Well, all right, let's talk about the Democratic party, although I'm out of my depth here (and probably have been from the beginning).

I'd say their biggest problem right now-- and I mean "problem" in the sense that they relate to the rational, normal American like you and me, and not in the sense of Democratic strategy-- is that they are not the GOP. To cut right to the chase, there is a huge game of Good Cop/Bad Cop that is being foisted on the American public right now. (God, I feel like I'm laboring the obvious, but oh well).

As soon as official party policy becomes, "At least we're not that OTHER GUY!" you've begun to introduce a kind of slow rot into the idea of electability. This is what seems to have torpedoed the Democratic aspirations in '04 against Bush. The best Kerry could ever muster was, "Well, I'm not Bush, you can say that for sure!" And that's pretty weak tea, cold oatmeal. It's death, from a philosophical standpoint. Even factoring in the roiling tides of anti-Bush sentiment, it just wasn't enough.

And that seems to have been a crucial point in Democratic ideology. "We're not those guys!" Which is great, because on the one hand, no, we don't exactly want a bunch of eye-rolling loonies. But of course that's a colossal dupe. There is no choice. Do you want a punch in the eye or a kick in the balls? You're plenty bad enough, even if you aren't those guys. You're just a little sneakier about it.

Do you want something that explicitly terrifies you, or only implicitly? I wrote a little anecdote which is the best I can put it:

The impatient businessman says to his client, "Don't forget to take a pen on your way out." His client looks at the empty mug on his desk and says, "But you're out of pens." The businessman replies, "Fine, then take two and let's not have any fuss about it."

party conversation topic

As I was explaining last night to a fellow who turned out to be from Scotland, Texas is in the rather unusual position of having to defend a rational policy.

And what I mean by that: Texas, by virtue of its geographic character, shares a pretty enormous border with Mexico, meaning that in spite of all the abstract thinking and (let's be honest) stupid rhetoric that gets tossed around on this issue-- they actually and truly have to deal with being a border state. As a result, even though they are firmly in The South, solidly conservative, GOP, home of George W. Bush and so on, someone like Rick Perry has had to stand up and say to other GOP candidates things along the lines of, "Well, we'd all love to build a fence to keep out 'illegals', but you know that's not really feasible or desirable..." while the other candidates then get to jump on him for being soft on illegal immigration.

You can probably see the rich irony of the situation. Texas politicians get flak from their own party for dealing with reality, no matter how much they might wish it were otherwise, if only because official party policy is at such odds with reality. And this puts them in the blackly humorous position of having to defend a rational, reasonable, forward-thinking set of policies because such rationality is held in such low regard by others in their party.

This, to me, is modern political theater at its most absolutely hilarious. I mean, for pure black comedy you just can't beat it. It makes Pagliacci look absolutely amateur.

I think in certain ways this makes Rick Perry the inescapable end-product of our modern political system, or at least one wing of it (the Democratic side of the aisle has a much more subtle terror going for them, but I won't go into that now). Where he is not absolutely and monstrously wrong, he is absolutely and monstrously right, and there is no way either of these positions can do him any good. (There's also the chance that he really is a braindead buffoon. But I don't think it's lack of intelligence, per se, that makes him the figure that he is). He is right for all the wrong reasons, and he's wrong for all the right reasons. And you can't ask for a more fascinating politician than that.

As a matter of fact, what's been his most effective strategy so far, as a politician? Not showing up! He didn't show up for debates when it came to the governorship of Texas, and that suited him perfectly. That strategy was a resounding success. And now that he's become a national joke, what is he talking about doing? Not showing up! Yes! The problem is that he has actually been going to the GOP debates, and opening his mouth, and just generally spewing forth the type of incoherent word-salad that has him plummeting in the polls like a swan with an arrow through its heart. His tactic is to be absent. His positions are that which remain once all other positions have been taken by other, irritatingly present candidates. Rick Perry is What's Left. And that is fucking brilliant.

Now, this may have suited him for the governorship, but I don't think it'll be enough to win him the GOP nomination. For one thing, Mitt Romney just keeps showing up and not being demonstrably insane, which you can tell is pissing off the Washington insiders no end. They're desperate to go with any-fucking-body else, but it's just not happening. For another thing, Perry has already burst his own balloon by doing the opposite of what he does best. He's already shown up (and it's been a disaster). If he had been the perfect, abstract candidate... and aren't those polls hilarious, the ones that show Obama losing to generic, anonymous "Republican candidate", but him thumping soundly any actual person with a name and an agenda?-- he might've stood a chance. But no, he's become distinct now, and what he is is distinctly... strange. Not electable, anyway. Oh well. Poor Richard.

another in a series of endless examples

there is, I believe, a fundamental difference between american and european attitudes when it comes to personality. (This is a grotesque and probably objectionable oversimplification on the parts of both europeans and americans, but it serves here as a shorthand for what I'm really getting at. The idea, of course, being that I'm trying to emphasize a basic duality which transcends national boundaries, and has at various times been filled by American and European roles. The two characters could easily be reversed and probably have been).

On the one hand, you have a certain affected naivety, where the roles of social convention are followed to a T, at the expense of a certain effectiveness. On the other hand, you have a kind of honesty which seems simplistic but (in my opinion) is much more effective when it comes to communication and tolerance of the individual.

James Spader's character on "The Office" (in this case a pretty quintessentially "American" show) fills the second type of personality, and in so doing, lends a pretty good streak of humor. He simply exists, unapologetically, leaving the other characters politely bewildered in his wake. (I wonder if this might not have to do with europe's having had yea many years to understand and absorb the lessons of Kafka, who taught us once and for all the absolute nightmares that lay behind trying to politely follow the rules. Which in turn prefigured the endless enigmatic terrors of Stalin's bureaucracy and so on). At any rate, the lesson to be learned is the difference between being "open", which is merely a shorthand for being confused and not much of anything, and simply being, which is far more fascinating and potentially impolite, which is just better, I think, for all of us.