There are almost twenty men and women running for president of the United States this year. So far. Yet, the field seems strangely muted and empty. Kind of like the feeling we have in the pit of our collective national tummy, when we contemplate the lack of seriousness of purpose among these collected ambitious pols. Why is America so bad at producing politicians of substance? Or, a better question to ask is this: why is the current crop of 2016 hopefuls so apparently listless and hopelessly uninspiring?
Let’s start with the Republicans because they have the biggest pool. At the present time there are around a dozen Senators, Governors, and businesspeople vying for the party’s nomination. There will be nearly a year and a half of back-breaking infighting until the Summer convention produces a winner. Why are all these people willing to put themselves through so much to be Leader of the Free World? Whatever their reasons are, the candidates for 2016 seem like a particularly lackluster lot. They all spout the same truisms and offer the same tired solutions to problems that are vexing and pressing, problems that threaten the nation and the world. They pretend to come from different corners of the Party but they all seem like listless iterations of the same tried-and-true formulas. Where are the future faces of Mount Rushmore? Ted Cruz? Rand Paul? Please.
And then there are the Democrats. Or, as now seems more than likely, the Democrat. Let’s face it folks, love her or loathe her, Hillary Clinton now seems more than a little inevitable. And is that a good thing for a Party that needs some serious reinvention? The national debate isn’t going to go very far if these are the men and women who populate our political conversation for the next eighteen months. In fact, there isn’t going to be much of a debate at all because all of these people, despite their advertised differences are really, as former Alabama governor and racist, George Wallace, used to say, “not worth a dime’s difference.” Even racist governor’s sometimes said things that made more sense than some of the sorry pols that people our national landscape. Pretty sad.
