Snapshots
Feb. 21, 2016 -- Jeb! suspended his campaign last night. (One less Wanted poster on the post-office wall.) I suppose he only ran in the first place because he thought it was his responsibility to run. Where he got that idea I can’t imagine (probably from his mother). His father is/was a great human being, a conscientious but uninspiring President; his brother remains -- as a man & a Chief Executive -- something akin to the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, i.e., someone/something that makes Michael Moore wanna make another (tedious, patronizing) fucking movie. Jeb! saved us all a lotta heartache.*
Now that we’re down to the Elite Eight Minus One (with Sanders & Clinton already seeded into one of the semifinals), I’m suspending my campaign, too. There’s nothing else I can say or do to ameliorate matters. My younger daughter changed her registration to Democrat (to vote for Bernie) all by herself. On line. You can do that.
Before I go, by which I mean stop posting election-specific columns on this blog, I would like to indulge myself with some parting thoughts on the folks who are still in the field. And why may I not? If you are reading this, you have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me (with your time and attention), and I am determined that you shall have me -- though I may be the biggest fool in the land, and bore you beyond all precedent.**
Shufflin’, shamblin’, slow-talkin’ , sleep-walkin’ Ben Carson is really the Poster Boy for what this campaign has been all about. Don’t confuse him with Herman Whatzizname, the pizza guy who was cast as the token black Republican hopeful four years ago. Dr. Carson is the Real Deal. This egomaniac has raised millions of dollars, and done just what I would have done with it -- skimmed off my tribute and then spent every nickel of it on more fund-raising. The Ben Carson campaign isn’t a crusade to save America; it’s an ATM for the Ben Carson cronies who have been cranking out all those TV ads you’ve yet to see one of. Oh, and don’t think it’s been po’ black fo’ who have been sending in all those schekels. That dough has been Mau-Mau’d out of just the kind of assholes who deserve a mugging like this: guilty, white suburbanites from states like, oh -- Pennsylvania. Friends, this fabled neurosurgeon turned motivational speaker actually interrupted his campaign, while his poll numbers were nearly Trumpian, to go on a two-week-long book tour.
John Kasich looks like a wide-mouth frog. He has been a US Congressman and is the sitting (re-elected) governor of the Great (Swing) State of Ohio. If you have an iron butt, you can read every stance on every issue Kasich has ever endorsed or voted for on his wikipedia page. If you have some vague, generous idea that he is a sheep in Republican clothing, forget it. He is running for Vice President because his views are so toxic that he won’t ever get a third term even from Ohioans. After he drops out of this fool’s errand of a campaign, he will go back to where he came from, filling in for Bill O’Reilly when Bill-O is off on his next “Killing [fill in the blank]” book tour.
His absolutely glittering CV notwithstanding, Raphael Edward “Ted” Cruz is still assailed, stupidly, over whether he holds jus soli citizenship status. Let me clear that up for you right now: his mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. He’s an American.
His father is the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Which is why he looks like that. And talks like that. (He doesn’t speak in long sentences with dependent clauses and rhetorical flourishes in them because he has gills.) And it’s why no one who remembers him -- even people from Princeton and Harvard Law and the Federal Trade Commission, none of them -- has ever said a kind word about him. He is a sitting United States senator (albeit from Texas) who has succeeded in shutting down the Government. Now he wants you to let him run it. Like having DB Cooper in charge of American Airlines, or Carly Fiorina running General Electric, or -- I don’t know -- someone like Roger Goodell as Commissioner of the NFL. I mean, what could go wrong?
That leaves us the Semifinalists.
In the Blue Bracket …. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the two sides of the same coin, in this case, a 1943 steel penny (and you don’t see many of them anymore).
Bernie’s Tails. The flip side. The B side. The “better angels of our nature” side. He expresses, sometimes so that it’s almost understandable, a desire for a better life for everyone, a (naïve) sense of fairness, a sad old man’s regret that the world he’s lived in and the system that he’s served are, when all is said & done, a swindle. Which it is.
And which he can do nothing about. He’s not a revolutionist. He wouldn’t have a clue where to begin. And (alas) there’s no constituency for revolution, anyway. Which leaves Bernie what he is … at best, a progressive who’s not afraid to slice up the pie so that other people get a bigger piece every so often, and at worst, a senile old fart in a long white robe walking down the middle of Central Avenue in Los Angeles gesticulating wildly and baying at the moon. “Tails” as in “tails, you lose.”
Hillary’s Heads. The brains. The moxie. The “Heads, I win” heads. … Crusty and crazy and annoying as hell as he may be, you can’t help but like Bernie Sanders: he’s the second husband of your mother-in-law’s oldest sister that you always gravitate toward during those interminably horrible family Christmas reunion parties. … No one gravitates toward Hillary Clinton. She’s a horror. A monster of ambition. (And greedy as hell. Look, I suppose former Cabinet secretaries feel they have to support their families. But if you leave office expecting to run for President, do you actually take a six-figure fee from John Kasich’s old firm, Lehmann Brothers?) And that’s what it is with the Clintons, both of them, they just don’t get it -- for them, “the rules” are for other people. It’s almost as if they’re both Secret Agents from Mars, sent to infiltrate & destabilize Earth from within its very power structures and some dumb Martian bureaucrat gave them the instruction manual from 47 BC. … And maybe the Martian thing is why it sounds to me like a dog whistle every time I listen to her open her mouth.
And in the Red Corner: Donald Trump vs. Marco Rubio.
I’ll do Trump first, just to get him out of the way. And I’ll change this up by making a list:
The Most Unlikable Things About Donald J. Trump in No Particular Order of Nauseating
(1) His mouth. Which only seems attached to his skull by invisible wires, and (not a pretty sight, also) hangs open all the time.
(2) The way he always seems to be groping at his hotcha daughter.
(3) That fucking dead bleached raccoon that’s been stapled into his head.
(4) The fact that Franklin Roosevelt didn’t raise the Inheritance Tax rate on every estate above $150.00 to 100% when he had the chance.
(5) The total irresponsibility of the man. People -- OK, maybe not Real People (maybe not even real vertebrates), but GOP primary voters -- are voting to elect this cretin President of the United States, and he refuses to tell anyone what he would do -- and how he would try to pull it off -- if he actually won.
(6) His vulgarity.
(7) His obvious disrespect for the Nation he’s making an international laughing-stock of (and whose wartime draft he so cleverly dodged).
(8) His (latest) trophy wife.
(9) The Ben Carson money he’s making selling campaign gear.
(10) That he plays up -- and up to -- the racialist, sexist, xenophobic hatreds that embody Cliven Bundy’s America.
On the other hand -- look, I know the list could be lot longer (add your thoughts in Comments) -- on the other hand, he had the balls to say, to South Carolina Republicans, that there were no WMDs, that the (second) Iraq War was folly, that the US military “doesn’t win anymore” (anymore? I’m 68; it hasn’t won a war in my lifetime! It didn‘t even win the war I was in!). He told Jeb! he was “low energy.” He told Pope Francis to “fuck off.” And how do you know Megyn Kelly wasn’t on the rag when she tore into him? All right, that’s the stuff you hope to hear from the next George Carlin. Not the next President.
Look, the man is a Fascist. Pure and simple. (I’ll drag out the essay I wrote more than a year ago about fascism, clean it up & post it later this week.) He’s also a blowhard, a bully and an ignoramus. If he wins the Presidency, it’ll only be because we were complicit in it.
Which leaves (my guy) Marco Rubio.
I like him because he’s young. And the smartest guy in the room. And personable, obviously decent, serious (my God!), well-spoken and politician enough to know that virtually everything he tells his GOP base is horseshit: just the stuff he has to say to get the nomination. I think he wants to be President, and I can’t but admire his ambition. And I think that (unlike Trump) Rubio knows what a President actually does and has to do. I think there’s no doubt he’s a wonk. Day One he’ll have white papers and legislative agendas … and if that makes Marco sound kinda Al Gore-like, well -- that’s my worry.
There is a bit of Al Gore in Rubio (you don’t just wake them up in the morning, you also have to reboot them). You get the sense with both that even their ad-libs are rehearsed. Al Gore, though, the one we elected in 2000, was the finished product. Son of a legendary Tennessee legislator, to the manor born, Al volunteered for Vietnam, worked his way up through elective offices, etc., etc. When Scalia et al., snatched the ultimate prize away, he eventually had Scalia murdered. [WAIT A MINUTE -- Blogspot Editor]
I’m sorry. I was talking about Marco. Who wasn’t, as he is fond of saying, to the manor born. He’s the Stranger in a Strange Land in a lot of ways. You see it in his face and his mannerisms. He wants to please; the smile lasts too long; he often seems really uncomfortable. Precocious people are like that. I’ve seen it in the mirror. I guess what I’m saying is I wish Marco had sat down and read a book that wasn’t about policy or history or economics or some other Serious Shit, and that book had made him see that things aren’t all that -- serious.
Or maybe I should just stop fretting like an old hen and mail him my old copy of “Catch-22.” Best campaign briefing book he’ll ever read.
Footnotes
*Jeb! & Michael Moore have a lot in common: they both know what’s Good for You, they both buy their clothes at the Men’s Wear House (of Pancakes), and Other People give each of them millions of dollars to advance agendas most Americans couldn’t give a flash-frozen tub of margarine about. I mean, can you imagine how tedious Michael Moore’s “Bush! XLV” would be?
**The first poster in the Comments section (below) who correctly identifies the American classic I am paraphrasing in that last sentence wins Lovely Parting Gifts. [Not necessarily lovely, nor exactly “gifts” -- Blogpost Editor.]
