“Although (political parties) may at times serve the interests of the people, in the course of time they are likely to become powerful forces enabling cunning, ambitious, and unscrupulous men to subvert the power of the people and seize the reins of government. They then destroy the very forces that enabled them to rule unjustly in the first place.”
These wise words come from President George Washington’s farewell address in 1796.
Our two-party system is a wreck, more reminiscent of the football rivalry between UM and OSU than of political opponents honestly vying for the hearts, minds and votes of the American public.
Or, worse, it is comparable to the Kremlin in the mid-1930s, where prominent political actors like Trotsky and Yezhov disappeared overnight.
Alternatively, they were catapulted from infamy to canonization within a matter of months. In our modern narrative, the former is President Joe Biden and the latter is Vice President Kamala Harris.
Call it the quarterback sneak of political coups. On one hand, you have an old scarlet codger wandering the field, leaving a mess wherever he goes. The public is told that we cannot yet describe his career achievements with the superlatives already available to us, so more adjectives must be invented. He is Tony the Tiger! He is GREAT!
Until he failed in the pre-convention debate and everyone was on board to throw him overboard. His team knew all along what everyone else suspected, but they were constantly being led to believe that Methuselah was a racehorse at the top of his game. Don’t worry! They’ll just reverse the truths they’ve been telling about Harris up to this point by lying about her competence. Democracy!
In March, the Washington Post wrote that she should resign “for the sake of the country.” To be fair, that column was written by Kathleen Parker, who sometimes gives the impression of writing from a conservative perspective.
WaPo columnist David Ignatius told NPR last fall that both Biden and Harris should resign, pointing out that Biden’s only achievement was defeating Trump in 2020. It’s hard to argue with such an honest assessment, because Biden hasn’t accomplished much that could be called positive since then (or ever).
And then there’s her unlikable demeanor, which killed her 2019 presidential bid before it even began. She threw some deep punches at Biden during an early debate, but lost a knockout punch from fellow candidate Tulsi Gabbard.
“Harris’ presidential campaign will be remembered as one of the worst of this election cycle,” Christina Cauterucci wrote in Slate magazine in 2022. “Internally, it was a disastrously mismanaged mess. Externally, it offered a series of conflicting messages, short-lived slogans and attempts to backtrack along the ideological spectrum. Her dazzling presence in planned speeches and gotcha moments faded when she was forced to think on the fly – and take a coherent policy position. It was a spectacular disappointment that contained a lesson about electoral politics: Candidates who look promising on paper can easily stumble under pressure.”
She resigned before the Iowa caucuses and therefore didn’t win any primary votes. She also didn’t win any presidential primary votes in the 2024 Democratic primary. But… somehow she was anointed, crowned, whatever, as the presidential candidate to replace her confused, wandering boss. Are we supposed to believe that she suddenly woke up sometime in July with the tools she needs to lead our country? Joy!
But her party tells us that she will be great, attentive and even restrained.
Loyalty to the party is the most important thing, because maybe, just maybe, that loyalty will persuade the party leaders to share some of their power and spoils with the rest of us.
Washington warned us about this. It’s not the candidate’s fault, it’s the party’s fault. It’s not the country’s fault, it’s the party’s fault.
Bruce Edward Walker ([email protected]) is a columnist for the Morning Sun.
