Lord knows, I’m no political pundit but there are some things that are fairly self-evident even to a dilettante like me. Like, for example: this present JLP administration will be so gone after one term in office. Mr Golding may like to make distinctions between the JLP and the Government in trying to explain away the sordid Manatt, Phelps & Phillips extradition debacle that is this administration’s albatross, but I think it’s safe to say neither the JLP nor the Government has a chance of insulting well-thinking Jamaican people again for a long time.

Manatt, Phelps & Phillips was simply “an initiative to be undertaken by the party, not by or on behalf of the Government”. Yeaaah, but isn’t the JLP, like, the Government?

The prime minister’s statement, if it weren’t so pathetic, and, really, so thoroughly contemptible, would be laughable. Seriously, does he not get that this is 2010, not 1976? That Jamaicans are savvier now more than ever before? That the condescension and downright disrespect politicians have traditionally meted out to the citizenry will today not do?

Seriously.

Personally, I couldn’t believe the twists and turns the affair took. Like everybody else, I was stunned at how out of control that initial lie became. It was as obvious as the nose on a person’s face that the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips had been hired by the JLP/Govt. Why the prime minister denied knowing about any interaction between the company and the JLP and/or the Govt was a mystery to me. Things were already in the toilet with the Chief Servant’s refusal to extradite Christopher Coke to the United States where he is wanted to answer to drug and gun-running charges. Why lie about the fact that he hired a law office to lobby the US Govt on the matter? I mean, it isn’t as though public opinion of him could have gotten any lower, right?

Dear reader, even as I write this, I’m filled with incredulity that we’re here talking about this.

But as badly as one feels for the PM, you have to feel worse for his family, the people who love him the most.

It’s the same feeling of maddening pity, wrongly or rightly, one felt for Laura Bush.

At the beginning, and toward the end, of former US President George W Bush’s eight-year tenure in the White House, her husband’s image was of a not-too-bright rube. Remember all those late-night TV talk show hosts who mercilessly skewered Bush in skits and zingers? Those Internet jokes? I remember feeling badly for Bush’s twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, hipster young adults who wouldn’t necessarily have built up any kind of auto-immunity against the slings and arrows of public criticism of their dad, at the time. That was their dad the world was pillorying, and it had to have made them lose a little bit of themselves, regardless of how adjusted they were, every time he opened his mouth and said something like, oh I don’t know, “I hear there’s rumours on the Internets that we’re going to have a draft.” The Internets. Really? And those girls must have cringed for this obscure little gem: “Tribal sovereignty means that; it’s sovereign. I mean, you’re a – you’ve been given sovereignty, and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.” Tribal sovereignty. Really? I can’t even imagine what Laura, his wife, a former schoolteacher, an educated woman with a post-graduate degree in library science, thought about this nugget that I wish I could find a way to sell on eBay: “You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.”

Yikes. He or her? REALLLLLY?

The mortification wives of notorious politicos have to experience on a daily basis! And yet, I can’t help not feeling too sorry for them. No matter how able I am to empathise with Laura Bush I can’t pretend that there isn’t a bit of irritation with her complicity in helping America enter ill-advisedly into war and, as a result, into debt. Not to mention, the drubbing of the American name all across the world. After all, she remained quietly supportive of her husband and his cronies when they were at their wrong-headed worst. It’s no secret that all throughout the course of history, great men and leaders have taken counsel from their wives or mistresses. (Even brought to their knees by them: Samson and the temptress Delilah is a classic example.) In Jamaica, Edna Manley was influential in helping to mobilise her husband Norman to action after the 1938 labour revolts that eventually led to the formation of the PNP and, subsequently, the JLP. So it stands to reason that George W Bush, a spectacularly unpopular president with an inordinate amount of love for his wife, would have relied heavily on her for support.

Laura Bush, in promoting her recently published memoir, Spoken from the Heart, proves that she was more than capable of speaking to her husband. Where George W often comes across as a ninny, the literature-loving Laura is diametrically opposed. She’s well-spoken, well-read, at ease during interviews – she won over many, myself included, during her Oprah appearance – but more than anything, she actually has real views that reflect what people in the real world are passionate about. She’s even got some radical views thrown in for good measure that are polar opposites from her husband’s; she revealed on the stopover at Larry King’s that she supported, gasp, gay marriage and abortion. Why, Laura, how hip, how forward-thinking!

What, I wonder, would the world be like today had Laura Bush been ruthless in defying her husband on some of the social issues on which he took injurious stands? Had she said, “No nookie for you, George”, when he mentioned he was fixing to go to war in Iraq, maybe we wouldn’t be reeling from the effects of a world recession today. And here, at home on the Rock, maybe our prime minister’s wife can step in, help stop the Chief Servant’s insanity. It’s leading us down a path that very possibly can land us in a dark place. SOS, Lorna. SOS!