This is the week we celebrate St. Valentine, with flowers and wine and lots of candy. So it's either weirdly appropriate or painfully ironic that the beltway explodes in a somewhat contrived debate over contraceptives at the same time.
For the sake of argument, let's set aside that the debate played out on the Sunday morning talk shows by a bunch of old men.
President Obama ignited this firestorm last week by insisting that religious groups across the country had to provide free access to preventive care for women – including birth control. (Oddly enough, the president, PPACA or the talking heads that followed made no mention of such care for men, contraceptive or not.)
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The right and "the church" alike predictably went nuts. And, Obama, in equally predictable fashion, backed down. And once again, the buck got passed to the carriers.
But aside from stirring up the hornets' nests of the respective bases, did the president's not-so-ultimatum really accomplish anything? Or was that the point?
Because this entire debacle reveals one of two things: Either the president is a master politician who knew exactly what he was doing with this firestorm or he's an idiot who blitzed blindly into the buzzsaw of birth control and religion. I mean, talk about your trifecta of verboten dinner table topics: sex, politics and religion. Way to clear a room, Mr. President; I think your State of the Union spilled milk joke was better.
At any rate, as Republicans wrestle over the candidates like some kind of indecisive suitor ("Do I want the hot girl or the nice one?") and the president tries to justify his job ("Why don't you like me anymore?"), the rest of us gets distracted with irrelevant ideas like we're some kind of distracted golden retriever ("Squirrel!")
I harp on this a lot, but it drives me nuts. Why are we still arguing about gay marriage, guns or the pill when we should be fighting over jobs, energy and Iran? This is why people in other countries make fun of us and our First World problems, because we argue about who we pray to while Athens burns.
Are we ever going to get a candidate (or president) that takes us seriously? Are we ever going to take them seriously? Or do we still simply get the leaders we deserve?
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