Cookie monster

 Kevin McCarthy is a private citizen, but that's no excuse for sitting on this bombshell story while he presumably shopped for a book deal.  

"Biden's Oval Office, it is the quietest place.  No one's around.  The only thing, there are cookies," he revealed to shocked Fox viewers.  "He offers you cookies every time you're in there.  And he goes and gets them.  I mean, it is a depressing moment."  

Cookies.  My god.  We are in the hands of a monster.  

Picture it.  The president is about to sit down with the Speaker of the House.  They are alone.  And the leader of the free world asks, "Kevin, how are you?  Would you like a cookie?"  Stunned, McCarthy can only nod.  Does Biden bring over a tin?  Is there an assortment?  Can he take two?  Does Biden hand him -- I can hardly type the words -- a paper napkin with the White House logo?  McCarthy bites into his -- toll house?  Macaroon?  Surely not a Proustian madeleine.  Perhaps something crunchy, the sound echoing in the silent room.  I guess we'll have to buy the book.

Any real president would have assistants dashing in and out with printouts from social media, bulletins about shark attacks, a television showing discussions of whether he is greater than Lincoln or only greater than Washington -- on Fox News, for instance -- and a big button he can mash when he wants some soda pop.  Not Joe Biden.  He's hopeless at this.  He doesn't even see the look of pity on McCarthy's face as he chews his cookie.  He wants to talk about funding the government or some such.  Poor old man.

What else will we learn from Ten Months That Shook the World:  My Career as Speaker of the House (Bulksale Books)?  How much taxpayer time goes into these snack rituals?  What about gluten?  Are raisins involved?  (Major California product!)  

On his way home to Bakersfield McCarthy may care to stop off at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.  They sell Reagan's trademark jellybeans at the gift shop.  I hear he used to send tons of them to foreign dignitaries, at public expense, of course, in addition to keeping a jar on the Resolute Desk.  But that's completely different.