One of my favorite episodes of The Outer Limits is The Hundred Days of the Dragon -- the one where some unnamed, presumably "Communist" Asian country discovers a way to turn people's skin to mush for a few minutes so they can perfectly impress the faces and fingerprints of other people onto their agents.
Armed with this new technology -- and some snazzy face-pans -- they then assassinate and replace the man most likely to become the next President, who goes on to win, and pave the way for other agents to perform other replacements...
I' won't give away the ending, but I'm sure it'll be no surprise if I tell you that, despite low cunning, an neat gimmick, and what seemed an airtight plan, their sinister machinations are scuppered due to one little unforeseen error.
You're probably wondering why I'm bringing this up, 200 days into the Presidency of a man who, by all rights, should not have won the last election, but did -- possibly due to the machinations of a certain foreign power, and/or possibly in keeping with their hopes of relations not stymied by sanctions and scorn.
Well, in spite of breakneck campaigning, a slick marketing machine, and a fascinating groundswell of support from neglected sectors of the population... the plan is not exactly adhering to the timetable. The head and body of the nation may be under occupation, but the heart and soul remain elusive.
And, let's face it, his poll numbers suck.
So what happened, here? What was the unforeseen error?
I'll tell you one thing, it wasn't unforeseen. Not unless you, like so many people with buyers' remorse, are shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that a man whose only management style is to shake things up until they break (and then walk away from the wreckage onto the next big thing) would be behaving any differently at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue than he did at 725 5th Avenue.
That's the problem with letting the dragon loose: you might get some chaos (and fewer knights), but you'll also get a burned-down kingdom, a smashed castle, and a whole bunch of crispy princesses.
And once the joy of watching Washington DC burn down subsides, you have to ask "hey, wasn't he supposed to fix things for us?"
Maybe next time they'll know better than to back the wrong dragon.
