Election 2008

Another hoard of worthless hacks who want to be president

     Horribly, appallingly, infuriatingly, cringingly we're already deeply mired in the fetid, intellectually toxic muck of the 2008 presidential election, collectively being soiled by two hordes of mostly second- and third-rate political hacks so unfit to lead the nation that in a just and decent universe this would be some sort of ugly, absurdist satire and not the American political reality.

     I get creeped out and queasy just thinking about it.

     Also viciously obnoxious. So strap yourself down - it's gonna be a rough dance.

     Despite the dozens of dullards, fools and bucket-heads who have already declared themselves candidates in both major parties, only a few actually matter.

     Really.

     Possibly three Democrats, maybe three Republicans. That's it. The rest are not only unelectable (as are, in fact, a couple of the candidates who matter), they're also useless, worthless, witless, unaccomplished, unqualified, unimportant, uninteresting, pompous, sanctimonious, weaseling, suck-running nobodies who are doing nothing but, well, let's say, exposing themselves in public while innocent voters are expected to watch.

     In a reasonable and virtuous society that would be a morals crime.

     And because it's an obscenity to even use the words "president" and "Brownback" or "Biden" or "Dodd" or "Tancredo" or "Kucinich" or "Romney" (and plenty of others) in the same sentence, we'd be better served and less nauseated if we look at those few candidates who may actually succeed in inflicting themselves upon the country.

     Except they, too, are a mostly annoying and tiresome scrum of ego, avarice, venality, self-importance and delusion.

     And remember, it isn't even 2008 yet.

     These posturing politicians and their insolent ambitions and their cheap ideologies are dirtying the most important democratic process of the republic. Worse, from a journalistic and intellectual standpoint, they're ruining the fun of politics.

     Few things in all of humanity's ugly history are worse than the sight of buffoonish Capital Hill backbenchers, the presumptuously unqualified and seniority- bloated headline whores squeaking and beeping their way through a cattlecall of a pointless debate staged by a special-interest group trying to leverage its corrupting influence.

     Not even a bottle of 30-year-old whisky and an hour-long shower can make you feel clean or happy after that.

     But it's not just the cash-grubbing, special-interest-pimping, cliche-spewing, pandering, preening shamelessness of candidates who have more in common with crack whores working the Jersey end of the Holland Tunnel than with actual statesmen and leaders.

     Their political parties and the governors and legislators of a long list of states are guilty of turning presidential elections into an ever-more protracted, ever-less meaningful process that perpetuates undeserving campaigns, overvalues tiny groups of otherwise rightly insignificant people and further cheapens a system already diseased by monstrous special interests, ideological fascism and partisan stupidity.

     Yes, the American system of democratic republicanism still beats everything else out there, but increasingly only because of the constitution that created it and not the political infrastructure on which it functions.

     And when those who presume themselves fit to lead the free world haven't the integrity or decency to at least be a little ashamed that they enthusiastically indulge in what are nothing more than low-brow, fatuous stunts for what amounts to a circus-tent audience of fools and ignorami, well, it doesn't exactly inspire you to come to attention and salute.

     Of course, nothing really important is at stake - it's not as though ours is a nation at war.