There have been eleven U.S. presidents in my 61-year life. All but one of them would have made my list for “someone you’d like to have dinner with.”
Dwight Eisenhower was a grandfatherly fellow who’d accomplished great things. JFK had sex appeal. Lyndon Johnson would have had some seriously foul jokes (and a bottle of good whiskey). Jerry Ford seemed to be a genuinely nice man. James Earl Carter is a Sunday School teacher (and we share a similiar first/middle name combo). Reagan would have cool stories to tell about Hollywood, provided he left his bitchy wife on the ranch. George HW Bush is a gracious New England patrician, his son an affible doofus. Bill Clinton would be the life of any party and I can see Barry Obama sitting on my deck with a beer in his hand.
But among the current batch of Oval Office wannabee candidates, I can’t think of one who would be on my list.
Trump and Cruz are just plain mean. Both of these cretans remind me of the childhood bully who captured a grasshopper in the schoolyard and gloried in watching it try to jump after pulling off a leg.
Rubio is a sycophant who has learned that certain phrases will gain him considerable praise. He has virtually no ability to think outside the parameters of his narrow viewpoint. Even if he did have an independent idea, he’d keep it to himself for fear if upsetting the people who pat him on the back.
And it doesn’t look good on the other side.
Hillary Clinton has proven on numerous occasions to be an extremely talented calculator. She and her husband are masters at manipulating circumstances and playing a great game of political chess. When it comes to cold-hearted bitches, only Nancy Reagan could hold a candle to HRC.
And that leaves us with brother Bernie, the Democratic Socialist from Vermont who seems to have one volume – – shouting. His followers want me to “feel the Bern” but that reminds me of the time I dropped a roasted hazelnut into the front opening of my jammies and roasted my own nuts.
So, it looks as though “likibility” is off the table as a qualifier in this year’s quadrennial contest. We might be forced to condider competency. And that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Would it?