Trigger warnings are all the rage in the world of the academe--many professors now let students know when a particular reading assignment may contain sex or violence, lest these trigger some difficult incident from the students' pasts.
It's my feeling, after viewing the last two Republican debates, that candidates should come with their own trigger warnings, perhaps helpfully dispensed by a little runner across the bottom of the screen. Donald Trump? "May Cause Dementia of Hair Follicles." Carly Fiorina? "She Is A Bit Headache-Inducing." Ben Carson? "Narcoleptics Beware!"
"God Might Strike You Dead" if you disagree with Mike Huckabee, at least to hear him tell it. And Jeb Bush? "Well, Yes, He Is A Bush!" (He also thinks Myanmar is still called Burma, but that's another story.)
It is so good to be back at the beginning of another campaign season. The latest edition of Anything For A Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns will be out on October 27, updated and revised to 2012. (Preorder it here.) It is my job to remind you that the more things change in our national election contests, the more they remain the same. Sure you've got Republican candidates snarling at each other (soon the Democrats), but has Trump called Jeb Bush "a fathead with the brains of a guinea pig," as Teddy Roosevelt once dubbed William Howard Taft? Has Bush riposted that Trump is a "hideous hermaphrodite?" That's what Thomas Jefferson (via his cackling hack writer James Callender) called John Adams.
And when, in 1864, General George McClellan sneered that Abraham Lincoln was "nothing more than a well-meaning baboon," well, you know that even a Trump or Huckabee couldn't match this level of invective. But I kind of hope that they do. Because then the trigger warning could read: "In The Grand Old Tradition of 19th Century America Politicking, Here Comes A Real Election!"
Candidates, don't let me down.
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