Let the Sideshow Begin

The campaign for the Republican nomination heated up a bit this week. Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota, announced his candidacy, or rather, as these things go, announced the formation of an exploratory committee, which I guess is the same thing. Pawlenty seems like a reasonable person, for a Republican, although he's certainly pandering to the Tea Party fanatics. I think the country could survive four years of him at the helm.

Far more interesting and comic are the presumed candidacies of Donald Trump and Michele Bachmann. Trump, making noises about running, probably won't when it comes down to it, because he would have to disclose his financial situation. This stopped Howard Stern in his run for New York governor twenty years and will certainly stop Trump, because it would mean revealing he has less money than he says he does.

But before that happens he's playing the part, promoting his fading reality show and the possibility of his being president, as if the two were the same thing. He got into it with Whoopi Goldberg over Barack Obama's birthplace, a kind of surreal moment that makes one think back to the early days of the Republic. What would James Madison have made of it?

I'm hard-pressed to understand why anyone would vote for as repellent a figure as Donald Trump. Yes, he's made a lot of money, so what? The President of the United States is not a businessman--he can't fire Congress. There are a lot of people, the Rotarian type, who equate the two, thinking if someone can multiply the already large amount of money they were bequeathed, it qualifies them to run the free world. But there has to be more than that. I'm not a big one on character, but it seems to me that Trump has almost none. The tag that Spy magazine layed on him years ago, "Short-fingered vulgarian," still seems to be apropos.

But I do hope he lasts into some debates, for he would increase their entertainment value exponentially. That will also be the best part of Bachmann's candidacy. She has become famous mostly for going on news shows and making bizarre, outlandish claims that the Fox-News junkies lap up. Her litany of cuckoo statements is too long to list here; the latest had her stating that the battles of Lexington and Concord took place in New Hampshire (an honest mistake, I'm sure). My favorite was her coming out against the Census, wondering if the information would be used to round up citizens and put them into camps like we did with the Japanese in World War II. My hope was that all of her constituents would refuse to fill out their forms, and thus Minnesota would lose a congressional seat--hers.

Bachmann could be a factor in the race. The religious nuts hold a large sway in Iowa and South Carolina, two of the first three contests. She could come across as the more responsible Sarah Palin, and get 20 percent of a vote. She's extremely conservative on all the hot-button issues, and even once belonged to a church that viewed the Pope as the Antichrist.

From here on the left, it's easy to view Bachmann as crazy, but if she's crazy so are a lot of Americans, and a lot of them vote. I don't see a way she could get the nomination, let alone be elected, and for that we can all thank whatever God we pray to. But the early debates are shaping up to be much more entertaining than any of Donald Trump's TV shows. Trump, Bachmann, Gingrich, Santorum, Huckabee, Romney. Poor boring Tim Pawlenty may just fade into the background.