We Need A President

There is an old joke that had three sub punch lines.

I can only remember two of them.

“FDR proved anybody could be president.

Harry Truman proved we don’t need a president.”

That joke got a lot of hilarity from the republicans of that age, and on its face it’s fairly droll.

But part of the humor came from the obvious and intended variance of the joke’s assertion from the facts of American life then on the ground: Truman took over near the end of a civilization threatening war.  He ended the war; he started the rebuild of Europe with the Marshall Plan; he ended segregation in the military; he got the GI Bill done.

To name a few of the things we needed a president for.

At that time.

These times are no less in need of presidential leadership.

But we don’t have any.

Leadership – or, really, president.

When the obviousness of that politically slippery fact begins to manifest itself in the cosmically trivial – donnie and his wife aren’t attending the Kennedy Center event – it’s time to become genuinely worried.

I don’t know how he goes.

I just know he must go.

And, there are three acceptable and obvious ways for him to go: the Twenty Fifth Amendment, impeachment, or just resign.

The problem is, all three of those options require pressure being applied to donnie by the other elected branch of our government.

Like happened to Nixon.

But that branch is controlled by republicans this time.

And they are gutless parasites mostly – as are the Democrats, mostly – who keep whistling past the graveyard hoping that donnie is going to morph into Ronald Regan – or, even, Harry Truman.

He isn’t going to morph.

And that is a problem.

We can’t go another six months, let alone three and a half years, without a president.