Celebrities, Failures, And Nonentities

Julian Castro?
Antonio Villaraigosa?
Kal Penn?
Eva Longoria?
Sandra Fluke?
Jon Huntsman?

This is a major party's national-convention lineup?

Oh, excuse me, please: I forgot:
Michelle Obama?
Joseph Biden?
Barack Hussein Obama?

The Republican National Convention was top-heavy with achievers. The planners were especially wise to feature Chris Christie and Scott Walker, two of America's most successful governors, among a lineup of generally heavy hitters. Yes, yes, there was an entertainer on the final night...a good one, a highly revered actor with a long and glittering resume, who's also the director most Hollywood high-liners are most eager to work with. Choose any one of the speakers from the 2012 RNC and tot his accomplishments up against those of all the above DNC speakers taken together. Who comes out on top?

I suppose it's not quite fair of me to have included the Obamas in the list. Look at them! Michelle is a former lawyer who'll never again practice law; Barack is a former "community organizer" and lapsed constitutional-law instructor who couldn't qualify for even an assistant professorship and has never made a dollar in the private sector. It would take quite a long list of genuine achievements to counterbalance their personal records of failure, especially if we include Barack's failures as president.

(No, for a Democrat to win an election is not an accomplishment of note. Not in Chicago, anyway.)

At any rate, what we're witnessing in the DNC is what's traditionally called a coronation. The whole show is centered on elevating Barack Hussein Obama to the plane of the immortals. Right up there next to Albert J. Parkhouse, inventor of the wire coat hanger.

Oops! Excuse me, please. We're not supposed to mention coat hangers and Democrats in the same paragraph, are we? It constitutes racism of some sort, no doubt.

Obama won the presidency in 2008 in large measure because the Republicans fielded a weak candidate, who went on to run a bad campaign. I've occasionally wondered whether the GOP was anxious not to occupy the Oval Office these past four years, so that the odium for the FannieMae / FreddieMac-precipitated collapse in housing and finance would be seen to rest on someone else's shoulders. It seems more plausible the longer I ponder it -- and even more plausible that the Democrats are "playing to lose" this year, so they can have the next four or eight years to purge their own ranks and attempt to bring their party nearer to the mainstream of American life and thought.

Really, how could anyone look at the ridiculous extravaganza the Democrats are staging in Charlotte and not at least contemplate the possibility?

The Republicans are no prize, granted. Of the bunch that pursued the nomination, Mitt Romney was the candidate I liked least. The GOP's Congressional "leadership" is a joke...or would be, if it were as funny as it is pathetic. But at least the RNC demonstrated some sense of what matters to Americans engaged with the political process. The Democrats are too mesmerized by the glory of The Won to take notice of the carnage his "leadership" has brought about. Full speed ahead with the coronation! His Majesty's new clothes have to turn up eventually.

I sometimes wish I could contrive to sleep until November 7. Unfortunately, this campaign is far too important. Drinking heavily is also out, as I have five novels to complete and a new guitar to master.

Ah, well. This, too, shall pass away, right? Right?