Poor Wolf Blitzer, the host of CNN’s “The Situation Room”! His hyperventilation as he announces the latest “breaking news” and then eggs panels of experts to comment on it is sometimes scary: I half-expect him to keel over from lack of carbon dioxide. He often succeeds John King, who missed a calling as a tobacco auctioneer. Even if I could understand all John’s words, my mind probably couldn’t assemble them quickly enough into a coherent thought. But the subject is all the same: You-Know-Who.

Almost all the posts on Facebook, except for the expected daily chest-beating of patriots, express outrage. But after countless reiterations, Bernie Sanders’ favorite noun has lost its punch (much as has “racism,” which has to make you wonder if that effect is intentional). Just as you might be pondering how much lower His Nibs can go than urging the young Congressional women of “The Squad” to return to their crime-infested countries of origin, he attacks an African-American congressman in charge of investigating him, calls the congressman’s district “rat and rodent infested” [sic], and replaces the respected Director of National Intelligence with an utterly unqualified fervent political supporter. The mind, it boggles.

Every so often we peasants hear in the distance the trumpet of a champion. A few months ago, this clarion rang across the hills: “Talk is cheap, but action is essential if we are to overcome the challenges facing our families, our state [Utah], and our nation.” Yep, that was Mitt Romney, one-time candidate for President, peeking out now and then from behind the arras to remind us how close we came to greatness.

I have to admit that Mitt had me going there for a while, especially when he followed up that pronouncement with more fighting words: I will support policies that I believe are in the best interest of the country and my state, and oppose those that are not. I do not intend to comment on every tweet or fault. But I will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest, or destructive to democratic institutions. Since then, however, he’s reminded me mainly of Lewis Carroll’s lobster: When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark, And will talk in contemptuous tones of the shark: But when the tide rises and sharks are around, His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.

Sic transit, Mitt. We should have known. You coulda been a contender, instead of part of the frowning wallpaper standing behind the Majority Leader. Come to think of it, we haven’t seen you even there.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party seems to be having great difficulty deciding what, if anything, to do. Its committees plug onward, like old siege engines, issuing and prosecuting subpoenas, and clearly unsettling the current resident of the castle. Peter Welsh, Congressman from Vermont, recently gave a speech Lincolnesque in its argument, but doomed to ignominy; his justifications for impeachment can go nowhere. If the party were able to take a longer view, it would begin to sort through its clown car of candidates, decide what it’s going to be for, and agree to focus on one thing: November 2020.

When we were children, we often heard the fable of the mice who held a meeting to decide what to do about the cat that was decimating their numbers. They couldn’t come up with anything, till one genius suggested they put a bell on the cat so they could hear it coming. After the applause had died down, a small voice asked, “Who’s going to put the bell on him?” There were, predictably, no volunteers.

That story’s usually ascribed to Aesop, though there’s no evidence of that. It was alluded to, humorously, in 1482, at a meeting of Scottish nobles desirous of doing away with James III’s “favourite,” Robert Cochrane. Lord Gray observed, ‘Tis well said, but wha daur bell the cat? Archibald, Earl of Angus, did the deadly deed, and was ever after called Archie Bell-the-Cat.

So Mitt is hors de combat, somehow silenced and, as they say in Argentina, disappeared. It appears that the President’s party is devoid of anyone else sufficiently principled to offer even a hint of remonstrance to his excesses. The Earl of Angus was a bit bloody – he allegedly hanged Cochrane from Lauder Bridge in 1483 – but in my reveries I often hear the cry of Mudville’s manager in Clarence McDonald’s poem “Casey Twenty Years Later”: “Is there within the grandstand here” – his voice rang loud and clear – “A man who has the sporting blood to be a volunteer?” It doesn’t make much difference who answers the call; anything has got to be better than this impotent and blunted outrage.