Should The New York Crank seek the Democratic nomination for President? This is an extremely serious question (almost).

Thanks to free clipart like this example from Clipart-Library.com

anybody can make a poster and run for President. And  it looks as if

quite nearly everybody does.

I mean, why the hell not?

As of this posting, there are already 29 declared Democratic candidates for President. That rises to 30 if you count not-quite-announced probable candidate Joe Biden. It rises to 31 if you count not-yet-decided Stacey Abrams and to 32 if you count not-yet-decided Bill deBlasio, the less-than-wonderfully-competent mayor of New York.

A million gurgling bile ducts'

worth of incompetence

Given that incompetence seems to be a prerequisite for the job of head of state these days, I will bet up to two cents…no, make that three cents…no, make that a nickel…. that deBlasio will sooner or later declare himself a candidate. But I’m getting ahead of myself. So back to the incompetence thing.

Exhibit A, of course, is the creepy clown, (or should that be kreepy klown?) currently occupying the White House. Collusion or no collusion, it’s a wonder the guy can tie his own shoelaces without inadvertently hanging himself. 

The little staff

that wouldn't

Until recently, it would appear that all kinds of horrors were not visited on the people of the United States, and possibly of the world, simply because Trump's underlings ignored his orders. This was exacerbated by the fact that Trump either forgot he had issued the orders, or didn’t know what to do when people disobeyed him.

It would appear that after two years, Trump figured this out, fired most of the Defiant Ones, and is slowly replacing them with Yes men (there seems to be a shortage of Yes women) whose slavish devotion to His Klownship for all I know might lead us either eventually or very quickly to a major depression. Or runaway inflation. Or a nuclear war with North Korea. Or us unilaterally nuking…I dunno, maybe France or England.

We don't need comic opera.

We have Donald Trump.

The thing about Donald Trump is that he’s on trend. Incompetence at the top of national governments used to be confined to nations about which composers of limited talent wrote operettas back in the 1920s. As one parody of these operettas, written by a nearly-forgotten humorist named Newman Levy, described the quintessential  situation:

The scene: a public square in Ruritania  

Fair Ruritania, land of gay romance

Where the people have a strange and curious mania 

For gathering in the public square to dance.

Derision of the gods

You don't have to limit the current examples of Ruritanian comic opera to Brexit. (You didn't think I'd leave out Brexit, did you?) For another contemporary recreation of Ruritanian incompetence, I herewith submit to you Ukraine. 

There, a comedian with zero political experience, who stars in a TV sitcom about a shlub with no political experience who is accidently elected President of Ukraine, was in fact elected President of Ukraine. A perfect example of life imitating art, imitating life, imitating art, in a zen-like wheel of repetitive insanity. 

We don’t need versified parodies of operettas. The gods are already mocking us.

The new Ukranian President Zelenskiy almost makes Trump look good. He has no political experience, and makes promises that call for explanations, without offering any explanations. In other words, he's just like Trump, only funnier. Zelenskiy has promised to fight governmental corruption without explaining how he’ll do it. Ditto his promise to end the conflict with Russia in Eastern Ukraine. 

(Maybe he’ll do both by simply surrendering the nation to Russia. That would serve the citizens of Ukraine right for thinking they’re in on the joke.)

Should deBlasio's campaign slogan

be "You could do worse?"

Now we come to wavering U.S. Presidential candidate Bill deBlasio, who presently happens to be mayor of New York, the city where I live. DeBlasio's strongest claim to the Presidency, so far as I can determine, is that he is not really the worst mayor New York has ever had. He is merely incompetent. Not to mention tone deaf.

For an example of his tone deafness I give you his stubborn insistence on going to the gym each morning. No, there’s nothing wrong with going to the gym. It’s how and where he goes to the gym.

The mayor lives in an official residence on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He works in City Hall, in lower Manhattan. Between those two points there are, last I counted, three Ys (the closest to him only a few blocks from his residence) and more private health clubs that I can count. So where does he go?

To his favorite YMCA in Brooklyn, a round trip drive of — I’m estimating here — twelve miles. But deBlasio doesn’t take the subway, the way the late Mayor Abe Beame often did. Instead, he gets into a gas-guzzling SUV, followed by a a security detail in two other gas-guzzling SUVs, and burns carbon all the way to Brooklyn and back.

Cogestion pricing? That's

for the little people.

Then, because traffic gridlock is so bad in New York, deBlasio slams the city with a congestion pricing tax that has upped my taxi fare whenever I need a taxi to go to the doctor, or when I’m horribly late to someone’s home. 

DeBlasio's traffic congestion tax adds to the impossibility for most New Yorkers of owning any kind of a car, for any reason, in Manhattan. Make an exception here for the super-rich, who deBlasio aids and abets while opposing them.

And then he positions himself as an environmentalist.

Why won’t he walk to a neighborhood gym? He evidently loves his Brooklyn Y more than he loves any thing else. Which means, if he becomes President, that Air Force One will be flying him to New York each morning, where a Presidential motorcade will meet him on a daily basis and take him to his Brooklyn Y and then back to the airport again. Terrorist crisis? Let it wait. President deBlasio is on his treadmill to oblivion.

Did I mention that in New York the subways are a mess, public housing is falling apart, potholes are a plague, infrastructure is rusting, affordable housing is vanishing, triple-digit million dollar skyscraper condos are sprouting like weeds, and most of the city’s once great schools continue to be mediocre at best?

One reason for all that? Fourteen of the city’s agencies, offices and corporations lack a permanent head. The mayor simply hasn’t gotten around to doing that part of his job. It’s more Trump-like than Trump.

Will they love him in November

like they do in Nevada?

Meanwhile, incompetent deBlasio busily buzzes off to faraway places in Iowa and Nevada, testing the waters for enthusiasm about his candidacy for President.

All this is right on trend. Tone deaf incompetence is creeping toward universality. Have I mentioned Venezuela? Do I need to?

So that’s why I’m considering running for President. If elected, I promise to sleep in, wake up in foul moods, throw temper tantrums wherever and whenever possible, secure world peace including between Israel and Palestine, eliminate nuclear weapons, tax the rich until they bleed from their eyeballs, fix the environment, lower temperatures two degrees Celsius, get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, provide Medicare for all (but only for the people who want it), and force every child of a celebrity millionaire to take the college entrance exams under the trained and watchful eyes of murderous thugs armed with AR-15s. 

Vote for me.