The word of the Constitution came to Mitch, son of Addison: “Go to the Senate floor and hold a vote on confirming a supreme court justice nominee, because a vacancy has come before me.”

But Mitch ran away from the Constitution and headed for Tarshish. Thus, as time went on, evenly split decisions came down, and there was a mighty tempest in the nation, so that the rule of law was like to be broken. And every administrator was afraid because many policies existed in a state of legal limbo, so that enforcement was lightened, and confusion and corruption flourished. But Mitch was hiding in a corner with his fingers in his ears, pretending to be fast asleep.

The administrators searched for the source of the problem, and found that the chain of causality led back to Mitch. They said to him: “Tell us, why is this evil upon us? What is your job? Where do you come from? Who are your people?”

He replied, “I am from Kentucky, and I serve the Constitution, on which all the laws of the land depend.”

The administrators were terrified. They asked him, “What on Earth are you doing?” For they knew that he had turned his back on the Constitution, and was setting an ever-stronger precedent of petty obstructionism and partisan gridlock. The inevitable result would be increased governmental dysfunction, dwindling trust in its mechanisms by the people, and the rise of demagogues without any respect for negotiation, nuance, or the rule of law. They asked him, “So what are we supposed to do now? We want our governance to go smoothly, with cooperation and trust from our constituents.”

And Mitch replied, “That’s not my problem. Stopping the current president from building a legacy is more important to me than anything else in the world.”

So they got fed up and threw him out of their boat.

And an oversize beast with tiny vestigial hands and fake hair came up out of the slimiest depths of the sea to swallow up Mitch. And Mitch was in the belly of the beast for an entire election cycle. And Mitch prayed to the Constitution, his master, from the beast’s belly.

But for some reason this was an age when crass willfulness trumped the rule of law, and the Constitution did not save Mitch from the monster he, and those like him, had summoned.

…

(To be continued…???)