A Politician's Life

("The Vain and the Desperate")

Who indeed would subject him or herself to this process, to the interminable race, to the accusations and innuendos, to the prying eyes, to the ever more intense hunt for the next dollar, to the pettiness and the petulance, to the pretending and the prevaricating, to all that is entailed?

For what earthly reason, to be ultimately thrust into a quagmire, into a world in which reason and logic seem to have little space, where loyalty runs not to ideals but to donors, where the room is full of Hatfields and McCoys and where positive outcome, along with Elvis, seems to have left the building?

For the Republican party, void of any meaningful ideas, existing in a vacuum of deceit and denial, clinging to hatred as the central platform, whose purpose seems to be to do as much harm to as many as possible, it would be nigh impossible to locate a viable candidate for President whose shortcomings were not omnipresent.

And for Hillary, and others on the Democratic side who will soon embark on this all consuming mission to hell, what is the great allure? Two years of words, endless and repetitive, to convince the few who are listening, who care and who have not already aligned with one camp or the other, of the sanctity of their cause?

And at the end of the road, after the dust settles and the single moment of glory has passed, to be embroiled in a task in which there is seemingly no opportunity at home to do anything promised and on foreign soil to be relegated to the role of fireman, trying to extinguish blazes but handed only a small bucket of water, desperately hunting for other fire departments willing to attempt to prevent a conflagration?

Always on a high-wire without a safety net.

Who indeed but the foolish or the foolhardy would wish this life?