Slim pickins

Ok, I know it's early on, and I know the Sheriff has no interest in election campaigning, but honestly: what am I to make of the fact that one day -- a day in November 2008, to be exact -- roughly 50% of Americans will pull the lever for one of the knuckleheads paraded on our television screens lately?

Obviously, the frontrunners are going to be liars, thugs, and hypocrites (that means McCain, Giuliani, and Romney, as if it needed explanation), but what of the simpletons and bigots in the "tier" below them? Here's Mike Huckabee, offering an "eloquent" explanation of his belief in "creationism," as CNN puts it: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth... A person either believes that God created the process or believes that it was an accident and that it just happened all on its own... If anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it."

This man cannot be President. The other god stuff is fine; "God loves us," says McCain, "There's a God of the universe that loves us very much and was involved in the process," says Brownback, but come on--creationism? Argued eloquently? I might refer to children arguing "eloquently" for the existence of various mystical religious bunny rabbits and jolly old St. Present-Bearers, but my use of "eloquent" would be patronizing--exactly what I expect it to be when serious adults refer to people who argue for man's spontaneous creation, apart from apes. Such people might make friendly neighbors and loyal friends, but they cannot occupy the White House. (And I realize that Bush said that the "jury's out" on evolution, but everything he says is aberrant and surreal, right? We're living through a long, national nightmare, right? One which we will soon awake from...right??)

I don't want to bash Huckabee too much; he seems like a nice enough, genuine enough person. If only the same could be said for people like McCain, who pulled one of his hideous "straight talk" unspeak moments. The "surge," whatever this chimera is, is a total failure and he will never take responsibility for the needless deaths incurred. If the god of which these fine gentlemen speak exists, may He preserve us from this man.

CNN's "senior political analyst" Bill Schneider says he is "surprised" at Tom Tancredo's "astonishing" attack on Bush, as if Bush wasn't a complete and utter failure, completely discredited except in the eyes of the most virulent ideologues, and as if the central issue surrounding Tancredo's criticism of Bush wasn't the fact that Bush is not racist enough for Tancredo. This matter is also whence Tancredo derives most of his popularity.

Meanwhile, people are going ga-ga over Ron Paul, simply because he says half-sane things about foreign policy that even Democrats won't dare to speak. On domestic issues, however, he is extremely unpopular in his principled libertarian stance against Social Security and Medicare. That may be his bag, but I'm not an inch closer to voting for him, the only one of these jokers who comes close.

This is where lifelong partisanship is born, ladies and gentlemen. If this is what we have to look forward to for years to come, then I, the staunchest defender of democracy I hope one could find, might be sliding towards the caustic opinion of H.L. Mencken, who once quipped that “democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”