Letter 2 America for March 14, 2014

Dear America,

I briefly saw Trey Gowdy on Fox-TV last night.  He is a member of Daryl Issa's House Oversight Committee, and the two of them ooze righteous indignation out of every pore.  They are both Republican Congressmen from sage Republican districts, so they will likely be members of The House for as long as they want to be.  Gowdy was a federal prosecutor and the Solicitor for the State of South Carolina before he ran for Congress.  He won his seat by deposing the incumbent Republican by being more conservative than he was--Gowdy's predecessor actually believed that global warming was precipitated by human activity.  And in a state that could elect a governor like Nikki Haley, a bible-thumping Tea Party-er like Gowdy is a sure bet.  Now, Gowdy has gotten a bill passed in The House...for the most part along party lines...that, if enacted into law, would compel The President to implement every law passed, thus stripping the executive branch of its power to check and balance a congress like the one we suffer with today.  Gowdy is also the guy who wanted to prosecute the IRS high level manager Lois Lerner for her role in investigation suspicious applications for tax immunity on the basis of his now disproven contention that she and others did something criminal when they scrutinized organizations with the phrase "Tea Party" in their names.  You don't get tax exemption if you are a politically activist organization, and if your name is Tea Party something or other, you look pretty political to me, but now Gowdy wants to give Congress the right to sue The President, not for exercising his power, but for declining to do so.  In other words, Gowdy wants to rule the country with his Tea Party buddies the way that Joe McCarthy did in the fifties by investigating anyone he didn't like, all of which raised a question in my mind.  How do people with such unmitigated audacity get elected; who could like them enough to vote for them?

My guess is that most people are afraid to be on the wrong side of someone like Gowdy; I know I would be.  He is a bully, and he is irrational in the bargain.  Throw in the fact that he uses The Constitution to make the points he wants to make, but ignores it when the issue is something like the separation of powers that he doesn't like so much, but that is ingrained in The Constitution to prevent exactly what he wants to do, and you can see how dangerous he could be.  I guess that Congress has always had people like Gowdy in it...or at least as long as South Carolina has been a state.  But it puzzles me as the one time I was in South Carolina--in a little town called Yemesee--the people treated me very nicely in the aftermath of an automobile accident.  They didn't seem like they could have been Gowdy supporters.  Gowdy certainly wasn't elected for his looks, so that isn't the explanation.  And though he is a IIIrd--Harold Watson "Trey" Gowdy III--he doesn't appear to come from money.  His father was a doctor, but that doesn't represent the kind of wealth that buys elections.  Maybe it has something to do with how he got the name Trey.  Maybe it's not the obvious: trey is another word for three, which is what he is...among other things.  Maybe something diabolical inspired the name Trey, and that's what explains how a seemingly unimpressive bully could ascend to such political office.  Or maybe people just felt sorry for him.  He seems to have a pointy head...in more ways than one...and perhaps it was a combination of dread that he would wind up in people's yards dressed in a sheet wearing a pointy hat combined with his futile attempts to cover up his unique cranium, which elicited pity, that led him to power.  But whatever it was, it's nothing to worry about.

Trey Gowdy is a back bencher, no matter how he scrambles to be noticed.  He and Issa have tried to tar the Democrats, and President Obama in particular, with one thing after another.  Issa is still trying to argue that there was some scandal related to Benghazi, and Gowdy's obsession with Lois Lerner is almost like a comedy sketch now.  So, while old Trey has an unlimited future in South Carolina, he will never get much attention...at least not the positive kind...out here in the real world, though he can probably count on Daryl Issa to have hearings to find out why.

Your friend,

Mike