NFL battles for White House

From Behind the Lens by Ryan Smith

There’s only two things certain in life: death and taxes.

But, as far as politics is concerned, the adage may need to be updated to make way for one more certainty—the Washington Redskins.

With the presidential election quickly winding down to its final days and still locked in a bitter stalemate, analysts are scratching their heads wondering which way the political winds might turn next.

The good news is analysts may not need to search any farther for answers to election questions than FedEx Field, home to the Washington Redskins and ultimately the holding site of the true fate of this presidential election.

Depending on what side of the party line you affiliate with most, the Redskins can either be your good luck charm or a voodoo doll curse.

That’s because in the past 18 presidential elections, spanning over 72 years, the result of the last Redskins game before an election has all but sealed the fate of the party in office, with the exception of the 1996 election between then President Bill Clinton and former Senator Bob Dole.

According the record books, in 1932 the Redskins tied the Bears and coincidentally Herbert Hoover lost his re-election setting up Franklin Roosevelt to be the last President to serve more than two terms in the White House.

From that point on until 1996, every time the Redskins lost before an election, a new president was elected to office. And, if the Redskins won, the incumbent candidate stayed in office for another term.

The 1996 election appears to be the only hitch in this “master plan.” That year the Redskins lost but Clinton won a second term. The trend continued again, however, for the 2000 election.

This year, the election is on Nov. 2 with the Redskins playing the Green Bay Packers on Oct. 31.

While it’s still too early in the football season to say which team has an advantage over the other, the consensus seems to be that Green Bay has a stronger team.

Good news for Senator Kerry.

It’s just too bad that Kerry fumbled a perfect chance to support the Packers while he was campaigning in Wisconsin about a week ago, incorrectly naming Lambeau Field as Lambert Field.
Good news for President Bush.

It’s obvious that this election can’t be won on the issues alone. Both candidates and their supporters have tried for months to discredit and defame one another in hopes of getting a leg up but have failed repeatedly.

The solution: quit campaigning politics and start campaigning football.

Maybe, instead of scheduling three debates in the final days before the election, in which Kerry and Bush will undoubtedly argue about the war on Iraq, let domestic issues fall by the wayside and bicker about a number of other topics that a majority of the American public doesn’t care to listen to, the two candidates should schedule a pick-up football game on the White House lawn.

Kerry and his democratic buddies could be the Packers and Bush and the republicans could be the Redskins.

Televise that on National television and by the time the game was over, one of the two candidates would have a solid lead in the polls.

Fact of the matter is, politicians need to get back in touch with the people. And if a football game could attract more people to the voting booth, then it’s more important than the war in Iraq.