Marianne Faithfully

For those of of you who are disappointed that Oprah Winfrey isn't running for President in 2020, take heart: The Democratic presidential nomination process has a new Winfreyesque candidate to fill the void.

Marianne Williamson declared her candidacy for President not too long ago.  You might remember her as the self-help guru who ran for the U.S. House of Representatives from California in 2014.  Well, she's back and she's not just seeking a higher office; she wants to put America in touch with a higher reality.

An explanation: Marianne Williamson's entire shtick is based on a New Age theory of "spiritual regeneration" and the idea that physical reality is just an illusory dream.  This got her Winfrey's attention back in the early nineties, and she quickly became a "spiritual adviser" to Winfrey, who is a big advocate herself of creating one's own reality through magical thinking.  Williamson summed up her entire message of her presidential campaign with this statement on CNN:

"We need a moral and spiritual awakening in the country.  Nothing short of that is adequate to fundamentally change the patterns of our political dysfunction." 

Just gotta have a little faith, right?

But wait - there's more!  Not only do we need an awakening, she says, we need to rediscover love.  This was of course the theme of her 2014 House campaign, and the idea of bringing love to Washington sounds as mushheaded now as it did then.  I may have once said that if we all have love, everything else will fall into place, but getting things done in Washington isn't based on love; it's based on compromise.

And what are her qualifications for the highest office in the land?  A 35-year year career of dealing with "the deeper levels of moral dysfunction" and "naming and transforming those dynamics."

Silly me, and I thought a good qualification for the Presidency was to serve two terms as governor of Maryland.

Anyway, Williamson's platform is mostly no different from other Democratic presidential candidates who have actual experience in governing.  She supports Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal proposal, universal background checks for gun owners, and tuition-free college.

But get this.  She also advocates a $100 billion budget for paying reparations to the descendants of slaves, to be paid out over ten years.

Not only does this have no chance of becoming reality (but then, Marianne Williamson is famous for being undeterred by reality!), she's going to have to deal with the argument, put forward by cultural critics such as James Howard Kunstler and Jamie Malanowski, that reparations have been paid for slavery  - 360,222 Union soldiers and their Commander-In-Chief, Abraham Lincoln, paid with their lives.     

Even if you favor reparations for the descendants of slaves, you have to admit that Marianne Williamson is completely unqualified to be President and that her candidacy is a joke. It's being taken seriously, though, if only because too many people took a joke candidacy like Donald Trump's seriously, and now we have a bad joke in the White House as a result.  But Trump's election only made it possible for anyone to run for President.  Even a flaky New Age guru like Williamson.   

So if I think we should not take her seriously, why am I writing about her?  Because it beats talking about Tulsi Gabbard.

I think Martin O'Malley made a huge mistake by deciding not to run for President in 2020.  He scoffed at the idea of inexperienced celebrities like Oprah running for the job, yet Williamson is a candidate and O'Malley isn't.  So far the choices for an opponent for Trump have ranged from unsatisfying to dismaying.  I don't see that changing any time soon.