Category Archives: elections

Dr. Crane appreciates our imperfections  

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(For the next ninety days or so we will be subjected to hour after hour—in 30-second bites—of attacks and counter-attacks on those seeking our support at the ballot box.  In fact, probably we’ve already had some of that in the primary campaigns. We know it will become intolerable noise until the November elections, though.  Dr. Frank Crane, however, suggests we might find something redeeming in our imperfections as he is—)

IN PRAISE OF FLAWS

The old priest’s pale face lit up with a curious one-sided smile. It was a find face, of a certain marble composure, as if he were a living carven stone rather than flesh and blood; yet there was a glint of humor in his eye, and of wisdom, for the two are akin, though one be the gift of God and the other the harvest of experience.

He spoke to her, a disheveled mass of self-pity and helpless remorse, one of the kind that picks at sin like a child at a hangnail, and said,

“Do not lacerate yourself, lady. Sack-cloth and ashes have virtue when applied to the body, according to tradition, but I know of no warrant for applying irritants to the soul. Your fault is the fault, it is true, and for sin, even the smallest, there is no excuse, but I question if you are the worse for it.

“Far be it from me to say a word that might encourage one to evil, condone heresy in the slightest degree, or justify imperfection. But the smooth polish of angelic sanctity is not for mortals. To be human is not the unpardonable sin.

“So, while I may not say a word for wrongdoing, yet I may speak in praise of flaws. For it is not by their strength but by their weakness that human creatures get their hold on one another.

“No one has a mightier grasp of love than a baby, that holds its mother in a grip of steel and binds strong men to its service; and the secret of this strange influence is but the child’s sheer helplessness….

“And doubtless it is because we are so blind and helpless, stumble and grope so pitifully, and are altogether so marred with ignorance that the divine hand is reached out to help us.  Thus the Almighty is the servant of the feeble, as it is written, He is servant of all, for it is ever the business of the strong to serve the weak.

“It is not the classic beauty in a face that moves us. Hearts hang upon the little pegs of imperfection. If we were perfect no one would love us; we might be admired but not loved. Let us then be thankful for our tentacular blemishes. They are like the little tendrils of climbing vines; by them we cling and rise.

You recall what the cardinal said, in Ariadne in Mantua.* ‘There is, I notice, even in yoru speaking voice,’ he said to the singer Diego, ‘a certain quality such as folk say melts men’s hearts; a trifle hoarseness, a something of a break, which mars it as mere sound but gives it more power than that of sound.’

“Hate not yourself, dear lady, because you are mortal; but rather study to make use of your limitations, that you may weave all your little failings into a strong web of success. Souls can go forward even by falling. Walking has been called a succession of forward fallings. And more people slip and blunder into happiness than capture happiness by shrewdness.”

Whereupon the lady went her way, a little heartened and much puzzled, while the good priest murmured to himself: “Heaven forgive me if I have said anything she could understand.”

(*Ariadne inMantua, a Romance in Five Acts, was written in 1903 by prolific supernatural fiction British author Violet Paget 1856-1935), who wrote under the pen name of Vernon Lee. Thomas B. Mosher wrote in a foreword to the book:  “As for her vanished world of dear dead women and their lovers who are dust, we may indeed for a brief hour enter that enchanted atmosphere. Then a vapour arises as out of long lost lagoons, and, be it Venice or Mantua, we come to feel ‘how deep an abyss separates us—and how many faint and nameless ghosts crowd round the few enduring things bequeathed to us by the past.’” The work is available to read on the internet.)

Invasion

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Our president has decided cities with Democratic mayors are so hopelessly overridden by violent crime that the only solution is an invasion by federal forces who presumably will get rid of the crime problem.

Your observer isn’t sure criminals in those cities should start “shaking in their boots” because of his rhetoric, but he sure scares the hell out of me.

His insertion of 114 federal law enforcement agents into Portland a couple of weeks ago ostensibly to protect the federal courthouse from “anarchists” (a nice phrase borrowed from the late 19th and early 20th centuries) has shown to many of his critics that he is a man with a can.

Not a man with a PLAN.  A man with a can

—of gasoline.

The behavior of those agents, captured on cell phones and in stories of some of those hauled into vans and spirited away to lockups, does not indicate that this strategy is providing any significant increase in the protection of the general population, nor is it showing any concern for stopping violent crime—unless you consider all protestors to be in the same league with murderers, rapists, armed robbers, arsonists, and others of that ilk.

Based on reports we have read and seen, the presence of these forces has intensified the protests in Portland.

A few days ago Portland’s mayor was among those gassed by federal agents. Our president found that gleeful. “They knocked the hell out of him,” he declared.

How he wants to “help the cities” is something few of us could ever have imagined and few of us want to contemplate. “We’ll go into all of the cities, any of the cities. We’ll put in fifty-thousand, sixty-thousand people that really know what they’re doing. They’re strong. They’re tough. And we can solve these problems so fast,” he told a FOX interviewer last week, adding, “but as you know, we have to be invited in.”

He says it but he doesn’t believe it—the part about being invited in, that is.

So far he has sent or threatened to send agents to Kansas City and Portland, Chicago and Albuquerque.

Let’s do some invasion math—-because what he’s proposing isn’t assistance. It’s invasion.

Number of mayors asking for hundreds (and ultimately thousands perhaps) of agents to come in to fight violent crime: 0

Number of governors who have asked for such actions by the Trump administration: 0

Number of congressional delegations who have sought this “help” in their states: 0

One of the first surges of federal agents was the insertion of 225 of them into Kansas City to help catch and prosecute violent criminals. The administration says it is sending more.

Number of violent crime charges the administration claims have been filed in Kansas City since Operation Legend began: 200

Number of charges really filed by federal prosecutors: 1

Attorney General William Barr last week, speaking of Operation Legend, said, “Just to give you an idea of what’s possible, the FBI went in very strong into Kansas City and within two weeks we’ve had 200 arrests,”

That was news to the U. S. Attorney who told inquisitive reporters for The Kansas City Star that his office has filed ONE charge and it was against a guy with a drug conviction on his record who had a gun. Convicted felons cannot have guns under the law.

Last weekend, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said on FOX News Sunday he welcomed the federal agents in his town, but for a “pinpointed and targeted focus on solving murders.”  But he was frustrated by our president’s rhetoric about the George Floyd Protests and the Black Lives Matter movement because “that’s not the case in Kansas City.”

“What we don’t need is more fuel on the fire from federal agents to make, I think, an exciting political issue.”

He told NBC’s Chuck Todd our president’s talk about Black Lives Matter protests causing murders is “asinine” as well as “inaccurate and unfair” and does nothing to address the real issue—national gun trafficking that make guns readily available on cities’ streets.

There are many people, whether they are supporters of our president or supporters of someone else, who argue the cause of states’ rights. These actions should provide fertile ground for spirited arguments on both sides of whether the federal government has a right to invade cities at the whim of a president, a person who thinks he can order fifty or sixty thousand people “who really know what they’re doing” into a city for whatever purpose he might have—including looking good to his political base by creating “an exciting political issue.” Forget about any invitation.

States rights advocates, in our observations, generally seem to fall on the right side of the political spectrum.  But we haven’t heard or seen any of those folks questioning the administration’s uninvited invasion of cities as a violation of states rights. We might have missed it, but the issue deserves louder discussions than we have heard. There is no doubt that discussion will take place. Among judges.

The administration’s choice of locations for these invasions also is curious. The most recent FBI final non-preliminary data (whatever that means) that we’ve seen for cities with the highest violent crime rate lists none of these cities among the top 20 cities for violent crime. Kansas City is 23rd.

It is interesting that our president was not as concerned about mobilizing federal forces to fight a pandemic as he has been in fighting mostly-legal protests (destroying public buildings is hardly legal). You might recall that early in the pandemic, states were pleading with the administration to help them find the equipment needed to fight the virus, particularly the protective equipment needed to protect those on the front lines.  But the states were told to fend for themselves, that federal help was a “last resort,” at a time when many states were seeing the federal government in precisely that way and our president said he felt no responsibility for the spread of the virus.

The administration’s handling of the pandemic has undermined our president’s re-election hopes.  He hopes to regain that ground by his “tough on crime” approach.  A key question for the public to consider is whether his approach has been appropriate in either case.

He relied on the Tenth Amendment for his defense that fighting the virus was a state responsibility. States and cities see Tenth Amendment as their defense on the local issue of crime.  This crime-fighting strategy already is headed to the courts. It appears the pandemic defense is headed to the ballot box.

The polls indicate most potential voters consider his response (or non-response, depending on the way the question was answered) in the spring produced tragic results. We can only hope the crime fighting strategy of the summer does not also turn tragic before the courts define the bounds of presidential power exercised or suggested by the man with a can.

(For those who lean right who see this entry as an attack on them, we plan our next entry to question the left, with the rights of states at the center of that argument, too.)

Dr. Crane says we can’t all be friends

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(Dr. Frank Crane might have been thinking about the already-feverish antagonisms of the 2020 campaign year when he warned a centuryu ago that nobody can be liked by everybody, that all of us have—)

THE ENEMY

Whoever you are there’s somebody that doesn’t like you.

The one constant figure on life’s stage is the enemy. He’s always there, sitting grim and silent, or busy with hostility.

“Be thou as pure as ice, as chaste as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.”

Gentle maiden, as good as fair, with a heart warm and kind to all God’s creatures, anxious to spread happiness as May to spread flowers, it seems incredible, but there is someone to whom your presence is offense, and to whom your surcease would be pleasing!

In the chemistry of souls this repellency is most curious but undeniable. No human force ever comes into the world without the opposite. Every positive has its negative. In every love is a little spot of hate. Heaven and hell, in their deeper significance, touch every human heart.

Caesar had his Brutus, Socrates his Miletus, and Jesus his envious Pharisees.

When I read any book that pleases me, human Dickens or quiet Wordsworth, the exquisitely tooled word craft of Vernon Lee or the smashing liveliness of Conan Doyle, it often comes to me—somebody doesn’t like this.

Queer, isn’t it? Sinister and strange, but true. Little dove, the hawk soars stilly watching; little fly, the spider swings ready in his web; little doe, the cougar crouches behind the bush; little soul, among the gods walks one who looks darkly at you.

And the higher you climb, the brighter you write your name upon fame’s scroll, the louder your applause and the more signal your triumph, the surer there will be, somewhere muffled in the cheering crowd, the somber figure of some “Mordecai, sitting at the king’s gate.”

Is not America a beloved country? There are those who loathe it unreservedly. Is not President Wilson a fine figure among statesmen? There are many who would rejoice at his downfall, who watch eagerly to find his mistakes and herald them.

In a way the strength of the enemy is a reliable measure of one’s success. The more you amount to, the sharper the hisses. Many a man has been elected to Congress by his enemies, and many a writer has been hounded to fame.

The best way to meet the enemy is to let him see that you do not think it worthwhile to fight him. Nothing so enrages malice as to discover that you don’t mind. Nothing so disarms attack as for you to go about your business as usual. Such defense is the most exasperating vengeance.

When in doubt, say nothing. Your enemy can answer everything you can possibly say, can retaliate against everything that you can possibly do, except one thing. That is silence.

 

Us vs. Us

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A fearful old man sat down at my computer yesterday and began to type.

The son of Kansas Baptist/Methodist Republicans—Landon, anybody-but-Roosevelt, Dewey, Eisenhower, Nixon Republicans—earlier in the year fearful of a spreading plague but now fearful of something more dangerous.

Fearful that he might soon see an American Tiananmen Square, the violent and deadly pro-democracy protests that are remembered because of the image of one man blocking a military tank on its way to put down the demonstrations.

Fearful that a desperate effort to project and protect personal power without limits, unchallenged by timid participants from his own party intimidated by his presence and his loud loyalist legion will leave a legacy of distrust in a system of government created long ago by men whose ideals ultimately far overshadowed their ideology.

Fearful of a force that sees a crisis as a political opportunity rather than as a cause demanding responsibility and as an opportunity for creating a united spirit to reach an inclusive goal.

Fearful of a climate being expanded that encourages citizens to feel they are victims of government rather than responsible participants in it.

The old man at the keyboard remembers other bad times and other missed opportunities to heal the national spirit, other days of burnings and of lootings, other days when the peaceful expression of grief and of hope growing from it was overshadowed by uncaring opportunistic violence that diverted actions and intentions to create a better community and a better nation to overshadowing relief that the burnings and lootings finally were over.

The old man, having seen many things in a long life, is fearful, fearful that the democratic republic that he and his Kansas Republican parents have loved and believed in has been pushed to the edge of its existence by repeated missed opportunities and now by leadership that cares about plagues and public tragedy and disruption only to the degree that it can turn them to perceived personal advantage.

The old man is fearful when those within a leader’s orbit lack the bravery to advocate compassion that transcends perpetuating personal political power and the will to work for reason in unreasonable times. He worries at the loss of common integrity and the lack of diverse voices demanding it from those in the most powerful positions, and the refusal of those in those positions to display it.

His mind is often drawn to a poem called “Talk” by Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko from many years ago that ends:

How sharply our children will be ashamed

Taking at last their vengeance for these horrors

Remembering how in so strange a time

common integrity could look like courage.

Integrity. Courage. The old man seeks them from those reluctant or afraid to display them. And in times like these when integrity and courage are most needed, he is fearful.

Us vs. It—part IX, prayer and politics.

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Last Sunday was Ascension Sunday in our faith tradition. Our minister remarked that he had seen a joke circulating on Facebook that when Jesus ascended into Heaven, he became the first person to work from home.

President Trump, just before the holiday weekend, ordered churches to open “right now” for face-to-face worship. As he has done in the past, he claimed exclusive power to override local and state orders for worship-in-place limits. The president who has proclaimed that it’s up to states and their governors to fight the Coronavirus, with his administration only as a backup, seemed to think on the issue of opening churches that governors and states (and mayors and cities) have no business standing in his way when it comes to letting congregations, uh, congregate.

As is often the case with this president, he was claiming a power he does not have and the motive behind a statement, a bluster, a tweet, a fabrication, a rant—whatever—is a matter of what benefits him.

It isn’t all that hard to see who President Trump really tried to please with his sudden “order.” Politico reported his bolt-from-the-blue announcement Friday was the result of “a sudden shift in support…among religious conservatives is triggering alarm bells inside his reelection campaign.” A couple of reputable religious polling organizations show a “staggering decline in the president’s favorability among white evangelicals and white Catholics.” Both groups strongly supported Trump in 2016. The Public Religion Research Institute last month showed double-digit drops in favorability among mainline Protestants (down 18%), white Catholics (down 12%) and white evangelicals (down 11%).

Once again, it appears the president responded to his advisors who said, “You’ve got to do something!”

The PRRI cited above is run by Dr. Robert P. Jones, who has Baptist roots, a Master of Divinity degree from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar and who once was an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Missouri State University in Springfield. His 2016 book, The End of White Christian America is a thoughtful study of cultural changes underway in our country, the fears of some that are motivating some political considerations and actions, and an analysis of how the white Christian culture that has dominated the course of this nation can maintain significance in the face of ongoing and inevitable cultural change.

The President last Friday didn’t answer any questions that inevitably would have been asked about his ongoing claim that he has absolute power over such things as this.

One indisputable thing he did say in his Friday announcement is, “In America, we need more prayer, not less.” He’s correct, of course, although he might not like many of the prayers that are being offered. Plus, prayers don’t have to be said inside a religious building to be heard. This observer has heard prayers on street corners. In fact, he and his wife were once stopped on a street in Philadelphia—near the cemetery where Benjamin Franklin is buried—but a great big fella who grabbed my right hand and her left and offered up a mighty prayer for our well-being. Scared the living bejeezus out of us for a second or two. But on reflection, it was kind of nice.

We know the President will be deeply disappointed and maybe angry that our church is ignoring his pronouncement. We don’t plan to gather in our sanctuary at First Christian in Jefferson City until June 7. We hope he doesn’t become upset that Governor Parson did not force us to gather there last Sunday.

It often has been observed that a church is not a building. When a pastor says, “Good morning, church,” the pastor is not talking to a structure but to a flock.

Someone, we tuned in too late to hear who it was on the radio Sunday morning, suggested the President probably hasn’t read the Bible very much, particularly the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus suggests (as we in these times might interpret it) that it is not necessary to gather in groups under a roof to pray. In fact, it seemed to suggest just the opposite:

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven…And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you..

Baptist minister Rod Kennedy, who is doing an interim ministry at the First Baptist Church in Ottawa, Kansas, responded to the President’s demand that churches open “right now” on his Facebook page:

President Trump,

On behalf of my Baptist congregation, I want to thank you for your concern for houses of worship. We respectfully decline your suggestion that we reopen. The Frist Amendment, religious freedom, separation of church and state,—all that constitutes our right to ignore you.

I’m not drinking bleach, taking suspected drugs, or buying your demagoguery. We will let you know when our church decides to reopen. After all, we are a free, independent Baptist congregation and government interference iirritates our Baptist gumption.

When churches do re-open we would be happy to see you in church every Sunday. It might help you find some divine wisdom.

If you want to help, wear a mask, stop being divisive, make sure voting will be easy in November, and stop mocking, threatening, and demeaning others. It’s not a religious practice.

Kennedy, who describes himself as a “Catholic Baptist,” retired after twelve years at the First Baptist Church of Dayton, Ohio. He has no trouble pointing out the differences he has with the more fundamentalist members of the diverse denomination. He posted a couple of longer additional messages to the President and the responses illustrate the wide differences among Baptists—and among those of other denominations who call themselves Christian. See https://baptistnews.com/article/self-described-catholic-baptist-leaves-ohio-church-embarks-on-writing-career/#.Xsrq8mhKiUk if you want to know more about him and if you’re a Facebooker, you can go to his page or if you want to hear what he sounds like in the pulpit, go to the First Baptist Church webpage in Ottawa, Kansas.

Last Sunday morning, we went to the presidential webpage to check on President Trump’s schedule for Sunday, May 24:

President Donald Trump has no public events on his schedule today and is expected to remain in the White House with the first family. With the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and current recovery efforts, the president is likely to meet with national leaders and public officials regarding the needs of the coming week.

Mmmmm-hmm. Churches are essential but not so essential that he would do what he urged millions of Americans, particularly his faithful followers (read that any way you would prefer) to do—go to church even “with the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and current recovery efforts.” Wonder why he didn’t tell Melania and Baron Sunday morning, “We’re going to church—right now!”  Instead he went out and he worshipped the putter and the driver.

Sometime when the man gets all worked up like this, we wish somebody would say, “Oh, go take a pill!” But—– hasn’t he already been doing that?

Us vs. It—part III, Re-opening Day

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This is the third or fourth version of this entry from your faithful observer as he has struggled to keep up with our President and his ping-pong positions on the pandemic.

We started with the anticipation that President Trump would be convening a task force to look at when he can proclaim the country re-opened for business. He called it the biggest decision of his life. Within seventy-two hours he had amplified his position, asserting that he and he alone could order the lifting of social distancing and other policies put in place by the nation’s governors.

Now, after several governors have suggested rather clearly that he didn’t know what he was talking about, he has decided he’s going to “authorize” each governor to reopen states as the governors see fit. This is a big CYA effort (or if you prefer a more elevated phrase, a face-saving effort) and governors are likely to maintain that they don’t need his “authorization” either.

The way things are going, this entry could be out of date before sundown. But we’re going ahead anyway.

The President is under a lot of pressure to get the economy moving again. Some of that pressure is coming from Wall Street, which is highly-important to him personally as well as politically.

The Washington Post reported a few days ago that the Trump Organization had laid off 1,500 people and closed seventeen of its twenty-four properties in various parts of the world because of the virus. Based on previous Trump financial disclosures, says the newspaper, the closed properties generate about $650,000 a day. The organization’s payments on leases and property taxes are coming due or are past-due.

Some of this is increasingly political. He needs a big economic turnaround before the Republican National Convention opens in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 27. He needs the virus to be gone and a major economic resurgence to talk about at the convention and in the weeks before the election. He can continue deflecting criticism of his handling of the epidemic to someone else—as he already has in pointing a finger at China, Congress, Democrats, the Obama Administration, governors, and the World Health Organization. But by late August, he’ll have a hard time generating enough other boogeymen to deflect enough blame away from an administration that had taken exclusive credit for the growing economy and now wants no criticism for its sharp decline.

While he now seems willing to let governors decide what is best for their states, we’ll be watching to see if this new attitude also includes better assistance to the states in the recovery. As we have heard, he has blamed governors for their lack of protective equipment for healthcare workers.

Actually, we were looking forward to a possible legal donnybrook between the governors and the President if he had maintained his position that he has the exclusive power to reopen state economies. We do wonder if his new position still includes part of his previous statement that if he disagrees with a governor’s actions or lack of them, “I would overrule a governor, and I have a right to do it.”

We all know what could happen if he tries to overrule a governor, don’t we? What will the President do if a governor refuses to be overruled? Will he withhold federal disaster aid? That won’t win many friends or votes. Will he sue the states or the governors? Will the states and their governors sue him?

Our Governor Parson, asked on Monday about the President’s remarks about exclusive powers, said the President “well-knows the authority of the states.”  He said he’s not worried.” We might have to go back to the early days of World War II to find a governor who suddenly has so many things on his plate.

The President still hopes something good for him can happen on May 1. He seems to be one of the few who thinks that date is realistic.

Here’s an outlook for Missouri is concerned:

Leaders of the Missouri legislature hope to re-convene the General Assembly on April 27. Governor Parson said yesterday that would be okay with him as long as they maintain social distancing—as they did last week when they passed the supplemental budget bill. Some projections underline the governor’s cautionary note.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which has been cited in several White House Coronavirus briefings, a few days ago lowered the anticipated death toll from the virus at 61,545, quite a drop from a possible 240,000 suggested earlier. It says social distancing is the key to the lower number. But while the 61,545 was the hard number we read about and heard about, the institute admitted it was only an estimate, somewhere between 26,487 and 155,311 in its modeling.

We checked the projection graphs a few hours before posting this entry. The institute has increased its projected death total to 68,841 with the 68,841st death coming on June 28. The hard number falls in a bracket of 30,188 and 175,961.

The forecast estimated that on May 1, the nation’s hospitals will need 49,891 beds, 10,937 in intensive care, and 8,953 invasive ventilators. It suggests 976 people will die that day.

Not a good day to reopen the country. We expect the modeling will changes from day to day as new statistics are fed into the system.

The IHME’s latest forecast is for Missouri’s peak day is April 29, just one day before May 1, two days after the legislature convenes. The good news is that no bed shortages or ICU space shortages are forecast. But we will need 313 ventilators. The institute forecasts that we’ll be averaging 50 deaths per day by then, part of an anticipated total of 1,712 with the 1,712th death coming on June 16. That’s the hard number forecast so far. The institute model says that’s within a range of 420 and 5,557.

Governor Parson has said more than once that he’s making decisions about re-starting the economy based on Missouri-specific data. He needs a lot more of it. Our testing numbers, although growing, are not impressive and Missouri as well as other states are going to have to have large improvements in testing to make a safe determination of when stay-at-home orders should be lifted and social distancing standards should be eased.

The President realizes that the opposition gains more ammunition each day the virus creates a new hot spot, each day that first responders are overwhelmed, every day that doctors and nurses are exposed to the virus because they lack the personal protective equipment they need. He knows, or should know, that declaring the company open is a great risk if the virus is still killing significant numbers of people each day.

Governors also must be aware that easing the protective steps they have ordered could backfire on them, many of them facing re-election this year. The autumn flu season will have started by the election in November. The autumn sports seasons will draw thousands of people to distances far less than six feet, elevating the danger of a new virus surge. The last thing the President or the governors need is a flare-up of COVID-19 ten days or fewer before the election.

A popular song during World War I proclaimed, “We won’t come back ‘till it’s over, over there.” The lyric can change to fit our times: “We won’t come back ‘till it’s over, over here,” with a new definition of “come back” and another new definition for “it.”

 

 

Worthless Tuesday

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Missouri was unworthy of playing presidential primary politics with the fourteen states and one territory that held primary elections yesterday. The big folks who run the national political parties have dismissed us from most important single day of the pre-convention process.

Missouri will have more delegates at the Democratic National Convention (78) than nine of the states in the primary. It will have more delegates at the Republican National Convention (54) than TEN of the Super Tuesday states.

But Missouri isn’t important is this process. The whole Super Tuesday thing leaves a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people. It is, of course, better than having fifty different primaries with fifty different stages full of debate contestants and who knows how many town hall forums before each election. But Super Tuesdays can take a lot of the wind out of political balloons by establishing reasonably clear front runners and start undermining what little interest there is in the national conventions four or five months before they’re held.

The aggravating thing, however, is that we have three times more Democratic delegates than Arkansas, and Maine, almost five times more than Vermont, almost a dozen more than Colorado, three more than Minnesota, fourteen more than Tennessee. We more than double the number of Republican delegates from Maine, triple the number from Vermont, have a dozen-plus more than Arkansas, thirteen more than Massachusetts, fifteen more than Minnesota, eleven more than Oklahoma and 34 more than Utah. We even top Virginia by a half-dozen.

AMERICAN SAMOA with its six Democratic delegates was part of Super Tuesday!

We remember—it must have been 2012—when Missouri was kept out of Super Tuesday. We watched the Missouri Senate, in a state of great urinary agitation, rail against the idea, especially after being told that if our Republicans didn’t stay out of Super Tuesday, our delegates to the convention might as well stay at home because they wouldn’t be seated.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has a great idea. The hell with it. Forget about a presidential primary in Missouri. It means nothing. Delegates are picked in party caucuses anyway. He’s been talking about this sing last summer, at least, if not longer. A few days ago he told the House Budget Committee his office can find something far better to spent $9.1 million dollars on than an election that brings no campaigning candidates to the state and isn’t binding.

Good idea.

We normally highly object to any move that takes votes away from people (term limits, for example). But the Missouri Presidential Primary began in 1988 when Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt had dreams of greatness. He won the Iowa caucus, the Missouri Democratic Primary and the primary in South Dakota. He finished fifth in a field of six major candidates overall and was gone within weeks..

Does anybody remember how our presidential primary turned out in 2016?   Hillary beat Bernie by 0.24 of a percentage point. Donald Trump beat Ted Cruz by 0.21 of a percentage point.

Anybody remember any significant candidate appearances in Missouri during this election cycle? Out of Tuesday, out of mind.

It’s time to kill this useless exercise. Jay Ashcroft has it right. And he has a much better way to spend $9.1 million bucks.

It’s formally known as a presidential preference primary. Our primary preference is to quit wasting money on it.

 

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight—

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It’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Call it what you will: a saying. Or an axiom, or a truism, and maybe an adage or a precept or an aphorism. The thought comes to mind with the President of the United States, who is six-feet-three, disparaging his most commercially visible challenger, “Mini-Mike” (as he calls him) Bloomberg, who is five-foot-eight.

We will not indulge in stereotyping politicians by saying all of them would be smaller if they lost all their hot air. That’s not fair so we’re not going to go down that road.

We will note, however, that President Trump ranks only third on the physical stature list of presidents. He’s a half-inch shorter than Lyndon Johnson. We wonder if being only THIRD tallest irritates him.

The President’s comparison of his physical size to the physical stature of those who think he should be one-and-done has prompted us to look at the physical sizes of those who want or wanted to be chosen to oppose him later this year.

In recent memory (my “recent” might be more “past” than your “recent”) the tallest presidential candidate was Crystal City, Missouri native Bill Bradley, who was 6’5” tall when he ran in 2000. Bradley will be 77 later this year and probably has shrunk by an inch or two. One brief candidate in this election cycle equaled him—New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio, whose support came up way short and made him one of the first pretenders to the throne to drop out.

President Trump, however, does still have an opponent taller than he—more or less. Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld got nine percent of the vote in New Hampshire last week (obviously he didn’t import enough illegal aliens to vote for him—-oops, we apologize for that remark; it just slipped out). One unidentified person who also uses Twitter suggested that President Trump did not want to debate Weld in New Hampshire because Weld is an inch taller than the President. So, by the way, was Abraham Lincoln.

Two 6-4 Democrats got in and got out of the campaign: Beto O’Rourke and Wayne Messam. Cory Booker is 6’2” tall. Two six-footers remain: Biden and Sanders.

Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Mike Bloomberg can stand nose-to-nose-to-nose (a picture of that would go viral in an eyeblink and would trigger tweeting like you wouldn’t believe) at five-eight.

The leader of the Yang Gang is 5-7. Kamala Harris is 5-2.

If Harris had stayed in the race and had she been elected, she would be the shortest President in American history at 5’2” tall.

Only nineteen of our Presidents have been taller than six feet. Our own Harry Truman was only one inch taller than “mini-Mike.” Among the political giants but physically small men to precede the proudly-tall President Trump are John Adams (5-7), the same size as William McKinley. Martin Van Buren and Benjamin Harrison were 5-6. And the shortest of our Presidents was James Madison, who is considered the “Father of the Constitution” and the Bill of Rights and the co-author of the Federalist Papers, all of which played a big part in the arguments for and against the removal of President Trump. Madison only five feet four inches tall. And what a debate opponent he would be in contemporary times!

We wonder if President Trump has a disparaging nickname for him.

It’s not the size of the dog, etc.

Speaking of dogs, particularly old dogs—-

Another bunch of information for your campaign trivia discussions is the age of the candidates when they were or will be sworn into office. A related discussion items is the importance of their selection of a running mate.

The youngest President of the United States was Theodore Roosevelt, who was sworn in at the age of 42 years, 322 days after William McKinley was assassinated. The youngest elected President was John F. Kennedy, who was 43 years, 236 days old in 1961.

President Trump is the oldest person ever to take the Presidential oath. He was 70 years, 220 days, older the Ronald Reagan at his first inauguration. Reagan as 69 years, 349 days. Four years later, some thought his age was a campaign issue. But in a debate four years later with challenger Walter Mondale, who was 16 years and 11 months younger than Reagan, the incumbent uttered the memorable, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” Reagan, of course, became the oldest president to leave office, another record President Trump could break if he wins in November.

One of the remaining Democrat candidates would break the records of Roosevelt and Kennedy by a significant margin if he wins in November. Mayor Pete would be 39 years and one day old.

On the other hand, FOUR Democrats would break the record as the oldest President if one of them wins. Elizabeth Warren would be the youngest of the bunch at 71-212. Joe Biden would be 78 years, 61 days old. Bloomberg would be 78-341 and Bernie would be 79-134.

Tom Steyer, by the way, would be a spritely 63 years, 207 days. Amy Klobuchar would be 60-240.

All of which points to an issue seldom discussed either in debates or among radio talkers or even around the table at the local coffee place: the vice-presidential candidate.

Michael Richard Pence will be 61 on June 7. Unless he inadvertently disagrees with the president about something, he’s going to be on the ticket again this year.

Among Democrats who have fallen by the campaign wayside: On inauguration day, 2021, Andrew Yang will be five months away from turning 47. Cory Booker will be eighty-eight days short of 52. Michael Bennett will be just past 56. Tulsi Gabbard will be 75 days short of 40. Beto O’Rourke will be about 47 ½.

Nothing prohibits a nominee from picking someone outside his field of opponents, as President Trump did, with Mike Pence.

And some voters, looking at the ages of the incumbent and of many of his challengers, might find the choice of vice-president a factor in what they do in November. Not many, maybe, but some.

 

Dr. Crane on egoists

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Here we are, deep into the early days of a political campaign year. We will have to endure the preening, boasting, promising—and sometimes bullying—of those who want to attract our money and our votes. It’s a time for Egos on Parade, candidates from all parties promising that they can do magnificent things—as if there were no other parts of government or levels of government with a voice in doing things.   The phrase “reality check” didn’t come into use until thirty years after Dr. Crane died. But that’s what he offers. This entry might not matter to our big-time candidates but maybe it might help us little people (who are bigger if we vote) to look for someone with a tinge of—–

HUMANITY

What is my boasted independence? I am dependent upon everybody and everything. I go with the crowd. I am caught in the press of men. I must move with them.

All my ancestors have left me something. Not money or goods, but deeper potencies. What I call my character or nature is made up of infinite particles of inherited tendencies from those whose blood runs in my veins. A little seed of laziness from this grandfather and of prodigality from that. Some remote grandmother, perhaps, as stamped me with a fear of horses or a love of dogs. There may be in me a bit of outlawry from some forefather who was a pirate, and a dash of piety from one who was a saint.

So everything in me passes on through my children and flecks of my children’s children with a spot of strength or weakness. I am sewn in between ancestry and posterity. I am a drop of water in a flowing river. I am a molecule in a mountain. I am a cell in a great tree.

The words I think are not mine. They are humanity’s. Millions made them, as a coral reef into which my thoughts creep.

My gestures, ways, mannerisms, so-called peculiarities, I borrowed them all.

Religion is not a personal affair so much as it is a communal. You are a Jew because you were born a Jew; for the same reason you are a Catholic, you are a Presbyterian, you a Mahometan, you a Buddhist, you a Mormon. As we enter life we find these cells already made in the human beehive and crawl into them.

The Young lover imagines no one else ever felt his pangs and ecstasies; yet Nature is but repeating in him the motions she has made in a myriad others.

“Nothing human is alien to me,” said the philosopher.

Said Burke, “Society is a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living and those who are dead—and those who are to be born.”

What I call my opinion—how much of it is but echo? Opinions are catching, like measles or smallpox. Our notions of art, letters, politics, morals, we have but secreted them from the mass.

Original ideas? Where will you find them? All the ideas there are exist now, floating in the human sea. I, an oyster, absorb a few and call them mine. Even the phrases of the Lord’s Prayer have been traced to Talmudic sources.

“The dewdrop slips into the shining sea.” The river of humanity emerges from the infinite and pours ever into the infinite again.

In passing how we perk ourselves up into strange egotisms! We strut, gesticulate, contend, and talk of me and mine, only to go down at last in the cataract that, unceasing as Niagara, empties into the unknown.

Let us, therefore, put away the coarse egotisms and the partisan passions that infest us, and learn to love humanity, to think and feel in terms of humanity.

Exonerated?

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We got a message from Eric Greitens last week proclaiming, “We’ve been exonerated.”

—as in not guilty of criminal charges.

As we discussed last week, “not guilty” does not mean “innocent.”   But the Greitens news release said the Missouri Ethics Commission found “no evidence of any wrongdoing” by Greitens.

Well, except for that little finding that his campaign has been fined $178,000 because a political action committee supposedly independent of Greitens’ gubernatorial campaign violated laws requiring independence. The commission says the failure to disclose that A New Missouri, the non-profit set up to support the Greitens agenda, paid for a poll that was given to the Greitens campaign—a violation of rules requiring the reporting of gifts.

Greitens told his faithful followers in his emails that the ruling “makes it clear…our justice system was abused. Lies were told and bribes were paid in a criminal effort to overturn the 2016 election.” He points out that “some of the people” who lied about him face criminal charges for lying under oath and evidence tampering.

Frankly, we‘ve heard just about enough of this “overturning an election” business. Getting elected is a gift, not a license. And one thing government does from time to time is take away the license of someone who misbehaves behind the wheel, in a profession, or even misuses the gift of public office.

Some of the people” actually is one person, William Tisaby, who was hired to investigate the Greitens sex scandal is scheduled for trial next month on six charges of perjury and one of tampering. Greitens resigned as governor in a plea deal with Tisaby’s boss, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, that she would drop criminal charges connected to the sexual affair if he quit.

Greitens’ email message to the faithful quickly becomes a pity plea. He cites “constant harassment and vitriol, the lies—repeated and magnified over and over again—the vicious attack on family and personal finances.” The months since he left office, he says, have been “the hardest of my life” with “plenty of dark days.” But he’s been uplifted by “how compassionate, strong, and loving most regular people are.”

Greitens is not the first political figure to experience “dark days” because he or she fumbled the big chance to be significant.

But he’s right, you know. History shows that even disgraced politicians remain human beings. To go farther, if you get a politician out of his or her theatre of operations, they’re just regular folks (most of them, in our experience). And if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that the face we wear while practicing our profession often is not the face that our friends outside the profession recognize. The ruthless politician, the toughest lawyer, the matter-of-fact doctor, the hard-bargaining car dealer, the flinty-eyed reporter are different people when they’re barbecuing hamburgers with friends or coaching their child’s sports team.

Greitens’ email shows the kind of magnanimity that people in his position eventually realize regardless of how much they maintain they have been persecuted. Dwelling on the hurt and resentment gets one nowhere. “Hang on, keep faith, and have courage—life comes back around and it offers a lot of joy, and purpose, and love.”

Sounds like the roots for another book. “A friend” told the Washington Examiner, a conservative monthly political publication, that Greitens is writing one. The same person said Greitens is preparing to launch a new service organization. The Mission Continues, the veterans services organization Greitens founded in 2007, became embroiled in the Greitens investigation when it was revealed he had used the organization’s mailing list to solicit campaign donations. The Missouri Ethics Commission fined the Greitens campaign $1,000 for that little episode (The campaign paid $100 of the fine and promised not to sin like that again with that organization). The Mission Continues continues, by the way.

However, his comment that, “The deepest possible tragedy in all of this would come if we let them change who we are” indicates an inability to grow beyond what he was. And what he was was a not-very-good-governor. He was arrogant. He was secretive. He tried to control the message although that didn’t go well in the end. He believed he could force some members of his own party to support ideas that weren’t going to fly by divulging their personal phone numbers on the internet. He was derogatory toward the legislature and saw no need to patch things up after he was in office for his critical but publicly-popular comments during the campaign.

And we shouldn’t forget that he quit when a legislative investigation headed toward likely impeachment had cornered him on possible serious campaign finance violations. The special investigative committee basically gave him a choice of revealing intertwined big-money links between various committees providing financial fuel for his political ambitions, or leaving town. So he announced his resignation, took no questions, and got out of Dodge.

It’s not altogether helpful for Greitens to suggest he’s not going to change his spots.

There have been rumors that Greitens would emerge and run for the governorship this year as an Independent; the Republican Party could hardly be expected to welcome him back. But the “friend” who spoke to the Examiner said he does not expect to seek political office this year although his options remain open for the future.

Greitens’ email says he’s not thinking of revenge, which is “about the past,” he said. “Justice is about the future…the future is bright.”

There is light at the end of the tunnel for Eric Greitens. “The future is bright.”

Unless, of course, that’s the headlight of a locomotive.

That House investigation shut down after the resignation before all the questions were asked or answered. He would prefer those efforts not be resumed in his future public life.

Eric Greitens will have a political shadow over him for a long time. He still has a core group of believers of seeming Trumpian loyalty that he was speaking to with his emailed statement. But it will take more than commercials showing him blowing up stuff and claiming he was wrongly persecuted to convince the general public it can trust him again.

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