In place of my usual carefully constructed essay I have just a few thoughts today on recent items of political interest (to me). Hence my views on the amazing irresponsibility of Dick (“Ol’ Blood and Five Deferments”) Cheney, my inability to understand Seth Moulton’s campaign message, and finding America in a lesbian piano bar.
Former Vice-President Dick (“Ol’ Someone Else’s Kid’s Blood and Guts”) Cheney is back in the news with a new book detailing his five heart attacks. The New York Times wrote about this in In New Book, Cheney Recalls 5 Heart Attacks and His Brush with Death. He had already suffered three heart attacks when, tasked by Republican nominee George W. Bush to vet vice-presidential nominees, he improbably came up with himself as the best possible candidate. Here is the paragraph that jumped out at me from the Times article:
Among other things, the book discloses that on Sept. 11, 2001, as Mr. Cheney, in President George W. Bush’s absence, was effectively managing the response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington from the White House bunker, his doctors had just received indications that he was in serious risk of a heart attack.
So he got through that but might a prudent patriot elect to not put the nation in that position again by declining another run for VP? But that’s not Dick (“Ol’ Thank God for Government Health Insurance”) Cheney.
Actually I think I understand Cheney but on Seth Moulton I’m missing something.
When I saw Mr. Moulton’s fundraising tweet of September 30 I thought the juxtaposition of “our goal” and the pending folly of a government shutdown was perhaps poorly chosen. The candidate responded with his slogan of sending a “new generation of leadership to Washington.” But looking back, one of the biggest problems we have is the new generation of leadership in Washington – specifically, the ones elected as part of the Tea Party movement in 2010 and 2012. Republican graybeards like John McCain always knew that the shutdown and skirting the debt ceiling was a nutty idea.
My good friend President William Bulger always tells me that when you are young your slogan is “give a young person a chance” and when you are older it is “experience counts.” It was a very worthwhile exchange though because I rarely get the chance to tweet about Jefferson’s “earth belongs to the living” letter to Madison.
My final political insight came as my wife and I were strolling past a bar in Provincetown Friday night and heard singing and music from a piano bar inside. We went in to strike a blow for liberty (an old Harry Truman term for having a drink) and enjoyed a piano player and a large group of aging lesbians singing delightedly off key. The assemblage was made up of folks who spent most of their lives perhaps in the closet, maybe pretending to be someone they were not, being derided; but in the last ten years of their long lives they’ve been able to get married in Massachusetts. The blue-haired chorus was having a great time belting out an assortment of show tunes and old standards but had a special vigor for one song, leaping to their feet, entwining their arms, and raising their glasses in toast. And that song was “God Bless America.”
Take that, Tea Party Patriots. This is Our Country.
