Dear America,
The Republican Party, though some Republicans have opted out, continues to employ dubious tactics in serving their constituency at the expense of the rest of us. Senators Corker and Flake aren't the first to see the moral failure of such tactics--of the decline of comity in our legislature, in fact--by declining to run for reelection. For example, Democratic senator Birch Evans Bayh III, the namesake of his father (though Birch III went by the name Evan) who had also been in Congress, declined to run for reelection for his Senate seat from Indiana in 2010 citing degradation of Senate principles of conduct and political polarization of the electorate that made moderate politics non-viable. You may remember that 2010 was the year in which the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives back from the Democrats.
Dismay over our politics may not be unique to a few Republicans, but there has been a paucity of Republicans who are willing to repudiate the now-accepted form of political conduct in what became after 2012 a unified Republican Congress with both houses in Republican control. Now, under the influence of Donald Trump and his tendency toward prevarication if not outright dishonesty, the conduct of the party in power, unified in its affinity for disingenuous fulminations against anyone who disagrees with them, our government is the most in need of such righteousness of any administration in memory. The Democrats continue to mouth politically trite indignation, but being the opposing party, their protestations are little more than the expected riposte to most of what the Republicans say. And regardless of intent, their attempts at defense in the face of a withering assault on their constituents by the conservative captors of the Republican ethos have been to little avail, and cannot be expected to do better if left unfortified in some way.
The only counteractive strategy that might work against the degradation of the American polity in both spirit and method would be a counter-reformation, so to speak. The diffident leadership of the Democratic Party has made fainthearted attempts at fomenting one, but fainthearted is not enough. Until Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, our former president, Barrack Obama, or some other embodiment of the Democratic platform makes a successful effort to be on the evening news as often as Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are, fear of the worst in 2018 and 2020 cannot be assuaged. Someone--and it doesn't appear that there is a Republican who believes in it so it will have to be a Democrat--must reignite what we of the boomer generation knew as the American Ideal as a guiding light for the electorate. Some antidote to the American iteration of the Nazi adopted "blood and soil" mentality of pre-war Germany must be found. It is not enough to decry what has euphemistically been dubbed the "alt-right." An alternative must be offered that will meet the needs of our people better than the greed and elitism that American capitalism has gradually fallen into since the New Deal. In the end, it is all about money, including the xenophobia that is rampant on the right today. We need someone who can project American secular humanism, which in its essence is what the Democratic Party stands for traditionally. We need charisma and credibility in our next leader: gravitas and credibility. I can think of two candidates.
The first who comes to mind is Howard Dean, the physician former governor of Vermont and Democratic presidential candidate. When he ran for the nomination, he was still too young at heart and his boyish enthusiasm outshined his dignity of purpose. He's still around, and every once in awhile you can see him on television offering political commentary consistent with the principles we need to revive. But his viability as a candidate for high office may still be suspect, thus, he would make a sound choice for vice-president. But for the top spot in the Democratic Party, perhaps someone else would be best.
The country's majority--not those who must be overcome, but the majority--still wants a woman for president. And as the United States becomes less white and more homogeneous, that is, more like the rest of the world, a person of ethnicity becomes more and more desirable to a larger and larger segment of the population. So, here's what I propose. Michelle Obama should let her husband do what Bill Clinton did, which is to go off and do good work as a president emeritus. Let him go off wind-surfing in Hawaii while she stays home and makes her presence felt to the extent that the news media give her time and her station in our society becomes less inchoate and more present. She has the gravitas needed. She has the credibility. What a refreshing change to the nightly news she would be.
Your friend,
Mike
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