HOW DO I LOVE THEE?

Remember how special Valentine’s Day was back in third grade. 

The night before, I’d sit at our kitchen table with scissors and Elmer’s glue, pasting white lacy doilies on heart-shaped red construction paper, and writing, “Be mine” with an Eversharp ballpoint pen.  I usually had to make 22 cards because everyone in my class got one — that was the teacher’s rule. 

Maybe it’s time to reinstitute that rule.  

Especially in Washington, D.C. where the Democrats are PO’ed at the Republicans, the White House is apoplectic about the latest Quinnipiac poll, Chuck Schumer has yanked Mitch McConnell off speed-dial, everyone is carping about the contentious cabinet selection hearings, immigrants are packing their suitcases, nobody respects anybody, especially poor old beleaguered Sean Spicer. 

OMG, it’s time to send in the Marines. Or maybe it’s just time for a little love.

Sweetheart “conversation candies” are as traditional a Valentine’s Day offering as a dozen red roses, a box of Whitman’s Samplers or a hand-made paper card. Manufactured by the Necco Company for over 150 years, nearly eight billion are sold in the six weeks around February 14. 

Nowadays some of pithy messages are totally 21st Century, like “Text me” or “Tweets to my Sweet.” But it’s the old-fashioned messages that I believe might save our nation. And my sanity.

Just suppose next Tuesday a pink Sweetheart candy went from Paul Ryan to Nancy Pelosi …Judge Robart to President Trump… Hillary to Bernie … Kellyanne to the CEO of Nordstrom’s, with one simple message:

Maybe we can convince the Tweet King to write something other than “The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill” or “SAD!”  How refreshing to read a tweet from Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump that read:

The past three weeks have been a nonstop cacophony about Steve Bannon’s unprecedented placement on the National Security Council, confrontational phone calls to foreign heads of state, nitpicking over Melania’s decision to bivouac at Trump Tower, and the qualifications (or not) of Betsy DeVos.

TV anchors blather on about hints of a Russian dossier!  And rumors about General Michael Flynn’s private tete-a-tete with Putin! They tsk-tsk over Senate Minority Leader Schumer’s NO vote against Senator Majority Leader McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, for Secretary of Transportation.  

To quote Rodney King, Can’t we all get along?  What in God’s name do we look like to the rest of the civilized world?

I get acid reflux watching the evening news. I’m exhausted by the snarky sniping. My iPhone beeps constantly with eblasts from USAToday touting yet another “developing situation.” 

Okay, maybe Sweetheart candies can’t alleviate gridlock, ease the tension or turn the world nice again. Maybe they’re a silly idea. After all, they’re sort of childish.  But that’s who we are dealing with in Washington, D.C.:  unruly children who want things “their way or the highway.” 

I believe these little hearts are just the sweetener Washington needs.