No offense to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who from all of his interviews and assorted promotional junk seems like a genuinely nice and extremely well-meaning person, but America should probably take a break in between installing former pro wrestlers in the White House. Nevertheless, the idea of Johnson running for president as soon as the 2020 election has been floating around for the past couple of months, and we would say it’s just an amusing little trifle that’s not meant to be taken seriously, except we learned that lesson the hard way.
Yesterday, this fun dream that seriously, definitely should not actually become reality came a step closer to doing exactly that, as a group called “Run The Rock 2020” filed on Johnson’s behalf with the Federal Election Commission. The group, it should be noted, has no official ties to Johnson himself. The paperwork was filed by a West Virginia man named Kenton Tilford, who—for the love of God, Kenton, if you’re reading this, this is indeed pretty funny but please consider dropping it and redirecting your spare time and political acumen into something that actually matters, because while it may seem like everything is an insignificant joke when you spend all of your time online, there actually is a real world out there full of real people who will feel the real life-or-death consequences of your actions, and if ironic detachment continues to seep into areas of life that were once considered serious, adult business, we’re in deep shit as a society.
Phew. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah: Johnson’s been coy about how serious he actually is about his presidential bid, making a joke out of it on Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show but telling GQ that he has some real ideas about how to bring leadership back to the White House. And that’s great. Maybe we can hear more about them after he runs for Congress, and then for governor of California, and then for president. But can we have someone who’s just a little bit boring first? Just until everything gets back to normal, as much as that’s possible now that we’ve gone through the looking glass into this crazy upside-down world where even a conservative site like Drudge Report is leading with stories about the Republican president’s son colluding with foreign powers to gain potentially compromising information about his opponent in what’s supposed to be a free election. Please?