Column: Raging Moderate, by Will Durst

You do realize that Washington, D.C., is not the real world, don’t you? It’s a state of mind. An altered state of mind. Where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Slammed when you stand and rammed when you run. Berated if you lie and lambasted for the truth. Where even the slightest of breeze can carry the pollen of disaster. And the pack on top knows the best way to avoid getting a face full of disaster pollen is to spread the dried residue of other exquisite catastrophes first. Ream or be reamed.

And as far as D.C. stories go, a lack of misfortune is no good reason not to speak of them. So now the Washington punditry has banded together to float the notion that President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda has stalled. That he’s such a lame duck the presidential limousine should be sporting a blue placard hanging from the rear view mirror. Best thing to do is to burrow deep and lie low. Give up and crawl into the overhead compartment of Air Force One and eat marzipan in the dark.

Now. Already. Four months in, with 44 left to go.

Holey moley, guys. You left the movie before the opening credits rolled. More stuff happens after the overture, you know. Have you ever made it through an entire entree? Would hate to be your date at a baseball game; you sound like the kind of people who leave between the top and bottom halves of the second inning. Must be Dodger fans.

It takes a special kind of degenerative myopia to craft these precocious accusations. First off, you need to be blind as an Oedipal bat to ignore the exhaustingly recalcitrant House majority, including leader John Boehner, who would rather be seen washing skid-mark undies in a Congressional hallway water fountain than work with the president.

To fail to witness the GOP defy the will of 90 percent of America while appeasing their NRA overlords, your sunglasses must be cut from slabs of granite. Wearing your hoodie on backwards to not be aware that both sides of the aisle are concerned with one thing and one thing only: re-election. Suffer from tertiary retinal jam not to notice you’re jumping on a bandwagon so flimsy a lighting moth would crash through the floorboards.

Let’s say the Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs commentators are correct. That the Kenyan Kid has wasted the tiny political capital his November election earned. What’s he supposed to do now? Take up hydroponic gardening to supply dispensaries in Colorado and Washington? Wink-wink. Nudge-nudge.

Engage in a lengthy bout of Hawaiian location scouting for potential presidential library sites? Establish residency in some backwater state so Michelle can run for senator? Canvas talent agencies for potential 2017 speaking engagements? Spend an inordinate amount of time in the basement White House bowling alley to get his average up for the Ex-Presidents League?

And since we’ve agreed his presidency is over, why stop there? Since the No. 1 GOP strategy since January of 1993 has been to deny any Democratic president even the tiniest of victories, this might be an unimpeachable time to preemptively besmirch Hillary Clinton’s upcoming first term as an unmitigated calamity and complete and utter failure. Unless you’re into self-fulfilling prophecies.

 

Recipient of seven consecutive nominations for Stand-Up of the Year, Will Durst’s new one-man show, “BoomerAging: From LSD to OMG,” is presented every Tuesday at The Marsh, San Francisco. Go to themarsh.org or willdurst.com for more information.