A Political Epiphany

It was during the summer of my 13th year when I realized that “politics” was more than an unwelcome interruption of my regular evening television shows.  The year was 1960.  As the summer progressed my usual fare of cartoons, game shows, variety shows and comedy skits was more and more often preempted by an array of talking heads droning on at great length about topics that made absolutely no sense to my way of thinking.  Just about the time that I decided that all this meaningless jabbering was a complete waste of time, my senses were assaulted by live coverage of great crowds of people cheering, applauding and generally raising cane in a large hall of some sort.  My mother patiently explained that it was a “convention” (whatever THAT was supposed to mean) and that it would be over in a few days.  Then came the second, even more raucous, “convention”.  The world, as I perceived it, had gone stark raving mad with this thing called “politics”.

The loud bands were entertaining and the excitement of the crowds was strangely contagious, but the interminable speeches were still gibberish.  I did notice that one of the crowds seemed to be worshipping images of donkeys while the other demonstrated a wild-eyed fascination with elephants.  I didn’t see the relevance of either.  When I questioned the meaning of this apparent symbolism, mother explained that the elephant people were called “Republicans” and the donkey folks were called “Democrats”.  She had no idea what the animal icons represented, but she did know that the elephants were all about helping the rich people get richer at the expense of the rest of us.  The donkeys, on the other hand, were all about helping the “common” people by taking money from the rich fat-cats and giving it to us.  We were, most assuredly, donkey worshippers!

As my awareness grew I asked more and more questions.  I was told about this wonderful gentleman named Roosevelt who, as President, not only guided our nation through a terrible war, but also created jobs and thereby money for the great masses of working people who had been bled almost dry by the evil Hoover in his single-minded determination to line the pockets of his rich cronies.  To me that was ancient history which had little or nothing to do with me and my life.

After the conventions, most of the droning old fogeys disappeared from the nightly TV lineup to be replaced by the two survivors of their respective chanting mobs.  Mother told me that these two were the candidates chosen by their parties to compete for the job of President.  Even without the influence of mothers’ opinions I would not have trusted the dark haired elephant-man, with his bushy eyebrows and beady eyes, within arms reach of anything which I considered valuable.  Simply put, he gave me a bad case of the creeps (intentional pun).  The donkey-man however was different.  His eyes seemed to burn with conviction and strength.  His manner and style were magnetic.  I began to really listen to what he was saying and for the first time I felt that I really understood what he meant.  His voice was penetrating and at the same time reassuring.  His hopeful message of a bright and prosperous future resonated within me and I was captivated by his vision.  The boyish sense of humor and seemingly effortless grace lent a human dimension to his otherwise powerful leadership persona.  The distinctive, if unfamiliar, Bostonian accent, which seemed to confuse the pronunciation of ”r’s” and “a’s”, seemed to amplify his overall charisma.

By the time November rolled around, I was following the election news as carefully and critically as any political pundit.  I cheered and felt the exhilaration of an almost personal victory when the results of the election were finally announced.  The triumphant John F. Kennedy was our newly anointed President.  He was my President.  He was the choice of the people to be leader of the greatest nation on the planet and he was my personal political hero.

Three years and three weeks later his vision of the future would be prematurely extinguished under a noonday Texas sun and my world would come crashing down around my ears, but that was in the unseen future.  On that November evening in 1960 I was filled to the bursting point with the desire and determination to follow in the footsteps of my chosen leader and to make this world a better place in which to live.  I had become a fully fledged Kennedy Democrat and I couldn’t have been prouder of myself.

In the summer of 1963, during the break between my Junior and Senior years of high school I had accepted my first real job.  I had embarked upon what I had hoped would become a long and rewarding career in broadcasting.  By that November I had achieved some degree of success as an announcer and news reporter for a local radio station, had fallen head over heals in love with the station owners’ daughter and was seemingly on course toward the bright and prosperous future which had been promised by my President. 

However, on a warm Friday afternoon in California, I was summoned out of my Chemistry Lab class and escorted to the school office by a visibly shaken secretary.  Once inside the office the open tears and audible weeping of the Principal and his staff alerted me that something awful had happened, but I was totally unprepared to learn that not only had my hero been slain in Dallas but that, due to my newly acquired profession, I had been selected to make the fateful announcement over the school PA system.  I learned a valuable lesson in professional objectivity that day.  For the first time in my 16 years of life I also tasted the bitter ashes of disenchantment, disillusionment and despair.  Neither my political enthusiasm nor my desire for a career in broadcasting would survive that day.

For the next 44 years I would wander through a dismal desert of political ambivalence.  Uninspired and unmotivated I would watch as succeeding administrations came and went in Washington. Each less worthy of admiration and emulation than the last.  The soft-spoken Texan who took over after Dallas would lead us into an almost bottomless quagmire in Asia then retire to his ranch when it became obvious that the people would never elect him to a second term of office.  The shifty eyed elephant-man of my first political summer would finally get the job which he had coveted in 1960, would oversee the first military defeat this country had ever known and prove to the world that he was, indeed, a crook before resigning in disgrace.  His unelected Vice-President would slink into oblivion after two separate women would try their level best to kill him.  We’ll probably never know if it was outright fear of death or the political fallout from his predecessors’ dirty dealings that finally made him decide to move to Colorado and pretend he’d never been to Washington.

Next came the peanut farmer from Georgia whose heart was in the right place, but who was about as inspiring and charismatic as the crop for which he became known.  His successor was a moderately successful actor who made his mark playing the “other guy” to a string of more famous leading men and women.  To his credit, his legacy as President is somewhat more enviable than those of his four predecessors notwithstanding the would-be paramour of Jodie Foster who managed to wound the President and a few others in an unsuccessful assassination attempt.  Of course, there are those who claim that his erudite elitist Vice-President served as script writer and production designer to the actor-Presidents’ longest running booking – but who knows?

What we do know is that the Kennebunkport bred VP succeeded the actor for one term during which he managed to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, invade Iraq with an overwhelming force, only to give it back and withdraw before the job was finished.  He then managed to lose his re-election bid thus joining the aforementioned peanut farmer in the single term club.  The fellow who defeated him was a promising, youngish Rhodes Scholar who did manage to get himself re-elected only to succumb to temptation with a female intern whose little blue dress, with it’s incriminating stain of Presidential DNA intact, was carefully preserved for evidential purposes.  His dalliance and embarrassment might have been forgiven had he not found it expedient to lie to the American people about the whole affair.   That little lapse of morality earned him the distinction of being the only sitting President against whom Articles of Impeachment have been drawn in modern times.

All of which brings us to the previously mentioned elitist VP’s little boy who is the current occupant of the large house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  The list of his incredible incompetence over the last 7 years is too long to detail here, but suffice it to say that there are serious questions surrounding both of his election victories.  His prosecution of the current collection of ineffective wars (against Afghanistan, Iraq, Terror, Drugs and the Bill of Rights) has provided ample grist for the mills of every sort of pundit, analyst and late-night comic currently working.  And finally, who can forget the look on his face while calmly reading “My Pet Goat” while New York City was in flames.  Emperor Nero would have been proud.

Believe it or not there really is a happy ending to this bleak and somewhat lengthy diatribe.  Forty-four years after my political foundation was shattered by a hail of gunfire, and at the start of yet another Presidential campaign season, I have undergone an epiphany every bit as soul shattering as that experienced by Saul on the road to Damascus.  After years of treading water in the cesspool that our once great political system has become, and at the very moment in time when I had resigned myself to the death of my once optimistic political outlook, a savior has appeared out of the darkness.  His manner is unassuming. His throaty voice sometimes falters as he speaks.  His age denies him the youthful vitality which was the hallmark of my first political inspiration (although in candid moments his former vigor and energy become unmistakably apparent).  But his message, vision and the strength of his convictions ring out loud and clear when he addresses issues.  The clarity of that message and the purity of his consistent dedication to his principles resonate in my being like a temple gong.  I am once again electrified and moved to action.  For the first time in all those intervening years, I sense a swelling of hope and I can imagine a better world, a better life and a return to those solid values upon which this country was founded. 

It’s as though in the nations darkest hour, at that precise moment in time when it seemed that she would surely cease to exist, one of our founding fathers has stepped from the pages of history to restore and sustain her.  In the very nick of time, as America finds herself adrift and awash in a pounding sea of ever increasing debt and the loss of her prestige abroad;  in the last seconds as the shadowy traitors at the helm are about to open the sea cocks and scuttle the once proud and mighty ship of state, a worthy hero has emerged armored in righteousness and wielding our Constitution like a sword to rally the demoralized and dispirited crew to action.  I for one am prepared to answer that call.  He has inspired my soul to stand alongside him and to defend the foundations of our country and Constitution with every fibre of my being.

This gentle man who has come forward to lead the battle for our very existence is none other than the Honorable Dr. Ron Paul.  The obstetrician turned Congressman from Texas  has remained steadfast in his dedication to the Constitution and fiscal responsibility throughout his long and distinguished multi-term tenure in the House of Representatives.  His unwavering position in opposition to foreign entanglements and wars is fully consistent with the views and desires of our nations founders.  His insistence on real, value based currency is fully spelled out within the body of our founding documents and his position on the sanctity of human life is based in a deep abiding faith in the God of our forefathers.  Dr. Paul does not merely give lip service to family values, he lives them every day of his life.  As I write this he and his lovely wife are about to celebrate 51 years of marriage.

So far, Dr. Pauls’ campaign for this nations highest office has been financed solely by the contributions of his supporters.  These are not the typical corporate supporters upon whom the rest of the candidates rely.  These are entirely made up of small contributions averaging less than $100 per donor.  With these donations, Dr. Paul raised more campaign funds than any other Republican in the race totalling almost $20 million in the last quarter of 2007.  His supporters span every demographic in the land and include people of every race, creed, education level, age bracket and economic status.

Despite his broad based support and popularity he has been shunned, ignored, vilified and dismissed by virtually every mainstream media outlet.  Despite this well organized conspiracy of silence, Dr. Paul has made impressive showings in the caucuses and primary contests to date.  As this campaign progresses and Dr. Pauls’ movement gains momentum it will become harder and harder for the media to maintain their silence.  In short, Dr. Ron Paul is almost the perfect candidate at the perfect moment in history to restore our beloved country to her former glory.

You will notice that I said “almost” the perfect candidate.  He does suffer from one flaw from my personal point of view.  Despite his staunch Constitutionalist/Libertarian position on the issues facing the nation, Dr. Paul has chosen to campaign on the Republican ticket.  That makes him an elephant-man.  Which means, in purely personal terms, that in order to support him I am forced to register and vote Republican.  The once proud Kennedy Democrat has become a born-again Paul Republican.  I can almost hear the anguished cries of my dear, departed mother as she spins in her grave.  I think she’ll understand – eventually.

(NOTE: Future posts will be shorter….I promise.  Thanks for having the patience to wade through my “mini-novel”.  Your comments, suggestions and criticisms are welcome and appreciated)