The Headwinds of Any Presidency
We’re not hashing over Biden and Trump here. The subject is the presidency itself, and it’s all headwind from start to finish.
The first thing on the menu is media-sponsored ‘debates’
You know the drill, a network drillmaster sits at a desk in front of a dozen or so self-proclaimed candidates who take the better part of two hours slicing one another into bite-sized chunks. It’s blood-sport, a fox hunt without horses and hounds. There are usually enough of these to winnow out all but two or three by declining popularity polls.
Then come the state Primary Elections
We haven’t always had these. Until sometime in the 70s we had Party Conventions, where the candidates were chosen in back-room wheeling and dealing. We got some good presidents that way, men who got the support of those they would have to work with in Washington. Then those candidates, one from each party, would go out and raise hell with one another. But it was considered un-democratic, which indeed it was, and we traded it for the muddying of all candidates in order to claim democratic principles.
So nowadays whoever survives the slings and arrows of those early televised ‘debates’ has to lie and thieve and suffer through early-state primaries (New Hampshire being the earliest) until something called Super Tuesday. We are a nation of supers, super-sized, super special and even a Super Bowl to soothe our super fans.
Super Tuesday occurs in February or March when the greatest number of U.S. states hold primary elections, fifteen this year. Usually that stops the bleeding, and we declare a couple of candidates. All of which was contrived to make elections fairer, but our hope that figures wouldn’t lie has mostly proven that, in the long run, liars figure.
Like most of American life, politics is a money game
The 2020 election American presidential election cost upward of $14.4 billion. 155 million Americans voted in that election, a record number. If my arithmetic holds steady, that comes to about ninety-three bucks a vote.
That’s a bunch of dough by any standards and it gets dumped into the pot by ordinary citizens, PACS (political action committees) and Super PACS, which are usually corporate. The Supreme Court made it legal in 2010 for corporations to ‘contribute’ whatever the hell they want, finding that corporations enjoyed the same freedoms as private citizens. We all have the freedom to speak, some of us just have larger megaphones.
A wag said he would believe corporations were citizens as soon as the state of Texas executed one.
Anyway, whether you’re Joe Doaks or General Electric, if you donate money, you either believe in what your candidate claims to believe, or you want them to answer the phone when you call. Joe knows that’s not going to happen for him, but GE expects otherwise, which is why it is said that we have the finest government money can buy.
But if you’re a presidential candidate, answering those expectations is a gale-force wind before the votes are even counted
So, we finally have a national election on the first Tuesday in November, and when we finally count the votes in something called the Electoral College, someone will win the required 270. No matter that in three of the last five presidential elections, the candidate that won the most popular votes (from you and me) was not elected. That’s another story, but it sure as hell is another headwind.
Now we finally have a winner, and he (or she) ought to be able to go to Florida and sit on a beach long enough to catch his or her breath. But no, they take office on January 20th and GE (or dozens of other high-roller donors) are ringing the phone off the hook, trying to call in their bets. There has been a piper through all of this and now it is time to pay that piper.
It’s a nightmare. It’s the way it works in what we call a free society, where who calls the shots is anything but free
All newly elected presidents have a hundred days, something called a honeymoon, before a thread comes loose somewhere and a kind of slow-motion unravelling begins, much like a modern marriage. Most of us can handle a steady blow, but when the wind comes from all directions, and with increasing strength, holding course seems a long way off, marriage-wise or presidentially.
But it’s not
It’s right there every morning in a security briefing that calls for attention to something you never knew was there as a candidate, a half a world away and needs a decision now, goddamnit, now. Half a dozen unfriendly heads of state, who were quiet as mice no more than a moment ago, are now whipping up another gale to be navigated.
And who knew there was going to be a major storm to be flown to, a crisis in Madagascar and a cabinet secretary found to be cuddling up to someone not his wife? Most of us grab an umbrella when it’s raining, for presidents it’s raining everywhere.
The point is that the headwinds never stop, only blow the harder
Becoming president of the most powerful nation in the world is the absolute high point of any American life, and it’s become an impossible job.
More years ago than I care to admit, there was a Chrysler CEO by the name of Lee Iacocca, an enormously talented man who was touted as a presidential candidate. Lee was very direct, when he said, “I’ve run a major corporation, and when I say ‘get something done,’ everyone turns to and gets it done or they’re out on the street. Government doesn’t run like that. When a president tries to accomplish something, half the government works like hell to see he doesn’t get his way. I’d be a fool to take a job like that.”
Indeed. It’s a matter of headwinds.
And then, if the job doesn’t kill you, in four years you get to do it all over again.