By Steve Fey

First, let me tell you a bit of my own history. I come from a state called Ohio. Well, actually where I grew up we sort of called it ah-high-ah, but you see what I mean. Ohio is a state with a lot of natural resources, among others is the ability to send guys to Washington DC to be President. Ohio has sent more Presidents up there than any state except Virginia. Sort of the Yankee version of Williamsburg, or something. Some of those Presidents have been better than others. Take Warren G. Harding, please. A bit of scandal touching the White House? No, a whole lot of scandal touching the White House. Makes Irangate seem pretty tame, and as for Whitewater, well, what in heck is that. I guess you could keep your Whitewater in your Teapot (Dome) maybe, but as is pretty normal, I’m digressing. I think there have been six Presidents from Ohio, including Taft (who kept his girlfriend just down the hall from his wife, thus beating out even Caesar, who had to go to a different house to see his lady friend), Rutherford B. Hayes, and who could forget Ulysses Simpson Grant, the hero (to Ohio for sure) of Vicksburg and the man who accepted the surrender of Robert E. Lee. Some decent credentials there. Other states have sent multiple Presidents of course. I mentioned Virginia (Washington, Jefferson, etc.) and there’s also Massachusetts, Adamic though it may be, but in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, you know, the past forty years or so, it’s been Texas that has done really well at sending guys up.

Texas? Didn’t they secede once? No matter, they’ve sent three in recent decades. And what a three! Let’s look. First was Lyndon Baines Johnson, a man who decided not to run for a second term because he couldn’t face the brouhaha over the mess he’d gotten us into. Then came George HW Bush, who failed to get re-elected by losing to some trailer park hick from Arkansas (who got reelected easily, by the way, and I’m sure there’s a lesson there somewhere.) Now we have the third Texan in the White House, one George W C&B Bush. That’s George Walker Crash and Burn Bush, in case you couldn’t figure it out. GWCB Bush might well do what Johnson did, except that he can’t run again anyway, and is thus spared the ignominy.

Isn’t that a neat word: ignominy? Synonyms include, amongst other things, humiliation, embarrassment, discomfiture, shame, disgrace, dishonor, disrepute, discredit. But none of those words looks nearly as cool as ignominy. Try it yourself: say it out loud: ignominy, ignominy, ignominy. Is that a cool thing to say or what?

My point being that either we should have let Texas secede in the first place, after all they did volunteer, or that we should maybe avoid electing anyone else from that state until they demonstrate somehow that they’ve got it together better. Ohio sent up a mixed bag, as did Virginia and probably a few other states. So far, Texas is batting 0 for 3, which if it were a hitter in the majors would get it replaced with a younger player until it proved it could still swing. Maybe we should follow that very spirit and elect somebody from a younger state. I mean, how much worse could it get?