This is Going to Hurt
Seventeen months until the next election and it's already so very painful
As I continue my six-month European sabbatical*, one of the common refrains I hear from other Americans abroad is they are relieved to be away from the incipient 2024 presidential campaign. Everybody agrees it’s going to be a shambles, whose endless primary season is most likely to conclude by pitting a befuddled, out-of-touch senior citizen against President Joe Biden.
At that point, it’ll devolve a straight-up bloodbath.
Both parties have their problems. The Republicans have devolved into a party of backbiting bloviators intent on rolling back protections against, among other things: environmental laws, child labor laws, immigration reform, abortion, birth control, protections for the LGBTQ community, and, somehow, reading. They don’t like books and they don’t want your children reading them; the party of scientific illiteracy has now become the party of general illiteracy. Worse, they celebrate their ignorance the way a dog wags its tail while eating its own vomit.
The Democratic side, too, has problems, the most surprising of which comes in the form of a conspiracy theorist who shares a last name with Boomer royalty. Robert Kennedy Jr. has emerged from Steve Bannon’s acid-rimmed Jacuzzi like a creature from the wack lagoon. How is it possible that a nutcase conspiracy theorist who collects roadkill and keeps it in the back of his minivan is polling among the Democrats about the same as Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Tim Scott, and Mike Pence combined? No, he’s not going to win the nomination but why is he even in the conversation?
Are Americans so desperate for hope and change that they will settle for dumb and dumber?
When did the nation’s presidential contests become a traveling circus for any grifter with a few million bucks to blow? When did it become the appropriate stage for New Agers with a Jesus complex? Was it always like this? I remember back in 1992 when an eccentric Texas billionaire named Ross Perot threw his ten-gallon hat in the ring as an independent against President George H.W. Bush and Governor Bill Clinton. He ended up winning almost 19% of the vote. At the time, everybody thought he was a nutty iconoclast. In retrospect, he looks prescient.
Running for President is no longer about running for President. It’s about brand-building, data collection, auditioning for cable news jobs, money-hoarding, and merch sales. It’s a business unto itself, as removed from the business of governance as Five Guys is removed from the business of nutrition.
One doesn’t even really run for President anymore. Running implies a starting and ending point. With many of these candidates, there is neither. The campaign only pauses every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. To say that Nikki Haley, for example, is just now running for President for the first time ignores the fact that she’s been positioning herself for the job for at least the last four years. When she loses this time, she’ll immediately begin preparing for the next cycle. For an increasing number of presidential candidates, running for President is the job.
And for what?
Is being President of the United States even such a great job? Sure you get to fly around in the big plane with the fancy china and the big bed up front, but most of your workday is filled with endless meetings with annoying people who want stuff from you, phone calls with the planet’s other biggest narcissists, most of whom want stuff from you, and pissing off half of the nation you lead no matter what you do. Best case scenario: at the end of it, they put your face on money. Big whoop. Frankly, the whole deal seems like a huge pain in the neck.
You’d have to be kind of crazy to want a job like that. And, true to form, most of the people who want it are kind of crazy. Which makes for a crazy campaign season. Which means people like me are more than happy to be several thousand miles from the growing insanity and inanity. Unfortunately, I’ll be returning home in September, just in time to witness the worst of my fellow Americans. It’s going to be a long year and a half.
*unemployment