I have a list of ideas for blog topics that I’ve collected over the last several months. Many of them have to do with politics. But as I sat down to draft today’s post, I found I had little appetite for pursuing any of the political topics on my list of ideas. Maybe that’s because my prime impetus for blogging about politics has been my indignation with the Trump presidency, and now that he’s on his way out, that motivation has diminished. Or maybe it’s because we’re in a kind of political limbo — Donald Trump has stopped even pretending to govern the country, and Joe Biden isn’t yet in office.
Sure, from one perspective — where politics is viewed as a contest or a spectacle — there’s a lot happening right now. Trump appears to be in the process of tearing the GOP apart. On Saturday he got on the phone with Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and effectively said, “Nice GOP Senate delegation you’ve got there; be a shame if something happened to it.” Given that Raffensperger declined to help Trump overturn the November election results, the president may very well motivate his most ardent supporters to stay away from the polls tomorrow when he speaks at a rally tonight in Valdosta.
And then there’s the fact that a large number of senators and representatives will move to block ratification of the Electoral College vote in Congress on Wednesday. This stuff is history-making. So why do I find myself shrugging my shoulders? Because none of it has anything to do with the real job of politics: enabling government to serve the disparate interests of the American electorate.
So I find it hard to get worked up about the death throes of the Trump presidency, even though he and his GOP appeasers are undoubtedly doing enormous harm to voters’ faith in our electoral system and thus to the future viability of our republic. Yes, Trump’s malfeasance has reached new heights, and he appears to be more unhinged than we’ve ever seen him, but it all nonetheless feels like more of the same. We have a veritable mob boss as president, but we’ve known that for years.
My professed ennui notwithstanding, I am interested to see what Trump does at his rally tonight and who wins tomorrow’s runoffs in Georgia. If Trump manages to sabotage his own party and deliver a senate majority to the Democrats, that will be jaw-dropping.
But I have little interest in the GOPs performative brouhaha on the hill on Wednesday, especially given that the outcome is foreordained. While I’m unsettled about the possibility that that current president might yet start World War III, I otherwise don’t give a damn what he does between now and January 20th. I’m just waiting for the inauguration of a president who will at least attempt to govern the country.