Just shy of two months to go in the 2008 election season, the two parties have now cross the Rubicon, and the two tickets are set for the last trip down the backstretch, what is sure to be a final turn in which an epic amount of mud will be slung.

To slightly paraphrase Shakespeare:

“Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair America, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”

Indeed, the situation that has evolved politically almost sounds like something straight out of a Shakespeare play. Between the rhetoric, the natural disasters, the intrigue, rumors and the complex back story, it’s highly unlikely that even the Bard’s great conceptual mind could have dreamed this up.

There are the Capulets — er, I mean Democrats: the young, impetuous, rhetorically gifted, politically inexperienced — despite whatever his supporters say — Obama, backed up by the old guard experience of Joe Biden. The sight of the young African-American striding alongside the white-haired old Delaware veteran is, indeed, a “change” of sorts.

Contrast that against the Republican ticket: the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant McCain, with three decades in Washington, war hero credentials and a thinning head of white hair paired with Sarah Palin’s face-wide smile, exceedingly short political resume and former beauty pageant appearance.

It’s almost as though the two tickets are mirror images of each other. Not in recent political times have there been tickets quite like this. The Democrats have the experience on the lower part of their ticket, in the person of Biden, while the rhetorical power and youth appeal belongs to Obama. The Republicans, on the other hand, have put the experience and rhetorical power on the top of the ticket with McCain, while the youth appeal and “new” factor are on the bottom of the ticket with Palin.

Some comments on each side’s lineup:

While a strong pick, Joe Biden is almost overqualified for the job. It makes a person wonder why the Democrats didn’t put him on the top of the ticket to begin with. The answer, of course, is in the politics of the primaries and the staying power of a candidate’s campaign. Iowa killed Biden’s presidential hopes, even though on paper he was one of the most qualified candidates in the field. He brings a lot of heavy firepower to the Obama lineup, most notably his massive reserve of foreign policy credibility, which Obama sorely lacked. Indeed, McCain has led Obama in almost every significant foreign policy or national security poll up to this point.

Sarah Palin makes sense from the viewpoint of campaign tactics. While she was on the short list, she wasn’t one of the more prominent names on the short list, and picking her ahead of Mitt Romney — a controversial figure in and of himself — and Tim Pawlenty may have been a move to throw the Democrats’ PR machine off for a few days. She serves, also, to solidify the right-wing base which, even this far into the campaign, McCain has had issues with. Despite all the speeches, all the campaigning, some hard-right Republicans still believe McCain to be too much of a moderate. Palin makes huge strides toward making that up.

The two running mate choices both showed us candidates that, by themselves, are basically flawed. Both choices, at their core — and this shouldn’t be a surprise — were made with the election in mind, and not what happens after the election. Biden was chosen to fill in Obama’s perceived deficiencies with voters, and Palin was chosen to fill in McCain’s perceived deficiencies with voters. While that can seem a little unsettling given that either Biden or Palin will be a heartbeat from the presidency, it is a reality in our modern politics. Maybe that’s why the framers of the Constitution originally intended that the runner-up for the top office should become the vice president, and perhaps that’s yet another great defense of why our modern minds shouldn’t go messing with the framers’ brilliance.

At the very least, we’ll finally be replacing Claudius and Cassius.

Two months. Two more months. Two more months of ads, speeches, yard signs and obnoxious media coverage. To quote Shakespeare yet again:

“Now is the winter of our discontent,

Made glorious by this son of York”

Or son of Illinois? Or Arizona? We’ll see.

— Ryan Frederick is a senior in management from Orient.