The Designated Driver

It's Metaphore Thursday... how about another?

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I feel like the nation is a bunch of drunks leaving the Clinton party. "What an asshole, anyway. Snidely berating the other two branches of government as he perjured himself in the courts. We're out of here." Drunk from the successes of the past eight years, we staggered outside to the bus of a new administration. We huddled, voted and selected another drunk to drive us to the next party.

Along the way, I and the others that hadn't drunk as much saw something was amiss shortly after the driver got behind the wheel. Something didn't seem right. "We're at war!" the driver declared. Let's drive to Iraq!

"This guy's gonna get someone killed" we thought.

For six years the bus has careened along, running roughshod over rights, the Constitution, cities. You name it. Every time a sober rider predicts a bad outcome, the driver swerves just in time to miss the predicted obstacle and just in time to hit another unseen one. "See, you're just a worry-wart" the remaining drunks say. The bus barely shivers as the driver's swerve takes out a pedestrian, a family.

Slowly, some of the drunks begin to sober, but not the driver. He keeps swilling his spiked Kool-Aid(tm), thundering bellicosely that's he'll protect us and get us there safely.

More and more people are sobering. Only 31% are still drunk enough to think it was a good idea to elect this driver. Why aren't they sobering up?

But the majority still agrees -- we can't stop the bus and select a new driver. "Don't change horses mid-stream!" one drunk slobbers. "Stay the course!" slurs another.

Can the country make it another 2 years?

Before the 2004 (re-) election, John Stewart used a similar metaphor when he said, "W drove us into a brick wall, but by God he didn't blink!"