No Matter Who Wins... America Loses

This being an election year, and me being both a history buff and a political junkie, I find myself thinking a lot about our next President, whomever that might turn out to be.   I look at this year's collection of candidates, and just sigh.   Part of me is sad because of how utterly pathetic they all will be as President, and part of me is sad because of how far we have fallen that this, THIS, is the best group of people we can trot out there.  

Now, most of you realize that I'm about as liberal as people come in this country.   Bernie Sanders isn't liberal ENOUGH for my tastes.   I'd legalize all vices (drugs, prostitution, gambling... you name it, I'd make it legal and tax the shit out of it), ban most guns, socialize not only the health care industry but insurance and pharmaceuticals too, and take half our military budget to fund our nonexistent infrastructure and education systems.   I also realize that I'm an outlier and not representative of the country at large.   I wish I could make everyone believe what I believe, but alas, I'm always forced to settle for something in the middle.  

That being said, I think Obama has been a very good president, and that Bill Clinton was a great one.   I'm sure the people I know that are good little republicans who diligently believe everything Fox News tells them to believe are frothing at the mouth in their desire to yell at me about why Obama and Clinton were evil, Reagan was the greatest President ever, and W. was just misunderstood and underrated.   We all have our opinions, and as wrong as yours is, I believe you're entitled to it. 

But seriously, folks, what the hell happened?   How did we get to the point where this is the best we can do?   I hated Reagan, and think he did more lasting harm to this country than any President ever has, but at least he knew how to act the part, and if you were rich, he was a really great President for you.   W. was an imbecile, but at least he was a polished and shiny one, and had enough lifetime politicians around him to make him occasionally sound Presidential.   And THOSE are the BAD ones. 

We are a country that had FDR, Eisenhower, Truman, JFK.   The Great Society of Lyndon Johnson.  Woodrow Wilson guiding us onto the world stage through the tumult of WWI.  Great men.  Great leaders.  

And now, we have this?

Marco Rubio is the little kid who is pissed off that everyone isn't just giving him what he wants.   He's Eric Cartman.   When he lost the Virginia primary the other day, his response was classic.   If only a few of these other people weren't in the race, we would have won.   No shit, Sherlock.   Really?   If only you were the only person in the race, you could have sewn it up already.   And seriously can you look at that whiny little shit and think to yourself, "Wow, he looks like a President".   He strikes me as the kid whose parents divorced and then each tried to buy his love by giving him whatever he wanted and never issuing an ounce of discipline.   I can just see him sitting in a corner screaming to anyone who will listen "But I WANT to be President!!!!   Why can't they just let me have it?!?!!"

Hillary.   Ugh.   She's the most likely winner, and about the only reason I'm truly happy about it is that she'll get to choose a couple of Supreme Court justices.   I look at Hillary the way I assume most Republicans look at George Bush Sr.: with a "meh", a shrug, and a "coulda been worse".    She'll keep the status quo.   She won't make any significant changes, nor will she screw anything up all that bad.   The problem is, people want change.   If anything has been shown by this election cycle, it's that people are tired and frustrated with how things are being done, and they want something different.  She's as status quo as there is.  And she just seems so hollow when standing next to her husband.  Bill is one of the most charismatic people that has ever walked the Earth. Hillary couldn't be charismatic if her life depended on it. She's like Dr. Frankenstein sat in his lab and said, "Let's make a female career politician."   She has no soul.  Meh, could be worse. 

Ted Cruz is Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.  I believe he is truly Evil, and yet, is constantly wrapped up in a "Good Lord Willing..." cloak.  He's the person that goes to church every week, and yet has never done a single act of charity in his life.  He's the type that will tell you how good a Christian he is while looking down in disgust at the homeless person that has the temerity to be in his presence. How does someone so reviled by people in his OWN party get to the point where he has a chance to be President?   Everyone hates this guy.   Lindsey Graham said it best in a tweet last week:  "If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, no one would convict you."  That's a Republican saying that, folks.   This is someone whose sole purpose is to shut down government, regardless of the damage it does to the country.   He would be so bad as President that I'd be willing to dig up the corpse of Ronald Reagan and swear him into office again rather than let this guy win.   He's one of the few people that looked at Antonin Scalia and said to himself, "Nope, not conservative enough".   I could write a dozen blogs on why the Tea Party is terrible for this country, and this is the shining star of that movement. People are looking at Donald Trump like he would be the worst President ever.   I'm no Trump fan by any means, but I'd let Trump serve three terms rather than letting Cruz serve one.   Cruz as President would set this country back 50 years.   At least.  

Speaking of Trump, I might be one of the few really liberal Democrats that don't think he'd be a complete disaster.   I look at Trump in much the same way I look at Hillary.   Meh, could be worse.   Yes, the world would look at him as a joke, and look at us with disdain.   Guess what?   Most of the world already looks at us with disdain.   Yes, he's a blowhard who is completely in love with himself.   So is almost everyone else running.  He's just honest about it.   He wouldn't defund planned parenthood like Cruz, he wouldn't kowtow to the republican establishment like Rubio.   He wouldn't rollback Obamacare.  When he's taken a political stance in the past, it's been fairly middle of the road.  He wouldn't be a great President.  He wouldn't even be a good President.   But I don't think he'd be as terrible as Cruz or Rubio would be, and for that reason I look at him and say, "Meh.  Could be worse."  

Finally, there's Bernie.   Bernie Sanders aligns with me more closely than any other candidate.   Bernie's problem (other than the fact that he's not going to beat Hillary), is that even if he DID get elected President, he wouldn't be able to get anything done.   The system is rigged against him, and no one would be willing to help him make the changes that need to be made.   America is a teenager unwilling to hear what their parents are trying to tell them.   Seriously, Bernie is the parent telling us the hard truth that we don't want to hear.   And we are either the teenager that buries our head in the sand because we don't want to hear it (Democrats) or we're the teenager that gets angry and yells about how wrong the parent is (Republicans).   Either way, a few years down the road, we'll look back and sheepishly apologize because we found out that they were right.    But right now the teenagers aren't going to admit that he's right, and aren't going to allow him to get anything done.   He'd make a handful of good changes, appoint some great justices, and be gone in four years because we wouldn't want to have to make the sacrifices both small (Democrats) and big (Republicans) that the wise old man would ask of us.   We are a Now culture, and Bernie is a big-picture, down-the-road politician.  He's a great man, and if we as a society were ready for him, he'd be a truly great President.   Unfortunately, we're just not ready to feel the Bern.