Pick a good one, and move on
LARRY ANDERSON
Larry Anderson
Election years are marked by familiarity, like watching so many re-runs of Seinfeld to which one can recite the lines.
Remember the episode when Jerry said, “Yadda, yadda, yadda?”
Like that.
The issues are well chewed; indeed, some of the candidates are the same, just a few years older with that “now or never” look in their eyes. There is no shortage of ambition, jaws are like granite, and political abs are rock solid.
We listen to the speeches, not because we haven’t heard them before, but for the nuances, the hints of being human, and the eyes to the skyline that only politicians seem able to invoke.
Who can quip the party into shape?
Who can bring out the troops?
Who can deliver the promises and lead us in song?
Forget about unity this election, folks.
Politics isn’t about that and never was.
Politicking in America is about competition.
Therefore, we don’t align with the candidate who wants to hold hands and get along. We want the bruiser, the verbal champion, the Hollywood vision with a plan for fairness and the financial stratosphere.
What we want is perfection, the hero who can solve all problems and ruffle no feathers.
That, of course, is impossible.
Instead, we have to examine what we have and do the best we can. After all, even reluctant presidents can turn out well.
Look at Harry Truman, the sturdy county commissioner who made the political machinery work for him before becoming a solid, if flawed, chief executive.
Harry didn’t want to be president, but he got the job anyway when FDR passed.
Truman was tough as a Missouri mule, but he was nobody’s fool and didn’t treat others that way. He knew how to issue orders in a manner understood.
Good man, Harry.
Even a political novice can excel by virtue of integrity, intelligence, and ingenuity. Recall Abraham Lincoln, who surmised what was needed for the country to survive civil war.
Lincoln didn’t spend decades in Congress, or even as a governor for a term. He was just a good man with a gift for analysis and a will of iron.
Lincoln understood America and Americans.
Not everyone does.
Our tendency may be to despair in view of the lineup, but I encourage you not to falter.
There may not be another Lincoln in our midst, but I can assure you those who have reached for the baton are capable, even if an individual may not resonate with you on a personal level.
These candidates before us are strong people focused on a need to pay back to a country that has given everyone so much. Politicians want what is best for their progeny too.
Their sincerity is genuine.
America is ready for a steady hand. The nation aches for a voice strong in purpose and one who understands order is needed.
We must settle some issues that have been hanging around too long.
There also needs to be a new understanding of what we will tolerate and what we won’t from our government and those who abuse it.
That is the purpose of elections, as designed by those who understood the necessity of representation.
Currently, we are bogged in a morass of political correctness and a generational lack of understanding that with freedom comes responsibility.
We have handed over too much to the politically greedy and the merely foolish.
We need a new quarterback to jog onto the field with a smile on his face and an aim that is true. We need a projection of confidence and a game plan.
We must have a leader who loves America like a cheerleader, not a tired old socialist still insisting what doesn’t work really does. Somehow.
I don’t see a political prodigy in the mix, but I do see potential and opportunity.
I see people who can help even as the winnowing continues as it must.
Pick a good one, and let’s get on with it, but let’s be done with those who think America is finished, that we are wrong about everything, that we Americans are a mistake rooted not in freedom but in the pain of others.
Let’s be done with that.
Instead, let’s make like the Fourth of July in a new era of resurgence.
Larry W. Anderson’s novel, I, Eugenius, is available at Maryville Daily Forum.
