The Sweet Spot

So, once again, a lot is happening in the world. And, once again, I have been a little slow in blogging. My apologies to anyone who is bothered because my thought processes are just a little slower than the speed of events happening in Washington and around  world.

Still, if you are, you can take some comfort in knowing that it gives me just a tiny bit of guilty pleasure. Such is the mind of a writer.

Regardless, today I want to talk about the concept of a sweet spot. It is, mostly, a sports term. One that is almost universally understood.

(In fact, I googled “Sweet Spot” and got more than 70 million hits in less than a minute. And pages and pages of businesses and books with that name, from feminine hygiene products to body wipes and from vanilla blossom wash to an instant ice cream maker.)

But I am using sweet spot in the same way it was originally used, the part of a tennis racket where you get the most powerful and accurate hit. The sweet spot. Same thing for a golf club, or a bat or the best leverage in negotiating a business deal. In short, sweet spot is what works best.

                                            But Where Is The Politics?

Now what does this have to do with Washington? Well, we are being treated with a long line of Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives - the names tend to change from hour to hour - all trying to get the precise sweet spot of reacting to President Trump’s debacle in Helsinki.

They can’t criticize him too strongly, or they will lose his supporters. They can’t ignore what he said, or they will lose the support of what is left of the hard core anti-Communists. They can’t appear to be doing nothing, but they also can’t look like they are moving too quickly, too much ahead of the crowd. That last one is particularly hard, because dozens of them are moving, and if you are ahead of the crowd at 3 p.m., you may find yourself behind it by dinnertime.

Some have taken refuge in our President’s statement that he made a mis-statement, leaving out one single word that would have turned “there is no reason to believe” into “there is no reason not to believe,” Fans of Donald Trump know how easy it would be for someone so eloquent in his language to make such an error.

It may be thin, but any port in a storm for them. No matter how small a sweet spot - or maybe an escape hatch - they will take it.

                                          Not A Lot Of Options

In truth, what kind of choice do they have? Blending all those contradictions into one policy statement is just about impossible. But, coming up with a statement that doesn’t fade into the woodwork - that is just vague enough to sound like everybody else - violates the first directive, appearing to be doing something.

After all, in politics you don’t look like you are doing something - or saying something - if no one hears you say it.

So, it looks likely that all of this will just go up on a shelf, along with a whole lot of other things, and won’t be looked again until the mid-term elections show just what the small sliver of the nation that really does pick a candidate performs its civic duty,

What small percentage, you ask? Well, Loyal Democrats will vote for whoever their party picks, or won’t show up. And Loyal Republicans will do the same thing. So, that leaves the election to the non-affiliated undecided folks. You know, the marginal group that the media doesn’t cover really well in their election run-up stories.

They don’t go to rallies. They aren’t on the lists of regular party contributors. You won’t find then writing letters to the editor or at many town hall meetings. And, if you run across one or two - as I have, from time to time - they may not be able to tell you just who they are voting for early in a campaign. It seems a lot of them just don’t believe things politicians warn about until those things actually happen.

So, one big mia culpa to me for not blogging for a while. And one big mia culpa for the people in Congress, who haven’t done much of anything for a while. Except, of course, approve a really big tax cut for the rich, gut our health care system and name a Supreme Court Justice or two.

Ah, but as the undecideds who really decide our elections like to say - nothing to see yet. Just wait until November. Or next April 15. Or maybe until 2020.