Entertainment Value Lost In Congress

Ron Paul is quitting to focus on running for President.

With Paul’s chances of actually winning the presidency on a similar level to those of the American Communist Party, this likely means that Paul will be leaving the public stage after the inevitable flood of Paul-obsessed spammers during the 2012 primaries.

With Ohio’s Dennis Kucinich also being lost to redistricting, we are all losing a lot of entertainment value from what is otherwise a grimly earnest caucus on both sides of the congressional aisle.  British politics understands that humor is a vital part of making government comprehensible to the people at the same time it keeps politics in its limited place.  With the exception of unintentional contributions like Paul and Kucinich, American politics is usually grim and humorless.

Paul and Kucinich were both pretty crazy, but not the genuinely scary kind of crazy like a Michelle Bachmann or Alan Grayson.  Instead, Paul’s obsession with weird conspiracy theories about the Federal Reserve and a transnational cabal of Jewish bankers who were going to destroy American sovereignty by building a freeway through Oklahoma and Kucinich’s hippy-dippy weird ideas like his crusade for a “Department of Peace” gave an occasional reason to laugh in the midst of horribly desperate zero-sum partisan warfare.

And for that, whether they like it or not, they will both be missed.