Straight Talk

And the Lord God Founding Fathers of our nation looked at what they had done.

And it was good.

Representing the farmers, planters, businessmen of the thirteen colonies, they had forged a powerful Declaration of Independence to announce an end to the domination of the British colonial power; they had convinced a reluctant and somewhat distant planter to return to his military background and lead a rag-tag army of dedicated civilians against the ruling British Army. Using stealth and shrewdness to wage the American Revolutionary War, he had been victorious beyond dreams and had then accepted what was called the Presidency, making certain it did not mean King; and would last only until a government was formed with elected representatives…

Then they’d gone further and focused on turning the needs of the thirteen different colonies into a representative body. They had created a Constitution which would be the very foundation for a national government to hold together the various interests of the farmers, planters and businessmen who were the community leaders in those colonies.

Yes, they looked at what they had done in just a few short years. And it was good.

THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM

We’re about to talk tough about politics today.

But to put things in perspective we look back to the beginning to note that we started with a two party political system and despite the various third or minor parties which have been part of our history and our present, sometimes with influence, a two party system is what we are about as a democratic nation.

Roughly between 1792 and 1824, two national parties competed for the Presidency, Congress and the State houses. The Federalist Party was created largely by Alexander Hamilton to essentially represent the interests of the business community. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison created the Democratic-Republican Party -usually referred to as the Republican Party- to represent the interests of the farmers and plantation owners. The Federalists strongly favored the potential strength of a national government; the Republicans were concerned about the interests of the farmers and planters in the colonies.

The Federalists were dominant until 1800 or so, the Republicans came into power after 1800.

By 1824 the number and influence of the Federalists had faded. By 1828, the Democratic-Republican Party had broken into several factions…the Jacksonian faction eventually became what we know to be the Democratic Party…the other faction became the Whig Party led by Henry Clay.

From 1854 to the present every American President has either been a Democrat or a Republican.

Two things were apparent right from the very beginning: each party would have special interests and focus on different strengths and factions within our society.

It was clear from the earliest days of this democratic experiment in freedom that those who were permitted to vote would be most important to those who wanted to be elected to the government.

That would change eventually to something else and that “else” would have a stunning impact on what had come before…all the way back, before.

THE 20TH CENTURY

When Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Governor of New York replaced Republican President Herbert Hoover, the Republican Party would have only one President for almost 50 years…for them an eternity. It wasn’t until Ronald Reagan became President in 1980 that the Republican Party began to envision and then plan for a time when they would rule America for years to come.

The industrialization of America exploded as we moved from the 19th to the 20th Century. Andrew Carnegie’s steel, the Harriman railroads, the Ford automobiles, Edison’s electricity and Bell’s telephone revolutionized American life.

Immigrants fleeing Europe were welcome at either Ellis Island or swimming ashore illegally as assembly line-factory manufacturing demanded hands needing work.

The explosion of industry needed large financial investments. It also needed the growth of unions in all of those industries to help make working conditions humane and reasonable. Industry welcomed the Stock Market and fought the development of unions with armed enforcers.

The Republicans had their President in Herbert Hoover the man who promised a chicken in every pot. Then came the revelation that all that investment was not without significant holes and suddenly America knew its first national Depression as capitalism lurched, stumbled and seemed to collapse in upon itself.

And then came Roosevelt and his extraordinary Cabinet and the national effort to put Americans to work again.

Unions grew strong enough to sit at the table with the industrial power-players.. Concern for the working and new middle classes was at the highest government had seen in decades. The Second World War brought both sides together in a united effort to win the war.

In 1943 when the Liberal Party became the first influential third party in New York State (though it’s policies influenced the nation in many ways) the internal hope was that there were liberals within the Republican Party to help humanize it and to help end the corruption in the Democratic Party.

There were and the Liberal Party could support those Republicans and help elect them to State office and to the Senate and House of Representatives.

This approach drove the corrupt Democratic Tammany Hall out of existence and with it – for a time – the essential corruption in the party in New York. But one party rule makes political corruption too easy. We have seen it for years. It exists today with little or no Republican Party in sight.

By the end of his eight years Presidency Reagan policies drove liberal Republicans out of existence. And with the coming of Poppy Bush and W in and around the Bill Clinton years, came political advisor Karl Rove, a Texan with a simple political philosophy which we could call The Big Lie. Keep telling the lies you need to tell to gain and hold power and don’t stop. He saw that approach to gaining and holding the American Presidency for the Republican Party “forever”.

Rove believed that the power of the Presidency had reached such proportions that it must become the singular prize of a political party and that an “anything goes” philosophy was enough to make that happen.

When Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell promised America that the Republican Party would do everything in its power to stop newly elected President Barack Obama from enacting any piece of legislation, McConnell was essentially holding the power of the Federal government hostage by removing one of the two major parties from any role in governing other than to say ”No”.

THE DENIERS

Donald Trump spent 15 years as a reality show host on network television. He knew exactly where his audience was and why they liked and watched him.

He knew nothing about government other than it made him pay taxes. He thought people who had chosen politics as a career were ‘losers’ who came to him for money and would do or say anything to get some.

He had no concept of democracy because he ran his own business, built good apartments and learned how to sell them even if it took lying to do it. He was in real estate – it comes with the territory.

He ran for the Presidency in 2015 because he wanted to impress Vladimir Putin and the Saudi Arabians that he was important enough to let him build properties in their countries.

When he stood before the public for the first time in the first Republican Presidential primary debate and looked into that camera and told us that the 16 candidates on either side of him were all politicians who didn’t care about us but only wanted to be elected, no one challenged him. He told millions of Americans what they already believed – politicians were worthless and dishonest.

He then went on to insult everyone of his opponents by giving them nicknames and essentially shoving them out of the race.

He didn’t win the popular vote against a stunned Hillary Clinton but he squeezed by her in the Electoral College to become President.

When he had no idea of how to be President, Steve Bannon told him to simply do and say anything he wanted to and that would be enough.

He was in the news every day for four years saying and doing what he wanted to do – lies and all. He was being himself.

But it was at the very end of his Presidency that he did something that may prove to be a catastrophe for our democracy in the years immediately ahead of us.

He said the election, that defeated him was stolen from him by fraud and fake ballots.

And millions believe him then, today and tomorrow.

More than that, 26 Republican Governors are establishing political committees in their State Legislatures which will be charged with deciding whether the elections in those States are legitimate or can be changed at the will of those committees.

The four men likely to challenge another Trump candidacy DeSantis, Cruz, Hawley and Cotton are all deniers and support the lie about the “stolen” election.

They will do what they can to deny Trump by convincing him that he will lose again…a prospect too imposing for a man stained by his Father’s view of ”losers”.

No matter the political party, once Americans can be led to believe that their votes do not count but can be overridden by unproved allegations of fraud or the will of a partisan committee, the core of our government – democracy – has been overridden.

Trump is a figure of our imagination. We made him. And millions believe in what he stands for. And that belief is pounded into us by social media just as Karl Rove helped destroy the reality of ‘liberal’ in the minds of Republicans.

These Covid years are strange years. Masks separate us from a full view of what is real and what is dangerous. We’d better take the masks off before they rise up to blind and damage us beyond repair.

Nobody ever imagined the hundreds of empty office buildings that line midtown New York streets for more than two years. Those windows remain dark…with no end in sight.