Remember former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric during the 2008 campaign? She couldn’t name a Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade or a single newspaper she read regularly. Since then and until recently, Palin was seen as a possible — and outrageous — presidential candidate for 2012.
In another sign of the 2012 apocalypse, Donald Trump has come around to change the name of the crazy game for the next Republican presidential run.
We can’t help but feel that America has slid even further into the loony bin by welcoming the media stunts Trump now pulls routinely. Out of nowhere he practically became the face of the “birther” movement — the people who don’t believe President Barack Obama was born in America and is therefore ineligible for the office he holds.
To put this claim in perspective, even Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has come around, vetoing the “birther” bill last week and telling CNN’s John King on Monday that the issue is taking the country “down a path of destruction.”
After Trump was rewarded with headlines for saying Obama was ineligible for the Oval Office, the businessman-turned-TV-star came back to say the president was also unfit for the Ivy League.
Obama, who graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, has not released his transcripts, and this is Trump’s attempt to get him to do this — as if it even matters.
Trump, at the same time, won’t say how much he is worth right now. He says he’ll only do that if he decides to run for president. “I don't want to say because I don't want to ruin the press conference,” Trump told the Associated Press.
What is concerning, though, is that Trump makes Reps. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., and Ron Paul, R-Texas, look normal. Other than their fans, Bachmann and Paul are generally seen as outliers in the presidential candidates.
Bachmann is the politician who claimed, “Lady Liberty and Sarah Palin are lit by the same torch,” and has accused the Obama administration of running a “gangster government.”
For his part, Ron Paul likes the idea of ending the Federal Reserve. Never mind that the Fed helped stabilized the economy when it was in a freefall in 2008 and that it is still taking measures to stimulate the economy.
If this sets the stage for the 2012 presidential race, this will be a cycle worth making into a reality TV show. Instead of looking for an apprentice, the next show Trump films can be about his search for a campaign manager. During the primary elections, different contestants can get assigned different states. Winner runs the general election campaign.
If he gets elected — a big and terrifying if — he could film another series in which contestants compete for a position in the president’s cabinet. Taking place during The Donald’s first 100 days in office, he could announce the winners on the press conference he holds on his hundredth day in office.
What’s this, you say? These ideas make a mockery of our democracy? Well, we are just taking a page out of Trump’s book.
