"Politics is the only thing more boring than blood samples." - Baltar, Battlestar Galactica

Houston on a winter’s morn. No horses were harmed during the filming of this picture.

It’s been pretty dull ‘round here for the past few days. Thankfully, we don’t live in New Hampshire or Iowa. If we lived there, I could easily see that Hillary would be in our kitchen advising us on what meals we should eat if we want to qualify for her health care plan, Huckabee would be presiding over prayer before the meal, and Fred Thompson would be sleeping on the couch. No doubt, in my spot. Something tells me that Romney would eat all the peas. I don’t trust him for that reason. Obama would be in the background, vaguely saying that he was in favor of apple pie. Ron Paul? He’d be deleting TaxCut™ from my computer since he was going to abolish the IRS. (Nice Idea®.)

I’ll not argue the undeniable wisdom in letting Iowa and New Hampshire have an inordinate share of deciding who the presidential candidates will be, especially since it keeps Fred from drooling on my couch pillows. It just doesn’t make any logical sense, anymore than letting American Samoa and Bangor, Maine go first. Me? I think they’re just selfish.

Thankfully, our democratic process allows us only to elect attractive candidates who speak well nowadays, since we all know that ugly tall people who are a bit gawky would be horrible leaders. Especially if they had a name that polled very low, like “Abraham.” Thankfully, NBCNN would never let us have a leader with a loser name like “Abraham.” (Important disclosure: I voted for John C. Fremont.)

I digress. I used to be very interested in politics from when I graduated college to when I moved to Alaska. Politics (as I’ve said before here) then got very distant. From the vantage point of Fairbanks, on the edge of the immense wilderness that is Alaska, I could see that the squabbling of a bunch of sleep-deprived Senators and pandering Representatives was as significant as a schoolyard argument over whose dad could win in a fight. For the record, if the other dad is a Green Beret, I’ll educate my son, that, no, Dad can’t win ‘em all.

Alaska made me politically calm.

Alia S. Wilder came home the other night, said that her (19 year old) friend said, “This is the most important election of your life.”

The Mrs. and I looked at Alia, and said, “rrrrrright.” There’s a reason we both said that and gave Alia our cynicism in stereo. We both had felt, once upon a time, that our votes could make a difference. Our candidate, if elected, would keep his word on occasion about raising taxes, and would not get caught in an embarrassing sexual scandal involving office machinery and nubile young interns.

Frankly, nothing actually occurs in Washington of any use unless there’s a major emergency. Then aides talk to other aides and figure out how to fix it and get the Senator out of the bathroom stall so he can pretend to read the emergency thingy that they wrote for him to put forth as a bill.

Me? I think the most fun I could ever have was being one of those interns. Heck, (True Fact© coming up) one time a state representative called the place I was living in college. My roommate was his aide. He was wondering what the heck a certain farm thingamajig was. Since I was the only one he’d know that had actually been near a farm one night while stealing a goat for a sacrifice a bit later on, he asked me. Me? Influencing state politics when I was 19????

This should have been a clue. Also, I should have lied and messed with the outcome of the bill in question, making the farmers have to irrigate using Coors© beer or something. That’d show ‘em, listening to a 19 year old.

So, Fred, Mitt, Ron, Barak (Barack? Is that Klingon?), Mike, Hillary, and all the rest, good luck.

Me? I’m voting for a Washington-Jefferson ticket. I think those dudes have what it takes.