Political campaigns wobble along on tired, overused, and incoherent metaphors. The 2012 event, whether you think it's an election or a selection, also features candidates who squeak along on the rusty wheels of gambling, sailing, traveling, and warring.
One common metaphor is the gambling hyperbole. "The stakes have never been higher!"
To reply, of course the stakes have been described as being higher. This gambling metaphor is dragged out whenever the candidate's speechwriters have come to a dead end. The candidate and speechwriters should be ashamed of having to stick their hands in the muddy waters of using an overworn analogy. But, they aren't ashamed, they continue to bleat about "The stakes have never been higher!"
It often takes a doctor to dignose ills in a patient, and so with political metaphors. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson peers at the 1972 US election pitting George McGovern and Richard Nixon. Hunter is ruthless at peeling the tarnishing gilt off political rhetoric, leaving it blowing tattered and looking ridiculous. For a fascinating, insighful, funny, and tragic look at the turn of the US in 1972, read
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 by Hunter. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7748.Fear_and_Loathing_on_the_Campaign_Trail_72
Hunter records the boxing metaphor, used by losing candidates who pretend that they have just been nice, and now it's time to "take off the gloves," implying that the losing candidate is now ready to beat up the other loser candidate.
Kudos to any candidates with original thoughts and original writers, who have the desire to serve the good citizens of the US, and honor the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.
For the other candidates, who look and sound like dangerous clowns, may they also endure a metaphor, of the last circle of Hell, where they must listen to endless loops of their ridiculous and treacherous tired rhetoric.
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