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The Dud and Forty Percent

“The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein

America has at least a 30 year history of, more often than not, electing the dud. And by dud, I mean the absolutely least qualified or least desirable person for the job. Take a quick look at Saint Ron. That guy was an awful actor, sub-par governor, and an absolute crapbox President. And yet he appeared “strong on terrorism” versus Carter, who actually turned out to be right about our petrol based economy. Too bad that Reagan loved him some terrorists. Oh, I’m sorry, we called them “freedom fighters.” Blowing shit up is still blowing shit up.

Then let’s look at his protege, Bush Senior. Ran against a pretty unassuming guy in Michael Dukakis, but didn’t have anything other than the bubble of Reagan, or perhaps horribly racist campaigning. He got booted after notably lying about raising taxes. Or maybe it was that Oil War we dove into so easily …

And then there’s the current dud. There are vast tracts of the internet devoted entirely to the cyclone of suck that is George W Bush. The guy hasn’t ever succeeded in anything in his life … and we somehow elected him. Twice. Why? (mumble mumble) Terrorism (mumble mumble) Al Qaeda (mumble mumble) Saddam Hussein (mumble mumble) Weapons (mumble mumble) … We’re a bunch of incredible tools for continuing to do this.

But the greatest surprise to me is that a guy who is like Bush more than 95% of the time can possibly have a higher approval rating. It’s like we’re spreading our collective ass cheeks and telling the rich guys who have been fucking us terribly for the last eight years to have another four to impact our National Colon. Bush is polling at somewhere between 22 and 31 percent, according to pollingreport.com, yet McCain seems to have higher ratings across the board, even though his policies don’t differ very much from Bush’s policies. NPR had an interesting take on some of this as well.

Amazingly, we’re faced with a pretty no-brain decision…. We’ve had eight years of disasterous leadership in every area, and have a choice between a candidate who wants to continue doing it and one who doesn’t. I’m *amazed* that we’re not all dead from trying to eat food through our ears or something. There’s just something wrong with most of the people in this country that this isn’t a “slam dunk”. And Democrats, don’t think you’re not off the hook. If you can’t get people to vote for you in *this* election, what the hell are you doing wrong?

I always remember that Bush has at least a 20% approval rating, which means that out of five random people, one of them has parents who are brother and sister, or who has to be told how to breathe. This ain’t that difficult to figure out, guys, you picked a dud *twice*. Strong leadership means admitting to mistakes, not trying to jam a square peg into a round hole until you break the peg. But McCain has been polling above 40%, which is again testing my faith in humanity. The guy isn’t charismatic, doesn’t have good stances on any of the important issues facing the next President, and looks like he’s being eaten by a liver spot. I would have said “unelectable” if I had been asked a year ago. But apparently, reality is suspended, again, for an election cycle, and the Dud will triumph, again.

I would come up with something witty to say here, but I’m just really saddened that it has come down to this. My whole life, I’ve wanted a President who would, you know, care about the environment, energy conservation, and a thousand other things that Presidents *should* care about, but don’t. If we can’t move away from petrol when it costs us more than ever to purchase it, what the hell is wrong with us? I just hope that everyone is happy with The Dud, since we’re going to get four years of that.

Oh, and Joe Lieberman sucks ass. I voted against him in the last election, and will do so again if given the chance. Sorry, just had to get that one in there.