2003-08-20 - 11:55 a.m.
Goddamn it. Every time I say I'm going to stop ranting about politics, John Ashcroft up and does something else outrageous.
This time he's touring the country to pimp for the PATRIOT act. Fortunately, the Howard Dean people are all over it this time. On your way out of here, be sure to go and sign this. And if John-boy comes to your town, be sure to make an appearance and tell him how you feel.
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Why oh why didn't I decide to run for governor of California? That's what all the hep kids are doing. I could have scraped together 3,500 bucks on short notice, no problem. I could have maxed out one of my credit cards, asked my parents for a loan, gotten an advance on my salary ... True, that might have undermined any claim I made of fiscal responsibility, but that's never been a prerequisite for the governorship anyway.
OK, I remember now why I'm not running. It's because only an insane person would want to govern this state. It's miles deep in red ink, it's crushed under the weight of a hopelessly ossified bureaucracy and one-party political machine that has all of the corruption of Daley's Chicago but with none of the efficency, its opposition party has been consigned to permanent minority status by the ideological cranks who control the nomination process for statewide offices and thereby insure that nobody who's halfway electable will ever receive the party's blessing, and anything constructive that the state government does manage to do can be quickly undone by anyone with enough money and word-processing skills to write an initiative and get it onto the ballot.
Years ago, I read an article in Harper's that described California's system of government as "elected anarchy." That pretty much sums it up.
Personally, I'll probably vote no on the recall itself, and then for Arianna Huffington if the thing actually goes through. Or maybe I'll vote for Angelyne, if she ever comes clean with her position on offshore oil drilling. Larry Flynt is a possibility, too. Having a perverted gimp in a gold-plated wheelchair as governor would be too cool for words.
But seriously, can you imagine what a national recall would be like? God knows, I have no love lost for George W. Bush, but I have this terrifying image of all the Presidential recall candidates beating each other up so thoroughly that their votes all cancel each other out and we end up with, I dunno, Anna Nicole Smith in the White House. Or that creepy guy who won the first season of Survivor. Don't think it couldn't happen here.
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