Observations from the Basement #2

Mr. President:

My last political science class may have been taken before cell phones existed. I may not know a whole lot more about the Bush Doctrine than Caribou Barbie claims to know. And I can't manage my own household and its finances particularly well so I certainly don't have any business managing say a company or a country. BUT. In the spirit of my baseball observation...

This I know:

Going on television every couple of years for the sole purpose of scaring the shit out of people so they will hop on your bandwagon is NOT THE WAY TO LEAD A COUNTRY!

I won't dwell in your past attempts at doing this. I have my Sesame Street Terror Alert on my iPage as a daily reminder.

But for this more recent incident, let's review:

• In January you said our economy was "sound."
• In July you said our economy was "basically sound."
• You spent the rest of the summer toddling around Camp David and the Olympics.
• Then last night you come on prime time television to tell people "OUR ENTIRE ECONOMY IS IN DANGER."

Stellar. And so much more thrilling than that guy originally scheduled to be on TV who'd been hanging upside down for three days.

But you know... this current pattern of yours sounds pretty familiar... let's see... oh yeah, that's where I've heard it before...

IT WAS ME. MY SENIOR YEAR OF COLLEGE.

How did Gert handle her impending adulthood? Let's review:

• In January of that year, I believe I was quoted as saying, "No worries. Where's the keg?"
• By June I was all "Dude, look at my pretty diploma!"
• That summer? Spent it happily living in a tent and skipping around in the woods.
• September arrived. I suddenly realized the sky was falling.

It wasn't pretty. But you know what? I WAS TWENTY-FRICKIN'-TWO-YEARS OLD. The only things I was responsible for were my student loan, a Volkswagen named Jose Jetta, and a ficus. NOT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF 300 MILLION PEOPLE.

But again, what do I know? I am so far from being an economics expert it's not even funny. I'm more likely to be named Miss Alaska than Fed Chair. Well, actually, the opposite is probably closer to being true. BUT YOU GET MY POINT.

So... since we seem to have similar ways of obliviously keeping our heads up our asses and then running around like morons handling big problems, I would like to offer up my own life experience as a cautionary tale:

Of the three things I was responsible for during September Nervous Breakdown '93, the only one that was still alive by September '94 was my student loan.

Still in the basement,
Gert