We’re now the National Lampoon of politics

It was many years ago (1973) that the National Lampoon used the famous demand on the cover. These days, it seems to me that both political parties are using a similar demand to get support from their base (how appropriate a term) and to use it as a fundraising tool, through fear of the opposition’s accession to power. Is it time to call these bluffs? Why don’t we, the voters and taxpayers, demand that political campaigns be publicly funded with spending caps for each type of position? We end up paying for it one way or another so let’s demand more and better transparency and accountability. Maybe in the process we can also kill Citizens’ United. That’s all for today. I’m still fed up from last night’s “debate.”

Politics

By William Meredith

Tonight Hazard’s father and stepmother are having

jazz for McGovern. In the old game-room

the old liberals listen as the quintet builds

crazy houses out of skin and brass, crumbling

the house of decorum, everybody likes that.

For decades they have paid for the refurbishing

of America and they have not got their money’s worth.

Now they listen, hopeful,

to the hard rock for McGovern.

The ceiling in this palace needs fixing,

the chalky blue paint is like an old heaven

but there are holes and flaking.

They had movies here when grandpa was solvent.

Hazard desires his wife, the way people

on the trains to the death camps were seized

by irrational lust. She is the youngest woman

in the room, he would like to be in bed

with her now, he would like to be president.

He has not been to his studio

in four days, he asks the bartender,

a college boy with a ponytail, for more gin.

He stands in the doorway. Forsythia and lilac

have overgrown the porch, there is the rich

smell of wood-rot. What twenty years will do

to untended shrubbery and America and Hazard.

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