It’s hard to know how it can get any worse…..

For a party that managed such a good showing in the 2004 election, it’s hard to know how the Republicans could have gotten themselves in their current mess so quickly. Attorney General Gonzales can’t seem to get his stories straight. Paul Wolfowitz went to the World Bank to clean up its corruption, and turns out to be as corrupt himself. Donald Rumsfeld had to be sacked (finally). Tom DeLay got caught playing illegal games with campaign funds. Scooter Libby is facing prison. Dick Cheney gets booed even in conservative Republican venues. Carl Rove spends most of his time trying to avoid testifying at trials and congressional hearings. And President Bush seems to be in denial about almost everything from the conditions in Iraq to global warming to the balance of payments problem to the problems of his Attorney General.

In general, the neoconservatives seem to have had their chance over the past six years, and have been found to be seriously wanting in both domestic and foreign policy, as corrupt as their Democratic predecessors, as well as incredibly naïve about the real world around them. What they have left us with after six years is a messy and expensive insurgency in Iraq, a weakened position in the Middle East, an overstretched military, a massive increase in government spending, an unwieldy Homeland Security bureaucracy, and a steadily declining influence in the world at large. Even their spin doctors can’t make this pig’s ear into a silk purse.

And none of the potential Republican candidates on the horizon to date look much better.

Not that the Democrats seem to be doing any better. Now that they control congress, have they set out to deal with any of the really serious problems the nation faces? No, they seem to be primarily bent on scoring cheap points against the President by passing liberal bills they know he won’t sign. In 2008 the Democrats are likely to offer us Hillery Clinton, who would make an outstanding Mafia boss, or Barak Obama, whose obvious glamour and appeal seems to mask an almost complete lack of substance. The only ray of hope I see on the Democratic side is perhaps John Edwards, who at least is willing to offer substantive proposals. But of course his opponents will bludgeon him with this honesty in the primaries, so he probably won’t get the nomination.

I fear it will be one of those election in which I would like to check the “none of the above” box.