Oh What a Year!

By Bill Murchison Argh! I think thats a reasonable however inelegant take on this falls electoral fun -- whose elements I suppose I need not summarize. We shake our heads in bewilderment. Its come to this really? The brains of the Founding Fathers and the blood and toil of those who followed them -- reduce to this moment and to the question of the moment: Which of two political misfits gets to run the American show for a few years? Er ... yes. It does more or less come down to that. But that shouldnt lead us to deduce from this campaign season the final ruin of America. There is a lot of ruin in a nation the great Adam Smith is reported to have replied when a friend frantically entered Smiths drawing room proclaiming Britains doom after Gen. Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga. It sits poorly all the same with those who yearn for ordered freedom and honorable government to contemplate the present choice: Donald Trump as the agent of rescue from the clutches of maybe the most self-involved politician in the land -- one who all too evidently wants to be president because she wants to be president. The main problem with Hillary Clinton isnt her backstage machinations; its her second-rate-ness as a public figure. The admission is hard to make in that she may actually win the presidency. She demonstrates no gifts for leadership; she drives away rather than attracts. She seems to lack ideas as to what America needs (except herself as president): making speeches proposing laws meeting and greeting and taking her chair at the top of the table. She doesnt lay out visions; she chirps and chatters. Thats no slam on female orators. The titanic Margaret Thatcher hardly ever said anything not worth weighing whether for agreement or disagreement. Clintons mounting challenges over past emails stem apparently from a well-developed personal habit of acting on what seems to help Clinton to the exclusion of all other courses. Her strategy when she guesses wrong is to brass it out: Dont dare question me: Im the heir to the throne. Modesty we could all probably agree is not Clintons biggest asset. Whats that you say? Donald Trump is fundamentally no wiser than she no more steeped in political and philosophical arcana? Ill buy that one up to a certain point with two reservations: 1) Trumps lifespan in politics has been a lot shorter than hers affording him scanter exposure to ideas and 2) a becoming number of his advisers and counselors are halfway sane in the political sense unlike the way-left-wing Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren two counselors and enablers to Clinton. Again I venture the not-too-far-out judgment: Argh! Whats likely to happen if Clinton wins as the pollsters and prognosticators seem to fancy? What tricks will Clinton Warren and Sanders try to bring off? So far to the political left is this ensemble with no visible interest in non-left-wing solutions that nothing of importance is likely to happen under a Clinton regime. Its thought that Republicans will probably retain control of the House and perhaps the Senate as well. That means a standoff -- and maybe that is the best indicated outcome -- unless Clinton adopts through practice in the mirror a sympathy she has never shown for ordered liberty local rights and traditional standards of behavior. The national Democrats dont think much of or even much about ordered liberty. Clintons ability to marshal them away from left-wing pro-heavy-government stances on energy and taxation cannot be overestimated: the less so if the issue of the day -- emails and the FBI -- comes to dominate her tenure. Trusting Clintons word is not the countrys fallback position. And that may be less our fault than hers on account of her apparently shallow acquaintance with the reasons Americas first president (per Parson Weems telling) might have fessed up to the cherry tree incident. Those reasons would be for instance: dutys call; a sense of destiny as more than just the achievement of an ancient ambition; a sense of honor; and deep love of the higher things in life as distinguished sharply from the lower. Anyway here we go. Well see soon enough. Argh.