There’s nothing like a US presidential election to shake up the laws of time — and just about everything else
The US election is just over three weeks away and suddenly time has never moved faster as the world buckles up for the most unusual election ever.
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Arriving to live in America, I picked out half marathons and rock concerts all over this vast nation and hit the road with my running shoes and my credit card to buy fan merch.
Sadly, the cursed virus has closed all of that down now.
But back in the day, I was lucky enough to use this plan to see many points of this amazing country, including the Stones in Seattle, Kiss in St Louis and Fleetwood Mac – featuring “Aussie” Neil Finn - in Tulsa.
I also decided to travel to iconic/corny Mt Rushmore for a half marathon, mapping out a road trip through the Midwest en route to Rapid City, South Dakota. I didn’t love the run or do a great time, but it was a fun trip, especially seeing the wild west town of Deadwood – which has actually burned down many times and is really more of a fun park with pokies, but you can’t always be choosy.
At a gift shop on this portentous trip, I happened to find a funny little item called the Countdown to Trump’s Last Day, a palm-sized digital clock featuring the face of the Prez which told you how long it was until the election.
At the time, it was counting back from something like 750 days or so. The little gem went missing along the way now and again, behind shelves, under couches, in liquor cabinets. But it always turned up.
And now it says: 24 days. And it seems to be counting down faster every day.
It is hard to explain what a day in the 2020 election cycle is really like now that we have hit the pointy end. I mean, we all knew this was coming, but could we ever have imagined it to be like this? The Trump team’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine project has nothing on this.
Take the past 72 hours or so. Fresh out of COVID hospital, Donald Trump called off negotiations with the Democrats over a budget stimulus package, then said it was game back on and he called his brush with the pathogen a gift from god.
Then we had “the most important vice presidential debate ever” between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris. It was certainly a more substantive meeting of minds than last week, a largely civil exchange of ideas expressed with the sort of robust energy you would expect with a few weeks to go before an election.
Since then, we have had the official debates commission say the second presidential debate will be “virtual”, Donald Trump saying he won’t take part if that’s the case, then the debate was canned altogether, the FBI revealed an anti-Trump governor was the subject of an assassination plot, Nancy Pelosi said she will try to use the constitution to sack Trump this week, Trump said she’s actually angling to sack Biden if he wins and then the President demanded Obama and Biden be charged with treason.
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Oh, and Joe Biden’s super-smart election tactic to tell Americans they “don’t deserve” to know if he will expand the Supreme Court if he wins the election. Hmm.
Could you make this up?
And believe me, that’s an edited version of events.
As Tom Selleck says in TV ads here hawking reverse-mortgage loans, this isn’t my first rodeo. But there has never been an election like this.
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Originally published as There’s nothing like a US presidential election to shake up the laws of time — and just about everything else