I don’t know about you, but I’m already tired of the 2016 presidential race and it hasn’t even actually begun.
On the Democratic side the establishment and the news media have already crowned Hilary Clinton as the nominee, even though many of us in the rank and file are suffering from Clinton fatigue.
Worse, though, the Republican race for the nomination is looking more and more like a circus with too many clowns.
Clarence Darrow of the Scopes trial fame once quipped: “When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m beginning to believe it.”
I think we are seeing his inclinations were spot on. The idea that you can become anything you want to be here in America sounds nice, and is something adults often tell kids to encourage them to work hard and do their best.
The problem is, that old adage has a fatal flaw. You cannot become anything you want to be unless you have the ability to do what it is you want to do.
Apparently most of the Republican presidential candidates haven’t yet accepted this fact. They say and do things that if they were still children an adult would sit them down and explain why they are not cut out for the job.
It’s enough to make you laugh except we are talking about something too serious to be funny.
Being president is about holding a position of power that requires above average intelligence, wisdom by experience, and an ability to keep your head when everyone around you is losing theirs (to quote Kipling).
Thus far the Republicans running for president (and those in Congress) are failing on all counts, especially the last one.
Not one of them is able to keep his or her head when it comes to important issues.
Take the Iran nuclear arms deal President Obama’s team just worked out. Before any of them had even read what the agreement includes they were ranting and raving about how bad it is.
This treaty is about one thing. Trying to curb Iran’s quest for nuclear arms without going to war. But as you would expect Republicans prefer the risk of war.
Sending someone else’s sons and daughters to fight and die in unnecessary and unwinnable wars has never bothered them before, and apparently still doesn’t.
They want Iran to become the nation they want it to be before they will talk about a nuclear arms treaty. On the one hand that is arrogance at its worse. On the other it is about a standard by which none of the arms agreements we made with the old Soviet Union would have been possible.
The fact is, what the Republicans are saying is not about the deal with Iran. It’s about politics. And when it comes to the ones who want to be president, it is the worst kind of politics. It’s about nothing more than promising to undo everything President Obama has done.
That is why their opposition to the Iran nuclear agreement is the foreign policy equivalent of their opposition to Obamacare. They have no sensible alternative to offer, but they are opposed anyway.
As I said, I’m already tired of the 2016 presidential campaign that is a year away.
I wish I had the power of God to turn the year into a day and then all of us could put this nightmare that promises to get worse behind us.
linnposts.com 