Or you’d think as much from listening to the Legion of Doom running for the presidency of the USA. “It’s a conflagration out there and the only one who can save the world is ME!” The Laurel and Hardy of this operation, of course, are Donald (The Mouth That Roared) Trump and Ted (Acidosis) Cruz, two hateful stiffs who have risen, phoenixlike, from the political ashheap and soared together to lead the race for the Republican nomination. This unlikely duo qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment to an already frazzled electorate. Where is Sirhan Sirhan when you really need him?
It’s difficult to discern the more dangerous of these two clodhoppers. Cruz would like to return the nation to the Stone Age while Trump would be satisfied with Nazi Germany of the 1940s. Trump’s racebaiting and uncompromising attitudes toward other nations have drawn parallels with old friend Adolph Hitler. May we suggest everyone get a grip? This seems an outrageously unfair comparison. After all, Der Fuehrer never proposed a wall around Poland.
At any rate, the excessive acrimony, the uncompromising incivility of the contenders has the coutry stunned. Has there ever been such animosity in the long history of political warfare? Have we reached an impossible 10 on the Richter Scale of political insanity? Well, yes and no, in that order. Politicians have a long history of promising death and destruction to fools who would ignore their warnings. Backroom brawls have not been uncommon. But at least—in this perilous era of “open carry”—so far, the bullets have remained in the guns. This was not always the case.
The Good Old Days
Aaron Burr, vice president under president Thomas Jefferson, was not supported by the latter for a second term in 1804. That year, a faction of New York Federalists who had found their fortunes drastically diminished after the ascendance of Jefferson sought to enlist the disgruntled Burr into their party and elect him governor. Alexander Hamilton, who had once said “I feel it is a religious duty to oppose his (Burr’s) career,” campaigned against Burr with great fervor, savagely attacking his character and causing him to lose the Federalist nomination and then, when Burr ran as an Independent for governor, the election. In a later, kinder era, Burr might have moped around a bit and dejectedly told the press, “Well, at least now you won’t have Aaron Burr to kick around any more.” Alas, for Hamilton, “affairs of honor” were often settled in those times with weapons. Burr challenged Alexander to a duel. Hamilton suggested Pies at ten paces but Burr demurred. Thus, on July 11, 1804, the rivals met at 7 a.m. on the dueling drounds near Weehawken, New Jersey, a bad omen for Hamilton. This was the same spot where his son had died defending his father’s honor in 1801. Uh oh.
There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. Acording to Hamilton’s second, the latter decided the duel was morally wrong and deliberately fired into the air. If so, bad plan. Burr’s second claimed that Hamilton fired at Burr and missed. In any case, Burr was not one for wasting ammunition. He plugged Alexander in the stomach and killed him dead. Hamilton resisted oblivion by earning a place on the ten-dollar bill, where he resides to this day. Burr died penniless in obscurity, though much later.
The dueling grounds might be an apt solution for Trump and Cruz, although we have a notion either or both are likely to shoot themselves in the foot. And the only way either of these characters will appear on any currency is if they start printing it themselves.
‘Twas Ever Thus
Getting back to Jefferson, the election of 1800 was a hoot, being the only time in history when a vice-president ran against the president he was currently serving under. Thomas Jefferson, the veep, hired a writer to pen insults rather than dirty his own hands. One of the flack’s most creative lines called the president “A hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force or firmness of a man nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Gee. The worst thing Trump called Cruz was a Canadian.
Adams’ Federalists did not take this sitting down, asking voters “Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames…female chastity violated…children writhing on the pike? Great God of compassion and justice, shield my country from destruction!” These Federalists would no doubt be a little testy to arrive these days in a time machine and discover Thomas Jefferson’s likeness carved into Mount Rushmore. After the hateful election, Congress passed the Twelfth Amendment, stating the nominee with the second highest number of votes would no longer be elected vice-president. Good idea.
The Adams boys, of course, were all very feisty. When Andrew Jackson ran against incumbent John Quincy Adams, the latter said Jackson had the personality of a dictator and was too uneducated to be president since he couldn’t even spell “Urope.” Then, he went after Jackson’s wife, Rachel, a recent divorcee from an earlier marriage, calling her “a dirty black wench, a convicted adultress prone to open and notorious lewdness.” Gosh. What would Jackie Kennedy think? Quick-thinking Jackson backers replied with an accusation that Adams had sold his wife’s maid as a concubine to the czar of Russia. Good enough. The voters dumped Adams 642,553 to 500,897.
Honest Abe? Well, Sometimes.
When Abraham Lincoln ran for the presidency against Stephen Douglas in 1860, the latter chose to meander slowly from town to town advocating his candidacy. Since this sort of thing was considered rather tacky at the time, Douglas denied it, professing to be merely taking a liesurely train ride from Washington to New York to visit his mom. Lincoln and his supporters took note of the fact that it took Douglas over a month to get there and put out a “Lost Child” handbill wondering what happened to him. They also unkindly referred to Douglas as The Little Giant, he being about 5-4, describing him as “five feet nothing in height and about the same thing in diameter the other way.” Douglas shot back, calling Lincoln “a horrid-looking wretch, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between a nutmeg dealer, the horse-swapper and the nightman.” If that wasn’t good enough, he added “Lincoln is the leanest, lankest, most ungainly mass of legs and arms and hatchet face ever strung together on a single frame.” The mass of legs, arms and hatchet face got the last laugh, winning in a runaway.
Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa?
If a pristine reputation was required to win the presidency, the nation would have been leaderless after 1884. The Republican candidate, Maine Senator James Blaine, had been scarred several years earlier by revelations Blaine had traded congressional favors for cash, a transgression the Democrats brought up at every opportunity. Righteous indignation is a two-way street, however, as they discovered when the Buffalo Evening Telegraph broke a story many in New York had long known to be true. The Democratic candidate, N.Y. Governor Grover Cleveland, had ten years ago impregnated a woman named Maria Halpin who gave birth to a son with the surname Cleveland and had then been taken to a mental asylum while the child was adopted by another family. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune on October 31, 1984, Halpin proclaimed, “The circumstances under which my ruin was accomplished are too revolting on the part of Grover Cleveland to be made public.”
The Tribune revealed them anyway. After a relentless pursuit by Cleveland, Halpin had finally agreed to join him for a meal, after which he escorted her back to her boarding house. In an 1874 affidavit, Halpin strongly implied that Cleveland’s entry into her room and the incident which transpired there afterwards was not consensual and that Cleveland was forceful and violent, promising to ruin her if she went to the authorities. Doctors from the asylum to which Halpin had been admitted later acknowledged that she was not in need of commitment. The Republicans picked up the ball and ran with it, inventing a confused baby’s chant—”Ma, ma—where’s my pa?”—which spread like wildfire.
In the end, however, Cleveland’s personal peccadilloes proved more palatable to the voters than Blain’s political indiscretions. The Democrats won the election by a small majority and devised a chant of their own. When “Ma, ma—where’s my pa?” was invoked, the answer was quickly forthcoming: “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”
I’m Only A Bird In A Gilded Cage
In 1920, Republican Warren G. Harding blasted Democrat James Cox, taking more than 60% of the popular vote and winning 37 of the 48 states. The election was only interesting because of the third-place finisher, Eugene V. Debs. The latter, a socialist, had previously run losing campaigns in 1900, 1904, 1908 and 1912, so it was no surprise he showed up again. This time, however, he was mildly inconvenienced. He was running for president from jail.
Debs, it should be noted, was no stranger to incarceration, having served time in connection with an 1894 railroad strike. In 1918, he gave an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, in which he decried a “ruling class” which made decisions to send “the working class” to war. “Yours not to reason why. Yours but to do and die,” Debs famously remarked. He was convicted under an espionage law and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Demonstrations protesting his imprisonment evolved into the May Day riots of 1919 and Debs was later moved to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, from which he conducted his presidential campaign. Debs got an impressive 900,000 votes, a healthy total in those days. The following year—on Christmas Day—Harding commuted Debs’ sentence to time served. He never ran for president again.
She’s B-a-a-a-ck!
Where do I buy some stock in Saturday Night Live? Sarah Palin is back again, just in time to give fellow wacko Donald Trump a big boost in the goofy Iowa Caucus. It’s probably for the best. Trump’s main rival for the prize is everybody’s favorite neanderthal, Ted Cruz, and we can’t have him winning anything. If Trump wins the presidency, he’s going to build a big wall. If Cruz wins, he’s going to plunk his magic twanger and send us back to the days when people lived in caves and ate dirt. You’d think Sarah would have enough to do keeping an eye on her high-bouncing family. Son Track recently socked his girlfriend in the eye, kicked her in the knee and then held an AR-15 assault rifle near his head, cocked the gun and threatened to blow his head off. Track was charged with fourth-degree assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime and possession of a firearm while intoxicated, then tossed in the pokey.
Palin’s daughter Bristol, an angel by comparison, is 25 years old and a single mother of two by different sires. She’s currently engaged in a vicious child support battle with Levi Johnston, the father of the first one. Meanwhile, Sarah and husband Todd continue to deny rumors of an impending divorce. Hey, what ever happened to “family values?” Tina Fey—are you listening?
I’m always amused by the issuance of propaganda by the Nitwit Brigade that foreign countries no longer have any respect for the U.S. due to the profligacies of Barack Obama. Well, just put one of the two leading GOP candidates on the job and lay an ear to the ground. You’ll hear them laughing from Tappahannock to Tipperary.
That’s all, folks….
