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Back when I was still watching television, I used to love the old game show To Tell the Truth. A real person of renown along with two impostors answered questions from a celebrity panel. Then they had to guess who was real and who was phony. It was amazing how many impostors were so convincing that they were able to fool even seasoned panelists.
When the real person stood up, sometimes we were all amazed. How could the impostors have known so much and persuaded us that they were somebody that they really were not?
Every four years, the United States of America plays such a game on the stage of real life with serious consequences for those who make a wrong choice. We watch political candidates of both parties on the campaign trail beginning in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina. We here at Hawaii never ever get to see any of them up close and personal.
So how are we to discern from what a man or woman says on the campaign trail whether it will jibe with what they actually do once he or she actually sits behind that big desk in the Oval Office? The truth of the matter is that we can never know for 100% sure if what we see is what we get.
If you have read any of my previous writings, you know that I love to look back at previous presidents to see what we can learn from our experience with them. So let’s briefly review the choices voters had since 1960.
Harry Truman was president when I was born and Dwight Eisenhower was already in office by the time I became aware of political elections. But I do recall some of the things that impacted the showdown between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy.
Nixon was known as kind of a clumsy Vice President under Eisenhower. He had exactly zero charisma and came across as sweaty and inarticulate on old black and white TV tubes. But the eloquent and debonair young Senator from an affluent Massachusetts family impressed a lot of people.
Back then people still talked about how Al Smith had run for president against Herbert Hoover in 1928 and his Catholicism was a factor in his loss. Likewise whether we would elect our first Catholic President was a big issue I remember with Kennedy. Compared to today, it’s hard to believe that this was such an issue.
But JFK was also a war hero in an era when the Greatest Generation were still electing presidents. Many people were happy that he had prevailed and were ready to write off Nixon’s political future forever.
After Lyndon Johnson tragically became president on a dark day in November 1963, he faced an important election in 1964 against Barry Goldwater. Democrats successfully painted Goldwater as the warmonger, but it was LBJ who got us into the quagmire in Southeast Asia.
When I entered U.S. Air Force Basic Training at Lackland AFB, Texas in December 1968, we new recruits just off the plane, wearing our multicolored civilian clothes before we visited the green monster to get our uniforms issued, heard the Jody cadences of the trainees as they marched by:
Rainbow, Rainbow, have you heard?
LBJ has sent the word!
We are going to Vietnam,
To kill ourselves some Viet Cong.
If I die in Vietnam,
Send my body home to Mom.
Fold my arms across my chest,
Tell my gal I did my best.
LBJ did not run again in 1968 for health reasons, and in fact would barely have survived another term had he won. The election of 1968 will go down in the annals of history as one of our most volatile.
Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot in Memphis on April 4th. After Robert Kennedy won the California Democrat primary, he was mortally wounded on June 5th. The November election was between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. I have long considered that if Robert Kennedy had lived and been nominated, he probably would have been elected.
After four years in office and trying to end the war in Vietnam the wrong way by unilateral withdrawal rather than absolute victory, Nixon won a landslide victory over George McGovern, the anti-war candidate. The best slogan from that campaign was McGovern McCan’t.
After the resignation of Spiro Agnew as Vice President, followed by Nixon’s unprecedented resignation as President after the Watergate cover-up, former Michigan Congressman Gerald Ford who had filled the vacant VP slot was elevated to the highest office in the land.
In 1976, we had a choice of former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter or reelecting President Ford. Ford was a decent fellow, but came across as rather unknowledgeable and inept. I recall a gaffe in a debate where he denied the existence of the Iron Curtain in Europe at a time the Soviet Union was very much in control there.
Carter was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and persuaded people he understood national security issues. But when Iran took American diplomats hostage at our Embassy in Tehran, Carter was proven totally unprepared to deal with it. So there is no wonder that Ronald Reagan won the election of 1980.
Reagan had been best known as an actor in Class B movies and on television. He did serve well as California Governor. He unsuccessfully tried to challenge Ford for the GOP nomination in 1976. He acquitted himself well in the campaign against Carter in 1980 and went on to serve as our most memorable and effective president of my lifetime in my opinion.
In 1984, Carter’s hapless former VP Walter Mondale managed a record of ineptitude not since equaled. Reagan won 49 states, yes even including Hawaii, whereas Mondale won only his home state of Minnesota plus Washington DC. Those old enough will remember that Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman nominated by a major political party to run for VP. We may also recall that it was George HW Bush who served as VP under Reagan after falling short in the 1980 primary.
In 1988, Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts only managed to embarrass himself in his contest against the elder Bush. Perhaps just as noteworthy in that election was the debate wherein Democrat VP Candidate Lloyd Bentsen humiliated Dan Quayle by reminding him that he was no John Kennedy whom Bentsen had known personally.
Bush won and appeared headed for re-election after the first Persian Gulf War. But he broke a campaign promise of no new taxes that had included a proclamation of Read My Lips! The young glib Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton limited Bush Sr. to a single term in office.
Despite a rather lackluster four years, Bill Clinton easily defeated Bob Dole in 1996. Dole’s service during World War II was no match for the youthful exuberance of the incumbent.
Many of us still remember the 2000 Election from Hell though new 18-year-old voters in 2020 were born after that and even after 9-11-2001. How many of us remember an early challenge in the administration of George W Bush when a U.S. Navy P-3 was forced down by China on Hainan Island? The terror attacks later that year have pretty much erased all memory of that earlier face off.
After Dubya’s response to 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, he still managed to win re-election in 2004 against John Kerry whose political baggage probably would have taken him down whether or not he was Swift-boated.
The biggest miscalculation conservatives made in 2008 was a mistaken assumption that it was preferable to see the Democrats nominate Barack Obama because he would have less chance of winning the general election than Hillary Clinton. John McCain practically served up that election on a silver platter by refusing to challenge Obama’s nebulous record.
Ironically, it was the exact same miscalculation that sunk Mitt Romney in 2012. He thought a positive message was all that was needed and failed to show where his opponent had untenable policies. Mitt did not even really pursue Benghazi which had happened less than two months before the election.
We all know what happened in 2016 so I won’t belabor that. But I will say that the Democrats made the same mistake that Republicans had made eight years earlier. They wanted Trump to win the GOP nomination because they felt he would absolutely lose to Hillary.
So let’s summarize what we have discussed here:
Kennedy’s Catholicism was a non-issue and he became an effective president.
Johnson painted Goldwater as the warmonger then got us into a war in Vietnam he lacked the resolve to win.
We will never know what would have happened if Robert Kennedy had not been assassinated and had become president.
If Nixon had not covered up Watergate, it would not have set the scene for Carter beating Ford.
There was really nothing in Ronald Reagan’s background that would have suggested that he would become one of our greatest presidents, but he did.
If George HW Bush had not broken a campaign promise so blatantly by saying no new taxes, read my lips, and then raising taxes, we might have been spared the embarrassment of Bill Clinton’s presidency.
If someone else had been in office, perhaps even Bob Dole would have better counteracted Osama bin Laden to preclude 9-11, but we’ll never know.
How many times have I pondered what Al Gore would have done after the terror attacks on September 11th? I suspect it would have been a rather anemic response.
If Republicans did not take Obama for granted, he would never have gotten the chance to fulfill his promise, i.e., threat, to fundamentally change America into something unrecognizable to those who honor and respect traditional family values.
I will personally do the mea culpa bit here regarding Donald Trump. I said when the debates begin, his lack of substance will become obvious. Then I said when people actually have to start voting in Iowa and New Hampshire, this fascination with Trump will wear off. Then, the convention had the opportunity to do the right thing but did the wrong thing. So I was bracing myself for four terrible years under President Hillary Clinton.
Donald John Trump is the perfect case study for what we’re talking about here. He is a prime example of ~ what you see is not necessarily what you get. He actually stated in so many words that he is quite capable of changing into anything he wants to change into. I actually believed that statement, but was apprehensive about the unknown if he should be elected, which of course he was.
Early on, he waffled under dhimmi National Security Adviser HR McMaster who followed Michael Flynn, then he restored sanity by appointing John Bolton. Rex Tillerson was a nothingburger as Secretary of State but Mike Pompeo appears to be quite pompous.
Trump’s record thus far is a mixed bag. Gorsuch for Supreme Court was good. Kavanaugh was a compromise that may not turn out to be so great. If Ginsburg retires, he really should consider Ted Cruz for the next vacancy.
Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing the Golan Heights as Israel’s sovereign territory in support of our best friend and ally are the right things to do. But having a Secretary of State and U.S. Ambassadors around the world declaring a gay pride month makes one wonder if things are really changed since Obama was issuing their marching orders.
My point here is that we really did not get a clear picture of what Trump would be as president by watching him during the political campaign. He bullied other candidates during the debates. If only he could stand up to Putin, Xi, Kim and ErdoÄŸan as adroitly as he screamed Lyin’ Ted, he would be a far more effective Commander-in-Chief.
That’s why I dare say we need a primary challenge in 2020. Without going over each of the Democrat hopefuls at this point, it is obvious that any one of them would basically take us back to the years of Obama’s ineffective foreign policy and a social re-engineering of society in a way very undesirable to conservatives.
Remembering the lesson of not hoping for the opposition candidate that is so extreme you expect them to lose and then being stuck with the horror of them actually winning, I think that the least worst possibility is probably Joe Biden. It’s obvious that Joe has just been Biden his time!
Joe Biden is not as much of an extreme leftist idealogue as the other candidates. But, he definitely does know on which side his bread is buttered. He will say or do whatever it takes to get elected. As is the case unfortunately with virtually every other politician in this day and age.
But, it’s likely that Trump could beat Biden who has no really strong following. Both sides are rather gaffe-prone, so that might make an entertaining set of debates anyway. But, should he actually win, there is some hope that common sense and reason would not die altogether during a Biden Administration as it would with the other utra-liberals of his party.
Life is full of unknowns. What would have happened if Candidate B had been elected president instead of Candidate A? What if I had gone the other way at some Y-intersection in my own life? What if I had zigged when I zagged? All these are unanswerable, but you know we all think of such things at times.
We need to carefully explore the options beforehand because hindsight is always 20/20. This time, election 2020 also needs to be approached with 20/20 vision!
A GOP Primary challenge would serve two basic purposes. First it would provide a forum for conservative views and visions of America to be expressed to counteract all the leftist rhetoric in the media. Second it would ensure that the best candidate will be nominated in Charlotte next year to defeat whichever Democrat emerges victorious from Milwaukee.
Will the real dyed-in-the-wool conservative standard-bearer please stand up?
Will you help revive the American Conservative Movement?
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