There are many industrious walks of life that don't pay well, but we depend on their output.
On the one hand, I've been reading newspapers at lunch since the 1950s, inside and outside government at several places and times of my life. I also took a keen interest in government document declassifications under the Presidential Records Act and the 1992 Records Collection Act.
So I have to snicker every time I recall a friend's bumper-sticker from the 2008 campaigns:
"I believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Honest Republicans."
And I've said it here before. The hype over the Benghazi tragedy and administration statements about it, and the e-mail server is sort of like the story of the fellow in Castaneda's "Tales of Power" (or "Journey to Ixtlan" [?]) who takes some mushrooms in a small room with a small fly buzzing around, then suddenly sees the fly as Godzilla.
Nobody can deny, though, that political warfare includes strategies for plucking the election-day support of the gullible. And there's a century's history emerging with Marconi for how other sorts of campaigns have an effect on something called "Public Opinion."
I suppose I can gamble on whether the FBI investigation results in anything remotely criminal. But the concoction of there being any is mostly something the believers desperately want.
The mishap of the Bush presidency has created this desperation, and is something like the story of the Emperor with No Clothes. Nobody wants to admit that he and his circle had much less than that.
Call it the "Purple Robe Syndrome" of political reaction.
What amazes me is that Chris Christie would be the one to unveil Rubio's sad mantra one would predict for any Republican debate this year: "Obama was the worst ever . . " Christie's voice had been in the chorus with that hypnotic chant since the Big Show started last year. "Feckless" I think was one way he had put it.