Post-America chose one kind of big baby over another

You probably know about Madame Bleachbit's self-immolation in India. Like a car wreck, it's the kind of thing you know you should turn away from but just can't. The bit about white women voting as their husbands and boyfriends told them to. The statement that she won the successful states and the Very Stable Genius won the failing states. Sure, it's shameful that she said this stuff on foreign soil, but it's not so much outrage that it evokes as pity. It's uncomfortable as hell to witness that level of self-embarrassment.

What strikes me is the absolute dearth of character between our choices as we turned the calendar page to November in 2016.

They had this much in common: They were big babies.

Trump, we've continued to have ample opportunity to know about. He can't stand the slightest hint of disrespect from any quarter. He'll pick Twitter fights with the most irrelevant figures over the mildest departures from unmitigated praise.

In Madame Bleachbit's case, it's the classic caricature of anyone to her right as desperately invested in preserving some kind of order that has it in for all the demographics we loosely call minorities, or those who purport to champion them on a demographic basis. This goes back to her Today show appearance the day after the Lewinsky scandal broke, blaming her husband's predicament on a "vast, right-wing conspiracy." She routinely talks like some smug women's-study professor at Unitarian coffee hour.

It's kind of interesting to be watching Rex Tillerson's farewell speech to the State Department as I write this. There's clearly emotion in his voice, but he's comporting himself with dignity and decorum. There's not the slightest hint of either bluster or whining.

You can conduct yourself that way when you're motivated not by power but by service. This is not to put Tillerson on any kind of pedestal. Per the post below, I have strong policy differences with him. But he wasn't driven up the wall by any threat to his catbird seat.

We had presidential candidates to choose from to whom that position was was likewise an opportunity to see their principles acted upon. It pains me to say that we were so far gone that we actually admired the power-lust that was the most prominent trait of the two final contenders.

The dodging-a-bullet metaphor doesn't apply here. We got hit with one kind of projectile rather than another.