A general election for president should be a yacht race between the very best each party has to offer. Instead, voters this year will watch a contest between two badly leaking rowboats. Both parties are doing more bailing than rowing, too.
Either party would walk into the White House in this election if it had nominated someone -- anyone -- broadly perceived as minimally qualified, honest and patriotic. And no, Sen. Bernie Sanders fans, a socialist does not fit the definition of minimally qualified, not in this country.
Instead, a bitterly divided Republican Party convenes Monday in Cleveland. Delegates are expected to nominate the most unpopular candidate for president to ever lead a major party ticket. Well, at least since modern polling began tracking such things. Donald Trump's task will be to stop the Democrat, Hillary Clinton. She's the second-most unpopular candidate since polling began. Something's severely wrong with the primary process of both parties when such a result is even possible.
I respectfully suggest that the Republican Party stop complaining that neither the Benghazi committee nor the FBI sank the other rowboat. They should cast about 1/1,000th of the scrutiny lavished upon those issues upon themselves. What's so wrong with the GOP that they aren't fielding a candidate certain to win this race? At the same time, the Democrats should recognize they've set a very low threshold for Republicans to beat.
Some might argue one of these candidates or the other has received a bad rap. Very well: Suppose a candidate has been treated unfairly. Suppose both of them have. Despite this, isn't widespread public loathing of a candidate -- however undeserved -- a severe weakness in a nominee?
I have my own ideas about the glaring flaws in the primary process in both parties. Rather than scold, however, here's an example how a yacht race should be run.
Britain's defeats in America's Cup yacht races hurt their national pride; "Britannia rule the waves" and all that. Some suspected the Americans of cheating. The "rules" just didn't seem to apply in that race. To the British, the "right" result never happened.
No other loyal subject to the British crown tried and failed to take the America's Cup trophy away to Britain more times than Thomas Lipton, the Sam Walton of his day. A grocer, this self-made man started with one shop and built a chain of stores that made him very rich.
Lipton's determination and reputation for sportsmanship in 30 unflagging years' of sponsoring Britain's best entries in the America's Cup races made his tea famous in this country. Organizers of the race gave him a unique honorary trophy in recognition of decades of doing his best. In contrast, the Royal Yacht Squadron in Great Britain never allowed the low-born Lipton into its membership until shortly before his death.
While attending a high-society banquet in London, a lady guest took her seat next to Lipton. Perhaps the Americans put something in the water that causes your boats to lose, she speculated.
"Yes -- better boats," Lipton replied.
The first party to put a better boat in the water will receive the votes of a grateful nation.
Republicans, if you want to win a presidential race, run better candidates. Stop placing longshot bets that some scandal will hand the election to you. Democrats, stop laughing at Republican chaos at the top. Take account of the rout of your candidates at every other level of government. The presidency is all you have left. You could lose that.
Both of you, stop pretending this country's gone so far down one drain or the other that we're finally desperate enough to give you full control. The general election voters aren't going to hand either of you total victory. Even when we slipped up and did that, we quickly corrected the mistake. Neither party knows what to do with control when it gets it. Look at the Republicans from 2001 to 2006 and the Democrats from 2009 to 2010.
Yacht races aren't one-time blowouts where the loser has to scuttle his boat. There's always another race coming up.
Primary voters -- who bear the primary fault for this mess -- say they refuse to give up on their principles. Very well. One of my principles is respect for majority rule. Another is a high regard for the actual institutions the Founding Fathers left behind, such as divided government, rather than haughty, politically convenient interpretations of their intent.
You cling to your principles. I'll cling to mine.
Commentary on 07/16/2016