While I’ve done my dead level best to protect my own sanity by avoiding listening to most of the rhetoric (more commonly called “bull excrement” or something similar by most common folk around our region) spewed during the recent respective political conventions, I couldn’t help but catch enough from both sides to realize something that ought to bother every single one of us. 

Do you realize just how far down the expectations we have from our presidential candidates have now sunk? Have you thought about that? Each side can say what they want about their particular candidate, but the bottom line regarding both is that neither one of them have much to brag about in regard to what each is hoping to see (or not see) from their guy. Depending on where your allegiance lies (assuming you are following one of the parties to their respective cliff like a good little lemming and are “all in” with one or the other as you are “supposed” to be), a list of the “reasonable” expectations from our current presidential choices could be listed as follows and in no particular order:

• can put together a coherent sentence while on camera

• does not tweet something while sitting on the toilet at 2 a.m. that starts World War III

• can accomplish something and actually give even partial credit to someone else for it

• can actually stay alive long enough for the election to take place

• doesn’t talk about how they’d be interested in dating their daughter if they weren’t her father

• can show something of actual value they’ve accomplished in their political career

• doesn’t brag about being more popular than Abraham Lincoln

• doesn’t brag about being smarter than everyone else on the planet

• doesn’t claim to have been in the top 50% of his college class when he actually was in the bottom 5%

• doesn’t publicly call into question the legitimacy of anyone else’s birth certificate

•  doesn’t mention children stroking the hair on their legs and/or sitting on their lap in a public speech

• doesn’t tweet any more letter combinations like “Covfefe” in the middle of the night 

• doesn’t grab and/or sniff a nearby female inappropriately

• can steer clear of any “additional” affairs surfacing before the election

I could go on, but you get the point. Some of the above are just as applicable to one as it is the other.

Now, the question that must be asked is how did we arrive at this juncture? Of course, remember that our “standard of measurement” regarding American society as a whole has degraded to the point where you rarely hear words like wise, decent, honest, consistent, honorable, humble, and Godly ever even used to describe anyone anymore, much less our political leaders. Instead the watermarks of measuring the character base of Americans today are: total number of arrests (whether they were misdemeanors or felonies included), number of marriages compared with number of affairs, how much money they have, and how “woke” they are. 

That’s it. Start adding much more into the formula and just about nobody will even fall into the ‘acceptable’ category these days. 

In other words, regarding our political candidates, we often get something that far too painfully resembles what we as a society have become and ultimately reflect. That should be a cold slap of reality for all Americans, but I doubt it will be.   

Regarding the looming presidential election, there are pretty much three camps forming: the “all in” Trumpeters, the “all in” Ridin’ with Biden’s, and the “Lord help me determine which one of these two is going to do the least amount of damage for the next four years and please please Lord send us someone to actually be excited to vote for in 2024” camp. 

If you are in the Biden camp, you have to be terrified to see the polls tightening up knowing that most Americans including an ever-increasing number of Republicans simply think Donald Trump is a jerk. If you are in the Trump camp, knowing that a candidate as weak as Joe Biden currently holds a lead in most polls should make you acutely aware of just how low the public’s regard and respect has sunk for your man (but of course, most of the polls are “fake” anyway so they really don’t matter, right?). 

Meanwhile, the rest of us over in the “Lord help me” camp just sigh, look down, shake our heads and wonder how in the actual heck we got to this between a rock and hard place place. 

What has really amused me is listening to the pundits and supporters from both sides use all of the things they can find to bring the “other side” down in the hopes of raising their guy up to make him look like he’s the clearly “better” choice. They are constantly espousing the “superiority” of their particular candidate by using comparisons to the opposing candidate as a measuring stick.

Which, given the parameters of those measurements, is about as impressive as claiming your guy to be tallest midget in Macon. 

When I think back to the presidential election of 2016, I’m reminded that I then said I felt quite confident in saying the available candidates were the weakest in the history of American presidential elections. 

Now that I look at 2020, I’m not so sure that’s still the case.