And To The Republic-an For Which It Stands

As many 8 year olds in New York in 1973, I was caught up in the excitement of the Mets World Series.  Although he was at the end of his career, an older Willie Mays was the embodiment of baseball himself.  It seemed like his mere presence would bring New York home the trophy.  It was not to be.  The following year, 1974, I became a Yankee fan.  Much like my baseball beginnings, my Presidential memories begin with a loss.  Watergate was my introduction into Presidential politics as a child.  Nixon, a lifelong politician and the embodiment of the Republican Party fell from grace.  But unlike my abandonment of the Mets, I remained a Republican.  Yes, a Republican.

August 8^th, 1974 President Nixon officially resigned as President of the United States.  This was a big deal.  As a kid, maybe you didn’t realize it…but it was certainly driven home by the adults around you.  Gerald Ford, a man appointed Vice President by Richard Nixon and not voted in, was now our commander in Chief.  President Ford was not known for his brains and mocked over certain “trips” he took.  But as a kid I looked up to him.  I was a Boy Scout and Gerald Ford had achieved the highest rank, being an Eagle Scout and receiving the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.  In college, he was a star athlete at the University of Michigan.  Ford played center and linebacker for the school's football team and helped the Wolverines to undefeated seasons and national titles in 1932 and 1933.  During 1934, Georgia Tech refused to play against Michigan if a black player named Willis Ward took the field.  The university decided not to play him in the game.  Ford, Ward’s best friend and roommate, reportedly threatened to quit the team in response to the university’s decision.  He eventually stayed on and played in that game only at the urging of Ward himself.  Talk about role models.  Want more?  I got it for you.  Ford was a boy scout, a star football player, in the forefront of civil rights…hmm, what’s left…what did he serve on an aircraft carrier in WWII?  Well, actually he did.  Ford served on the aircraft carrier USS Monterey (CVL-26).  From the ship's commissioning on June 17, 1943, until the end of December 1944, Ford served as the Assistant Navigator, Athletic Officer, and Antiaircraft Battery Officer on board the Monterey.  During that time, the carrier participated in many actions in the Pacific Theater with the Third and Fifth Fleets.  Unfortunately the Monterey’s fate was decided not by enemy action, but by a devastating Typhoon that hit the fleet.  Aircraft and fuel broke loose during the storm and caused uncontrollable fires on board.  Because of the extent of the fires, Admiral Halsey ordered the captain of the Monterey to abandon ship.  Instead the captain ordered Ford to lead a fire brigade below.  After five hours he and his team had put out the fire and saved the ship.  Raise your hand if you knew any of this about Gerald Ford.  Put it down, you’re lying.

Gerald Ford’s time as president would be short.  America was still reeling from the Watergate scandal and the Republicans looked like they would be voted out.  Even though he was only President from 1974 to 1977, Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, marking a move toward détente in the Cold War.  Also, nine months into his presidency, U.S. involvement in Vietnam essentially ended.  However, it was his Presidential pardon of Nixon that would eventually be his undoing.  After narrowly beating Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, he lost the presidential election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.  As a kid I was shocked.  How could such an American hero lose out to a peanut farmer…and a Democrat no less!  President Carter seemed to be everything Ford was not.  While he created two new cabinet positions, Department of Education and the Department of Energy, and pursued the Camp David Accords…he would be dogged by the events during his Presidency.  The 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, the eruption of Mount St. Helens and the one that marked the end of his presidential tenure…the Iran hostage crisis.  President Carter may have been the right man, but it was at the wrong time.  I wondered as a kid how Gerald Ford would have handled the hostage crisis.  I was pretty sure it would not have taken 444 days to get them back.

Gerald Ford faded into history, however the man he barely beat out for the Republican nomination four years earlier was now in the forefront, Ronald Reagan.  America had grown tired of Carter’s diplomacy.  We needed a tough guy and Reagan fit the bill.  Ronald Reagan reminded me a lot of Gerald Ford.  While not a star athlete at a big college, he was a member of the football team, captain of the swim team and student body president for Eureka College in Illinois.  As an actor, he embodied the characters he played on the big screen.  As teenagers, we all hoped he would ride in and save the day for America.  I was excited when Reagan beat Carter in the 1980 Presidential election.  However, my Mom was in tears the next day. She thought Reagan was a warmonger and would have the US, and her son (even though I was only 14), soon going to war.  I always found that ironic.  Reagan not only kept us OUT of war…but he also ended the longest war in America’s history, the Cold War.  Wasn’t the first time…or the last…that Mom was completely off base.

Ronald Reagan got the hostages back from Iran.  At that point he could do no wrong.  The 80’s were marred by nuclear tensions between the US and Russia.  In 1983 the movie, “The Day After”, came out in Hollywood’s atomic version of scared straight.  TV stations ran mini series on how World War III would play out.  We even had Great Britain and Argentina duking it out for a bit wondering if Russia might intervene.  Tensions ran high…but not for Ronald Reagan.  He went all in against Russia, way before the term was popularized by Texas Hold’em.  We ramped up our military and forced Russia to match us missile for missile, ship for ship.  On August 11, 1984, while running for re-election, Reagan was preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio.  As a sound check prior to the address, he made the following joke: “My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”  Reagan was chastised for this.  How could he be so careless?  That is not how I saw it.  In a game of high stakes, he was making jokes at his opponents expense…and especially wanted for them to hear it.  Russia struggled financially trying to match the U.S. and they were on the brink of bankruptcy.  And here was the American leader, without a worry in the world, making a mockery of the Cold War.  It reminded me of the war movie “Battle of the Bulge”.  It depicted the final chance the Germans had to beat back the Allies.  Germany threw everything they had into one last-ditch effort.  In one of the scenes the German general captured an American supply truck.  What he found was a cake flown in from Boston only a few days earlier.  He quipped that his army did not have enough fuel for his tanks yet the Americans have the fuel and aircraft to fly things as trivial as cake to the front.  He realized he was fighting a losing battle.  I can only imagine this is how frustrated Gorbachev felt as he heard Ronald Reagan’s words that day.  My guess is he realized he could not win either.

Ronald Reagan’s success led to an overwhelming victory for his Vice President, George Herbert Bush, to become our next president.  Much like Gerald Ford, Bush served on and aircraft carrier, the USS San Jacinto (CVL-30), during World War II.  Only one difference, Bush flew the aircraft.  As a kid growing up on Long Island, we all knew Grumman Corporation as a well known builder of aircraft.  As a history buff, I was proud of the part they played in winning the war.  Grumman built the fighters known as the Wildcat and Hellcat.   But it would be their torpedo bomber, the Avenger that Bush would pilot.  A WWII veteran, a navy pilot who flew Long Island’s Grumman aircraft…yeah, you could see why I liked him.  This day a print depicting his plane flying over his carrier, and signed by George Herbert Bush himself, is proudly displayed in my family room.  Unfortunately three words would derail his chances for a second term, “No new taxes”.  This would be a harbinger of things to come.  A turning point of the Republican Party, which now became focused on not raising taxes.  Other Republican presidents raised taxes, why did these three words became such a rallying point.  But this was the beginning of the end of the Republican Party as I knew it.

Bill Clinton would become our next president.  I was still astounded Bush could lose to the likes of him.  A smarmy fellow, he was nothing like the war hero he just replaced.  He would have success in office, and that seemed to make the Republican Party angry.  They did not know how to handle having the Democrats succeed, so they attacked.  From the White Water scandal to Monica Lewinsky.  Had the Republican’s forgotten Nixon and his REAL crimes in office?  It was the beginning of Republicans with short memories.  After Clinton’s second term, it was Al Gore’s time.  He wouldn’t stand a chance against the Republican machine, one that had warmed up by dismantling one of it’s own.  I happened to like Al Gore.  He invented the Internet for Christ’s sake!  Well, anyway, he was good for technology and the environment.  Also, you hope he could continue to lead the country to prosperous times like Clinton had before him.

As Al Gore easily locked up the Democratic presidential nomination, the Republican side was not so cut and dry.  You had George Herbert Bush’s son, George W.  One look at him and you could see the apple fell far from the tree…rolled down the hill, off a cliff, into the river and washed out to sea.  He was nothing like his father…if you missed my point.  He skipped out on the Vietnam War, was a C student and road his father’s success.  I get it, he was a legacy.  Throw him a bone.  The REAL candidate was John McCain.  Obviously he caught my eye as a Naval aviator.  In the early to mid 60’s he served aboard the aircraft carriers USS Intrepid and USS Enterprise.  Yes, that Intrepid sitting in downtown New York and yes that Enterprise that gave Gene Roddenberry starship it’s name.  In 1967 McCain volunteered for assignment with the USS Oriskany, another aircraft carrier employed in Operation Rolling Thunder.   Once there, he would be awarded the Navy Commendation Medal and the Bronze Star for missions flown over North Vietnam.  On October 26, 1967 while flying his 23rd bombing mission against North Vietnam, his plane was shot down by a missile over Hanoi.  McCain became a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years.  He was released on March 14, 1973.  His wartime injuries left him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head.  There was NO way George W. Bush would defeat him in the Republican primaries.

Eight years of Clinton had left the Republicans bitter.  Not the ones who vote, or run for office…but the ones who actually influence what happens.  McCain was a moderate, he probably could have been a Democrat.  Even though he would have made an excellent president, the Republican “powers that be” did not want him.  They wanted someone who they could control, manipulate…someone without any real thoughts of his own, a C student.  The Republican machine sprang into action breaking down McCain.  He was one of their own, a war hero, and the right man for the job.  What they put him through was a shame.  It was these actions that left a bitter taste in my mouth with the Republican Party.  The man they wanted, the man who would run the country for the next eight years…would make these Republican “powers that be” even more powerful.   Big business would now run this nation like never before, and a great divide among its people was created…one that had not been seen since the Civil War.  Eventually, some of this was exposed in the financial collapse in August of 2007.  The Republican “powers that be” knew the 2008 election would be a lost cause.  They offered up McCain as cannon fodder.  Eight years later he was a shell of who he was, and his policies changed just to win the Republican nomination.  They threw in Miss Alaska as a final insult to the poor man.  I would no longer back the Republican Party.

The nation wanted something so different that the Democrats offered a woman, Hillary Clinton and a black man, Barrack Obama.  I wanted Hillary.  I thought she might restore some order to a country in disarray.  Having the Clinton’s back in the White House might not be such a bad thing.  It was her time, but the Democrats can mess up a free lunch.  The Clinton’s knack for working with the Republicans was just what was needed to close the great divide.  Instead they elected Obama as their choice, and it divided a nation even further.  I don’t think the country was ready for a black president.  I see racism every day, and I am in the melting pot of New York City.  I can only imagine how the people of the south and mid-west think of him.  And you can see how it has reflected by looking at the political poles.  You may say racism has nothing to do with it, you see he failed us as a leader.  Don’t believe everything the Republican “powers that be” feed you.  The funny part is they couldn’t be happier after his four years.  As much as you watch FOX News break down “the worst President in US history”, don’t let them fool you.  If you were rich during these four years, you got richer.  If you were a big business, you made unmatched profits.  If you worked on Wall Street, you laughed all the way to the bank.  If you were middle class, you lost your house.  The talking heads on FOX are in the 1%...and they are pulling away from you financially at light speed.  The Republican “powers that be” are represented by the Koch (pronounced “Coke”) brothers.  If you don’t know who they are, shame on you.  They ARE the men behind the curtain.  They are the real life Randolph and Mortimer Duke from the movie Trading Places.  And they are loving every minute of the Obama administration.  But much like the movie, even though Eddie Murphy is making them money, they both come to the same conclusion, “Do you really believe I would have a (n-word) run our family business?”  Enter Mitt Romney.  The Bible belt will vote for him because he is not black.  They will use the guise of the Mormon religion is “Christian”.  BULLSHIT.  Jesus was not from the planet Kolob.  And others say, Vote Romney, he is a businessman that created jobs.  BULLSHIT, he is the real life Gordon Gekko from Wall Street.  Buying businesses and then closing them for profit.  Tell me again how that creates jobs?  It’s like the townspeople in Blazin’ Saddles and Obama was the new sheriff.

Maybe I could vote Republican again if they could put forth a “Real” candidate.  Where are the Ford's, the Reagan's and even the McCain's?   Where are the war heroes, where are the unabashed leaders?  It seems more and more that the men behind the curtain control our Government…and they don’t want a true leader in place.  Obama has served their purpose and now they tell you it is time for him to go.  I love how the Republican “powers that be” will feed you…”Are you better than you were four years ago?”  You probably aren’t.

But the Republican “powers that be” are.