You just might be looking at my next home.
The media have been telling us relentlessly, for months now, that the outcome of next week's presidential election is a done deal. Inevitable. Preordained.
Of course they said that about Hillary Clinton too, didn't they?
But the message coming from the Washington Post and the New York Times is pretty clear: unless you're planning to vote for Barack Obama, you might as well stay home.
As we used to say when I was in high shool, "They wish."
No, I'm going to go out and cast my vote for John McCain, as should anyone who doesn't especially relish the idea of living in the USSA -- United Socialist States of America.
I saw a bumper sticker years ago that I loved. "Like Your Mail Service? You'll LOVE National Health Insurance."
Get ready for it, and don't come crying to me when you feel a twinge that might be appendicitis and are told that you can see the doctor next November.
But I don't want to get started on that. I've already outlined my personal strategy for surviving four years of President Obama and his cadre of crypto-Marxists led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid: total disengagement. Unlike Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon, both of whom have threatened to leave the country if there's a Republican victory and neither of whom has actually put their money where their big mouths are, I'm not going to leave the country when Obama and his politboro take over. Don't get me wrong: if I could afford it I'd move to the Orkney Islands. But I can't. (Unlike Baldwin and Sarandon, so what are their excuses?)
Yes, the above-depicted manhole cover just might be my new front door. I'm going to batten down the hatches, cancel my newspaper subscription, quit listening to the radio, give my TV to the nearest needy cretin and change my home page to, oh, I don't know, SorenKierkegaard.com? Some place where I am absolutely assured that I won't see or hear anything remotely resembling news. I just don't want to know what Obama and his gang are up to out there. But if I peek out from under that manhole cover and see that all the trash cans in the neighborhood have "PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT stamped on them, I'll have a pretty good idea: someone decided that "spreading the wealth around" also applied to trash, and the Democrats rolled it through their one-party Congress without a rhetorical shot being fired. (Can you imagine garbage collectors as federal employees? In no time the whole country would look like New York City in the 1970s, when the garbage collectors were going on strike every forty-five minutes.)
I have to prepare for the worst. Even Rich Lowry and Byron York, writers for National Review, the country's premier conservative magazine, are already assessing what McCain did wrong. That sounds like fatalism to me, and those guys are more in the know than I am. Come November 5 we're probably going to be looking at the apotheosis of Jimmy Carter II. God help us all.
So I'm trying to think of something, anything good that might come out of this. Yes, of course, there's the feely-good factor that America elected itself a black president. I don't have a problem with that. I've been telling people all summer and fall that if Shelby Steele or Thomas Sowell were running for president, I wouldn't be able to get my sneakers laced up fast enough to run out and vote for either of them. For me the feely-good factor just doesn't outweigh the fact that the country is about to take a sharp swing to the left, and no good is going to come of it except the feely-good factor. Get ready for a LONG recession, everybody. Because it's government's endless tampering with the economy that makes recessions run long, and Obama and his crowd are going to tamper with the economy until its nipples are raw. (Had FDR and his cigarette-puffing "brain trust" kept their mitts off the economy, the Depression might have been called just that, not the GREAT Depression.)
Racking my brain, however, I have been able to come up with two -- no, maybe three --good things coming out of an Obama presidency.
Clearly, the feely-good thing is one. No longer will anyone be able to get away with calling America a horrible racist country. Not if we have a black president. Of course we've known that all along, haven't we?
Actually, my number-one positive thing is an offshoot of that. You see, I came to the realization long ago that if Obama is inaugurated on Jan. 9, 2009 or whenever it is, on January 10, 2009 Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are both going to be out of a job.
And Jackson, for one, has never had a real job in his life. "He's a REVEREND," my friend Jim insisted.
Like I said, he's never had a real job in his life.
Think about it for a minute. Jackson and Sharpton. What are those two guys, basically? Grievance peddlers, that's what. They traffic in grievance, and their little Johnny One-Note message, which gets screamed from the nearest soapbox every time Don Imus opens his mouth or some lying bimbo hired as a stripper gets the whole Duke University lacrosse team crucified in the biggest kangaroo court the media ever whooped up, is "We're VICTIMS! And as VICTIMS, we demand, demand, demand!" Well, with Barack Hussein Obama paring his fingernails in the Oval Office while he waits for Pelosi and Reid to arrive so the three of them can decide what they're going to nationalize next, (and should they check with Hugo Chavez for his advice first?) Jackson and Sharpton's message is all of a sudden going to sound pretty hollow, isn't it?
And wouldn't that be just too bad?
I can see Jackson now, opening a hot dog stand for the tourists on Constitution Avenue (within view of the White House! YESSS!) and counting on his name to build the clientele: "Jesse's Snacks For Snivelers! Best In The City! Get 'Em While They're Hot!"
As for Sharpton, there's no question in my mind as to the best post-Obama career choice for him. That guy has "pimp" written all over him. Right down to the hair.
Now watch him try to sue me. Sorry, Sharpton, I read up on libel. You're a public figure and that makes you fair game.
Now, as for the other salubrious effect I see coming out of an Obama presidency, well, it's the same something that my very best friend, die-hard liberal Jim Provenza used to try and get me to vote for John Kerry in 2004. "If you vote for Kerry," Jim explained, "Hillary will be out of the picture until 2012. Because the party in power always renominates the incumbent." You know, that was actually a good argument. I didn't vote for Kerry, but if I had, that would have been my reason. I couldn't think of another, that's all.
Now here comes that argument again. Same principle, four years later. If Obama wins, we're rid of the Clintons until 2016. Whether Obama gets re-elected in 2012 or not is a moot point. If he's president, the Democrats will renominate him. It's a given. In 2016 Hillary Clinton will be almost 70. Not quite as old as McCain, but getting up there. Someone is sure to bring up her age as a factor, not to mention the fact that she lost the 2008 nomination to Obama.
My point is, if Obama becomes president, we stand a very good chance of not seeing the Clintons again for another eight years. I have no illusions; they're going to keep coming back until someone drives a wooden stake through both their hearts. But eight years without either of them around sure would be nice.
Oh, what am I saying? I won't know whether they're there or not. I'll be in my room with the door locked, reading Tolstoy.
Don't bother me unless it's important. You know, like telling me it's time for my annual checkup. And that I should be there on time. Next November.
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