New Year’s Dinner Entrée: Roasted Lame Duck!

What a ride! The speed, the thrills, the inching incline, the heart-racing descent, rocketing into a vertical loop-de-loop that winds into a corkscrew before barreling through a darkened tunnel that emerges into a seat-gripping spiral.

Now we pull into the rank station with an abrupt screeching of the brakes, signaling our joyjaunt c’est fini. Swinging one mirthless leg out of the car after another, you trudge down the pitched exit to… immediately jump right back in line again for another go! Yippeeeeeeeee!

The Trump presidency is a similar amusement coaster. List it among heartstoppers like Kingda Ka, Superman: Escape, the Intimidator, the Buzzsaw Killer, the Hellslide, the Whurl-a-Rush, Death Mountain, and that rickety rotted wooden death trap operated by a chainsmoking carnie at your local fairground.

But shows stop, parties fold, lights dim, cups are quaffed, and inertia at last brings streaking shoots to a halt. The car creaks into the bay, the lap bar springs upward, and you’re awkwardly jostled outwards by a pimply teen with a learner’s permit. Samewise, Trump Term Two is stunned by anticlimactic anticipation. The lame duck is lumbering on shore, anxious ducklings spoiling to supplant the very patriarch who led them into power’s inner sanctum. Vice President Vance already scored his first major endorsement. In mimetic fashion, image-polishing Democrats are visiting early primary states. Kamala Harris, the last contest’s loser, is skittering ‘cross country to whatever stage will have her, babbling about nothing in particular, gathering headlines before the cold winter.

Blood and boredom float in the public weal. The economy groans under the weight of tariff-induced costs. The boom of Trump’s freshman tour is but a quaint memory. The White House is a steadier ship—no Cabinet secretaries have so far been tossed overboard. Yet exogenous forces brace an Administration that’s opted for superficial over substance.

Recall DOGE? The industrial-scale neutering of Leviathan, hatched by a billionaire who views life as an interactive video game? Elon Musk was convinced that with enough autistic twentysomethings on his payroll, and ketamine coursing in his brain, he could pinpoint enough Shady Acres conglomerates bilking Medicare to balance the federal balance sheet. The austerity assault petered out after a few thousand layoffs and nary a scratch made in the expanding deficit. Elon’s since gone back to playing with cars and rockets, his boyish attention span pivoting to his shiny toys.

As for the peace and prosperity promised by the President? The blunting of war swords in Gaza and Ukraine? The taming of the Bidenflation beast? The beautification of the Midwest Rust Belt with reindustrialization via carefully implemented tariffs on key foreign industries? Ptttshhhhh. Haven’t you ever heard the famous quip Trump Tower wasn’t built in a day? Making America great again takes time. In the meantime, while us covetous canaille eagerly await the price of ground beef dipping under a fiver a pound, we’re treated to the rebranding of the Kennedy Center with some Gorilla Glued polycarbon letters bought on Hobby Lobby clearance. You can’t snag a simple G.E. fridge for under $500 anymore, but at least you can catch a gabble of college freshmen throwing a free abridged performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the new and nominally improved “Trump-Kennedy Center.” (Free after dropping $25 on parking, that is.)

For further proof the country is over the Trump sequel, recall the President’s primetime address a week before Christmas. In a PR ploy straight from the days of broadsheet hook-hinting, our camera glazer-in-chief noticed an evening telecast absent specifics. The media, naturally, went crackers with conjecture. What was our sienna-splotched leader going to announce under heavy lights and a generous layer of HD foundation? Regime change in Venezuela? A breakthrough in artificial intelligence? Legalizing ganja? Proof that our government has been systematically laying in extraterrestrial technology to wage interdimensional war against beings that defy physical laws?

Sorry, speculators! All were off the mark. We were treated instead to a campaign brag session from a non-candidate constitutionally ineligible for another term. Booooorrrrrriiiiinnnnngggg.

That eye-drooping b-word defines what Trump’s sixth year as president, and 60th year in American public life, is becoming. The gags are still sprung, the Truth Socials are still rambling rage-slop with brief glimmers of wit, and MAGA viralists occasionally dogpile lefties who hysteri-weep over Charlie Kirk shirts. The novelty of a chief executroll is wearing thin. The Swamp is as fetid and full as ever. If the President managed to locate the drain stopper, he’s misplaced it in a drawer full of filigree.

Saul Bellow called boredom a “mighty force” that demands respect. Two heritage states proved the political poignancy of taedium vitae last month, electing two PTA moms to governorships. Internecine squabbling within the MAGA coalition, driven by the sundry sides’ failure to ideologically co-opt the Administration, is causing chism. Mike Pence, the most dryasdust Republican in America, is wooing bespectacled think tankers back to warmed-over Bushism.

The 2028 election sets in train amidst malaise. The Trump presidency recedes in the offing.