evidence, people care the most about what's happening closest to them.  I see a lot of yard signs for local offices and almost none for state-wide or federal office. Who's running for U.S. Congress here in Farmington? If I relied solely on yard signs, I wouldn't have a clue. I haven't seen a single sign promoting anyone for Congress. I also haven't noticed much advertising on television, and what there has been hasn't been for anything happening here in Missouri. The political ads airing on the St. Louis stations all seem to be for candidates running in Illinois.

Although you know what's weird about those ads? I've yet to see one that's for a candidate. We keep seeing ads bashing the heck out of some guy running for Congress -- or maybe Senate. I'm not sure because the ads talk a lot about what a disaster he'd be if he got to Washington, but they never come right out and specify that he'd made a lousy Senator or a lousy Representative. The only thing that's sort of clear is he's running for office in Illinois. I have not, however, seen an ad actually talking up either the target of the attack ad or the guy who's running against him. It's bizarre. Makes a person wonder if the ballot will have a line for a candidate named "Not That Guy,"

I will say, however, it's nice to be here in Missouri during these last few weeks before the election. No matter how annoying political ads might get, we can ignore them all. They won't be pushing any candidates we care about. If we were still up on the tundra, the mailbox would be filling up with campaign literature and every other commercial on television would be telling us that Governor Snyder walks on water. Down here? From our perspective, it's a non-issue. We still have to fill out our absentee ballots and get them in the mail, but from our perspective the election is already over.

I kind of wish we could plan on a similar escape from politics in 2016, but given the hype and speculation already swirling around potential presidential candidates, I'm thinking the only way to escape politics then might be to plan on spending half the year in some other country.