If Kanye staked out 2020, what about a Taylor/Kanye ticket for 2016? Consider the following possibility:
A draft Taylor/Kayne for president momentum ignites in the Democratic Party and quickly catches up with Trump in the polls. Can you imagine the electoral politics that would ensue from this point? It would truly stagger all of our imaginations, This of course has only the smallest probability of ever happening, but as I pondered the idea for a moment it occurred to me that maybe this is what our country has come down to: Through our presidential politics, we are becoming a caricature of ourselves.
Think about it. Virtually everywhere around the world U.S. leadership is showing up devoid of vision and thus chaotically misstepping. Crises abound. At the moment of total withdrawal under the banner of Mission Accomplished in the Middle East, ISIS ignited a toxic challenge catalyzed by the very rapaciousness of our Bush/Obama legacy there. Refugees now flood into Europe with refugees worldwide at unprecedented and growing numbers. People are moving from disasters: political, climactic, financial, religious, civil and terrorist. Climate change alone runs rampant in every country with extreme floods, drought, storms and cataclysms of all kinds laying community after community in waste. This is at the bottom of what is happening in Syria: unprecedented drought activating deep social contradictions within the context of chronic regional instability. This was at the root of the Arab Spring. Other global crises abound in a host of other sectors and demonstrations of U.S. leadership are few and far between.
And still the establishment in Washington sleeps. It is no wonder Trump and Kanye/Taylor could start campaigns. The lights are on but no one is at the switch in Washington, D.C. That's what's true about our country. Our politics are deeply broken. Paralysis has seized both debate and action at virtually every level and sector of governance. People are thus reaching outside the established political process for answers. This is at the heart of Trump's emergence.
Gearing up for 2016, Hillary is preaching old conventions with Bernie gaining ground and Biden dithering. The Republicans are consuming themselves on the petard of extremist immigration debates, dramatically damaging themselves in perhaps the key constituency for the presidential election. Trump is completely dominating their process, throwing all certainties to the wind. It's insane what is going on. The establishments in both parties are lost and giving way to tired incoherence among Democrats and dangerous extremism among Republicans.
Who knows, maybe a Trump/Taylor-Kanye match-up would be the perfect ending to our political brokenness. Then we would have pure Shakespeare -- a tragedy as farce. Or, if things turned out, a Cinderella story. Maybe someone with the brightness and common sense of Taylor Swift should be our president. If I compared Taylor Swift to Donald Trump, I'd say she trumps Trump. Maybe this is exactly the kind of renewal that we need.