The Best Candidate for President Who Isn't Running...

Aaron Sorkin is a genius.

I’ve been saying it for ten years.

If you don’t know the name, you certainly know the work.

He is the writer of the movies “The American President” and “A Few Good Men”, to name just two.
And he was the creator, and for the first four seasons, main writer and guiding light behind the TV show, “The West Wing.”
When it comes to writing crisp, insightful, funny, poignant, dramatic, tragic, romantic…well, you get the idea.

This guy’s got some serious game.

I quote him a lot. At least many of the lines of dialogue he wrote that made “The West Wing” the best thing television had to offer in the late nineties and early oughts.

And not just the uberknown lines from his movies.
Like, “you can’t HANDLE the truth”

Ohhhh, you say, the guy who wrote that…
Yeah. The guy who wrote that.

And two, much less well known lines of dialogue that Martin Sheen, as President Bartlett, spoke during an episode in which some students were killed when a pipe bomb was exploded during a college swim meet.

“The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight”

And the one that really kicked it for me.

“We don’t know who did this…but they weren’t born wanting to kill.”

Aaron Sorkin’s stunning words came back to me with at full volume today as I read the news story about Eve Carson.

(CNN) --Eve Carson, the 22-year-old president of the student body at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was found shot to death in a suburban neighborhood not far from campus about 5 a.m. Wednesday.
Her car was found in another neighborhood to the west, about a block or two from where she lived with roommates, Chapel Hill Police Chief Brian Curran said Friday.
Carson, a UNC senior and native of Athens, Georgia, was last seen about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday by her roommates, who were leaving their living quarters and invited her along. Carson was studying and declined, saying she had work to do, Curran said. He described Carson as "an extraordinarily busy woman" and said it would not have been unusual for her to go to her office in the middle of the night.
Police have subpoenaed her cell phone records and are examining her laptop, he said, but "as far as I know she wasn't having problems with anybody," Curran said. Authorities are also attempting to determine whether there was activity on Carson's credit cards or bank account about the time she was killed, he said.
At least two people called 9-1-1 to report hearing gunshots in the area where Carson's body was found, Curran said. Police believe, based on those calls, that she was slain at that location, he said.
The medical examiner told police there were no other injuries to Carson's body besides the gunshot wounds and no signs of sexual assault, he said.
Police believe Carson was not targeted, and the crime was a random one, he said.

Within a few days, Eve will be buried, fellow students, neighbors, well wishing acquaintances and, for that matter, just good everyday people who are reading this story today and crying will find the tears drying as they return to their lives and her family will be left alone to ponder the horrific obscenity that took their daughter from them while, I hazard to guess, having a serious talk with God about what kind of world He’s running these days.

I know I’d be looking for answers.
Hell, I’d be out of my fucking mind.

And “mysterious ways” wouldn’t come close to being acceptable.

I don’t need to waste my time or yours with cliché’ ramblings about the good dying young or the profane unfairness of a young, bright, promising, giving, caring young woman being shot to death for no better reason than she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Because this world of ours is filled with evil.

And evil kills young, bright, promising, giving, caring young women for no better reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time

But while I was crying a little and trying to avoid composing five hundred words on the injustice of it all, I couldn’t help but hear Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue over and over in my head.

“We don’t know who did this…but they weren’t born wanting to kill.”

Somewhere tonight, on this planet we share, closer to us than we might want to believe, maybe even a couple of houses down is a mom and dad who some years back were very likely filled with the same joy and excitement that Eve Carson’s parents experienced the moment she came to life and let out her first annoyed, but beautiful, cry. And somewhere tonight, on this planet we share, maybe even across the street in that convenience store right this minute, there is someone who, just like Eve, was likely held in his or her mother’s arms and nurtured and fed and kissed and loved, ears filled with whispers of affection and a brand new heart being filled with the promises of a life full of potential and promise and accomplishment.

The kind of potential and promise and accomplishment that Eve Carson realized.
For twenty-two years.
Two hundred and sixty four months.

Until she was shot to death at three o’clock in the morning for no better reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

By someone whose life has obviously not realized the same potential, promise and accomplishment that Eve Carson experienced.

Someone who wasn’t born wanting to kill.
But who did.

I suspect that many of us, today, are sharing a commonality of emotions about this killing.
Sadness, shock, pain, heartache, disbelief, even incredulity and, inevitably, anger.

I’m feeling all of them and then some myself.

But I’m pissed off for another reason besides the waste of a vibrant life.

A couple of news stories down the page, I read about how the two major Democratic candidates for President were trying to one up each other for recognition of who had raised the most money in February.

The score, as I read it (in millions..)…
Barack 55.
Hillary 35.

Obviously, neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton, nor, for that matter, John McCain have the power to prevent one stupid senseless killing on a dark street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina at three o’clock in the morning.
And bitching about how totally off the tracks and out of touch the whole process of electing a president in this country has become isn’t going to help Eve Carson’s family sleep better tonight or any night for a while to come.

But, I don’t want to read any more stories about how much money the candidates have raised.

I don’t want to read any more stories about Obama being offended that Clinton insinuated that Obama is Muslim because his middle name is Hussein.
I don’t want to read any more stories about how Clinton is offended that Obama misquoted her on some tri-fold handout that got tossed in the trash five seconds after it was handed out.

And I don’t want to read any more stories or hear any more about…”change.”

I want to read stories about “hope”.

I want to read stories and hear about how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John McCain are going to infuse this society with hope, the kind of hope that makes good kids do great things, the kind of hope that makes great kids do amazing things and, more importantly, the hope that makes kids who start life being nurtured and fed and loved and promised a life of potential stay nurtured and fed and loved so that they can realize that potential and not descend into a life of hopelessness and despair and, inevitably, anger.
Anger that too often manifests itself in the killing of young, bright, promising, giving, caring young women for no better reason than they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How will you turn the tide of this culture and infuse it with hope, Senators?

How will you make it possible for that child who wasn’t born to kill to grow up right along side that child who will surely die if hopelessness takes hold?

Tell me, in clear, precise no bullshit terms, how you will create hope in a hopeless society.
And I swear to God, I’ll vote for you as often as I can get away with it.

Otherwise, I’m voting for Aaron Sorkin.