With one debate down and two more to go (plus the John Edwards vs. Dick Cheney match on Tuesday), everyone's talking about what the candidates will talk about. I can tell you one thing I'm pretty sure no one will mention: vegetables.
On Thursday night, while most of you were hanging on every word to see if President George W. Bush would follow mix up Osama and Saddam - which, to no one's surprise, he did - I was waiting with bated breath to see if Bush or John Kerry would make the political misstep of confusing cucumbers with zucchini. No such luck.
Now, don't get me wrong. Agriculture is an important part of the economy. And sometimes, veggies are a political issue (my mom still gets livid when anyone mentions Ronald Reagan's unfortunate "ketchup is a vegetable" campaign). But do you remember when the big fight was between George H.W. Bush and broccoli farmers? And everyone was talking about how, exactly, do you spell potato, and how, exactly, our vice president could be so stupid?
The 1990s were a vegetable revolution of sorts. With such a good economy, people could buy organic produce and fancy fake meat. Finally, most Americans figured out that vegetarians do not eat chicken soup, even bowls without any pieces of flesh, and that tofu is not a kind of dog. And with no big political issues, people could focus on the president's eating habits (Big Macs and Monica).
You could say the 1990s were like America's teenage years. We elected Bill Clinton, the most adolescent of presidents, to the White House - twice. We started flirting with attractive European countries. We strove to be good-looking, from the mass migration to the gym to the Ally McBeal diet. We had a ton of disposable income to buy all sorts of gadgets. We gossiped about who was sleeping with who and did what was cool.
Which included not eating meat. I jumped on the bandwagon. Yes, I was a whiny teenage vegetarian.
Now, I could write a whole other column on why I usually don't eat meat, but the point is that it doesn't matter. Collectively, we were a nation of teenage vegetarians with the means and without the worries. I'm not trying to berate the efforts of animal activist and health conscious Americans - some people have stuck to their guns through thick and thin, and I do enjoy the vegetarian options while dining out. But, as we entered the new millennium (20-somethings, you could say) there's bigger fish to fry.
The national surplus to support our organic and pesticide-free diets is gone. More and more, Americans don't have irrationally exuberant paychecks to buy free-range, humanely killed chicken - when you're unemployed, any source of protein will do. Elder Bush's enemies retaliated by sending huge amounts of broccoli to the White House. Given that our current president is at war with an entire nation, I think we have to worry more about bombs arriving on the front door then tons of cabbage. And while having a vice president that couldn't spell was a little troublesome, having one that can get his company a $2 billion contract is downright scary.
So as the candidates duke it out, let's hope that they get to, if not the veggies, the meat of the issue. And maybe the vegetables will be greener on the other side of the aisle.
Emily Nemens '05 recommends Pawtucket's Garden Grille for all you veggies.
