Mustache snow globe. From gifts.com. |
Just when I realized I hadn't done anything to commemorate Presidents' Day (I always think of it as Nixon's Birthday, movable because Nixon wasn't exactly born), out comes Really Tom Friedman with the original version of his Sunday column in the Times, with all the fire and fervor those copy editors leach out of his prose, and on a presidential subject, calling for a centrist third party candidate!
As I’ve said many many many many times before, and not only because my iPad’s word processor gets its default style stuck on “antedated David Broder schtick,” America’s two parties are in no shape to undertake the radical reformation of capitalism necessary to make us thrive in the 22nd century. Santorum and Obama are symptoms of a national disease: idea-having. One has the big idea that marginal tax rate increases should fund increased safety-net and infrastructure spending. The other believes that Jews have horns full of diamonds. My point is, there has to be something in between those two positions, some path between boring old reason and the wild farragoes of what I’m only assuming was a failed lobotomy.So have a happy—at this point in the day perhaps it should be have had a happy holiday and get some sleep.