Barack Obama "has been one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times."
That, as the Post's Ruth Marcus notes this morning, was the "deranged" or "dangerous" California Congressman Darrell Issa speaking to Rush Limbaugh about a week ago. Marcus suspects danger more than derangement: "When Bloomberg's Al Hunt called Issa on his hyperbole, the congressman hemmed, hawed and brought forth a mouse: in-sourcing. Seriously. In-sourcing, the practice of shifting work from private contractors to government."
Issa, who will assume the chairmanship of the House oversight committee that traffics in phantom scandals, has also concluded that "the administration's dangling of a job offer to Rep. Joe Sestak to drop out of the Pennsylvania Senate primary is 'a crime' and an 'impeachable' offense, with an ensuing White House 'coverup' reminiscent of Watergate." Again, seriously.
But now for something -- seemingly -- completely different. Yesterday the Times' Bob Herbert rightly bemoaned: "What has always struck me ... is that there is a desperate need to improve the nation’s infrastructure and a desperate need for the jobs and enhanced economic activity that would come from sustained, long-term infrastructure investment. But somehow the leadership and the will to move forward on the scale that is needed are missing."
So what's the implied relationship (see above, "seemingly") between Maurcus' piece on dangerous Issa and Herbert's on intelligent spending? Exhaustion, I'd say. Exhaustion on both the writers' and readers' part. Wholesale intellectual and emotional exhaustion.
Sometimes, as I'm either reading a moderate-to-liberal commentary or writing one, it blasts me but good: My God, I've been reading, writing, this exact item for years -- the GOP is verifiably dangerous, provably deranged and empirically irresponsible; the nation needs to get in gear, to get moving, to reject fear, to embrace Reason. And the resulting sensation is, to repeat in a word, exhaustion.
When children learn their ABCs, they "get it." They get it and move on. But we adults seem to have a great deal of trouble in learning our governmental ABCs. We endlessly read or write identical columns on what's gobsmackingly stupid or sublimely sensible; then we promptly march en masse to the polls and ratify the former.
I don't mean to sound petulant, or worse, naive. It's just that all this recurrent buffoonery is so goddamn exhausting.