All politics is local

A very long time ago, I wrote a smut novel about a young woman who decided to run for mayor of her city because the incumbent had been in office her entire life. The premise was that the young woman had no political party, no real political agenda and no reason to even begin the process.

She was just out of work and wanted the job.

I put a lot of dots in a row and came up with the idea that she'd have to win a primary in order to be taken seriously in the November election. As local stories go, there's not much separating that novel from a lot of real political scenarios across the country.

At times, teenagers are elected to run their cities, all of which contributes to the overall premise that government is gridlock and that the people who run government are just actors on a stage.

It's the stuff of legend, the corrupt senator who is trying to evade detection by somebody who knows that the senator can ill afford to watch his empire crumble on the backs of a few white lies that ended up in somebody's chemical discharge into Lake Watapinkus.

There is not much about that trope that intrigues me now. Politics isn't about corruption; politics is about political parties. Knowing what the party wants is what matters to the candidates.

It isn't a very interesting topic anymore. And to use the current political backdrop for nurturing fiction is at best amusing. I'd move on to something more sinister -- and if you can't find that inside your mind, you aren't paying attention.

The art of politics is about manipulation of money, fondling the data and projecting. The problems are that the money is hidden now and there aren't limits on who spends it or where it comes from. Nobody is being polled now and the polls are designed to make the political parties look good.

Even the most objective analysis of politics is based on guesswork.

That has nothing really to do with writing, does it? Dunno, what if she just needs the job?