The next presidential election is just four short years away. It seemed like just yesterday that we Republicans envisioned a future of Romney, Ryan and Rubio. Now we have to wonder if we were too quick to laugh when Joe Biden said that this wouldn’t be his last hurrah, and that he would be on the ballot next time. These days, that seems all too possible. After all, if the majority of Americans don’t object to his being a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, why would they object to his actually having the heart that some other Vice President would be monitoring on a daily, if not hourly, basis?

After all, Biden will only be 73 when Obama vacates the White House. No doubt he will have even more hair and whiter teeth by then. Because the Republican Party will have gone the way of the Whigs and the Bull Moose, his only real worry will be whether Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton, who will be 69, but only 10 or 11 in dog years, decides to take him on.

If I’m still around, I’ll probably even vote for him. For one thing, he couldn’t possibly be worse than Obama. For another, I’ll never forget that he recently stated, “There’s never been a day in the last four years that I’ve been proud to be his Vice President.” That sort of candor should be rewarded.

It is a mystery to me, and one that will never be solved to my satisfaction, how it is that the majority of Americans can see what is happening in Greece and still continue to vote for left-wing ideologues like Barack Obama, who subscribe to the belief that the money that the government prints is every bit as good as the money that people earn. The closest I have come to generating a theory is that most people fail to see what is happening in Greece because they’re too busy watching really dumb shows on TV, and couldn’t find Greece on a map even if you printed “Athens” in really big letters.

I regret to admit that I come from a family of Democrats. Being secular Jews who were born in Russia, my parents seemed to suffer from the delusion common to a great many Jews that it was FDR, not Moses, who brought the tablets down from Mount Sinai. It helps explain why so many non-religious Jews regard it as a semi-sacred duty to vote for liberals.

I was so mistaken about the recent election that I actually believed that when the utility workers from Alabama who had come north to New Jersey in order to help the state restore power, and were turned away by the union thugs who demanded that they join the union or go home, it would open the eyes of the voters to how vile Obama’s public sector allies really are. But no such luck.

Aside from the fact that a lot of decent people are left to suffer without electricity, one of the truly despicable things about all this is that these blue collar union guys, who don’t give a damn about anything but saving all the work and overtime for themselves, are the very same schmucks who rail at the guys at the Stock Exchange for being greedy. Perhaps they are, although I have always found it peculiar that greed invariably seems to be a sin that only applies to other people, but at least no 80-year-old is going without heat and light because of those nogootniks on Wall Street.

I was reminded of the newspaper strike that took place in New York City in 1962-63. It killed off several newspapers, costing thousands of newsmen their livelihoods. By the time it ended, the papers had lost $100 million in sales and advertising, while the workers had lost $50 million in wages. But the union leaders were happy. So far as they were concerned, the other side had eventually caved, their own jobs were secure, and that’s all that really mattered.

Those at least were private sector unions. As such things are measured, it was a fair fight. It cost both sides. But in the intervening 50 years, we have seen public sector unions spring up. When these palookas negotiate, it’s with politicians. Therefore, the only side that loses is the one that never has a seat at the table: the taxpayers. The unions get whatever they ask for in terms of salary and pensions, and the politicians get the promise of campaign donations and campaign volunteers. And, most pathetic of all, because these groups include such sacred cows as cops, firemen and teachers, the poor suckers who are being financially bled to death are reluctant to object.

Finally, I’ve been thinking about our military. It seems to me that going back as far as Korea, it has been America’s policy, no matter who happens to be the president, to do everything in our power not to win wars. Apparently, it’s a carryover from the liberal belief that competition is a bad thing and that when kids play games, scores should not be kept, lest the losers wind up feeling like losers.

At some point, Americans began to look at our soldiers and, instead of seeing warriors, began to see Boy Scouts and Brownies. I first became aware of that during Desert Storm when I began reading editorials stating that something needed to be done and done quickly because the chocolate bars being issued to our soldiers were melting in the summer heat of Iraq and Kuwait.

The next thing I knew, Major Hasan was free to murder several Americans at his leisure because it had been decided that an army base, Fort Hood, would be a gun-free zone, except of course, for Muslim jihadists. Fortunately, a pistol-packing policewoman was in the neighborhood and she finally brought him down, ending the bloodbath that came to be referred to by this administration as workplace violence.

Frankly, inasmuch as our military has been singularly devoted for the past few decades to fighting and dying on behalf of one set of Muslims under attack by another equally vile set, I don’t see any real need to maintain a military.

The money saved could be used to pay down the national debt, but I suspect that America’s favorite fun couple would prefer to spend it on White House galas and exotic vacations.

And judging by the recent election, the American voter, who might well turn out to be Time magazine’s Simpleton of the Year, wouldn’t have it any other way.