This presidential campaign season has been a bit like living in the Bizarro world of “Htrae.” In the DC Comics Universe, it will be remembered, the Bizarro world is that world in which all things are the opposite of what they would be on the planet Earth.

Bizarro Campaign 2008 features a major political party nominating a female vice presidential candidate for only the second time in American history. Yet feminists across the land have cried “foul”! They sneeringly label Sarah Palin as a “former beauty queen.” One well-known female commentator remarks that her selection by the Republican presidential candidate was greeted by “literally laughter” in “very many newsrooms.” Other women who allegedly support gender equality in the workplace wonder aloud how a person can possibly mother five children and serve as a professional simultaneously. One state party chairwoman complains that Palin’s “primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”  Palin herself gives an acceptance speech that is well received by the American people, yet many media commentators feel the need to note that a speechwriter wrote the speech for this female candidate.  The male candidates have speechwriters, but few feel the need to remark upon them.

In the Bizarro election of 2008, Republicans are excoriated for their failure to get Osama bin Laden. Barack Obama pokes fun at John McCain’s declaration that he will “follow Osama bin Laden to the Gates of Hell.” Meanwhile, many liberal media commentators are loathe to question Obama’s friendly relations with two known domestic terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Such questions are unimportant, mere “fear politics” employed by Republicans, as one Democratic strategist recently declared on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes.

The Democratic Party of Bizarro Campaign 2008 believes that its most qualified candidate is a junior Senator from Illinois with no executive experience whatsoever. When asked to identify an effort that he has led, they sputter and hedge, sometimes pointing to his presidential campaign. (Because in Bizarro world, running for President is a qualification for the presidency, in and of itself.) They declare vehemently that Obama is more experienced than the Republican vice presidential candidate. Palin may have spent the past 12 years running first a town, then a state oil and gas commission, then the state itself, but these resume items are said to pale in comparison to Obama’s efforts as a community organizer.

In this Bizarro world, the Democratic candidate once naively stated that he would meet with the leaders of many rogue nations “without precondition.”  He opposed a troop surge in Iraq—a surge that later proved, by its success, to be a good idea. This candidate could not decide what to make of Russia’s invasion of Georgia. Over the course of several days, he issued multiple statements with different approaches to the situation. Yet some people continue to believe that this man will make a better commander-in-chief than the Republican: a former POW who understood that the surge will work and who immediately knew what approach to take when Russia invaded Georgia.

Finally, Bizarro Campaign 2008 features a Democratic Party that claims to represent the average working class American voter. Yet its candidates and supporters constantly make fun of the very people that they claim to represent. The presidential candidate himself described small town Pennsylvanians as people who are “bitter” and who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” One noted celebrity seems to believe that Palin’s background as a normal American voter—a self-described hockey mom—makes her unqualified to ever be President. “It’s like a really bad Disney movie,” he concludes, “It’s totally absurd.” In Bizarro Campaign 2008, Democrats expect to lead the country, all the while failing to understand the very essence of what it means to be an American: In this country, anyone can aspire to be anything he or she wants to be. It is not “absurd” for a hockey mom to work her way from mayor to President. It’s the American dream.

The 2008 campaign has truly been a Bizarro one.  But it need not have a Bizarro conclusion. On November 4, American voters can turn the world right-side-up once again.

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