Our Ceaseless Circus

[Scuba]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/opinion/bruni-our-ceaseless-circus.html?_r=0

Four Americans died in Benghazi, Libya: people with unrealized hopes, unfinished plans, relatives who loved them and friends who will miss them. But let’s focus on what really matters about the attack and its aftermath. Did Hillary Clinton’s presumed 2016 presidential campaign take a hit?

We live in a country lousy with guns and bloody with gun-related violence, manifest two weeks ago in a Kentucky 5-year-old’s fatal shooting of his 2-year-old sister, evident over the weekend in a hail of bullets at a Mother’s Day parade in New Orleans. But let’s cut to the chase. Did Kelly Ayotte, the New Hampshire senator, safeguard or endanger her political future by casting one of the votes that doomed gun-control legislation in the Senate? An d does the law’s failure mean that it’s time to write the obituary for Barack Obama’s presidency, which has more than 1,300 days to go, or can we wait — I don’t know — a week or maybe even two to do that?

Now we have a scandal at the Internal Revenue Service to factor in. And a scandal it is, in urgent need of a thorough investigation, which President Obama pledged at his news conference on Monday and which we’re very much owed. But before we get a full account, let’s by all means pivot to the possible political fallout, politics being all that seems to matter these days. Will Republicans ever trust and be able to work with the administration again? (This is being asked as if there were all that much trust and cooperation in the first place.) Have they finally been handed the cudgel that can whack Obama and his crew into oblivion? Assess, discuss and please don’t forget to make predictions about the 2014 midterms.

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What about the actual business of governing? Between all the preening, partisan cross-fire and of course fund-raising that consumes members of Congress, is there any space and energy for that? Not much, to judge from either the sclerosis that now defines the institution or the obsessions of those of us in the media. Our quickness to publicize skirmishes and divine political jockeying abet both. Actors tend to do whatever keeps the audience rapt.

[Newest Reality]

1. The circus

seems to be a distraction by clowns with agendas.

By that I mean, I think many of us could make a short or long list of very important, and even extremely critical, issues that are glaring and suggest imminent negative results if not attended to.

Few of those issues seem to get the kind of attention they need and even lessor so, action that would mitigate the impact or resolve those issues as a benefit to many.

The distractions seem to be a three-ring circus that insists that the National focus be just so and just this or that.

That show is going to bite us all more and more and the problems will be exacerbated by this kiind of neglect. If we were all in a boardroom and there was a crises concerning our bottom-line and profits, you could be as sure as hell we wouldn't vote to go see a movie and ignore it. That's the kind of priority I'm talking about.