West Wing Boys

I don't have to introduce myself, do I?
You read the papers. This being an election year,
you've seen plenty of my picture.
You know what I can do.
And I'm doing you, Hartigan.
Cold and hard, I'm doing you
--Sin City (2005)

A sum of money is a leading character
in this tale about people,
just as a sum of honey might properly
be a leading character in a tale about bees
--God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater,
Kurt Vonnegut

Sometimes you're better off dead
There's gun in your hand
and it's pointing at your head
--West End Girls, Pet Shop Boys

Oh, there's a big difference, Mrs. de Marco.
The mob is run by murdering, thieving, lying,
cheating psychopaths.
We work for the President of the United States of America
--Married to the Mob (1988)
____________________

This being a presidential election year, we are trying to figure out who has the scruples to hold the highest job in the land. Not that we have done particularly well on this account in the past, but everyone likes a good horse race.

Mitt Romney was a high school bully, sure. Barack Obama? A coke head and, if we are to believe the contents of the "Barack in Love" letters were truly written by the smitten 22-year-old Obama to whom Vanity Fair writer Mariness attributes them, an insufferable poseur. But alas, Barry has at last joined (or amassed) a gang of toughs in order that he, too, might have street cred.

Barry's gang is called Special Operations Commad (SOCOM) and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and they are his hitmen. Romney may have been a bully boy, but Barry now has his own syndicate with Barry's Boyz. How cool is that?

Despite the recent glowing encomium to Presidential assassination offered by the New York Times' hacks -- “When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises—but his family is with him—it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation” (Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will) -- such lawless behavior is not the basis of our democracy. It certainly is neither brave, nor is it very cool; it's just illegal.

When Theodore Roosevelt spoke of the Bully Pulpit, it is doubtful he had these two in mind.