Superman, Where Are You?

By Thomas L. Friedman

I had to catch a train in Washington last week.  The paved street in the traffic circle around Union Station was in such poor condition that I felt as though our very planet was going to disintegrate beneath my feet and that I should consider building a rocket ship to send my son to live on some other planet, or, failing that, a better run country like India. I traveled on the Amtrak Acela, which really should be called the Decela, am I right?  I also experienced several dropped cellphone calls and sent several text messages that were garbled by my phone’s autocorrect feature.  America needs a renewal.

And that is why I still hope that Kal-El, known to most of the Earth as Superman, will reconsider running for president as an independent candidate, if only to participate in the presidential debates and give our two-party system the shock it needs.

President Obama has significant achievements to his record.  But he is not much good when General Zod and his cronies escape the Phantom Zone and show up to wreak havoc on America’s cities, which are so poorly run that they already look like they have been mashed up by General Zod and his cronies.

With Europe in peril, China and America wobbling, the Arab world in turmoil, and energy prices spiraling because of market manipulations directed by Lex Luthor, we are facing some real storms ahead. We need to weatherproof our American house — and fast — in order to ensure that America remains a rock of stability for the world. To do that, we’ll have to make some big, hard decisions soon — and to do that successfully will require presidential vision in the next four years of the highest caliber. We need presidential x-ray vision.

This election has to be about hard choices, smart investments and shared sacrifices — how we set our economy on a clear-cut path of near-term, job-growing improvements in infrastructure and education and on a long-term pathway to serious fiscal, tax and entitlement reform. It would help if the next president had some experience with time travel or, at the very least, inter-dimensional travel. Superman has both.  This is a man who could clean our atmosphere by sucking all of the toxins into his super lungs and then exhaling them into the sun.  Mitt Romney has a nice house, but can he do that?

President Obama has proposed that people like Luthor, The Joker, The Penguin, Darkseid and others who have repeatedly tried to take over, destroy or otherwise wreak havoc on the world should pay an effective tax rate of 30%.  This is some pretty uninspiring small ball.  The President should have embraced the bipartisan Justice League Commission on tax and entitlement reform (also known as “The Aquaman Compromise.”)  Romney, meanwhile, maintains a ludicrous opposition to any tax hikes whatsoever, even on the Green Lantern’s enemy Sinestro, who recently turned Boston Harbor yellow and yet is still, for some reason, popular with the Tea Party.

Superman can bring a bolder vision to the table, including real tax reform, not Obama’s gimmicky special taxes or Romney’s plan to cut taxes for the most dangerous super villains in the hopes that they will create jobs.  Face it, Mitt, today’s super villains operate in a difficult economic environment and flat world where they can easily source minions, lackeys, technicians and other accomplices from lower wage nations.  The days of being able to quickly raise a private army of highly motivated and well-trained American workers who won’t demand health insurance and paid vacations are well behind us.

Superman doesn’t have to win to succeed.  He doesn’t even have to stay in the race until the very end. Simply by running and doing respectably in the polls he could change the dynamic of the election and, more importantly, the next administration no matter who heads it. Simply by being far stronger than the other candidates and by dint of having rudimentary mind control skills, he could force some of the other candidates to adopt his positions as Election Day neared.

The Man of Steel has often said that when he retires from adventuring that he plans to move up north to his Fortress of Solitude, never to be heard from again.  If we’re lucky, he might also gather up all of the nuclear missiles on Earth and hurl them into space.  Whatever.  He would be a really neat presidential candidate, instead.  It would certainly mean a lot more for the country than saving Lois Lane from one of her innumerable kidnappings.  Be Third Party Man, Kal-El.  I know a guy who can get you a birth certificate.