The guard rails aren't real

Former Pres. Obama speaks (last night on CNN)

Here is former Pres. Barack Obama in a brown suit, along with former First Lady Michelle Obama showing her arms. Let the wild rumpus begin.

So much of the pandemic has been about learning just how far we are from the kind of society I want. All the inequities we bemoan were out there for everyone to see, plus we had a leader who couldn’t have been less equipped for the job.

And it showed.

Last night on CNN, former Pres. Barack Obama talked about fatherhood, his legacy, and the safeguards he thought would protect the country from just how awful things became, both under Trump and during the pandemic. Obama, like many of us, said he was worried about what the other guy would do in office, but he said he also did not expect things to get as bad as they did.

Me, either. I had zero expectations for Trump, but I thought we had systems in place that meant that one person — even a true despot at the top of the political food chain — couldn’t do much to upset the ship of state.

How terribly wrong and naive I was. We will be years cleaning up the mess, in part because of this:

“I didn’t expect there to be so few people saying, ‘I don’t mind losing my office’” for standing against what has become GOP orthodoxy, Obama told Anderson Cooper last night. Was I naive to be surprised at this, as well? I think it would be difficult to find many Republicans outside the Romney-Kinzinger-Cheney orbit who appear to stand against the #GQP, and it has reminded me once and for always that politics are personal, voting matters, and the guard rails are imaginary. We are the guard rails. It’s on us.