By Edwin Cooney
I've always enjoyed politics, although the older I get, the more temperamental politics becomes, and the more I experience it as an observer, the more cynical it all seems.
First, a few truisms! Politics has always been just plain nasty. Like your children, politicians almost invariably have tried to get away with just about everything imaginable. Politics is invariably divisive as supporters of one candidate threaten not to support the winning candidate in the general election as a matter of principle. It's never politics. Not even ideologues who insist that they are above politics are honest enough to acknowledge their pettiness. (An example of that was Ralph Nader's Green Party candidacy in Florida which cost Al Gore the White House in 2000. I'm told that Mr. Nader, who made a living telling his truth about GM and other corporations, denies his culpability in the 2000 Democratic disaster.)
Vote-getting and vote-denying schemes are an American tradition. The slogan "vote early and vote often" was a way of life in that area of the country known today as the “honest Midwest.” Back in the “gilded age,” just after the Civil War, both parties, even Mr. Lincoln's Republicans, began practices that were eventually picked up by New Deal Democrats in the Twentieth Century. The states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, each bordering the Ohio River at their most southern point, used that vital waterway as an avenue on which to manipulate votes. Riverboats regularly traveled up and down the Ohio carrying conscientious and dedicated voters to riverfront polling places. You could vote early in the morning in Ohio, make some strategic stops in Indiana, vote in Illinois, and have time to vote your way back to your Ohio home. Senator Benjamin Harrison, who won the electoral vote in 1888 over President Grover Cleveland while losing the popular vote, once while president-elect, happily suggested to Matthew Quay, one of his campaign managers, that surely the Lord had granted him the election. However, Quay observed to a crony afterward, "he wouldn't have said that if he knew how many good men came that close to serving in the penitentiary on his political behalf last election day!"
Here's a final truism: the rich will always have an advantage in politics. You can't expect the rich to leave their money and prejudices at home, any more than you can expect the poor to try and vote in great numbers on election day — even if historically they've occasionally sought to register their dead!
This presidential election year seems especially loaded with scoundrels of all sorts. First, but hardly foremost, there's that socialist scoundrel from Vermont via Brooklyn, Bernie Sanders, who is a Democrat by caucus but a Socialist by name. Then, there's that Indian squaw ("Pocahontas") scoundrel via Oklahoma, Massachusetts and the United States Senate, Elizabeth Warren. Next there's Papa Joe Biden, whose biggest flaw was not controlling his adult son from joining a foreign country's energy corporation while Biden senior served as Vice President of the United States. And everyone knows, of course, how mean busy little Amy Klobuchar is to her staff — imagine how mean she must subsequently be to her dog who can't tell on her, although I'll just bet you that President Trump understands dog language and will soon tweet what Amy's dog has said about her to the whole nation! Then there's Mayor Pete Buttigieg who's so wet behind the ears that he thinks the presidency is a natural one step up from being Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, an office he may have handled well, but hardly flawlessly. As typical of the time, we have, not one or even two billionaires running for president, but three: Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, and…one other guy who we would laugh ourselves silly at if only he weren't the incumbent president, Donald John Trump! As for the other two billionaires, many fear that their money and ambition is being spent to satisfy their egos more than for "we, the people." As for the candidates who have fallen by the wayside, the truth may well be (even though they would never admit it) that they are the lucky ones!
I don't like to write this, let alone think it, but I'm almost sure that Michael Bloomberg will be the Democratic candidate. He and President Trump will ultimately square off for the big prize. Even sadder, I'm slowly, but very reluctantly, coming to the conclusion that we are becoming an oligarchy. For years, conservatives have insisted that this country has been on a steady deadly drift to the left since Franklin Roosevelt who became the "root of all evil.” However, in the wake of the 2010 United Citizens triumph in the Supreme Court, it appears to me that my friend Tim and his lovely lady Deb (perhaps the only liberals in all of Alabama) are right about the oncoming of American fascism. Fascism occurs when government and business unite to control the socio/economic structure of a country for their mutual benefit. Fascists, like Communists, Nazis and theocracies, are invariably one-party states. Someone recently observed that if a nation has only one party, it really is a no-party state. Hopefully, we haven't arrived at fascism, nazism or a theocracy yet, but Tim is looking more like a keen political prognosticator and that’s very, very scary!
As I wrote at the outset of this musing, I've always enjoyed politics with all its nastiness, inconsistencies, and even broken promises. Lately, however, politics has become downright squalid. Part of this has to do with the way politics has become integrated with religion. Religious leaders invariably insist that politicians must be not only moral, but moral according to their exacting religious standards.
We wouldn't be either free or human if we didn't expect our leaders to respond to our needs, but perhaps there's a requirement we need to insist on before we decide if a candidate is qualified to hold any public office, let alone the presidency.
Consider this question: How would either you or I be the loser if we were to ask every potential officeholder to demonstrate how he or she plans to work with members of the loyal opposition before we grant them our vote?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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