The Quadrennial Games

It’s time once again for the quadrennial party.  You know the one.  That over the top orgy of backbiting, name calling, sore losers, graceless winners, allegations of cheating, actual cheating, xenophobia, jingoism, backroom deals, payoffs, under the table money and other assorted bad behavior.  Thought I was going to write about the Summer Olympics didn’t you?  Maybe another time.  This is about the presidential elections. 

It’s true that the elections and the Summer Olympics have a lot in common.  They both grace us every four years with the good and unfortunately the bad in people.  The difference is that the Olympics manage to compress all of the melodrama into two weeks.  And as much as I anticipate the start it doesn’t take long for me to say; “meh.” I try to muster up some interest in an event that I would never, ever at any other time consider giving a moment’s thought to but in the end I still can’t get grabbed by equestrian dressage or synchronized swimming.  After a while even beach volleyball is no longer compelling even if it is a game of millimeters - millimeters away from a skimpy bikini wardrobe malfunction.  I have to say that there's something comical about the constant tugging of bikini bottoms.  But after about a week of commercials and  a cavalcade of tear jerking, heart rending vignettes being interrupted by the occasional actual event I’m usually about over it and ready to launch a javelin through the TV.  But, as I often do, I’ve digressed.

The elections?  I love ‘em.  The elections aren’t nearly as condensed as the Olympics.  Politicians manage to spread manure over an entire year or more; much more.  It’s a sort of lifetime achievement.  And that’s the good thing. There isn't the disappointment that comes when a TV series that you've gotten addicted to suddenly gets cut short at season's end.  And as distasteful and gauche and insulting and dishonest as the elections can be I’ve gotta say; I love it – yeah I already said that; but I really do love it.  I love the presidential elections.  They’re a ridiculous brew of P.T. Barnum; The Ringling Brothers Circus; Shakespearean tragicomedy; Machiavellian machinations; abject stupidity; unadulterated bullshit and all the class of a smoke filled strip club. The elections are the auto wreck we swear we would hate to see but secretly wish to glimpse at the head of that traffic jam.  The Olympics couldn’t hold a candle to a presidential election unless they add on naked mud wrestling with optional hidden weapons as an event. 

The elections are absolutely great.  I recently bought a new car and the timing couldn’t be better.  You see it came with 1 free year of Sirius Radio and I’ve shut down the music and sports I normally listen to and now I listen only to CNN.  The only downside is that my free year is going to run out just about a week before the general election. 

This year has been an absolute hoot.  Yeah there’s been a lot of the predictable.  Every election attracts a small swarm of the usual GOP mosquitos that appear and buzz around for a short while only to be eliminated early by the political repellant of general disinterest.  How many times now have the tub thumpers Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum come at us with the Old Testament only to be rejected by an electorate that in the end isn’t really interested in an evangelical theocracy?  Every four years these old boys resurrect themselves, threaten the nation with fire and brimstone and then peter out after Iowa when the revival bus has run out of gas money – hallelujah.  There’s been the family affair of father Ron Paul and his son Rand who have combined for three failed runs.  They’re described as Libertarians which is short for for if “you can’t pull on the oars of life’s rowboat then we’ll throw you overboard and may God have mercy on your worthless soul.”  Their political legs have been chopped off early in their campaigns.  Chris Christie, who has all the panache and style of a whoopee cushion came and went like he always does.  When he fizzled I wanted to say, “Don’t go ‘way mad, just go ‘way,” but the problem is that he’s always pissed off.  I pray for his kids.

And then there are those from nowhere; the ones who apparently had a midnight epiphany or had too much to drink and announced to the fam, “Hey, (hic) I’m going to run for president. (hic, hic)”  Maybe they get inspired by well-meaning friends like the people who suggest, “Hey you have a really great recipe for ribs.  You should open a restaurant.”  You know how that usually works out.  And thus we got Carly and Ben.  Carly Fiorina; there’s a great choice.  She drove that car called HP into a ditch so folks apparently wanted to see if she could run the train of the United States of America right off the rails.  A short while ago Carly announced that her campaign had been suspended, which is loser speak for – “I quit, because my rib recipe wasn’t worth a shit.”  Ben Carson is still hanging in there and for what reason only God and Ben know; and Ben is probably having conversations with God as I write this.  He seemed to be doing so well until he claimed that when he was a young man he had been offered a scholarship by West Point, which everybody knows doesn’t offer scholarships; well, everybody but Ben.  His star has dimmed but he’s still on the ballot.

Sarah Palin; the gift that keeps on giving. She’s on board the good ship Trump.  God I love her.  She’s better than repeats of All in the Family.  From seeing Russia from her backyard to blaming Obama for the PTSD that she alleges caused her son’s domestic violence (even though the lad never saw a day of combat) she never fails to disappoint. People want her to go away.  I don’t.  Sarah has that rare ability to light up an otherwise drab day with a few rays of slapstick idiocy.  Why would Democrats want her to go away?  She’s the leach that sucks the life blood out of a candidate.  She’s low hanging fruit for late night talk show hosts and comedy writers.  Every Democrat in America should send John McCain a gift basket just for bringing Sarah out of the Alaskan Wilderness. 

This election has been blessed or cursed (depending on your point of view) by one Donald Trump.  Trump is scorched earth politics at its best. He’s even trashed the Pope.  From the start Trump waded into the deepest, slimiest, dirtiest, most shit filled swamp in recent memory and then invited the rest of the GOP; “C’mon in, the water’s fine.” And they obliged.  And so we’ve had a months’ long pie fight that would make Larry, Curly and Moe look like stodgy gentlemen. I haven’t met anyone yet who has admitted to liking Trump.  To me that would be like going into the office and admitting to masturbating,  I did see a car in the local strip mall parking lot with a Trump for President bumper sticker.  Surprisingly the car seemed free of any long scratches in the paint.  I sort of wanted to wait for the owner to show up just so that I could very politely ask him, “Hey shit for brains, are you out of your fucking tree?" But I changed my mind when I reminded myself that I don't argue with 2 year olds or the mentally deranged.

My favorite part of this election has been the endless accusations of lying.  Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and the Trumpster are all clamoring to mount the high horse of truth while denouncing their opponents as delusional, prevaricating bastards and all the while each one is at best skirting the truth and at worse spreading pure bullshit.  Trump is all over Cruz like a cheap suit when it comes to lying while accusing Cruz of having a “double passport” when there is no such animal.  Trump’s campaign aired an ad that showed a fire drill of people crossing a border fence with the narrator assuring alarmed Americans that Trump would put a stop to this parade.  The assumption is that the footage is of Mexicans crossing our southern border but it’s really Moroccans crossing into Melilla; yeah we don’t have a border with Morocco. For his part, Marco Rubio has been in a mad sprint to disassociate himself from an immigration bill that he helped draft less than 3 years ago; it’s sort of like watching a guy trying to shake a bee out of his shirt.  There just isn’t enough space here to chronicle the accusations of lying by liars.  The great part of this is that all of these guys are absolutely shameless.  They know that they’re crapping on America and they don’t even give a damn.  Lying has become muscle memory with these guys. 

This election year has been like the Civil War; brother against brother and friend against friend.  I’ve watched friendships get dashed on social media.  I’ve seen folks on Facebook invite Trump supporters to delete themselves from friend’s lists.  I don’t know.  Is that the right thing to do?  Do we insulate ourselves from opposing views? Do we stifle debate?  If you simply dismiss the opposing view are you not just conceding a vote to the guy you don’t like?  Our whole system is supposed to be predicated on divergent views.  Are we parroting the nastiness of the candidates?  Maybe the candidates are parroting the nastiness of the American public; the American public that speaks out that is.  It speaks with a relentless, white hot, over the top, billingsgate filled anger.  Or have you never taken a dive into that dumpster called the Yahoo comments section.  

People are calling this the nastiest campaign ever.  They say that they long for the days of true statesmen and civil political discourse.  As my Uncle Al used to say, “Oh bullshit!” Most Americans don’t know that Thomas Jefferson’s campaign against John Adams characterized Adams as a “hideous hermaphrodite.”  The President of Yale University warned that a Jefferson presidency “would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution.” A couple of elections later and Adams’ son John Quincy’s supporters more or less portrayed Andrew Jackson’s wife Rachel of being a whore.  Fast forward to 1884 when Grover Cleveland who had fathered an illegitimate child was targeted with the clever Republican rhyme, “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa? Gone to the White House, Ha Ha Ha!”  We live in an era when, for better or for worse, an unguarded statement might be captured on a pocketed cell phone.  Today you can’t walk back something that you said that might have been inspired by anger or frustration.  Who knows what “tweets” might have emerged from the campaigns of Adams or Jefferson or Lincoln after a contentious meeting or a couple of snifters of brandy. 

I don’t delude myself with the notion that at some time or some point we were a more politically civil society.  Politics has been a dirty business since before Caesar took that shiv from Brutus.  Americans always like to harken back to the “good old days.”  I remember my dad often saying, “There never were any good old days.”