Run for your life

Getting into the political weeds, or cobwebs, a few things occurred to me. Start with the candidates for president. Is this going to be a primary or a parade? Cause for a rant.

When things become a pattern I start to poke fun at them. Today it’s the announcements. Every few days I get an email from someone but the subject is mostly the same. Uusually something like “should I run or not?” Whoa, are you talking to me? Glad you asked. It’s amusing how they all claim to be asking if they should run. That’s sort of like Hillary asking people “should I run?” You know there is no question in her mind, she decided long ago. Same thing with Jeb Bush and most of the others. Huckabee, there was another. In his case he parlayed his show on Fox into that question prompting his step down.

One of the latest in particular was a message from Jeb before he formerly announced. That one had a family member saying something close to: “urge my father to run”, he’s sitting on the fence wondering. Really, he was just waiting for me to tell him whether to run or not. Oh, I’m the one he is waiting to hear “yes” from before jumping in. A little sarcasm is appropriate. He seemed to have decided without my urging.

It’s almost too much for me to bear that all these people are waiting for my humble opinion on running. I must be pretty important. Of course, I know none of it is true. I have to joke about it because it is funny when they all do and say the same thing. It’s not true that they want to know much less care what you think. They want your money. What if you say no, don’t bother running or wasting your time? And every one of them has that handy-dandy link for a contribution, to “be as generous” as you possibly can. Never mind how they are going to spend it. It’s like Jim and Tammy Faye Baker shaking you down: “I know you’re heart is just telling you “give give give.”” Right, I just can’t refuse a great cause. (sarcasm meter is redlining)

Back to the announcements. When they do announce, they send you helpful notes to tell you to tune in to their announcement speech — which hopefully won’t be at the same time the other guy is also announcing. Talk about scheduling conflicts? Then you get to read the headline that indeed they announced. Woo–hoo! Was there any question about it?

But I’m just kicking the tires of the process. Well, after it happens a dozen of times or so there is no suspense to it. What people say really doesn’t matter anyway. And how about those lists they are building? That’s half the purpose of it. Why else do they do all those petition drives between runs? There is not much mystery about it. Well, accept that most of it is staged in a phony way. They’ve strategized a reason for a run, known to them.

There is one other point. If history is any example, then I figure that there is really only a potential for 2 runs. You can claim ignorance and inexperience after losing the first time and do a 2.0 revision run. That leaves us with where we are. I see Huck is running the second time. Does he realize this is it? Rick Perry is doing a second-time-around run. Rick Sandtorum. Hillary’s doing her re-fried-beans run. Oh, sure they may think they can go three but by that time they are stale as a brick. You go from household name to household blame. By then, the jig is up and it looks more like a full time job running for president. And no one wants to look like a “professional candidate”.

That leads into another issue with Jeb. You know he can run again if for some reason it doesn’t work out. It’s a rather depressing thought. Who knows, maybe he could run against one of his relatives next time? Well, that could be more like family feud, imagine those email campaigns. It’s all just a put-on anyway. We have plenty of real problems and these guys personalize it like a seer-sucker suit. It really is about them. Does he have the stuff, is what people are supposed to look at. To them the message is “why not me?”

I suppose one of the most depressing parts of it — while it is supposed to be an optimistic thing — is that it starts by getting us sick of the process before we really start. It’s like watching the holding pattern for Chicago’s O’hare airport. And let’s leave the pollsters out of it for the time being. So maybe it is a little different on the Democrats’ side. They knew four years ago who was going to run, and who was going to be the nominee. I’m sure she had the same email approach despite that.

If they based their popularity on their twitter accounts we’d be in deep kim-chee. How many phony followers does it take to decide to run? Obama and Michele have their army of followers. Obama has his own email campaign to lobby himself. He ran an insurgent campaign as the incumbent president. Follow that logic. Then he won and people voted for him the 2nd time. So this running for president thing is many various things, but straight forward and honest is not one of them.

“Then I’ll get on my knees and pray we don’t get fooled again…no no.” – Who

We might need a Candidates’ Anonymous. It would probably be government funded.

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