I can't help thinking that that's the way Theresa May feels about the current General Election. It was supposed to be a walk in the park for the PM - a 'coronation' as the Lib Dems put it. Yet, it's good if she's starting to feel under a bit of pressure. Frankly, it serves her right.
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Let's not kid ourselves, this election was called because she felt she could destroy the Labour party and return to the Commons with a massive majority. It's a vanity election to feed her ego and give her her own 'mandate' - while also helping her to dilute the influence of some critical back benchers and avoid going to the public for the next election too soon after the Brexit negotiations.
None of those reasons are remotely to do with 'democracy' or us, the mere voters. It's all about May. Indeed, it's estimated that the 2010 election cost £113 million to run - if it's anything like that this time then that's a lot of money to feed your ego. And people thought her shoes and trousers were expensive.
The reasons she gave for calling a snap election were laughable. She said she made the decision because the opposition had said they were going to oppose her (shock, horror) and that although the nation was united in favour of Brexit, the Commons wasn't. The latter point ignores the fact that the Commons voted in favour of her when it came to Brexit, without managing to land a single amendment to dent her progress. MPs, I'd argue, looked much more united on the subject than voters. We have to hope that she doesn't really believe that the opposition should be silenced - or the 'saboteurs crushed' as the Mail put it.
Luckily, I don't think she does believe that. In fact, I'm struggling to see what she does believe in, apart from herself. I've read a few articles in the likes of New Statesman in which writers have started to try to understand 'Mayism' and what makes the PM tick. While they've been well-written - and put forward a case for a politician who is more interventionist and in favour of the power of the state than her predecessors - I can't help thinking that hers is an empty agenda. She spouts robotic banalities such as 'Brexit means Brexit', 'strong and stable leadership' and 'coalition of chaos' that demean public debate offering nothing of substance. I think she went into the election thinking she could get away with doing as little as possible - letting Labour 'beat itself'.
Indeed, at the start of the campaign May toured remote village halls, turned up at factories after the real workers had gone home and denied local newspaper reporters the chance to ask proper questions as she executed her 'safety first' strategy which avoided 'real people' at all costs. That might be fine as a tactic, but we should be demanding much more. Theresa May called this election and it's only right that she should tell us more about what she'd do with the power she craves. Bizarre non-priorities such as fox hunting and grammar schools have been thrown out by way of distraction.
The Prime Minister also immediately dismissed all chance of a head-to-head debate with Jeremy Corbyn on TV. While I don't necessarily think a TV debate is the be all and end all, it is laughable that May wants to frame the election as a choice between her 'strong and stable leadership' and Jeremy Corbyn's 'coalition of chaos' while not having the guts to show us why she's stronger and more stable than him. Again, we deserve more. If you want to make this a presidential run-off with your face on every poster and leaflet, at least have the decency to conduct a campaign that reflects this.
Speaking of character, if Theresa May wants to make this election about the personalities of the prospective leaders then it's time to scrutinise her own record. She was the Home Secretary in charge when police numbers were cut back, when the Government failed to meet its own immigration targets and presided over the pitiful 'go home' vans that shamed us all. She campaigned for Remain - half-heartedly and maybe out of loyalty to David Cameron but still in favour of Remain - and now wants a full-on hard Brexit. She repeatedly said she would not have a snap election and here we are, heading to the polls on June 8. The Government she led seemed to achieve very little bar upsetting the people we need to negotiate with for the next two years and, indeed, her administration's only Budget ended in disaster, with a huge U-turn on a tax rise for the self-employed. Clearly, being Prime Minister or Home Secretary isn't easy - but we shouldn't allow May to go around boring us to death with a 'strong and stable' mantra that deserves to be contested.
That's before we even come to the manifesto and the row over the 'dementia tax'. I can't help thinking that she became a victim of the hysteria she's otherwise thrived on over this issue. The policy itself seemed a flawed version of other schemes floated by politicians who have desperately tried to solve the complex issue of the funding of care for an ageing population. Maybe it was flawed because May and her team were so complacent about the election result? Regardless, it quickly drew criticism from opponents (or should that be saboteurs?) such as the Mail on Sunday. The Tories, however, undermined their own wish to avoid this being framed as the 'dementia tax' by buying up ad space on Google to capture searches for 'dementia tax' and legitimising its use in the debate over this issue. The mud stuck and May and co managed the unusual feat of performing a massive U-turn on a manifesto policy before the election had even taken place. It was a poor policy that needed to have been better thought out but, at the first sign of trouble, she panicked. I imagine the EU negotiators must be rubbing their hands with glee at such a mess.
What of Brexit? The biggest issue of our times and the matter that was so serious that it, apparently, caused the election in the first place? Very little of substance has been said about this. Theresa May wants permission to do whatever she wants with the negotiations. She is basically asking for a blank cheque from the electorate (maybe literally given the possible size of the divorce bill). It'd be nice to know why some options have already been ruled out. Why couldn't we try to stay in the Single Market? Will we end up like Norway, opting 'out' over immigration as they do with fishing? We seem to have spent longer talking about threatening to walk out of the negotiations than anything else so far - a prospect that would surely be economically devastating. A badly-handled Brexit has the potential to render anyone's manifesto pledges impossible and wreck the public finances. I have a horrible feeling that David Davis, Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and Theresa May just aren't up to the task, frankly.
Now it seems as though Theresa May's campaign has returned to its back-up plan. The 'bore them to tears' stuff allowed Labour to present some policies and grab the agenda and the manifesto back-fired massively. With that in mind, it's now going to be a case of attacking Jeremy Corbyn as loudly as possible. Again, this might be effective but it's a pretty pathetic sight for a Prime Minister who started the race under zero pressure. It's especially embarrassing when some of the attacks fall flat. If Boris Johnson - the Foreign Secretary - has said similar things on terrorism to Jeremy Corbyn then it's harder to portray the Labour leader as some sort of madman. Mind you, it was surely always clear that putting Boris in a position such as that would back fire - she really ought to have known better.
It's almost certain that Theresa May will still win this election. Even the most favourable polls for Labour put her five or six points ahead. Yet, she's going to win having had an abysmal campaign, with a discredited manifesto and maybe even with an eventual majority that isn't as thumping as she'd hoped for. Regardless of what you think of the other leaders - and they undoubtedly have their flaws but they didn't call this election after all - I really don't feel she's shown herself up to the task ahead. Her interview with Andrew Neill on the BBC last week only served to cement that view.
I can't help but feel gloomy for our prospects under her continued leadership. We just have to hope that the campaign might teach her a well-deserved lesson or two before she goes straight into the most important talks a Prime Minister has conducted for decades. We should also hope that her ego gets a dent from this election proving a little harder than she expected although I'm not holding my breath.
