Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall ...

                                             
                                                  You can't even do wrong right.
                                                                                Blues Lyric

    An old friend used to call them The Baddies. They are the kind of day when things go wrong from the start. You oversleep. Breakfast is rushed. Some of it gets stuck between your teeth. Then you get toothpaste on your sleeve.  That kind of day. Bad karma right out of the gate.
    I've thought of The Baddies as the presidential campaigns lurch to a start.  Of Republicans, we can at most say that their dueling publicity stunts have offered counterpoint to the yawn-fest on the Democratic side. Over there, while Hillary Clinton still seems the one to beat,  tepid poll numbers say that even supporters are not enthusiastic about her.
    At this rate, our next president will be sent to the White House by people voting with their fingers crossed. Such are the possibilities of politics in a safe and affluent country. We have evolved but not improved our definition of the phrase "consent of the governed." The first Continental Congress received its consent in an affirmative sense of the word. It had no established authority within the norms of the day. It was  sent to do the work of the people who did the sending. Nowadays, government has vested interests of its own. It is large beyond any valid need. It is extravagantly wasteful of the public's money. And it is peopled by careerists who are serenely confident of the rightness of their judgments for the rest of us.
    This should be fertile ground for Republican politicians, who do indeed like to prattle about limited government. However it is only prattle. In saying they'd like to scale back government enterprise, they mean they'd like to scale back government enterprise to someone else's constituents. When it comes to sending boodle to the home folks, Republicans are champs. The day of truly limited government is over in this country, and this is why politicians who preach it sound so often callous or silly.
    According to the news-celebrities who call their opinions analysis,  time favors Democrats, because their natural constituencies are growing.  But which Democrats does time favor?  Consider what the Bernie Sanders phenomenon reveals:  A candidate who has remarkably energized voters is a renegade by established political norms.
    These norms have given the Democrats Hillary Clinton. In her, a talent for policy is evident. A personal gift for politics is not. Direct conversations with the people are visibly a chore. Thus her campaign seeks to reduce political leadership to an exercise in packaging and posturing. (Note to Clinton staff: Lose the official photo that makes her look as if she's been startled out of a nap.)
    And so, on both sides of the partisan divide, we find today's chosen vehicle for obtaining the consent of the governed: Politics by marketable pose. This is what we get when we mix show business into public affairs. (See: Donald Trump.) Also, this is what we get from candidates who don't quite know what to say to the American people.   We are beset by would-be leaders who are quite willing to tell us what they think we want to hear, if only they can figure out what that is.
    Along with ineptitude -- or because of it --  not a few of the candidates have a second deficiency. They have embraced the notion of political doctrine as higher truth. Some of them appear actually to believe this. For others, claiming to have the one true vision is a shortcut past the labor of crafting a coherent program of governance from the competing values of a diverse society.
    A lack of political aptitude is a serious shortcoming in candidates for an office that is, foremost, a position of political leadership.  Some of this country's highest achievements in democracy have gone forward on the sweaty shoulders of political craft.  The nation can negotiate many circumstances with a mere manager in the White House, but moments inescapably come when it needs a leader.