Letter 2 America for December 3, 2013

Dear America,

As we get closer to 2016--granted it's still three years away--the talk turns more and more toward the presidential election, even though the discussion of the mid-terms still hasn't begun in earnest.  But the future of American politics is much more interesting than the present.  The Obama administration looks more and more like a lesson in what not to do, and the Republican hegemony in congress, even in The Senate where they are in the minority, has been a meaningless interstice in American history during which the ruling party hasn't left its mark, but has rather ensured that no one else could.  So what does 2016 have to offer by way of a change?

I think that the primary season--which will be full-blown for both parties as there will be no incumbent in the field--will be far more interesting than the Republican primaries were in 2012.  There will be plenty of blather and bombast, but from the field of blatherskites there will emerge, by necessity, two candidates that will have much to say about the direction our country takes over the rest of the first half of this century.  My prediction (and it isn't much of a stretch of prescience) is that Hillary Clinton will be opposed by Chris Christie, and the discourse will be substantive rather than tendentious, meaningful rather than partisan.  Of course, there will be challenges to both candidates from within their parties before they emerge as the chosen people, so to speak, but they will amount to much sound and fury signifying nothing, as The Bard put it.  The Democrats most likely won't put up much of a fight.  Clinton is the scion of the Democratic golden era in which the party's leader, Bill Clinton, couldn't commit political suicide despite his best efforts.  He left the country better off than he found it, and his immediate successor promptly squandered the good Clinton had done, entangling us in two interminable wars, inspiring an age of such overt cupidity that our economy crashed around our ears by the end of his term.  And even though Barrack Obama inherited a nation so dispirited that it still hasn't recovered five years later, he was incapable of mustering the political fortitude to do what needed to be done during his first term, and he has been only marginally less timorous during the first year of his second.  So Hillary Clinton, boosted by the best Democratic campaigner of the modern era, will look like salvation to a people starving for charisma and competence.  Initially, Vice President Biden may give her a run for her money during the primaries, but he will eschew the internecine sniping that will be the only instrument at his disposal in favor of party unity, and he might even become the first person to serve as vice president in two different administrations.  Otherwise, there is Duval Patrick of Massachusetts to consider, but no one else looks like a contender, so there it is.  Clinton for president...again.

On the other side, there will be carnage...savagery...Republicanism.  Ted Cruz and Rand Paul will fill out the triumvirate of Republican candidates with Christy, who by then will be a shadow of his former self physically, but that much more viable as a candidate on account of his weight loss.  And he will look very good next to the other two, both aesthetically and philosophically, but Paul and Cruz will die hard.  They are both narcissistically motivated, and neither of them has anything but Tea Party dogma going for him, so they will split the conservative wing of the party and Christie, like Mitt Romney, will be the last man standing by default.  But unlike Romney, Christie actually has a political philosophy, and everyone will know what he stands for, which actually straddles the political fence, but with sincerity rather than cynicism.  He can tolerate same-gender marriage but he opposes big government.  He is a populist, but he brooks no babble from the populous.  He is shamelessly pro-business, but he is not above reaching across the aisle for socially conscious remedies to problems that need him, like disaster relief.  In short, Christie is the first potential Bunyanesque figure to emerge from Republican ranks since Ronald Reagan, who was more of an empty suit than a hero in reality, but conservatives still think of him as their patron saint, which says more about conservatives than it does about Reagan.  And I have to admit it, Christie is not just a viable contender for the presidency.  He might well be the front runner by the time the primaries are over and the campaign starts in earnest.  His problem will be that he has no political paragon to turn to for support the way that Hillary Clinton does.  The next election may be about Bill more than Hillary in that it may turn on how effective he is when stumping for his wife rather than himself.

However the next election goes, it is an exciting prospect.  In my opinion, the American people can't lose as long as those two are the nominees.  We will get someone strong, decisive rather than impulsive, and philosophical rather than dogmatic.  That's what this country needs: a president who thinks with his or her own head rather than someone else's, and in Clinton and Christie, we have a choice to make on which we can only come out better.

Your friend,

Mike