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MEA CULPA |
GIVE THE GOP A LANDSLIDE VICTORY |
THE ELEPHANT, THE ROOM, AND THE
PEOPLE
PART II |
THE ELEPHANT, THE ROOM, AND THE PEOPLE
PART I |
MONEY GRUBBING FEMALES, UNITE! |
WE AREN’T ELECTING A HOMECOMING QUEEN |
DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN |
THE TOOTSIE ISSUE |
Toddlers 4 President! |
CRYING BABIES AND OTHER PRESSING
MATTERS OF STATE |
Democratic Convention 2016: How It
Might Have Been |
I’D LIKE TO FEEL THE BERN,
ONLY…
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AN UNFORTUNATE REMEMBRANCE
OF THINGS PAST
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On Matters of the Lie, the
War, and Judgment |
EGO, POLITICS, AND THE
PRESIDENCY |
On Getting What We Deserve |
HOW JANUARY 2017 WILL LOOK |
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HOW JANUARY 2017 WILL LOOK
In the midst of this anxiety-producing Presidential primary season,
it appears that two of the Presidential candidates have actually
lost the plot. The plot is not promises. Nor is it reckless
declarations. And it is not a recitation of visions a la George
Bernard Shaw’s “But I see things as they never were” line. The plot
is the legislative process. The plot is creating the legislation
that will fulfill the promises being made and bring to life the
ideas being put forth.
If we’ve learned nothing else from the last eight years, we have
learned that the Presidency brings with it very little actual power.
The executive branch of the government—which, of course, is the
Presidency—neither makes laws nor effects change unless the
Legislative branch of the government wishes this to occur. If the
Legislative branch—the House of Representatives and the Senate—does
not wish this to happen, it doesn’t happen. Even if the President’s
own party manages to achieve a majority in the House and the Senate,
it is quite possible that nothing will happen as a result. For a
super majority must be attained, since only a super majority can
vote to stop a filibuster.
This being the case, it’s essential that the President, the
Vice-President, the Cabinet, and the staffs of all these people have
relationships that they can call upon because relationships equate
to compromises which ultimately lead to pieces of legislation
getting out of committees and onto the floor of the House and then
the Senate for votes.
We can see how all this has affected President Obama’s time in
office. Although he entered office with a majority in the House and
the Senate, he did not have a supermajority there, so things got
stalled. Additionally, the Republican representatives in the House
played bait and switch with their Democratic colleagues, offering
proposals for compromise on various bills, having those compromises
accepted, and then voting against the very measures on which they
offered to compromise when those measures came to the floor. Despite
his majorities in the Legislature, despite relationships built
there, despite having a Vice President who’d spent his entire career
in the Senate, pushing something through the Legislative branch of
the government became like pushing a bull through quick sand. And
the opposition inside the Legislative branch of the government was
very open about their intentions to thwart President Obama at every
turn. Majority Leader from 2010 onward, Senator Mitch McConnell—as
no doubt you know—said that his top priority was to make President
Obama a one-term President.
If we could examine what was going on inside the Senator’s mind when
he made that public declaration, we would probably arrive at the
conclusion of a misplaced priority on the part of a man who would
place his passions above the good of the country. But that’s not the
point. The point is power: who has it, who wields it best, and who
understands the importance of relationships in governing a country
of over 300 million people.
In Donald Trump we see someone who appears to believe that
declarations made from the Oval Office are written in concrete and
that his stated beliefs on any particular topic of national interest
are made ex cathedra. He announces that a wall will be built along
the border with Mexico, and so it shall be. He announces that the
Mexican government shall pay for the wall, and so it shall be. He
announces that there will be an indefinite moratorium on Muslims
entering the United States for any reason, and so it shall be. He
announces the deportation of eleven million illegal immigrants and
their US born children, and so it shall be. He announces an end to
trade agreements, and so it shall be. He announces that he will
route out ISIS and destroy them, and so it shall be. The passion of
his followers indicates that they too believe things will be as Mr.
Trump indicates they will be.
What Mr. Trump either fails to understand or does not wish to
consider is that nothing happens without the Legislative branch of
the government wanting it to happen or agreeing that it ought to
happen. What Mr. Trump fails to understand is that without the
friendship of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, his
smallest idea will not even see the light of legislative day. For
the Speaker of the House determines the agenda, not Mr. Trump. And
if the Speaker of the House decides that the President of the United
States needs to be stopped in his tracks, that is exactly what will
happen.
If we apply this same scenario to Senator Bernie Sanders, we can
also see—as Lady Macbeth put it—“the future in an instant.” The
Senator’s followers—as passionate as are Mr. Trump’s—have been
promised a great deal. Mr. Sanders has said there will be universal
government-paid health care, and so it shall be. Mr. Sanders has
said state colleges and universities will be free, and so it shall
be. Mr. Sanders has said that Wall Street will be brought under
strict supervision by the government, and so it shall be. Mr.
Sanders has said that election reform will happen, and so it shall
be. Mr. Sanders has said that billionaires and millionaires will
“pay their fair share”, and so it shall be. Mr. Sanders has said
that inheritance taxes will increase dramatically, and so it shall
be. Mr. Sanders has said that the minimum wage will be increased to
$17/hour, and so it shall be.
To do these things, Mr. Sanders will fall back upon his
relationships in the Senate and the House and upon an organization
that will be born among his followers in order to elect—in two years
hence—like-minded Representatives and Senators from whom will be
chosen the Speaker of the House, the majority leader of the Senate,
and enough Congressmen and –women to form the supermajority needed
to stop filibusters. The only problems with this strategy are Mr.
Sanders’ current lack of support in either the House or the
Senate—which I suppose can be considered a minor issue if those
members of Congress who don’t support him are all replaced in
2018—and the startling amount of money that his sweeping changes
would cost.
But the point is this: Somewhere along the line, these two
Presidential contenders have come to believe that the power of the
Presidency supersedes the power of the Legislature. But it does not,
and the reason for this is that the Founding Fathers were determined
to keep the power of the President in check so that tyranny could be
avoided. Hence they established what we all learned in Civics class
is called a system of Checks and Balances. They did not want a king,
they did not want a tyrant, and they did not want a
dictator—benevolent or otherwise. They knew that what they were
establishing in the Constitution comprised any number of risks
because at the end of the day, their government was going to depend
upon the will of the people as well as on the ability of the people
to distinguish between truth and lies, facts and fictions, dreams
and reality, ignorance and knowledge.
They had reservations. They were drawing up their constitution in a
period of time when very few people were thoroughly educated.
Because of this, they designed their system for electing a President
to have a form of checks and balances also. These consisted of
delegates whose responsibility would be to select the best candidate
to run as their party’s nominee for President. And just to be
absolutely certain that no charlatan managed to pull the wool over
the eyes of voters and delegates alike, they included a group of
people they called the Electoral College, who would essentially put
their stamp of approval on the election a few months after it
occurred. And these people became the most powerful of all for they
could, if they felt it essential, overturn the will of the voters,
nullify the election, and give the Presidency to someone else, such
as the other candidate. In my lifetime that has never happened
although in 2000 the will of the people was expressed through the
election of Al Gore to the Presidency while the electoral
college—with electors coming from every state—gave the election upon
the orders of the Supreme Court to George W. Bush. A simplistic way
of putting it, I know. But essentially that is what happened when
the Supreme Court decided that the entire issue of the Florida
Presidential election in 2000 was going to be laid to rest not by a
public counting of the votes but by their decree. The Founding
Fathers were no doubt spinning in their graves at that point, but
Vice President Gore put the country before his personal ambition and
accepted the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Putting the country first is, I believe, now falling by the wayside
in the candidacy of Donald Trump as well as in the candidacy of
Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump sees in the Presidency an opportunity
to fill, finally, the vast emptiness inside of him that has caused
him to seek attention most of his life. More than any other
Presidential candidate in my memory, he wears his narcissism on his
sleeve. We have seen it in his constant reference to what the polls
say about him, in his ceaseless phoning into talk radio shows and
television talk shows to express himself, in his inability to
restrain himself from using Twitter as a means of communication and
denigration. In the deepest part of himself where he fears to go, he
believes that the Presidency will make him whole. The fact that he
despises himself at heart can be seen in his inability to let the
smallest slight go unaddressed. Bullies like Donald Trump are
bullies because they are afraid. They are aggressors because they
believe the only way to keep themselves safe is to strike first or
to strike at once when something upsets them. Because they lack the
self-awareness to know why they do what they do, they continue to do
it. Thus all along Donald Trump has shown what kind of President he
would be. On the national stage he’s shown his damaged psyche and
he’s been richly rewarded for doing so. On the international stage,
he will do the same. I believe, however, that the outcome will be
vastly different.
Putting the country first is, in my opinion, also falling by the
wayside in the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. Whereas at the beginning
he was about making critical changes in the national life of the
United States in order to lift people up, now he is about “what the
polls say”; about complaining about the very primary system that put
him where he is today; about trashing the Democratic party; about
attacking the chairman of the Democratic party and announcing his
intention to replace her when and if he is elected; about
denigrating his opponent. A candidacy that began with lofty goals, a
commitment to transparency, and an interest in countering societal
ills has degenerated into threats of chaos at the convention,
anonymous and menacing phone calls made to state democratic chairmen
and –women, demands for alterations in rules that were put in place
at the beginning of the primary process, and oblique predictions of
what will happen should he not get what he wants in Philadelphia.
So in an odd way, we have come to essentially the same place in both
parties although we have taken different routes to get there. We
have two individuals running for President who are doing so out of
self-interest and ego instead of out of patriotism. In order to have
his way, Donald Trump lied, insulted opponents, engaged in gutter
politics of a kind we have never before seen (witness, please, his
not-quite-veiled suggestion that Senator Ted Cruz’s father was
involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy), used
the news media as a means of free advertising, and celebrated and
exploited the xenophobia, racism, ignorance, and base hatreds of his
supporters. In order to have his way, Bernie Sanders spent months
raging about a speech that his opponent made and for which she was
paid, repeated ad nauseum his plans for the future without a single
allusion to how his plans were going to be achieved, banged on about
“what the polls say” about Bernie Sanders (referring to himself in
the 3rd person as if the royal “we” was just around the corner),
boasted about who was sending him money versus who was sending his
opponent money, made a Senatorial vote on the war in Iraq the
cornerstone of why he should be President, and did nothing to
discourage his supporters from disrupting rallies and ultimately
disrupting an entire convention. In both of these men, we see the
manner in which ego defeats other. Ego demands the acknowledgement
and legitimacy each man believes the Presidency will give him. Ego
demands personal needs be fulfilled before the needs of the other.
In this case, the other is the American people.
Donald Trump is a fait accompli for the Republican party. What could
have been a disaster—the GOP convention—will now be…whatever Donald
Trump wants it to be. Meantime, on the other side, Bernie Sanders
has the opportunity to do what Hillary Clinton did in 2008. Do you
remember? After a long and bitter campaign that went on till the
bitter end—just like this one—Hillary Clinton walked onto the
convention floor, joined the New York delegation, and made a motion
that Senator Barack Obama be declared the Democratic nominee through
a unanimous vote. In doing that, Hillary Clinton put the American
people—the nation—above her ego. Which is, actually, what a patriot
does.
If something similar to that doesn’t occur when the Democrats meet
at their convention this summer, if whoever has insufficient
delegates for the nomination on the day the first vote is taken does
not walk onto the floor in support of the opponent, you can welcome
Donald Trump next January into the Oval Office, a President for the
digital age: ignorant, ill-informed, politically uneducated, and
happy to be so.
Candidates always show us who they are ultimately. When we vote for
them, we get the government that we deserve.
- Elizabeth George
Whidbey Island
Washington State
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