Thou shalt not enjoy thyself on vacation

This being my first election season in the Valley, I’ve tried to use a little discretion and keep my fool mouth shut a little more often than I might.

But I would be remiss to not throw a flag on what went down last Wednesday night at the Borough Assembly debate held at The Annex in Palmer, presented by AARP.

Each of the two candidates for the District 1 assembly seat were given the opportunity to ask their opponent one question.

Incumbent Jim Sykes used his to ask challenger Brian Endle what he thought made him the most qualified for the job, which turned into a battle over each’s history in community council governance. This got a bit testy but at least stayed, more or less, on topic.

But Endle’s question to Sykes went from bizarre to just plain ridiculous in 90 excruciatingly uncomfortable seconds.

“For what purpose, Mr. Sykes, did you go overseas?” Endle asked.

This was an odd question, especially since it didn’t specify any particular time or general geography of said travel.

My first instinct led me to think Endle was insinuating some sort of subversive or unpatriotic excursion on the part his opponent, whom he steadily paints as a Green Party socialist in RINO clothing.

Sykes took the question to be about his month-long absence over the summer when he vacationed in Greenland and Iceland.

Despite Sykes’ quick response, the question still seemed odd, but at least somewhat on topic.

Even borough assembly members, I might’ve thought, should get to take vacations. But then again, maybe not. Like I said, I’m still figuring out how things are done around here.

In any event, the incumbent’s absence through all of May gave Endle an opportunity to do some early campaigning unfettered. Hardly anything, it would seem, he should begrudge.

“We almost never leave during the summer, but my wife and I went on a trip for our 32^nd anniversary,” Sykes defended, then punned cornily: “I called it our, ‘I Only Have Ice for You’ tour.”

It turns out though, the way Sykes interpreted it was not really where Endle was going with his question at all. Each candidate was allowed to retort against the other’s answer.

“I also went overseas and to Hawaii and other places just for fun, but I do mission trips to different countries to help people out there and show them what I’ve known; helped to make the world a better place,” Endle said in response to Sykes’. “I hope to bring to the assembly the same service, the same willingness to give.”

So if I get this right, Endle was criticizing Sykes — and by extension anyone, for that matter — for taking a vacation of leisure, even though he admits he’s done the same in Hawaii and ‘other places overseas.’

Not only that, but what kind of missionary work does he have in store as a member of the Mat-Su Borough Assembly, a completely secular organization?

After the debate I asked Endle to clarify a little of what he meant.

“I just wanted to make the point that, myself, I’ve gone overseas to serve,” said Endle, referring to his missionary work. “I wanted to know (Sykes’) heart; is it to serve the people, or is his heart to serve himself? I’m hoping to possibly bring some of that out.”

The worst part was, Sykes took the bait, and found himself in the ridiculous position of having to almost apologize for his right to take vacation. He bit so hard he wound up trying to put a self-aggrandizing heaping helping of altruism on his own travels as a young man, travels fittingly, of the ‘Holy Land.’

“I think he what he wanted to show was his missionary work, which I totally respect,” Sykes said after the debate. “In my travels as a young man, I didn’t serve in Vietnam — it was just the way the draft worked — but I decided I’d be a self-appointed goodwill ambassador and I went places very few dare to go. I went from the Golan Heights to the tip of the Sinai Peninsula and all of the Holy Land. (Endle) just wanted to pump up his missionary thing a bit, and to me, if people have a spirituality and goodness of what they do to their political work, that’s fine, but I don’t think it applies politically to me.”

Between Endle’s absurdly cynical grandstanding and Sykes’ nearly as absurd need to defend the very notion of vacation, I needed a drink and needed a one soon — a drink for my own pleasure, mind you, not a drink needing to be justified with altruistic intentions.

That’s where my heart was at.

Endle and Sykes go at it one more time today at noon at the forum hosted by the Palmer Chamber of Commerce before they go head-to-head in the Oct. 4 election.

This final matchup may not be in a primetime slot, but it is some prime political theater.

Trust me, you don’t want to miss it.