Life in the land of
make-believe
By Wesley Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
These are hard times for grown-ups in America. Since
almost nobody wants to grow up, it’s hard for
grown-ups to find a grown-up candidate for political
office. The prospective candidates are on the road
determined to entertain America to death.
All a politician, a pundit or a preacher needs to
qualify for “leadership” is a toothy grin, a lame
joke, a guitar or, if you’re a congressman, a
digital camera to take photographs of what you
imagine you do best. It’s important to keep your
constituents informed about what’s going on in your
underwear.
Sarah Palin, the only one of the usual suspects with
star power, is having a high old time with her bus
tour of America, or at least a “national” tour of a
couple of the states crucial to the pursuit of the
presidency. She’s still a little rusty on history
and current events, but the moose-killer from Alaska
is the prettiest candidate, though we’re not
supposed to notice such things any more.
Mrs. Palin gets the thrill of sticking it to her
media tormentors and her fans get to watch her
enjoying it.
Not so long ago, a slot on a cable channel was
thought to be an audition for running for president,
though that may be changing. Running for president
now is an audition for a slot on a cable channel. If
you already have such a slot, running for president
can goose declining ratings.
Mrs. Palin won’t tell the reporters following her
magical mystery tour where she’s going, if in fact
she knows. She insists that just because she’s a
tourist followed by a throng of campaign
correspondents doesn’t mean she’s running, though
she did think to wear a Cross pendant around her
neck for a biker rally in Washington, exchanged for
a Star of David pendant by the time she got to
Gotham. Running or not, the spectacle of 15 cars,
SUVs, trucks and trailers following close behind her
bus makes for good film at 11. She gets the thrill
of sticking it to her media tormentors and her fans
get to watch her enjoying the thrill of sticking it
to her tormentors. One network reporter complains
that Mrs. Palin endangers the lives of others on the
highway by making the press follow dumbly behind,
not knowing where they’re going, either. This
concern isn’t likely to impress anyone, since a
wreck on the highway is just the kind of pictures
television lusts for, particularly if two or three
of the cars explode to scatter hair, teeth and limbs
all over the highway.
So who can blame Mike Huckabee for thinking that
maybe he came in out of the rain too soon? A Baptist
preacher needs a little funk, too. Mike is careful
to keep his guitar tuned, occasionally stepping up
to a mike to knock out the music for the kind of
lyrics he once scorned as not fit for his
congregation. But that was then, and this now, and
Mike told bystanders back home in Little Rock this
week that just because he said he wasn’t running
doesn’t necessarily make it so.
“Everything is still open,” he said. “I haven’t
closed doors.” And this: “It’s not going to be an
easy path for whoever the Republican is. Whoever it
is, is going to come out of a bloody primary broke
and battered.”
This ought to be good news for President Obama,
except that grown-ups have pretty much given up on
him. The hopey-changy man was supposed to have the
economy humming by now, and only Pollyanna with a
microscope can find evidence of that. The Wall
Street Journal reports that prices of houses, a
reliable indicator of the health of the economy,
fell an astonishing 4.2 percent in the first quarter
of this year. The average value of a house is now 33
percent below the peak in 2006, a bigger drop than
any recorded in the (gulp) Great Depression.
Rasmussen, one of the most reliable pollsters, finds
that Mr. Obama, though the pundits invariably call
him a likely winner, polls two points behind the
“generic” Republican nominee. Rasmussen says 66
percent of likely voters, including 41 percent of
likely Democratic voters, say the country is heading
down the wrong track. The wrong track rarely leads
to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The country speeds on, like a mighty passenger train
hurtling down the tracks toward a missing bridge
across the river. But why worry? The great
entertainers are in charge.