The choice

In the 1964 presidential election, while I was still in graduate school, I voted for Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater. I liked Goldwater, and I thought many of his conservative ideas had merit, but I was convinced (brainwashed?) by the Johnson campaign ads that Goldwater was an extremist who would expand our involvement in the Vietnam War. Remember the Goldwater slogan “In your heart you know he is right”, and the Johnson campaign rebuttal “In your guts you know he is nuts”. Of course Johnson won in a landslide, and then promptly expanded our involvement in the Vietnam War, with the disastrous and long-lasting aftereffects we all now recognize. It was an early lesson in my political education.

I was suckered once again with the first Obama campaign and the eloquent promises of “hope and change”.  Seven years on and the Dr. Phil question is relevant: “how’s that hopey-changey thing working for you?”.  In fact what we got from Obama was a lot more eloquence but neither hope nor change, and it was perhaps naïve of us to expect either hope or change from an untried community organizer freshman Senator with no experience in business or in dealing with a legislature.  In the event, Obama has proved unusually inept at dealing with Congress (remember his attempt at a “grand bargain” on the budget?), or even with the members of his own party, and unusually naïve in foreign affairs (remember the “Russian reset”, or the Cairo speech to the Muslim world, or his “JV” assessment of the ISIS threat?).

Now in this upcoming election we are faced with a real dilemma – try an outsider (Sanders, Trump) to try to shake up the incestuous and increasingly incompetent ruling establishment, or naively believe the promises of an establishment politician (Clinton) despite her poor record and seedy and greedy personal reputation.

This election is no longer about Democrats vs Republicans, nor even about liberals vs conservatives.  It is about the 1% vs the 99%, the incestuous, interlocking ruling elite (politicians, CEOs, Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers, mainstream news organizations, and all the ancillary think tanks and lobbyists that feed off of them) vs the rest of the country.

Both Trump and Cruz repulse me, both for their political, economic, and social views and for their increasingly degrading personal behavior. But their election might – just might – shake up the establishment and make it begin to be more responsive to those living in flyover country (ie – the rest of the nation).  

Hillary repulses me as well.  She gives lawyers a bad name, and may even be indicted as a felon before the election.  If she is not, it will be yet one more proof that the Washington power elite are so corrupt and so self-protective that members can get away with anything. If elected, she will almost certainly just maintain the status quo, and the establishment will go on corrupt and self-serving and oblivious to the problems of the rest of the country as before.

All in all, as I think about the miserable choices we all face this election cycle, I am tempted to vote for the outsiders, terrible as they may be, in hopes that the shockwaves to the establishment will wake them up and perhaps scare the living $%#@&% out of them.  What our aristocrats need now, perhaps, is the sight of a few pitchforks in the streets.