The Fourth of July seems a little more important this year. It’s one thing to celebrate the founding of our nation by eating hot dogs and potato salad that has been out of the fridge a little too long in the heat. It’s another to really contemplate the mess we are in as a country.
If eating another hot dog will solve it, put a couple on the grill for me. I suspect preserving the American experiment requires something more from we, the people.
I’m still shell shocked from the presidential debate. Biden had to do only one thing — go out there and demonstrate that he was alive. Trump could be counted on for self-inflicted wounds, spewing BS all night. Biden didn’t need to do much to hold his own against that. But he absolutely failed. He shuffled out on the stage looking lost and confused, and went downhill from there.
The highlight of the discussion, the one point when they engaged in any kind of cogent exchange, was over which of the failing old men has the better golf game.
My reaction watching it was that it was time to roll out the 25th Amendment. If not now, when? Four more years? I’m worried about four more months.
Biden’s team said it was just a bad night. He had a cold. In fairness, at a couple campaign events the next day, he was the “State of the Union” version of Joe Biden — feisty, engaging, coherent.
But even if it was a one-off, it was worse than a bad night. Drunken Teddy Kennedy driving his car off a bridge and drowning a young one-night stand was a bad night. Appearing on the stage of a presidential debate unable to string three words together, staring off into space, and everything short of wetting his pants was worse than a bad night.
Since the train wreck, people have been chattering about the need to replace him on the ballot. I suspect there would be a high level of agreement with the idea that Joe needs to be sent out to pasture. It ends there — and there is no level of agreement on who or how to replace him this late in the process. A free-for-all convention ends with a split party and a new candidate who has to make a national introduction in a couple of months. Not going to happen.
Our choice in November will be between senile and sedition. Can we shove the two-party system into the wood chipper now? We need a system that opens a primary to anybody who can get a significant number of petition signatures in something like 35 states.
There needs to be some filter to weed out the crazies, so demonstrating enough support to gather signatures in a lot of places helps. Then we have a national primary and narrow it down to some manageable number. Then a final election, and maybe if nobody wins more than 50%, the top two do a run off.
If the useless parties want to endorse somebody, let them. But they clearly don’t deserve their lock on whose name gets on the ballot. Not when they deliver this choice.
There are big issues out there. Climate change is happening right now. The economy is booming if you look at statistics, a rising tide that lifts all boats. That’s great if you have a boat. The people without boats are drowning.
The world seems more unstable than any time since I was hiding under my desk in elementary school during our “duck and cover” drills because that sheet of particle board was going to protect us from the Russian nukes.
The Supreme Court has granted presidents some kind of super powers and immunity. They also more or less shut down experts and scientists at the administrative agencies. The regulatory framework has become overcomplicated and inefficient. It’s also often ineffective. Everything is complicated, and the administrative process is supposed to put real experts in charge of the minute details of regulations.
Now the Supreme Court wants to have judges (who went to law school to avoid all that math and science stuff), not chemists and biologists, decide how many parts per billion of kryptonite is safe in our drinking water.
Congress, of course, could modify the administrative process. They could provide meaningful oversight and more clearly define the goals and intentions of regulatory statutes. Congress could do a lot, but it doesn’t do anything. They show up long enough to shout at each other about nothing, and then take a well-earned three week vacation. We keep reelecting them anyway.
I have a plan. Since the only point of real engagement at the debate debacle was golf, let’s start there. Jill and Melania need to go to lunch and figure out a way to get Joe and Donald to leave all the stupid, boring politics behind and devote their few remaining years to something that matters — improving their short game.
Don and Joe could drop out and sponsor golf tournaments for the aged. Maybe they can get the families involved. Hunter and Don Jr. seem to share a lot of common interests. And with both of the old guys out of the way, maybe the two parties could partially redeem themselves by nominating two new living, competent candidates. Jill, Melania, we’re counting you.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.