Monday, June 04, 2012
From a comment thread on Balloon Juice about why Mitt Romney wants to run for president;
31 mclaren Says:
@suzanne:
I’m often asked by people I know why I don’t run for something someday, since I’m very openly passionate about electoral politics, and my response is usually something like, “Because then I’d have to leave the house and talk to people I hate.”
Oh, suzanne, suzanne, suzanne… That’s only the start of it.
To become president, you have to do things like destroy your best friends…and then smile at them and shake their hands, and put your arm around their shoulders, and tell them how you much you love them and what great people they are, just before the prosecutors issue the phony indictments on trumped-up charges.
To become president, you have to do things like interrupt the girl giving you head in the Oval Office to take a call from one of your biggest political contributors—then sweet-talk the girl who was giving you head and tell her she’s the most important person in your life, just before you dump her, and then lie to your wife telling her “I have never had sex with that woman.”
To become president, you have to sift through photos of 17-year-old girls who are alleged to be terrorists and discuss whether to order them murdered along with their entire families, or just the 17-year-old girls themselves. Because collaterial damage might be politically awkward.
To become president, you have to be able to leave your best friends to die on the battlefield and then denounce them as traitors and un-American subhuman scum, not even worthy of being buried.
To become president, you have to be able to shake the hand of a senator who likes to rape and beat nearly to death his underage female pages, and then agree to intervene with an FBI investigation that’s on the brink of indicting him for serial rape, because that senator is the key to getting some legislation passed that will help millions of starving American children.
To become president, you have to be able to publicly praise a pope who has covered us tens of thousands of cases of child rape because the praising that power-hungry pederast is the way to get a key bloc of American voters to swing your way.
To become president, you have to be able to promise hope and change and believe it when you say it, and say it passionately and from the bottom of your heart, and then allow your beliefs to drift away and mutate into the exact opposite while compartalizing all awareness of your betrayal and rationalizing it to yourself as “the lesser of two evils” and “doing a little evil in order to do a lot of good.”
To become president, you have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror after advisors tell you that the canadian citizen you ordered kidnapped and flown by CIA learjet to be tortured for two years in Syria was actually innocent. And then you have to be able to agree to do it again…and again…and again, because if you don’t, key pro-military deep south constituencies won’t vote for you in your re-election.
Personally, I’d rather jam white-hot knitting needles into my eyes while scraping off my genitals with a rusty cheese grater than do those kinds of things. But that’s just me.
ReplyReply
June 4th, 2012 at 12:33 am
31 mclaren Says:
@suzanne:
I’m often asked by people I know why I don’t run for something someday, since I’m very openly passionate about electoral politics, and my response is usually something like, “Because then I’d have to leave the house and talk to people I hate.”
Oh, suzanne, suzanne, suzanne… That’s only the start of it.
To become president, you have to do things like destroy your best friends…and then smile at them and shake their hands, and put your arm around their shoulders, and tell them how you much you love them and what great people they are, just before the prosecutors issue the phony indictments on trumped-up charges.
To become president, you have to do things like interrupt the girl giving you head in the Oval Office to take a call from one of your biggest political contributors—then sweet-talk the girl who was giving you head and tell her she’s the most important person in your life, just before you dump her, and then lie to your wife telling her “I have never had sex with that woman.”
To become president, you have to sift through photos of 17-year-old girls who are alleged to be terrorists and discuss whether to order them murdered along with their entire families, or just the 17-year-old girls themselves. Because collaterial damage might be politically awkward.
To become president, you have to be able to leave your best friends to die on the battlefield and then denounce them as traitors and un-American subhuman scum, not even worthy of being buried.
To become president, you have to be able to shake the hand of a senator who likes to rape and beat nearly to death his underage female pages, and then agree to intervene with an FBI investigation that’s on the brink of indicting him for serial rape, because that senator is the key to getting some legislation passed that will help millions of starving American children.
To become president, you have to be able to publicly praise a pope who has covered us tens of thousands of cases of child rape because the praising that power-hungry pederast is the way to get a key bloc of American voters to swing your way.
To become president, you have to be able to promise hope and change and believe it when you say it, and say it passionately and from the bottom of your heart, and then allow your beliefs to drift away and mutate into the exact opposite while compartalizing all awareness of your betrayal and rationalizing it to yourself as “the lesser of two evils” and “doing a little evil in order to do a lot of good.”
To become president, you have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror after advisors tell you that the canadian citizen you ordered kidnapped and flown by CIA learjet to be tortured for two years in Syria was actually innocent. And then you have to be able to agree to do it again…and again…and again, because if you don’t, key pro-military deep south constituencies won’t vote for you in your re-election.
Personally, I’d rather jam white-hot knitting needles into my eyes while scraping off my genitals with a rusty cheese grater than do those kinds of things. But that’s just me.
ReplyReply
June 4th, 2012 at 12:33 am
# posted by Frank @ 12:13 PM 
