Oh, lawd, this is going to be a long campaign season.
Jeb Bush — you know, “the smart one” — has been cranking up the family Kennebunkumport Klunker for a leisurely-yet-manly drive to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and despite all evidence to the contrary he claims to be his own man when it comes to foreign policy.
“Everything about Jeb Bush’s national campaign is built on a foundation established by his grandfather, father, and brother — powerful Republicans all. Jeb has spent most of his life exploiting the benefits of his last name to advance his interests, and by appearances, he’s doing it again.”
Ho, ho. This bozo has all the originality of a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band rocking Ladies Night at the Desert Inn in Yeehaw Junction, Florida. If you loved President Alfred E. “Worry” Bush, you’re gonna love this guy.
Well, here we go, headfirst down the rathole of what the GOP expects will be Christmas in November and the rest of us fear will be a hole full of grinning rats, wearing American-flag lapel pins.
It seems the Founding Fathers intended the business of running a republic to be tough sledding, given our whole setup. “That government is best which governs least” is a line often attributed to Thomas Jefferson.
But I don’t think ol’ Tom, or any of his bros, intended it to be impossible.
And yet, today, we, the inheritors of a republic we don’t seem able or willing to keep, are said to be eager not to solve the problems of self-governance, but rather to exacerbate them by turning the Senate over to a collection of bunko artists, waterheads and loons. It’s like electing a full slate of Hell’s Angels to run your local school board.
God knows that the Donks have not covered themselves in glory here. Candidates like Mark Udall in Colorado and Bruce Braley in Iowa have run inexplicably feeble campaigns, and as a consequence we seem to be on the verge of elevating Neanderpols Cory Gardner and Joni Ernst to the upper chamber of our national legislature. All hat and no cattle, and two very small hats at that.
This is in part the fault of the media, which focuses on horse race and narrative over résumé and platform. But it’s also the fault of an electorate that prefers chowing down on a steaming plate of deep-fried bullshit to actually rustling around in the national kitchen to see if there’s anything more nourishing to be had.
And we do this all the time. We elect Republicans who make a shambles of things, then elect Democrats to clean up their mess, and then elect Republicans again because the Democrats aren’t cleaning up the Republicans’ mess fast enough. It’s like watching an arson victim chase the firefighters off at gunpoint and then invite the firebug inside for a Molotov cocktail.
I voted, like always, but I won’t pretend to be happy about it. The folks at the county clerk’s office were friendly and helpful, and they said turnout was surprisingly good for a midterm, and I felt like I was using the last few squirts from an old can of Krylon to scrawl my name on a collapsed bridge on an abandoned road.
The Erna Fergusson Library has rows of tables with power strips for the techno-fortunate who fetch their own machinery hither and thither.
Today my “office” is at the Erna Fergusson Library on San Mateo. I pulled the early shift at the Northeast Heights Satellite Coffee outlet, because a day without a breakfast burrito is like a day without sunshine, and then moved over here to free up some parking space for the caffeine-deprived. I’d have used the Juan Tabo branch, which is closer to Rancho Pendejo, but it’s closed on Sundays.
The phrase “your tax dollars at work” has become a punchline for eons, but I doubt it’s funny to the three dozen or so folks who were queued up outside in the hot sun, waiting for the library to open at 1 p.m. Most of them were in the line to use the facility’s computers. Having mine in a messenger bag — two of them, actually — I felt slightly yuppified and ostentatious.
Imagine doing without the Innertubes and computers in this day and age. If you want to go low tech, that’s one thing; but having to is something else, especially if you’re trying to find, oh, I don’t know, a job or health care or child care or something.
Oh, lawd, this is going to be a long campaign season.
