President Bush is trying to f-up my life...

He truly is. This is odd, as I bear the President no especial ill will. I just wish he would learn to chew with his mouth closed at State Functions and not act like he is sitting at the Jock Table in the high school cafeteria. It is embarrassing for all of us. But I digress…

Today, the president came to Columbus for a social call. A fundraiser for Congresswoman Deborah Pryce at the estate of the one, the only Les Wexner.

Don’t know Mr. Wexner (or Les, as we hip Columbus-ites call him)? If you’ve set foot in a mall sometime in the past 20 years, you do. Ever shopped at Express, The Limited, Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie and Fitch, White Barn Candle Co, Bath and Body Works, Lane Bryant, or Lerner New York? Then you’ve met Mr. Wexner. He is indeed the force behind this retail empire, and as you might guess, a wealthy man. The kind of man who the President would come to visit.

And today, he did. He touched down at Port Columbus International around 5:00, and then headed for New Albany, the teeny-tiny farming community that was basically purchased by Mr. Wexner’s land development company about 10 years ago, and turned into a veddy veddy upscale community. Don’t get me wrong, they have done a wonderful job—the town is simply lovely, the houses don’t look as funeral home-like as many new homes do, and there is an actual downtown with stores, grocery, etc. I don’t know how all of the old-timers in New Albany feel about it, but it seems like a nice place. New Albany is also home to my job—in a beautiful building, just outside of town. It is right off the highway, which is usually super-convenient for me. I’m going the opposite way of most of the traffic during rush hour and can make it door to door in about 35 minutes most days.

I say most days, because the President f-ed it up for me today. I should say Deborah Pryce f-ed it up, because as much as I don’t really hate the President, I really do hate Deborah Pryce.

As I was saying, he came to town for a Pryce fundraiser at Chateau Wexner. Here is some info I didn’t know—when the President is traveling from say, the airport to say, Les Wexner’s estate, he is the only car on the road. Really. They closed down all the Very Major highways he was to use. No cars going in either direction, no cars driving on the bridges above him or on roads beneath him. Just lots of people backed up on exit ramps, and city streets, secretly fuming and (I hope) plotting just how they aren’t going to vote for Deborah Pryce.

As I mentioned, my office is right off the highway, about 2 miles from the Estate of Les. As the highway and the roads over it, as well as any road going near the estate were closed, and I have no other decent route home, I was stuck in the parking lot for well over an hour. And then the traffic. Sweet Baby Jesus Up in Heaven…the traffic. Worse that an OSU football game. Not counting the time in the parking lot, it took me over an hour to get home. An hour.

When I finally got on the road, slowly inching home I though about the President in his limo. I wonder what it is like as your car glides through the strangely empty rush hour. Buildings go by at a blur; a house, a church, an empty factory, an auto parts store. Does he wish that he could trade it in for just a day, trade it all in an live in one of these houses, work at the auto parts store, and not have the fate of the country resting in his hands like an empty eggshell?