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Speaker 1: Somebody has to be the worst president in American history.

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They can all be number fourteen, as Joe Biden was

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in a survey of American historians, or number eight like Ike,

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or number thirty five like Richard Nixon. And isn't it

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only fair that the worst number forty five should be

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given the opportunity to improve his ranking? Of course it is. Meanwhile,

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I don't need to follow his second term day by day.

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I can better occupy my time with the crossword puzzle

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and the book reviews and skip the funny pages. I

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don't check my ir A every morning, or my blood

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pressure or the w NBA standings or the air Quality Index.

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So why should I upset myself at the thought of

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Cash Patel running the FBID, or Tulsey Gabbard as head

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of National Intelligence, or an anti vaxer as Secretary of Health.

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If I want to study lunacy, why not become a

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therapist and get paid for him? So I am focused

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on the positive aspects of life. I've just succeeded at

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taking a lazy one week vacation with my family at

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a resort in California, at which I slept late, hung

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out beside a pool under an umbrella and sipped lavender lemonade,

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and my work ethic relaxed severely. I was very agreeable

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the entire time. I even started to sort of like myself.

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Once I sat in a hot tub with four people

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who seemed to be employed in the software trade, and

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I listened to their talk and I didn't understand a

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single word of it, not even the or a or sense.

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It was very rewarding. None of them asked me what

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I do for a living, So I just sat in

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the bubbling hot water, watching the mountains turn pink in

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the sunset, and feeling very lucky not to be inflace want.

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Like Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times, who

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returned from a trip to China with a new perspective

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on world affairs, life is good once you master the

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art of deletion. Every day my laptop is full of

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emails asking for money to do worth while, noble things,

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which if I donated to them, I would soon be

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living in a cardboard box in a vacant lot. And

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so I click on unsubscribe and they go away for

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a while. Instead, I google what is the prospect of

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international peace and understanding? And I find that the UN

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thinks it's inevitable, and Dale Lama dot com says it's

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based on compassion, and foreign policy thinks the prospects are

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not good. We didn't used to have Google. We used

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to sit and worry about these things. Now, at last,

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clear answers are available, contradictory, but still clear. An old

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man sees progress on so many fronts, such as the

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advent of the frozen waffle and spreadable butter. I remember

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the heavy waffle irons of yesteryear, the risk of a

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small child yanking the whole contraption down on his head

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and therefore never getting into graduate school. The mixing of

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the dough and prying the toasted waffle off the hot

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iron and spreading rock hard butter on it and ripping

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the waffle to shreds. And now it's two minutes from

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toaster to mouth, no problem. Advances have been made in packaging.

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Tiny slits enable a person to open a bag of

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jelly beans or caramel corn without using brute force and

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perhaps injuring a shoulder and kneading shoulder replacement. As a

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liberal Democrat, I felt obliged to read about environmental degradation.

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Poor math scores among low income children, declining respect for

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governmental institutions, the loss of wildlife species, explosive economic inequality,

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the advance of artificial intelligence towards self replication, nations falling

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into and refugee populations growing, the fascination of the working

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class with billionaire leaders who use political power to enrich themselves,

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and so on and so forth. And now I've discovered

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artificial tears can take the place of reading about crises.

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A couple squirts in each eye, and I feel bad

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for half a minute, and I accomplish about as much

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as I would after reading the Times with the post.

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And so I am avoiding having lunch with Democrats because

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it's the same conversation over and over. Did you read

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about this and that? And I can't just can't believe,

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and so forth. And this man will do what he

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will do. I say, let John Thune Mike Johnson agonize

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over it all. I hope that he can beat out

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James Buchanan, who is currently ranked as forty fourth president

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by historians. He was the man who sat on his

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hands as the country blundered into the Civil War. It's

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a low bar, but as long as the South does

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not delete itself. I think mister Trump can do it,

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and if the South does well, thirty nine States is

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still a lot of states and may be much more united.