OPINION:
They say politics ain’t beanbag, but here’s another thing politics ain’t: smart.
Every four years, politics gets dumber. This time, we’ve got a 78-year-old former game show host running against someone who has gamed the system to rise up the ranks but has certainly reached her level of incompetence.
There are 320 million people in the United States; these two are the best we can do. No wonder America is the butt of jokes around the world. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump? It would be hilarious if it weren’t real.
What’s more, August is the “silly season.” The dog days of August — when Congress doesn’t bother to work and Americans are busy trying to enjoy the last bit of summer before the beanbag hits the spinner — bring the dumbest days of politics.
Certainly this year, well into the 21st century, is different, right? Nuh-uh. In just the last month, we’ve been told to focus on stolen valor, eyeliner, nannies, dementia and couches.
Before we go on, let’s set the scene. Here’s what’s going on in America right now: soaring inflation, unaffordable housing, escalating crime, rampant drug abuse and overdose deaths, a mental health epidemic, a student loan crisis, skyrocketing federal debt (it rises $1 million every 24 seconds), absurdly expensive health care, wealth inequality, crumbling infrastructure, unfettered illegal immigration, unrestrained price gouging, mounting poverty and homelessness, and political polarization that is becoming violent, leading to an assassination attempt against a presidential candidate.
Here’s what the media are busy with. “Is J.D. Vance Wearing Eyeliner?” Slate wrote recently. “Here’s why the internet is convinced JD Vance wears eyeliner,” The Independent wrote.
“Why does JD Vance always look like he’s wearing eyeliner?” journalist James Surowiecki wrote, adding: “He doesn’t really seem like the goth-boy type.”
Last week, Usha Vance set the record straight: Her husband’s luscious eyelashes are “all natural.” “I’ve always been jealous of those lashes,” she said.
Now, couches. “The rumor, first posted on X last month, involves a fake passage about a sex act and a couch supposedly in Sen. JD Vance’s 2016 book, ’Hillbilly Elegy,’” NBC News reported.
Right. It wasn’t — isn’t — true: Mr. Vance did not have sex with a couch. But that didn’t stop Ms. Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, from propagating the myth.
“I got to tell you, I can’t wait to debate the guy. That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up,” Mr. Walz said at a campaign event this month. As the crowd roared and Ms. Harris smirked behind him, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said, “You see what I did there?”
Hilarious. The price of gasoline is 44.5% higher now than when Mr. Trump left office, a dozen eggs now cost twice what they did in 2020, and 10 million foreigners have crossed the southern U.S. border illegally during the vice president’s tenure as border czar, but sure, let’s talk about couches.
It’s just as bad on the other side. Shortly after Ms. Harris picked Mr. Walz, reports emerged that he had stepped down from his National Guard post — 24 years after he joined, mind you — just a couple of months before his crew got sent to Iraq.
It seems clear that he inflated his record: He never carried a gun, as he claimed, “in war” — he never saw active combat. “We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war,” Mr. Walz said in a 2018 video. The Harris campaign said he “misspoke.”
Mr. Walz joined the National Guard at age 17 and served for 24 years, first in Nebraska, then in Minnesota. “According to the Minnesota National Guard, Walz retired in May 2005, two months before his unit, the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, received an alert order for mobilization to Iraq in July 2005,” NPR reported.
He was 41 at the time, and he did run for office a couple of years later, but Republicans decided to attack a 24-year veteran for “stolen valor.” Remember, Mr. Trump acknowledged to advisers in 2019 that he made up a fake injury to avoid military service because “I wasn’t going to Vietnam,” The Military Times reported.
“Trump received five deferments during the height of the Vietnam War. Four were for education. The fifth was the medical waiver, after his graduation,” the Times reported. The last deferment came after he got a note from his podiatrist saying he had bone spurs in his heels.
This really is the silly season. But sadly, this is just America now, day after day.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on X @josephcurl.
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