ginandtacos.com

Two Fridays ago I posed an open question about the best and worst places you have visited or in which you have lived. As I noted at the time I have little experience with international travel but I’ve travelled extensively in the United States, visiting 49 states (all but Alaska) and spending a decent amount of time driving around both the big cities and back roads of each. Here, then, are my conclusions about the worst towns/cities in the U.S. It’s not impossible to live in these places and like them, I suppose, but it would require a ton of money, the optimism of a Mormon missionary, and a mastery of self-delusion. There are a lot of crapholes in this country and I could spend all day naming them. But these stand out, for reasons that you no doubt understand if you’ve visited.

5. Lubbock, Texas - Quite literally the Middle of Nowhere, Lubbock stands as an oasis of nothingness in an enormous sea of more nothingness. Bad places often advertise their proximity to decent places, i.e. “Scranton is only an hour from Philadelphia!” Lubbock’s claim is “Only five and a half hours from Fort Worth!” Favorite pastimes among Lubbock residents include crapping out kids like Pez dispensers, bragging about how cheap their huge homes were (oblivious to the relationship between property values and desirability) and committing suicide. Being in Lubbock creates a sense of total isolation comparable to over-wintering in Antarctica or spacewalking outside the International Space Station. Hot, boring, and stuffed to the brim with prodigiously breeding Fundamentalist Texas stereotypes, Lubbock edges out El Paso and Huntsville for the right to represent the state. Trust me, Texas has a lot of candidates here.

4. Youngstown, Ohio - The poster child for post-industrial Midwestern urban decay. Gary, Flint, and Detroit get more press, but Youngstown is the perfect synthesis of blight, obscene pollution, a complete lack of anything to do (economically or for entertainment), and a crime rate that would make Johannesburg blush. Hopelessly corrupt Ohio politics govern this excuse for a city, not that there’s anything a competent government could do. The attitude seems to be “Why fix it? Who gives a fuck?” which makes perfect sense in a city that hasn’t seen a tree planted, a lick of new paint, or a pothole filled since the steel plants shuttered thirty years ago. People in Youngstown have absolutely no reason to live and spend their days desperately plotting an escape to Dayton, Allentown, or the sweet release of death.

3. Reno, Nevada - Where hope goes to die. A fifth-rate, non-union Mexican equivalent of Vegas. Given that Vegas already kinda sucks, this is particularly damning. Don’t go to the casinos hoping to live out a 1960s Rat Pack film. They’re loaded to the gunwales with junkies, the homeless, people who soon will be homeless, and other assorted societal detritus. A sad black hole of broken dreams, alcoholism, and gambling addiction. If Vegas is a glamorous date with a supermodel, Reno is being fingered by your uncle. If Vegas is champagne toasts with celebrities, Reno is beer-bonging Natty Ice behind a currency exchange. If Vegas is a majestic cruise ship, Reno is bobbing from Havana to Miami on a floating door. If Vegas is a $1000 meal with Thomas Keller, Reno is jamming a can of Cheese Whiz in your mouth and pressing hard. If not for its proximity to Lake Tahoe, Reno might rank even lower.

2a. Colorado Springs, Colorado - Unlike the others on this list, CS is relatively clean, has some wealth, and enjoys decent (if extreme) weather. It is also a megachurch and defense contractor infested cesspool which feels as artificial as Main Street, USA at Disneyworld. Celebration, Florida has more authentic character. Strip malls, megachurches, subdivisions, more strip malls, more megachurches, and more subdivisions, all populated with a mixture of humorless Dobson acolytes, buzz-cut Air Force personnel, and defense industry hangers-on. If Orange County and Southern California invented the awful, generic suburban strip mall landscape, CS took it to its logical extreme. Driving through this “city” is like watching one of those old, cheap Hanna-Barbera cartoons where they re-used the same background over and over and over.

2b. Lexington, Nebraska - Oh, you want someplace “bad” in the more traditional sense? Lexington is a rank outpost dominated by incomprehensibly big meat processing facilities (Tyson, IBP) which bathe the town in a noxious, knee-buckling blanket of excrement, rendered animal matter, and chemical wastes. Classic meat processing town – illegal aliens (the meat industry are equal opportunity exploiters, sampling Mexico, north Africa, and Eastern Europe with equal aplomb) crammed 10 per apartment, unbreathable air, undrinkable water, obscene crime rates, and a closer resemblance to Calcutta than Cleveland. Lexington goes the extra mile, though, littered with abandoned and rusting cars, often simply left in the middle of the road, and completely overrun by packs of feral dogs. Seriously. A Mad Max backdrop of burned buildings, broken windows, rusted appliances dumped on lawns and sidewalks, abandoned vehicles, and garbage that no one, least of all the city, bothers to pick up. Now Tyson is importing illegals from the Sudan, giving the rural Nebraska town an exploding HIV-positive population it is ill-equipped to handle. Redefines “godforsaken.”

1. Holbrook, Arizona/Pine Ridge, South Dakota - Indian reservations, especially those not proximate enough to populated areas to throw up casinos, are horrendously depressing places. So take your pick. These two, representing the Navajo and Sioux nations, respectively, are just brutal. Like abandoned trailer parks after an F5 tornado. If you want to see people living in the borders of the United States without electricity, indoor plumbing, or any source of income, here’s your chance. Grinding poverty, a complete absence of hope for improvement, cultural disenfranchisement, and magnified doses of every social problem in the country – teen pregnancy, meth, suicide, homicide, illiteracy, gangs – define reservation towns. Holbrook looks like a beat-up carnival ride, the kind you see in parking lots of county fairs, and ensures that anyone foolish enough to visit (Petrified Forest National Park is nearby) will have their car broken into as a reward. Shameful. Embarrassing. Pitiful. Guaranteed to make you feel better about your town.

I defy you to dispute any of these, although I’m confident that there are a lot of close honorable mentions one could argue for inclusion.

A personal tale, followed by commentary.

I got in a car in Athens, GA at 8:45 AM on Wednesday morning and walked in my door exactly 11 minutes ago at 12:02 AM Thursday. We made good time for the first, oh, nine hours, reaching the Indiana-Kentucky border. Then I hit a pothole and managed to blow out both tires on the passenger side of my car. Like, blown the fuck out. Six-inch gashes in the sidewalls. This happened just after 6 PM, when every conceivable retailer of tires or purveyor of tire repairs would be unlikely to be open.

Fortunately an Army chaplain and Baptist clergyman named T.S. Elliott (no, seriously, his name is T.S. Elliott) pulled over, invited us into his car, and then drove us around attempting to find an open repair shop in the godforsaken middle of nowhere, which is actually a few miles north of New Albany, Indiana. Unsuccessful, Pastor Elliott did the Christian thing and gave us his spare tire. This would enable me to limp home on two spares (as of course I had one of my own) and repair the damage on my own time. As he drove away to the sound of my profuse promises to return his tire at the most immediate convenience, I discovered that the lug spacing on his spare was approximately 1 millimeter off of mine. He drove a Ford, I a Nissan. Hence his thoughtful gift to a stranger was useless.

So we called AAA and they sent a tow truck which arrived at 8 PM, also known as closing time of the one remaining option for automotive service: the New Albany Wal-Mart tire center. Liz called and used her Girl Voice to (somehow, amazingly) talk the Wal-Mart tire center into staying open another half-hour so we could get the enormous, slow-moving AAA tow truck driver to convey our car there in time to purchase the cheapest Chinese Goodyear knockoff in stock and hopefully enable further travel.

Among our tow truck driver and the three employees of the Wal-Mart tire center on the Indiana-Kentucky border there were about 11 teeth, and I needed subtitles to understand them. More accurately I just looked at them while they made sounds and followed with educated guesses of what they wanted me to do based on their body language. I bent the hell out of one of my rims, but the other was fine and, one Wal-Mart tire, $65, and a $60 towing fee later (thanks AAA!) we were ready to roll at 9:30.

Having not eaten all day, we adjourned to the finest open dining establishment in New Albany near 10 PM on a weeknight: the Applebee’s in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Now, understand this about Liz and I: we do not eat at Applebee’s. We are dietary snobs. Liz has been known to get murderously violent when served non-organic food. Yet I witnessed with mine own eyes the woman inhaling a platter or riblets (seriously, riblets) while I annihilated an A1-laden cheeseburger like the respective entrees were the finest and most delicious things we had ever eaten.

After that it was a mere struggle to stay awake as we blazed through rural Indiana in pitch darkness. I got a little Rorschach at one point, responding to “You need to watch out for deer” with “No, the deer need to watch out for me.” But we made it home, neither of us able to speak in sentences or remember the last time we were not in a car by the end.

One thing struck both of us. Here on ginandtacos.com I am pretty hard on our country cousins, the denizens of rural America with their medieval worldview and passionate hatred of whatever Glenn Beck tells them to passionately hate. Yet everyone was horribly nice to us. So much politeness. From the Baptist minister who handed us a spare tire to the planet-sized tow truck operator to the furry gnomes who kept open the Wal-Mart tire center at our request to the staff of the sad little Applebee’s, everyone was wonderfully nice to us in a time of exasperation and stress.

Moments like this often conflict me. I know that on the most basic level, if I heard what any of these people thought about politics (if anything) I would hate them. I probably do hate them, I just didn’t realize it. And of course they were only nice to me because I’m a white, presumably heterosexual, probably Christian (or, if not, at least convertible) male. The pastor probably would have thrown us out of the car if he found out that we are not married, and wouldn’t have stopped to offer help at all if I was with my boyfriend instead. So I remain conflicted. It warms my heart to know how capable my fellow Americans are of being kind and helping unfortunate strangers. But it makes me wonder why, if we can be kind to people we don’t know, we are so apt to hate those same strangers as soon as we learn a few things about them. T.S. Elliott and I got along fine as blank slates in one another’s eyes. Such would not have been the case had he realized that I think Baptists are lunatics or if I fully realized that he thinks the Earth is 6,000 years old.

This is somewhat brief, as I am in Athens doing a “real estate tour.” I have a single eight-to-ten hour period to find a place to live before making the 12-hour return drive home, and if you have never had to interact with a realtor (in the process of being trucked among a dozen or so residences, many of them radiant examples of shitholeitude) for that long in 95 degree heat, I cannot in good conscience recommend the experience.

Now that GM has finally gone bankrupt – an end which has been inevitable for 15 years, obvious to any rational observer, and painfully protracted – it is a fascinating intellectual exercise to put Roger & Me on the Netflix list and give it another viewing. Moore’s primary point in that film was that an employer should not be demolishing factories and terminating employees while making record profits. The company responded that it needed to cut back its workforce and infrastructure in order to remain viable.

Looks like GM was right, weren’t they? Of course, the reason that they needed to make cuts so deeply and so urgently was the overwhelming shittiness of their products. That infrastructure and those UAW contracts didn’t seem so onerous when they were sitting on 40% of the domestic auto market. Even 30%. It was only when they became an afterthought in sales (despite saturating the market with product and dealers) that their prophecy was fulfilled.

A few days ago one of my Instaputz colleagues brought attention to this piece from Debra Saunders of the SF Chronicle. Entitled “Enough of Sarah Palin, the Victim,” Ms. Saunders opines:

I wish Sarah Palin would just go away. During the 2008 presidential campaign, I wrote about the unfair personal treatment to which the political press corps subjected Palin and her children. Now I just want her to stop milking her role as GOP martyr. Palin should stick to her day job – by which I mean, governing Alaska, not being fodder for talk-show humor. Both parties have their umbrage industries – thanks to true believers, who love nothing better than to see themselves as victims of a perceived double standard. Last week, comedian David Letterman’s two off-color jokes about a Palin family trip to New York led to an orgy of indignation.

I can only hope that Ms. Saunders survived the shocking orgy of indignation which, like clockwork, streamed forth from America’s Favorite Female Alaskan Incumbent Governor last week. While still not quite dismounted from her crucifix over a stupid David Letterman joke, the woman who wants to be your President set her sights on even bigger, even more powerful game: some two-bit Alaska blogger named Linda Kellen Biegel. Ever heard of her? Me neither.

Ms. Biegel did a 30-second photoshopping job on a picture of Palin holding her infant son, replacing his face with the face of an Alaska media personality, AM Radio jockey Eddie Burke, who is (apparently) perceived to be Palin’s lackey. Here is the amateurish result:

The humor isn’t very complex. Palin holds baby. Baby replaced with radio host. Radio host is Palin’s baby. I guess the most offense you could take from it is, based on the fact that the baby is Trig, Biegel is insinuating that the radio host is retarded. Personally I find that hilarious. Regardless, Trig is Palin’s only baby at the moment. Her other kids are all grown. So if someone wants a picture of Palin holding a baby, it’s going to be Trig. God knows she took every possible opportunity to be photographed holding PropTard (facing out, of course) during the election.

The reaction was predictable. “Recently we learned of a malicious desecration of a photo of the Governor and baby Trig that has become an iconic representation of a mother’s love for a special needs child,” (emphasis mine) Palin spokeswoman Meghan Stapelton told CNN. “Desecration”? This isn’t the fuckin’ Shroud of Turin. It’s a public domain .jpeg of which about 300 billion versions exist. I suppose such a common photo could be “desecrated” if it had, you know, the Dalai Lama or Pope John Paul II on it. I’m not convinced that anything associated with Palin, including this picture, is “iconic.” Just a little full of ourselves, aren’t we, Meghan Stapleton? Someone photoshops a Palin pic and all of the sudden it’s like someone airbrushed a damn Weezer logo on the Magna Carta or pasted Jesus’ face on the unfortunate bottom in sadistic gay porn pics.

Stapleton followed that, “The mere idea of someone doctoring the photo of a special needs baby is appalling.” So would photoshopping a non-tarded baby be OK? I’m confused. Was the photo “desecrated” in the sense that Palin’s child was made part of a partisan attack or is it because said child is “special?” I need clarification.

By the way, this is the 7th picture which comes up when Google image searching “Obama photoshop.”

I can’t imagine how even the most ardent Palin supporters have the stamina for the level of faux-indignant martyrdom she’s embracing at this point. How can anyone be so constantly and so grievously offended by…well, everything? Oh, wait. It’s because said person has absolutely nothing else to say. The McCain campaign and Palin’s own media handlers have been beating this drum since Day One. As I noted way back when, it’s the Spiro Agnew strategy all over again: bring some complete idiot into the limelight, have him/her sit there like a wounded puppy, and try to reel in sympathy votes when the media rips Puppy to shreds. Aww, that’s terrible! How could anyone do that to such a helpless little puppy?

Sarah Palin used her kids, whether it’s her handicapped baby or her knocked-up teenager, as Social Conservative Credential props more than any national candidate in the last 50 years. Even Bush never stooped to waving his daughters around so the media could attack them and he could benefit from sympathy. The Bush kids spent very little time in the spotlight even though the media badly wanted them on camera (because, of course, they’re hot and blond). I have the feeling that if they were Palin’s kids she would have had them in thongs, spread-eagle on the hood of a 1968 Pontiac GTO in full view of a few dozen photographers so that the Governor could wring every fake tear out of the ensuing outrage that the privacy of the candidate’s family could be so violated.

Ever since I was old enough to string words into sentences I have been amazed at how regularly people seem to ask the wrong questions. Throughout the Reagan years (bearing in mind that I was given a daily ration of the era’s prevailing wisdom throughout) everyone in white, suburban America was up in arms about “welfare.” No one bothered to define exactly what that meant, which was unimportant so long as we all properly understood it to mean theiving government bastards stealing white people’s money to give it to the coloreds so they could buy cigarettes and crack and bouncing cars. The problem was explained to Young Ed thusly: welfare was too generous, comparing favorably with the salary one would earn if working full-time at minimum wage. Why, the argument went, would anyone work if sitting at home was worth an equal paycheck?

It was, one must admit, solid logic. Staying home or working 40 hours at Pizza Hut for the same money (or close enough) is a slam dunk decision from a rational choice perspective. Thus the argument carried the appearance of logic and truth. But eight year-old Ed had to spend a lot of time wondering why everyone thought “Is the gap between welfare and minimum wage work big enough to discourage loafing?” was a more appropriate question than “Why does working 40 hours a week at the prevailing wage provide people with a sub-poverty line income which can barely house and feed single individual, if that?” The problem was always that welfare was too generous; it had to come down. Never was the problem that the minimum wage, which was a stunning $3.15 in the early 1980s, was too low. The rational choice game for the welfare recipient wasn’t to work and live a decent life or to lay around collecting pitiful checks to live in abject misery – it was between working and living in abject misery or not working and getting the same. Anyone interested in facts (and really, who was back then?) would note that not once in its 80-year history has the minimum wage, if earned 40 hours weekly, hit the Federal poverty line for a family. Not once. Really:

This is why I concluded at a very young age that adults are bizarre. Reaching adulthood has given me no reason to revise that. I see this kind of red herring-vs.-Occam’s Razor questioning all the time, debates which are fierce but avoid more obvious solutions, problems, and questions entirely. For instance.

We’re fat. By “we” I mean Americans, although the non-American readers should note that most of the industrialized world is doing yeoman’s work to close the obesity gap lately. While I recognize that obesity can result from medical problems or genetics, there’s also a whole lot of American obesity that results from shoving heathen portions of disgusting food into our faces and maintaining activity levels somewhere between that of the three-toed sloth and a rock. We’re fat and it’s a problem. We’re lazy and it’s a problem.

On account of our fatness the airline industry periodically threatens to start charging us more money if we are too fat to fit in one of their seats. On the surface this is logical. More weight on the plane means more fuel and, if we happen to take up another revenue-paying seat, fewer fare-payers on board. Again, though, I think this argument is a red herring set up to let us bloviate on Fairness and how Fatty should pay up. It misses a more obvious question that I prefer to ask when I fly (which is often): why are the seats so fucking small?

I’m not a large individual. I am usually described as lanky or, in the past, too thin. But at ~6′3″, most of which is limb, I am forced to shoehorn myself into coach seats. Especially with the rapid movement of domestic routes to “regional jets” with small cabins, I commonly fly with my knees in my chin. I’m not really that big. There is nothing exceptional about my size. I barely fit myself in Delta’s idea of a reasonable seat. What do people who are taller than 6′3″ do? What do people who weigh 400 pounds do?

The larger (pun intended) problem, in my opinion, is never discussed: the overwhelming failure of airline deregulation. Having created only the illusion of savings (believe me, you’ve paid back all that money you “saved” on lower fares in airline bankruptcies, fuel surcharges, and pension bailouts) while doing absolutely nothing to introduce real competition on most routes (try to find a non-Delta flight to/from Atlanta. I dare you.) it has succeeded only in setting up a market in which airlines cut every possible corner to save a nickel. The Heritage Foundation says it has given us lower fares. I say it has given us six-across seating in MD-90s and airline customer service that rivals that of a Nigerian intercity bus line.

Of course we cannot expect airlines to provide seats that will comfortably sit any conceivable passenger; if you weigh 400 pounds the experience is still going to be uncomfortable even if the seats are a couple inches wider. But can the airlines really be surprised that their seats, which can barely accomodate people of unexceptional size (and even then cannot do so comfortably) pose problems with obese customers?

Was air travel palatial before deregulation? (”Ah, for the days when aviation was a gentleman’s pursuit, back before any Joe Sweatsock could wedge himself behind a lunch tray and jet off to Raleigh-Durham.”) I doubt it. The point is that where airlines once competed on amenities, service, and comfort, they now compete on the only basis that American businesses understand: out-cheaping one another. And we’re supposed to be thrilled that we can fly AirTran on some winged tin shitbox for $180 while being charged for our baggage and asked to open our wallets by surly, overworked flight attendants who are too busy worrying about what happened to their benefits to care about passengers. Maybe I’m nuts, but asking why airlines are so strapped that they have to charge for the extra few ounces of fuel that a heavy passenger necessitates or why airline seats are apparently designed for small children makes more sense than having an argument about whether or not it’s Right to charge fat people more.

Are there really still people in this country (world?) who think the verdicts of our justice system have any relationship to reality once the defendant’s income drifts into the seven-figure range?

No, Michael Jackson was not convicted of anything. I’ll take this opportunity to remind you that R. Kelly is on videotape peeing on and getting a blowjob from a 14 year-old girl and was acquitted of peeing on and getting a blowjob from a 14 year-old girl.

About a hundred people – and bear in mind we’re talking about people I actually like – have lit up my social networking world with “tributes” to Michael Jackson. Several things.

1. We’re going a little overboard remembering a child molestor who we wanted kept alive mostly as a trainwreck/curiosity, no? I mean, it’s good that you enjoyed his music but, and I can’t stress this part enough, he fingerbangs kids. I realize that a person can create things that entertain us while being criminals, perverts, or plain old assholes in their private lives. Regardless, I’d have a difficult time remembering a child molestor fondly unless he created something a hell of a lot more meaningful than Thriller. I mean, if Frank Lloyd Wright felt up Cub Scouts in his spare time I would look at Fallingwater and grudgingly give him a pass. But Michael Jackson? Come on. Have you listened to that crap lately?

2. It was nice of our media to devote a week’s news cycle to Ed McMahon (relevant!), Farrah Fawcett (shocked to discover she didn’t die 10 years ago), and “The King of Pop.” This is possible because there is no other important news happening anywhere.

3. Did I mention that you need to keep in mind that Michael Jackson fingers 7 year old boys when watching the laudatory retrospectives on his life and career? OK. Just throwing that out there.

Craigslist is a scary place, and this post to the Milwaukee CL (entitled “TO “PHISH” PEOPLE AT ALPINE VALLEY THIS WEEKENED“) has to be the greatest thing I have ever seen in the genre. In part:

I HAVE LIVED OFF OF COUNTY HWY D NEAR ALPINE VALLEY FOR THE PAST 24 YEARS AND OFTEN FEEL THE RESIDUAL NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF THE CONCERTS. NEVER HAVE I HAD AN INCIDENT SUCH AS THE ONE THAT OCCURRED ON SATURDY NIGHT (JUN. 20) FOLLOWING A “PHISH” MUSICAL. OUR DOG WOKE US AT 1:30 AM MAKING A RUCKUS. WE HAVE A SMALL WARMING HOUSE NEAR THE EDGE OF THE HIGHWAY THAT I BUILT FOR OUR DAUGHTERS (NOW GROWN) TO WAIT FOR THE SCHOOLBUSES IN. THE LIGHT IN IT WAS ON AND SOMEONE WAS INSIDE. I PUT ON CLOTHES AND APPROACHED AND FOUND HIM DEFECATING ON THE FLOOR. HAD HAIR LOOKED LIKE A DOORMAT. EYES WERE BUGGY LIKE I REMEMBER ON MEN IN VIETNAM. I HAD A SHOTGUN AND TOLD HIM HE WAS GOING TO CLEAN UP THE DEFECATE. BUT I AM OLD (71 NOW) AND MADE A MISTAKE, RETURNING TO THE HOUSE TO GET A HOSE AND BUCKET. HE RAN IN THE DIRECTION OF THE INTERSTATE AND I DIDNOT FOLLOW.

So this is what it has come to in America. Or at least Milwaukee.

Another day, another moral majoritarian cheating on his wife, buying a reacharound in a public toilet, or exploring the beautiful synergy of crystal meth and gay hookers. When I heard about Senator John Ensign admitting to a lengthy affair with a staffer (who is also married) the only thing that surprised me was that after 10 years in the Senate John Ensign managed to get a headline. We’ve long since passed the point at which simple adultery from our elected officials is shocking. This Mark Sanford thing, though… It was bizarre. Fortean. Oddly reminiscent of the runaway bride (the person, not the horrible film). Of all the potential outcomes that came to mind when I heard that Gov. Sanford had gone AWOL, “He’s in Argentina” was #1,057 on the list. But reality trumps plausability yet again.

From my point of view the real fallout of this whole bizarre episode is that Sanford’s political career is over. Don’t get me wrong, I think about as much of Mark Sanford as a politician as I do of Glenn Reynolds as a blogger, but he was one of the better, or at least less laughably bad, GOP contenders for 2012. Objectively he had a few things going for him. Popular Governor. Not a Washington insider. New, as opposed to recycled garbage like Gingrich and Haley Barbour. Not a bad looking guy. Good enough verbal skills to make himself sound like he’s not retarded even though he is. I’ll go as far as to say that he was the leading contender in a horrid GOP field, roughly akin to being the best player on the Washington Nationals.

In that light, the ramifications of this incident on the 2012 race are significant. The pool of Republicans who would make good candidates is empty and they’re starting to run out of candidates who are even plausible. I know everyone hates it when I talk about elections too far in advance, but what in the hell is that party going to do in 2012? They might have a hard time scraping up enough candidates to make a competitive field let alone any good ones.

My position on the re-election of the current President hasn’t changed and will not. If there is any measurable indication of economic recovery between January 20, 2009 and the onset of the 2012 Election (roughly 1/1/2012) then the race is going to be a 1984-style coronation. The Republicans could run Abraham Lincoln and it wouldn’t matter. Obama took office and things sucked. If things do not suck (or suck less) when the next election rolls around the election could be a blowout like we haven’t seen in 20+ years. If things get worse or stagnate, a good Republican could take him down.

Now. Find me a good Republican.

Palin is going to be the candidate if scenario #1 happens – with a rosy economy and no chance of beating Obama, the GOP will be more than happy to let some idiot waste her time and money running in a race she will lose by 200 Electoral Votes. She will be the nominee because no one else will be lining up to donate his or her body for that kind of beating. In the second scenario the Party will try a little harder to find a credible nominee. Jindal? Uh, first impressions went poorly. Also, his background has plenty of gossip fodder in it, what with the exorcisms and such. Tim Pawlenty is the only name making the rounds who seems reasonable on paper (Governor, “independent” cred, etc.) but he looks and sounds like a used car salesman. Obama would really have to be on the ropes to lose to a piece of white bread like Pawlenty. Charlie Crist? There’s some potential there, but there’s also that vicious “arranged marriage/in-closet” rumor. Mitch Daniels? Decent, but really dull. No one will get excited about that guy.

Other than that, we have the reruns like Gingrich, Huckabee (whose Fox show isn’t helping, as he comes off like an infomercial host while interviewing “American Idol” contestants and the cast of “The Biggest Loser”), and Romney. Mittens might get the nod over Palin in a sacrificial lamb scenario, as he has more money to blow, but before picking any of these guys the GOP would be better off forfeiting the election and retaining some dignity.

It has been a long time – perhaps the 1996 GOP nomination or the 1988 Democratic field which settled on Michael “The Hindenburg” Dukakis by default – since I’ve seen a field this bad, bearing in mind that the 2008 GOP field was really bad. I guess that is the logical end result of a party that has been shrinking continuously for 25 years, a regional party which can’t feasibly hope to win statewide offices outside of the former Confederacy or the southwestern Sun Belt. A shrinking party produces a shrinking pool of good candidates and, as we see in Sanford’s case, the pool of candidates is shrinking itself as well.

(OK, should we just start the Jeb Bush betting pool now?)