What Can We Do to Make Your Stay in Power More Comfortable?

Bowing to the pressures of modern politics, the Nation's Business decided to resign effective immediately and throw its weight behind a perpetual, unremitting election cycle.

Speaking on behalf of the Nation's Business, Uncle Sam acknowledged that political capital was being squandered needlessly on issues of substance leaving huge wellsprings of pandering in the lurch. The nation, said Sam, was looking forward to the endless diversion offered by self-congratulatory confetti blizzards, ticker tape parades and glitzy ballroom galas.

Said Sam: "The next two years have been deemed a 'lame duck period' both by power-seekers and the folks that watch them. Everyone knows nothing of consequence occurs in a lame duck period. The Nation's Business has thus decided to abandon the pressing nature of its concerns which were becoming a real source of irritation in some political circles.

In a rare joint communiqué, the DNC and RNC chairmen welcomed the move, saying: “We applaud the nation's efforts not to hog the spotlight so that the real business of America, jockeying for power, can consume the remaining two years of the current four year term." Joining the chorus of support was The Eighth Graders of America League (EGAL) which estimates 5% of its membership has already formed exploratory committees for the 2038 presidential campaign. In the words of one pimply pre-teen, it's never too early to test the political waters, especially during study hall.

Adding to the general sense of inertia is the looming mid-term election cycle when all things come to a grinding halt, having just acquired a modicum of speed from the prior grinding halt brought upon, quite understandably, by the presidential election cycle.

One constitutional scholar suggested that future governance in America might resemble hunting season for the Eastern Bobcat, that is, a brief sixty-day window occurring twice each decade. Much however would depend on the resident squirrel population and whether the Bobcat lobby could mount a successful filibuster.

Confirming the trend toward electo-centric governance, TIME On-line Edition (March 12, 2006) reports (would a satirist kid you?) that looming nuclear confrontation with Iran may 'help [Bush's] numbers a little bit', thus taking some of the limp out of his lame and proving that even mushroom clouds have silver linings, birth defects notwithstanding.

Indeed global incineration is being hailed in some quarters as just what the doctor ordered to get serious governance back on its feet. The political class is not so ebullient however. Said one Washington infighter who moonlights as a lobbyist for hostile foreign interests: "The question is not whether American governance is best left to the whim and caprice of a handful of crazy imams. The question is how will pre-election straw polls be conducted in a post-apocalyptic landscape?

Only time—and a succession of Gallup polls—will tell.

© Norman Ball