It's weird to skip papers for about 10 days and then pick back up. It's like getting a TV series in a season package: yesterday's conjecture-laden headline ("Will anything happen when Iran talks to Saudi Arabia") becomes the next day's ho-hum ("Nothing happens in talks between Tehran and Riyadh"). It's just so instantly grate-ifying ("Oh wonderful!" he says, between clenched teeth), like there's no waiting required, nor any cliffhangers to endure.
Show's over folks. Get your souvenirs right here!
And reading forward into days like that, mirroring my recent shifting of hours since 1 March (back one, forward six, forward four, minus one, minus two, minus seven, plus one [cursed daylights savings!], minus three--screw Waldo, I just want to find the sun!), I can't help but feel like the Bush post-presidency has begun to cannibalize itself.
You know how I've argued that, once Bush is gone, everyone's price for cooperation with America will be cut in half? Well, it's like the liquidation sale has already begun, with the bankrupt business conducting its own wake (sorry, the time shifts my metaphors).
It's like "Six Feet Under" and the corpse is not only carrying on, it's cozying up--to just about everyone.
"How come we never talked like this when you were alive?"
Bush tours Latin America to counter the hugely accurate perception that he's ignored the region his entire term. A new diplomatic push on Israel and Palestine, to counter ... you know. Ditto with the rest of the Middle East, Russia, North Korea--the whole shooting match.
It's like that game show with Howie Mandel (the name escapes) [Deal or No Deal - Ed.]: every few minutes another box is opened with meaningful randomness ("I like number six, because I've got that many toes on my left foot!" My daughter Em: "That's soooo random!") and the discounting begins. Bush's legacy will either be $100 or maybe $275,000, but the million-dollar baby seems long gone. We won the Iraq War in 2004 just like we won the Vietnam War in 1966. You just can't help the feeling that the massive correction is already well underway. Sure, most of the major pieces will be left to the next administration ("Bring on the solutions-based centrists--social whatevers be damned! [no, really, they will be damned]), but this White House is getting what pennies on the dollar it can, while the getting's mediocre.
Ironic, but a team so committed to restoring the presidency's power has done so much to diminish it's global standing. Hubris is self-correcting, after all.
As much as I like tidy endings, I fear few of these will be. Currency runs/panics begin when international money spots local money running scared on itself (shorting), and yet I don't think we're looking at anything too adventurous by anybody--save perhaps a Goddamn'er'um from a Dick Cheney with one foot stuck in ... wherever Bill Maher's sense of comedic timing disappeared (tragedy PLUS time, dear fellow-traveler).
In short, the timing seems good for intellectual recalibrations, as there's little sense you'll miss anything in the meantime (Wouldn't even an impeachment "crisis" seem like old hat? So why bother, Chuck Hagel?).
A big part of me just wants to disappear somewhere off-grid, only to return once the nominees are set, so the weird prelims can be superseded by the significant arguments and the serious end-of-termism that this weird interregnum only approximates.
Secretly (he types on his blog), I'd love to see Barack v. Rudy, or an almost purely post-9/11 fight (Barack has no record pre-9/11 worth arguing for or against, while Rudy was reborn on that date) that focused on solutions and skipped all the 90s-reruns (much less the Vietnam replays).
My time-shifting brain just wants a reset, I guess.