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I spent part of yesterday’s Rush Hour renaming North America.

Not officially, of course.

But once Lake Ontario became “Lake America,” the possibilities started piling up pretty quickly.

The Panama Canal? Pan-America Canal.

Venezuela? Venezuza.

Greenland? Trumpland.

And somewhere in the middle of all that foolishness, I realized it actually fit the rest of the show better than I expected.

Because so much of politics now is theater.

Not governing.

Not solving.

Theater.

One of the better examples yesterday was watching Democrats suddenly discover that the old “do you condemn” game is irritating.

Imagine that.

Republicans have been playing this game for years.

Rush says something? Do you condemn Rush Limbaugh?

Some Republican somewhere says something stupid? Do you condemn it?

David Duke pops up? Do you condemn David Duke?

Sometimes the person deserved condemnation. Sometimes the question was ridiculous. That never really mattered.

The point was to put Republicans on the defensive and force them to answer for somebody else.

Now Democrats are being asked questions about Hasan Piker, and suddenly the whole exercise is unfair.

Debbie Dingell announced she was done answering questions about him.

Abdul Rahman Muhammad El-Sayed was irritated about it too.

Well, fellas, welcome to the club.

You don’t get to spend years cheering for a political tactic and then declare it illegitimate when somebody turns it around on you.

If reporters want to keep asking Democrats about Hasan Piker, I say keep asking.

They trained everybody to think this way.

Now they get to enjoy the results.

Something else caught my attention yesterday, and it may be even more revealing.

David Crowley, who is running for governor in Wisconsin, stood at a courthouse and opened by acknowledging the Native American tribes whose land he said it once was.

That has become fashionable in progressive politics.

And every time I hear one of these things, I have the same question:

What are you going to do about it?

Seriously.

If you believe you are standing on stolen land, are you giving it back?

Are you turning over the courthouse?

Are you proposing that Wisconsin return state property?

No?

Then what exactly are we doing here?

That is the part of modern politics that drives me nuts.

We have become very good at saying things that sound morally important while requiring absolutely nothing from the person saying them.

Acknowledge the land.

Issue the statement.

Post the slogan.

Condemn the designated villain.

Everybody feels virtuous for five minutes and goes home.

Meanwhile, the potholes are still there.

Then we got to a story that had nothing to do with elections or political parties.

Hundreds of drivers allegedly shut down Interstate 75 in Florida during one of these illegal street takeovers. Cars were doing burnouts in the middle of the highway, and one driver reportedly took police on a chase that reached about 140 miles an hour.

Obviously, you cannot commandeer an interstate because you feel like doing donuts.

But instead of stopping there, I started wondering why we don’t have more legal places for people to do this.

Americans love cars.

We sell people machines that can go 150, 180, even 200 miles an hour, and then tell them there is virtually nowhere they can legally experience what those cars can do.

Why not build more affordable tracks?

Why not create controlled speed zones for trained drivers?

Why not give the people doing these takeovers somewhere to burn rubber without putting families on an interstate in danger?

That interests me more than another politician reading another carefully prepared statement.

Because at least it is an attempt to answer a real question.

That was probably the thread running through yesterday’s show for me.

Too much of public life has become performance.

Democrats don’t want to answer the questions they spent years asking Republicans.

Politicians acknowledge “stolen land” they have absolutely no intention of returning.

Everybody wants credit for recognizing a problem.

Far fewer people seem interested in fixing one.

And that is why, strangely enough, the street-racing story stayed with me.

Somebody breaks the law.

Fine. Arrest them.

Then ask why hundreds of people wanted to do it badly enough to shut down an interstate in the first place.

That second question is where governing begins.

The rest is just noise.

Although I am still holding out hope for Venezuza.

— Bo Snerdley

Rush Hour airs Monday through Friday and moves quickly through the day’s hottest political stories, breaking developments and media absurdities. It is the fastest hour in American media because there is always more happening than the legacy media has time—or desire—to explain.

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