No, Look

     I never have had much patience with Congress, but I always figured it was their job to try my patience: to crank the wheels of government around with all due deliberation, with plenty of lost motion and chances for each and every one of them to sing out, "Whoa, nellie!" at ill-considered legislation, and, yes, to dip their state or district's beaks into every new dollop of gravy in the trough, ensuring, at least over time, a roughly uniform distribution of the burdens and benefits.

     Well and good, and if it resembles a clown circus from time to time, them's the breaks.  It kept 'em busy annoying one another more than annoying everyone else.

     But that system keeps breaking down, and these supposedly highly qualified boys and girls all saw that Jimmy Stewart movie -- or, more likely, read the Cliff's Notes -- and they think they can aw-shucks themselves into The People's hearts and pocketbooks, by either actually being some kind of semi-folksy, semi-poisonous idiot, or simulating one so well we forget to look up their privileged, Ivy-League upbringing, or, in at least one case, by simultaneously pretending to be a Public Intellectual and a hard-handed Man Of The Peeeple, a kind of six-dimensional Zen Everyman with furrowed brow and sweaty muscles.

     It won't wash.  I don't care if you're a gilded-palm New Jersey sleaze, a Rhodes scholar carefully sprinkling "ain'ts" like a society matron sifting well-aged parm on her pasta carbonara or a genuine moron from suburban Poughkeepsie, Atlanta or Helena, if you're not willing to actually do the work and pass up a few of the photo-ops and fawnings, then GTFO.  I don't care what your party is or what kind of crazy ideas you came into office with, if you're unwilling to deal with the actual reality of a giant country with global obligations, a hugely varied population and way too many situations that call for finding a least-bad choice that no one really likes, then please leave and go try out for a "reality" TV show, because you are unsuited for real life and entirely unsuited to be one of the frickin' legislators trying to keep the chaos of the fed.gov functioning.

     If you're one of the nasty few who got into office to try screwing the whole thing up or lining your own pockets, then there is no hell hot enough for you, and I sincerely wish your peers would put more effort into rooting out the rot.  The House and Senate have Ethics Committees, but they appear to mostly spend their time tut-tutting instead of checking for cheating and incipient Caesarism.

     And if all this sounds harsh and unfair to my readers, well -- it is.  We've let Congress get away with far too much for far too too long, and they've gone from sneaking cigarettes and reefer in the cloakrooms to all manner of slacking off and genuine vice.