Enter
surd to be wondering if a guy who
only got to Washington yesterday
was ready to run the whole show,
the press did at least wait until almost three years had passed since
the 2008 election to ask about it.
On the other hand, as of this past
Sunday, only about four months
has passed since our last presidential race. And so I understand why
Jeb Bush, when asked by Meet The
Press host David Gregory if he was
going to run in 2016, answered with
a more biting pejorative: “Man, you
guys are crack addicts.”
Naturally, the relative unfairness
of comparing David Gregory with
anyone who shows the singleminded determination of a crack addict
was not lost on Bush, who immediately amended the comparison to,
“OK, heroin addict, is that better?”
A bit! If only because the withdrawal seems to be so painful. See,
the joke used to be that as soon as
the presidential election season
concludes, the midterm election
campaign begins. And as soon as
midterms were over, everyone got
to take six hours off before turning into a fountain of breathless
speculation over the presidential
campaign. But this year, we seem to
have stumbled out of the gate looking to skip the midterms entirely.
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
HUFFINGTON
03.17.13
There is already a Wikipedia page
dedicated to the 2016 presidential
election, and looking at it is like
staring at a sickness. Right now,
the page lists the people who have
publicly expressed an interest in
running for the White House, along
with “other potential candidates.”
If there’s good news to report, it’s
that the former category of politicians is still quite restrained. Bush,
Chris Christie, Jon Huntsman,
[Hillary Clinton] is such
a force majeure ... until she
says she’s in or out … none of
the other 2016 wannabes can
afford to stick their toes into
presidential waters.”
Rand Paul and Rick Santorum are
on the list for the GOP, and Joe
Biden is the only Democrat. That’s
okay. We can live with that.
On the other hand, the list of
“other potential candidates” is out
of control. As of this moment, it
includes 49 people, and as near as
I can tell, they’re included in this
list if anyone, anywhere, at any
time suggested that they might
or should or could run for president. And so, you get a mix of those