In less than four weeks mid-term elections will be upon us, with the victors popping champagne corks while the losers eye high bridges. Lock your vaults and hide your daughters.
This time out it seems every politician, known and unknown, from both sides of the aisle is throwing his or her hat into the ring. Or since hats are passe, "forming exploratory committees." You know. Like a colonoscopy.
The run-up to these things is political Darwinism at its most elemental. "Dog eat dog" is too bland a phrase; "slash and burn" says it more plainly. And brother, does it seem to take forever, this time we're soon to enter. If farming season lasted as long we'd be harvesting green beans the size of dugout canoes. What we Americans put ourselves through every few years puts me in mind of a childhood memory.
When I was a boy my family would sometimes take Sunday drives. Long Sunday drives. Endless, bleak, soul-killing, waiting-for-Godot Sunday drives. There we'd be, my dad behind the wheel of our Ford Galaxy (Clark Kent hat tilted at a rakish angle), with my mom beside him. In the back seat were my little brother and yours truly.
Along about the eighteenth hour (or so it seemed) of the drive, my brother and I would grow bored, although "bored" doesn't really say it; that's like calling the firebombing of Dresden a "warmish day." Anyway, Scott would casually throw his leg over mine. I'd toss it back. He'd do it again with a bit more force. I'd toss it back. He'd stick his tongue out at me. I'd look back and pretend to eat boogers. He'd pinch me. I'd slug him. And so on.
The only thing that could end the fun was my dad with his eyes still on the road screaming obscenities and flailing his arm over the back of the seat, hoping to nail one of us, or both. My mom would laugh behind her hand, but I still saw it.
That's kind of like what election season is reminiscent of. Yeah.