There was a time, children, when a presidential election involved a choice between serious people who offered plans, policy proposals, and philosophies.
Alvin Lee was a rock-and-roll singer, guitarist, and songwriter of some note. Anyone who has seen the “Woodstock” movie surely remembers him and his band, Ten Years After, performing “I’m Going Home.” It didn’t impart the sense that Lee was high in the intellectual hit parade. But he was at least a talented predictor of future events, as I was reminded this week.
This will be a weird election, but not in the sense of uniqueness. If anything, 2024 is a race to find out who can best ignore recent history and doom the rest of us to repeat the weirdest aspects of it.
“America needs a full-time president, and a full-time Congress,” Nixon said. He also admitted errors in the events that led to his decision. “If some of my judgments were wrong — and some were wrong — they were made in what I believed at the time to be in the best interests of the nation.” The need for a full-time president no longer seems to exist, and the less time Congress spends on the job, as a general rule, the better.
For a short while a couple of days ago it seemed that it might — just might — be possible for a person of conscience to vote for Donald Trump. But then . . .
The campaign to re-elect Bugout Joe Biden may, upon retrospection, conclude that it was a false economy to recruit as Biden’s makeup technician for last week’s debate a student from a mortuary college.
The Zippy Crew hits the political pavement with an episode that covers Supreme Court decisions on gun control; American and European election seasons, including the upcoming debate between Presidents Biden and Trump; interesting facts about mosquitos and a look at solid teaching as discussed by the Apostle Paul in his second letter to Timothy.
I could have written this column, regardless of the outcome. Half the country has put its hopes in an all too human “savior.” Half the country has put its hopes on the defeat of that man. Today marks either a celebration or a catastrophe if one’s hopes rest on the state of President Trump. That tells more of our false hopes than anything else.
Those of us who have watched what currently passes for news know in absurd detail all we could ever hope to know about the trial of a former president for the lone financial offense of which he is arguably not guilty. What we don’t know about, because it has received practically no coverage, is 7 million cases of apparent homicide. Could be murder, could be manslaughter. We don’t know, and our media are not interested in finding out.
In 1974 my friend and mentor Sylvia Porter, the financial columnist, was summoned to Washington by the president, Gerald Ford. She had been asked to head a government effort to reduce inflation, which as a result of the 1973 Arab oil crisis had risen to 12.3 percent. When she got there, she was dismayed. The program consisted of red campaign buttons bearing the message “WIN.” Ford said the letters stood for “Whip Inflation Now.”