Presidential politics, 1963-2000--a cynic's view..

It was lunch recess and we were playing a child's game with a big red rubber ball, Two-square, I think it was called, when a sudden strange transformation of the entire school's population occurred at lightning speed.

Shocked and befuddled faculty members lined us up to return to our classrooms as the word of the Dallas assassination was whispered up and down the forming lines of students, not unlike common gossip spreads in a community laundry. I confess, the gravity of the news didn't impress me overly much initially, aside from the obvious distress written on our teachers' faces.

I believe they let school out early that day and by the the time I walked home and saw my mother sobbing in front of the living room television, the events of that day started to take on a more personal meaning.

Here was impact. My tough-as-nails, all-powerful and impervious mother sat in front of that tv-set for three solid days, crying continuously. Policemen and soldiers and horses and caskets paraded across the small black and white screen while talking heads intoned gravely in the background. This was serious stuff, alright. It pre-empted my Saturday morning cartoons.

Then there was Lyndon, a funny talking old man with huge jowls who was forever putting on and taking off his rimless eyeglasses (I think) whenever I saw his image on our small screen. This guy never seemed to talk more than 2 miles per hour in his peculiar Texas twang, and he won the next election in a landslide over Goldwater, another man who impressed me as being about 400 years old, with even more severe eyeglasses (black horn-rimmed) than LBJ's.

By almost all accounts, at least on television, Goldwater was the devil incarnate, a crusty misanthrope, hell bent upon global destruction, who said that extremism in defence of liberty was not vice, but a virtue––proof that even in 1964, Joe Six-pack had little understanding of the meanings of liberty.

In hindsight, I think that the famous and brilliant political advertisement depicting the awesome image of an atomic mushroom cloud, juxtaposed over eyes of an innocent child, fuelled Lyndon's landslide victory.

By 1968, it was obvious that the electorate had chosen the slightly more mundane flash of the conventional rocket's red glare over the frightening mushroom cloud image of the previous election, and the choice was manifesting itself with a vengeance in the hills and jungles of Vietnam. Meanwhile, as young Americans filled body bags by the thousands in Asia, cities burned on the home front and authority figures bludgeoned idealistic college students wherever they dared espouse the pernicious doctrines of peace and love.

After all, these youngsters had the audacity to want to be young and carefree to the detriment of the national war effort, and smoke pot, to boot!

Being only 11 at the time, the allure of free love and dope had still not eclipsed my boyish passions for baseball and petty thievery, and my best buddy and I took to looting the local Republican Headquarters of every Nixon-Agnew campaign button and bumper sticker we could lay our hands on. We were, of course, not a whit politically motivated. We just wanted to see how much of that shit we could steal. I suppose our focus was on the republican paraphernalia, because in those tumultuous times in our households (by this time in a small Maine farming town), and as it turns out, in many other households, the trappings of the Humphrey camp would have been far less acceptable and unobtrusive.

I suppose Nixon's appeal to the country was his stance for 'Law and Order,' a handy euphemism for quashing with an iron fist any domestic unrest fomented by disenfranchised and disrespected negroes and college students alike. By damned, these rabblerousers and malcontents, truants of mainstream America, would be dealt with accordingly! And so, by the mandate of a pliable and sleepy electorate, the megalomaniacal practices of the highest public offices were once more routinely perpetuated.

Yet another landslide election was recorded in history, this time in favor of Richard Nixon, aka Trickey Dick, who would win re-election again in 1972, only to abdicate his throne in disgrace a short time later to his next in succession, Gerald Ford.

In retrospect, the bungled Watergate burglary might have been the most inconsequential faux-pas to ever topple a sitting president, but the mood of a nation seemed to go wherever a Woodward, a Bernstein, and a Cronkite in a small electronic box would take it.

In 1976, the milque-toast Ford, who was not uncoincidentally a member of the rubber-stamping Warren Commission which myopically signed off on the JFK murder, gamely sought re-election, but alas, the magic of broadcast television had again done its mind control over a nation, this time via Chevy Chase's slapstick characterizations of a bumbling, stumbling Ford on NBC's Saturday Night Live.

Our new shining Commander in Chief would be a peanut farmer from Georgia, Jimmy Carter, a political outsider, whose aw-shucks charm was the approved antidote to the perceived malfeasance in the dark bowels of Washington D.C. Remember Miss Lilly and beer-swilling Billy, ....and Billy Beer? Ain't America great!

Personally, by 1976, the allure of good dope had taken fast hold on me, and petty thievery gave way to more substantial property crimes, ....but I was still waiting for the free love. Through no failing of my parents, I suppose I had become another teenager who developed the 'rebel without a cause' attitude with respect to the status quo, asking Brando's, "Whatcha got?" question at every turn (and, yes, ..I would eventually amend my criminal behavior).

By 1980, the insipid and unacknowledged inefficiency of big government politics had spawned economic disaster at home and international diplomatic havoc in Iran. Carter's failed knee-jerk militaristic attempt at absolving the Iranian situation ushered in the new chief executive, who will ever be remembered as 'The Acting President.'

For the next 8 years, Ronnie (Reagan) and Nancy moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue amidst much hoopla and flag waving, not to mention wholesale refurbishing and fabulously expensive redecorating, to gloriously reign over a fawning and ingratiating nation. Hell, the prez and the first lady absolutely needed that new china and silverware, and those luxurious new rugs so they could entertain the rest of the world's bigwigs in fitting style. Right?

By 1988, everybody that was anybody was making so much dough, that a silver-spoon fed, bumbling ex-fighter pilot and marginal business man-turned politician, CIA chief, and vice president, was swept into the highest office on Ronnie's tuxedo coattails, in another landslide election victory (it should be noted that the demopublicans had a penchant for fielding even less apt candidates than the the republicrats in most of these landslides, e.g. Michael Dukakis, a socialist Greek governor from Massachusetts who was fond of driving tanks in funny hats).

1992 found George Herbert Walker Bush III confident of reelection over upstart Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. After all, he'd whipped that Sad-am fellow over in the desert in goodshape and laid waste to the city that was practically the cradle of human civilization, ....and everybody (that was anybody) was still making shitloads of money, right?

G.H.W. Bush III may have dumped it to Clinton in '92 due in part to his buddy, comedian Dana Carvey, whose eerily accurate impersonations of Bush aired weekly on that thinly-vieled weekly social commentary, Saturday Night Live, capturing the essence of a poll-driven and opportunistic chameleon topdog trying to stay on top of the wave.

Bush, to his credit, met the satire at his expense head on, even appearing on Saturday Night, but by January, Bill Clinton was defiling the National Bible, swearing oaths, perhaps not understood, but more probably, never intended. Clinton's performance, I trust, is still fresh enough in our recollections to need no review here.

Which all brings us to the current election season, which in accord with the modern style, has been underway since immediately after the last election. Not that it probably matters much on a celestial scale, but here is my estimation of what the nation faces now:

Al Gore: Probably everything power-mad Clinton is now X 10, ....but without any charisma.

George W. Bush: strictly a political opportunist, probably running for the ill-conceived purpose of fulfilling Daddy George's vicarious ambitions of regaining the White House, as hell bent as any on perpetuating the politics of oligarchic control.

Sad, ain't it? ....And elections are all pretty much rigged, anyway, right?

On the bright side, though, at least these two bums have done their share of getting high ....but then that begs the question, "Why are we still jailing harmless dopers (and other political objectors)?"

Oh, ....shit.

Well, in the words of our long ago American patriot heroes, "Trust God, ....and keep your powder dry."