Nonetheless, overkill on minutiae notwithstanding, it is an interesting book. At this point the author has gotten Kennedy et al. up to early in 1962 and the political calculations involved in trying to ensure the right type of Democrats end up elected to the House and Senate. Kennedy wants more allies in Congress so he can get the legislation he wants passed actually passed. Democrats did enjoy a majority in both houses at the time, but that didn't meant they automatically approved everything the President wanted. A number of things Kennedy pushed for (Medicare, stronger civil rights legislation) did not in fact get passed until after his death.
But that's not what I was thinking about this morning. Nope, what was on my mind was the current slowly shrinking crop of potential presidential candidates. I have no problem with the large pool of wannabes. I was pretty happy to see that most of them are not old enough to be on Medicare and actually enjoy a strong chance of staying healthy through a presidential term and not drifting into senile dementia like the Current Occupant of the White House. It does annoy the bejesus out of me that the media want to stay focused on the frelling geezers -- shouldn't Bernie's cardiac event and emergency stent insertion be a huge red flag that it's not a good idea to back candidates who are so old they no longer buy green bananas? Let's face it. The top three candidates in terms of media hype are all ancient.
Okay, so Warren isn't quite as ancient as Bernie and Biden, but she's also Not Young. She's not even middle-aged. She's elderly. People hesitate to have grandparents who are in their late '60s babysit toddlers. Why would anyone want another geezer (geezette?) in the White House?
I was also thinking about how damn early this whole process started. The Human Yam had barely finished bitching about the vote count being wrong and that the crowd at his inauguration was so bigly there'd never been another that came close to being so bigly before potential nominees were out in Iowa kissing up to hog farmers and ethanol producers. I swear the jockeying for position for running in 2020 began before they'd even finished counting the votes in 2016. And then every other day (or so it seemed) for the past 2 years we've had another presidential wannabe crawling out from under obscure rocks around the country.
I have no complaints about the way the Democratic National Committee decided to structure the winnowing of the gazillion candidates in their attempt to figure out who the actual strongest contenders are except for one thing: Why the hell did it all start so early?
By the time the actual election gets here. . . fuck, by the time the first primaries roll around. . . people are going to be so burnt out on hearing about the 2020 election that the only people going to the polls will be the True Believers, the fanatics, the fringes of both parties. The few sane Republicans running against Trump won't have a prayer, especially when they don't have a lot to recommend them to begin with. And the Democrats? I have a hunch the progressives who want Medicare for all are still going to be a lot more committed to voting than the ones who lean toward preserving the status quo (translation: Biden will be toast).
Which brings me back to JFK. He did some quiet exploratory stuff, mostly speaking engagements around the country, but dodged questions about presidential ambitions until the 1960 general election was less than a year away. Do you know when he formally announced his candidacy? The first week of January 1960, approximately ten months before the election. I repeat, ten months.
Other potential candidates were equally quiet, with the possible exception of Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson, despite having been kicked to the curb twice by voters, cherished fantasies of being the nominee a third time. In retrospect it seems hard to believe anyone seriously considered giving him another shot at it but apparently a lot of people thought he could beat the obvious Republican choice, Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon. I find myself thinking that would make an interesting alternate history novel. What if Stevenson had been the nominee? What if Nixon had won in 1960? When I have thoughts like that, I kind of wish I was either more creative or more ambitious -- the possibilities are intriguing.
But, as usual, I digress. Bottom line is campaigning for elections in this country now starts way too soon. We need to reform the whole system. Eliminate the electoral college, get rid of corrupt campaign financing, and shorten the lead time. If politicians want to network and maneuver for position behind the scenes, fine, but don't make the rest of us listen to them until the election is a whole lot closer than it is now. Is there some way to return to the infamous smoke-filled rooms while most of us get to live in blissful ignorance until the countdown to the election is measured in weeks instead of years?
No comments:
Post a Comment
My space, my rules: play nice and keep it on topic.