None Of The Above
By
Leonard Zwelling
Be honest. That’s your first choice for President of the
United States so far, right?
The key number on MSNBC today, May 17, was 121. This is the
total percentage of negatives evoked by the two likely candidates for the
highest office in the land. Isn’t there any way for a do-over?
Donald Trump is an insult to any thinking person’s
intelligence. He is crude. He is rude. He is a racist, a misogynist and a
bigot. He would invoke a religious test for entrance into the United States and
has yet to tell us how he is going to make us great again. He’s a fraud and
that he has rallied American voters to his cause is more a comment on the
failed Republican leadership in the Congress and the meager group of candidates
put up by the GOP than it is an affirmation of The Donald’s great qualities. He
has none beside his great ego.
Unfortunately, Hillary is minimally better.
Her major foray into policy when she was First Lady was a
poorly handled and received attempt at health care reform. As a Senator, the
thing most people know about her is that she “worked hard” (I never saw any
member of Congress “work hard” during my 9 months there) and voted for the War
in Iraq. As a Secretary of State she certainly racked up the frequent flyer
miles, but other accomplishments were few and far between given her reluctance
to step up and lead and her boss’ similar proclivity.
So we essentially have a race between the most hated
politician on the Democratic side and the most despised reality show host on
the GOP side. Wow! Is that the best we can do? I guess it is.
Let’s examine for a moment how we got here.
Hillary was always going to make one more run at the
Presidency after her loss in 2008. She has collected a lot of critical gold
stars, but accomplished almost nothing for all that public service. Her
greatest accomplishment appears to be fighting for children her entire adult
life (not bad!) and being a woman (not her doing). No other viable Democrats
emerged. Only an independent self-avowed socialist senator from Vermont with
virtually no record of accomplishment for his 30 years of service in the
Congress took up the gauntlet to challenge Hillary. Given that the Dems held
the White House, there should have been no challenge. That there was suggests
the intrinsic weakness of the chosen one (Hillary) much as was the case in 1980
when Senator Kennedy challenged President Carter or in 1976 when Ronald Reagan
challenged sitting President Ford or even 1968 when the Democrats had several
candidates wishing to replace LBJ who said he would step down.
A
lively primary amongst the party faithful out of power is to be expected. To
have this shoot out (and it ain’t over yet) in the Democratic ranks today was
unexpected and speaks volumes to Secretary Clinton’s weakness as a candidate.
The GOP primary was the chuckleheads on parade. There were
many non-politicians (Fiorina, Carson and Trump), many governors (Bush, Perry,
Jindal, Kasich, Christie, Pataki, Huckabee) and assorted others (Rubio, Cruz,
Santorum), but in the end, the entertainer won. Whoops!
Anyway, you get my drift. This was a battle of the small
people, meaning a contest between the meanest was a foregone conclusion and
that appears to be what we are going to get.
Personally,
I still like none of the above, e on your SAT Scantron sheet.
I guess we have to vote for someone although “no one” is
looking better by the minute!
