He doesn't want to be president and he certainly never intended to be ahead in the polls. This is a mistake that is now keeping him up at night. He's worried. He doesn't quite know what to do about the surprise of being in the lead this long. He's had television shows, golf courses, and cologne named after him, but leading the polls for this long really wasn't the plan.
He's getting more and more nervous because he does not want to be president. Something backfired. He doesn't know how to get out of the lead. Can't he just fire somebody and end the game? This was not the plan. The bully never wants to be class president or any president. The bully's territory is outside not inside. He thought he might throw a few bloody one-liners out to the shark infested crowds, bring his rudeness to the middle of the floor, shake his hair a few times for fun, embarrass the embarrass-able, get a few close-ups with buxom blondes, spew the cruelest thing imaginable, then call it a day.
He does not want to be president. He lives to be a thorn in the side of a president. He's spent his life aspiring to be a jerk of legendary proportions, remarkably rich, a well-dressed, wrench-throwing bully. He never wanted to be taken seriously. Bullies make a scene and then run. That's what bullies do. The idea of sitting at a desk, right beside the red phone that could start a nuclear war, keeps him up at night. Bullies hate responsibility. Bullies get bored with life for sure and look for where to start a little brush fire maybe, but anything greater than this would require unnecessary contemplation. Bullies start fights because they like to see nosebleeds. They do not like spending their Friday and Saturday nights studying FBI reports on South Korea. Bullies know they immediately lose their reputation if ever protected by the CIA. He would much rather be a bully than the president.
Bullies only have four things to say. He only wanted to be in the spotlight a little at the beginning and then fade away and go start trouble somewhere else. Bullies like making the rest of the class completely quiet and afraid to speak. Bullies don't like to talk very much and despise any required state of the union annual speeches. He's starting to sweat. How much longer can his bullying keep the real press at bay?
This is a rich country that has always been fascinated with the audacity of the rich bully. They have always been fascinated with the one who steps out of line and calls himself courageous and smart and innovative when he is really only a bully. This bully leading the Red State polls doesn't want to be president. The thought of being president, of these yet to be United States of America, scares the bejesus out of him.
The mere thought of raising one hand and putting the other on a Bible makes his hair curl. He doesn't want to spend four years making decisions about wars or pipelines or natural disasters. He could care less about polar bears stranded on the last patches of ice. He has four flash cards that he uses with his present bully-loving media. I know Jobs. Women are stupid. Mexico will pay. The other guy is a loser. He says the same things over and over and a cheer goes up from the control room because the ratings are through the roof because somebody called this telling the truth. There's nobody like him, one meek reporter was heard to whisper.
That's not true. There are many like him. If he wasn't a billionaire you would call him what he is and you wouldn't give him a microphone every night to say the same 4 things over and over. The red states are bored. The people interviewing the red states are bored. They've all decided to elect the bully before the election.The bully in the camera lights doesn't want to be president and he doesn't know how in the world he got in the lead! Maybe this is the first Reality TV show of the season. Every night before he sprays his hair in place and shuts his eyes he giggles. He giggles about how much time the headlines are giving him to be his bully self. He giggles about how much time he is able to suck away from everything else that matters to what this country will be over the next 150 years.
Bullies have amazing timing. They specialize in stealing the show. They find the weakness in the organism or organization and start to drill down hard and fast. They say the same four things over and over and wear a new tie. There is always a camera's eye waiting for the rich bully to make his move so they can further sell his cowardice and disregard rather than wrestle with something that really matters.
Listening to the rich bully is so much easier than finding out why white militia men, carrying AK 47's, were allowed to walk and "protect" the streets of Ferguson on the anniversary of Michael Brown's death. Listening to the bully is easier and a lot more fun that struggling for the truth deep in a young person's eyes, who doesn't know where her sister is, her sister who has been missing for months along with thousands of other women of color, her sister who no one is looking for because they don't have a camera left for that story.
Listening to the bully is easier than asking why and how the EPA poisoned a Colorado River system. It's more entertaining than showing environmentalists standing firm against fracking. It's easier to listen to him than to give time and attention to homeless veterans sleeping on sidewalks or grandmothers standing in food bank lines or hand the mic to the families of thirteen, murdered, transgender American citizen who know a hate crime when they see one. Listening to the bully is like having a ringside seat at the circus. Welcome to the circus. It seems the house of the clown is far more newsworthy than cutting off the camera light in his face, telling him to go home, back to his lonely empire, because he is a bully and not reliable or convincing or entertaining.
Some very strange things begin to happen after an intellectual, thoughtful, imperfect Black man has been President for almost eight years. A hunt for the opposite begins, a hunt that for some only a rich bully can satisfy, as if the bully's bravado and browbeating, as if his hatred and cruelty, and his four flash cards is news.