The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
“I’m hoping the virus won’t get better until the election is over,” a grandfatherly-looking gentleman said to me when he spied my Biden button.
I was at the neighborhood Safeway which has become my sociology lab during the COVID-19 crisis. I wanted to ask him if his politics are more important than human life. But I grimaced behind my mask instead and backed up another few feet to end the conversation.
When I got home, I told my wife Nancy that I had just witnessed the convergence of contemporary political extremes: a new left that will tolerate unnecessary loss of life to defeat the Trump government, and a political right that always defends President Trump in the hope he will destroy the government altogether.
The American system is in need of an overhaul. Yet the political debate today seems to exist only in the extremes. On Fox News and MSNBC one can watch the right and left talk exclusively to their own constituency every day.
Are these the “factions” that were of grave concern to James Madison in the famous Federalist No. 10? He argued that without a system of governance that achieved compromise on the great issues, civil unrest would rage across the land. Need I mention the Civil War?
Nevertheless, our school books continue to teach old shibboleths about the immutable brilliance of a Constitution written by the Founders 244 years ago, when in fact its flaws are in plain sight.
In a stunning example of contemporary governance in Washington, a mayor of a large city and I visited a senior Republican senator shortly after the 2008 presidential election and asked for support on an environmental project at home. The senator stopped the mayor in midsentence to tell him he’d made a promise just this morning to oppose everything the president wants from the Senate. He went on to announce that his highest priority was to see that President Barack Obama failed and lost reelection.
Forget about America! Obama quickly got the picture, and imposed his will by embracing the murky authority of executive orders, leaving Congress out of major decisions on wars in the Middle East and health care, to name just two examples.
It is no insult to the Founders to stipulate that certain Constitutional constructs drawn up two and a half centuries ago seem quaint in today’s multiracial America of 300 million people.
I believe modernization would certainly include reform of the Electoral College to more closely resemble the popular vote. It would end gerrymandering by turning over to judicial panels the drawing of congressional districts. Most important, American elections could be publicly funded and perhaps conducted within a set time period .
The late, great singer and poet Leonard Cohen in his classic song “Anthem” chants, “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” The time has come for America to examine the cracks in our system and address them bravely.
As close as a shopping line at Safeway, I hear the words of hate and a hint of explosions in the distance. Donald Trump is the first President in my lifetime to so boldly employ division as a political strategy. His cynicism in this regard may be breathtaking and unprecedented, but as a tactician he is not to be underestimated. For all Trump fails to grasp about the government he leads, his genius in media manipulation and self-promotion is unmatched in modern politics.
I wear my Biden pin with a combination of pride, hope and anxiety. Having long admired Biden and his peerless experience in the legislative and executive branches, I hope he is up to the daunting challenges which lay before us.
Leonard Cohen’s wisdom extended to his final record, when he told us: “You aren’t going to like what comes after America.” I wholeheartedly agree, and let us pray it never comes to that.
