On Wednesday of this week, I set aside the column I was working on (it’s not time-sensitive; I can pick it up again at a later date), prodded to do so by many reactions to the results of Super Tuesday. I am myself dismayed, to put it mildly, at the prospect of a choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, neither of whom I can vote for in good conscience. But I was more appalled and at the same time shamefully entertained by the excessive reaction, especially on the part of those for whom Trump’s candidacy—with a strong possibility of victory—is an occasion for apocalyptic pronouncements. I could easily fill a column with quotations from these self-styled sages.
But then my mood suddenly shifted: I remembered another election year, the start of a new century, in which we were faced with an unsavory choice between George W. Bush and Al Gore. In particular, I remembered the fantasy we contrived for an issue of Books & Culture: “Bono for President,” the cover proclaimed, and inside the mag, there was a delicious page featuring Bono’s “cabinet” and other key figures in his imaginary administration; Warren Sapp, for instance, as secretary of defense, and Philip Yancey as “Gray Eminence.”rn
