Let's Fire The Boss

It’s official: I’d rather drink a tumbler full of vodka and powered glass than vote for George W. Bush to entertain us with four more years of his unique brand of physical comedy. I’m as willing as the next guy to let a joke run its course before deciding that it wasn’t funny, but enough is enough. Bush is like a Texas version of Jerry Lewis that the French actually don’t like. I really gave the guy a chance. He wasn’t my candidate in 2000, but after the inauguration I thought, “You know, how bad could it really get on the ground-level with him in the Oval Office?” The answer is much, much worse than I could have possibly imagined.


Ok, now tell me you still
don't believe in evolution.

Maybe you thought Clinton was the real Slim Shady. Maybe you think this President quoting gospel hymns during a state of the union address is the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Just what was the greatest thing before sliced bread, anyway?) All I know right now is that my income is 45% of what it was when the philandering Arkansan was in the White House. There just aren’t enough verses to Amazing Grace to make me feel good about that. What gives? I thought Republicans liked money. Get me back to $20 an hour and you can elect a Libertarian from Mississippi for all I care.

When someone gets to that level of government, their decisions were bought and paid for by a fraction of the electorate a long time ago, anyway. I just don’t cotton to having my livelihood stepped on in the process of giving the office away to the highest bidder, and this particular group of shadowy figures in the smoke-filled meeting room has now officially cost me income. So, for me, it’s time to shake the Executive branch Boggle cube and see if the new arrangement of letters has spelled “Robust Economy” from any angle.

Bush has managed to piss off the entire free world, get into an expensive war with a country that hasn’t invaded us, run up an even greater national debt than we had under Reagan and this guy’s still got more than a year left at the helm to make more sudden turns without breaking first. Aren’t the Republicans the party that preaches financial responsibility? We’ve got over a billion dollars a month to keep troops in Iraq, but we can’t afford to pay for education? The standard insult to Democrats is to call them tax and spend liberals, but cutting taxes while spending our asses off is somehow a better idea?


You might feel a slight
cramping sensation.

What do I have to show for it? The FBI can subpoena my library card activity and surfing habits. Whoopie. I feel so much safer now that John Ashcroft will know whether or not I’ve read The Bridges of Madison County or PVP. The Pentagon has proved once more that it can flatten third world countries with the efficiency of a lawn mower, but it hasn’t found Bin Laden or Hussein. We’re losing American troops at the rate of a handful per day, and that’s in a country we just conquered. We’re being told we can’t afford to take care of ourselves on the heels of being told that we have to spend $87 billion to rebuild Iraq. I wonder if seniors would have prescriptions completely covered by Medicare if Haliburton had a pharmaceutical division ready to fill a nice contract to provide the medications.

I’m less concerned with what Republicans think we should do than I am with what they’re doing. Maybe a small federal government is a good thing. Maybe we should have more of our money to spend ourselves. We can debate the abstract points of individual political philosophies until God finally tells the world’s faithful just which apocalyptic final chapter of which holy book had it right. In the meantime, the fact is: the standard of living in this country has slipped quite a bit with George’s people at the helm.

Now, as far as actually getting represented in exchange for your vote, picking a candidate has about as much of a specific effect on your personal future as your astrological sign. Maybe you voted for George, because he was Republican and that’s how you’re registered. Well, did he ever invite you to his house to talk about what you’d like him to do? Of course he didn’t. Not unless you contributed an amount of money to his party that has a single digit followed by a bunch of zeros, in which case, he did. But the regular kind of party line voting expressed by a ballot and not a checkbook actually gives you less say in how the specific administration will go, Republican or Democrat.

You, the faithful party voter, are the taken-for-granted girlfriend. Your party humors you and tells you what you want to hear from it, but not every day, anymore. Oh sure, right after the election there’s a honeymoon. They give you a little face time almost everyday and talk about how important you are. They romance you with language about the great future you’ll build together. But they’ve spent their time on the road talking to those other interests; sexy interests with bigger assets than you’ve got. Oh sure, you’re faithful and loyal, but they’ve already got you. Now, your party is setting their schedule around when those other interests they’ve been seeing need to get together and around what they’d like to do.


Of course I'll call you tommorow.

You ask them what they were doing with that political action committee or CEO the gossip section of the Wall Street Journal said they were out with the other night. Your party gives you a bunch of vague talk about how “We’re just good friends,” and then suddenly picks a fight with the country across the street before you can press them any further. Things start slipping around the House. Sure, some big show of effort is made about taking care of a couple of the things they said they’d do. But they begin to procrastinate on dealing with some of the issues and concerns they swore they’d make their top priorities. Promises made during those heady days of the campaign start to get broken. All of that money they said they’d spend on you or pay you back never quite materializes.

Maybe you feel disillusioned and start daydreaming about some independent candidate that reminds you of what your party was like when you first started voting. You start wondering about what it would be like on the other side of the fence. Who could blame you? All that time your party spent “broadening its horizons” with swing voters has left you feeling neglected and vulnerable. All that talk the Party gave you about how dedicated it was to you begins to sound hollow as you think about how your needs aren’t being met.

That is until the next election rolls around. Suddenly, there they are in the living room again every night. They throw lavish outdoor get-togethers for you and your friends. You get so many love notes in the mail you can’t even read them all. If you tell them about your problems and frustrations, they listen intently. You start to feel like the center of attention again. They talk about the things they can change or how you’ll work together to make it feel just like old times, again.


Parenting tip:
Never let your children
play with politicians,
you never know
where they've been.

Party-line Republicans and Democrats, I beseech you: snap out of it! These career politicians are worse than that jerk frat-boy your sister or cousin dated in college. They honestly need you, but only for one day every two to four years. When you give that vote away without a real commitment from your candidate, he won’t respect you for it. He’ll just move on to the next one. Campaigning politicians are like college freshmen guys trying to get laid. They think they have to work the hardest for the votes they haven’t gotten yet.

Would you sleep with someone who only called every two to four years and tried to get in bed with you using the same tired rhetoric you know they’ve already used with several thousand other people that week? Ok, maybe that analogy doesn’t work for the single young men out there, who just want to know how hot she is, before they’ll answer. But, I think you see my point. If these politicians want to spend their time chasing loose money and strange voters, make ‘em sleep in the minority seats in Congress. If your representatives aren’t representing you, dump their lame asses for someone else who will. Finally, if your president isn’t protecting your financial future or your freedoms before he does anything for anyone else, tell him the only library he needs to worry about monitoring is the one named after him that he’s about to build.