This column was too strident to publish, or so I thought when I finished it on Aug. 1, 2016.
Now, as I look at satellite photos of Hurricane Florence and remember what really happened to Puerto Rico, I have reconsidered. Here it is:
Imagine a tornado just ripped through town. One of your children is missing. Another lies among the wreckage of your home with a piece of wood sticking through his leg. You have staunched the bleeding but his leg is turning dark. FEMA is coordinating the response to the disaster.
So, who do you think will pick the best Supreme Court nominees?
I cover politics. I know more than I want to about the ins and outs and ups and downs of government. People like me who do not have a real-world job are especially prone to navel gazing. So every once in a while, it is good to drop the nuance and remember what matters.
Voters will decide who will be president. They should make that decision as if their lives depended on it. Why? Two reasons; One is because it could. The bigger, better reason is because someone's life definitely will. Young men and women sworn to the service of this country are in harm's way right now.
I hear both liberal and conservative friends talking about this election like it is some far off thing. They bring up Supreme Court picks. Some are GOP voters still trying to convince themselves to vote for Donald Trump. Others are Hillary Clinton not-quite-supporters-yet. Both often talk about holding their noses and deciding the future of the court.
I caught myself in one of these conversations. Then it occurred to me: We were not really talking about the Supreme Court. We were talking about overcoming our distaste for each of the candidates. We had to make a choice. We wanted the loftiest reason we could find, something high and noble. We were trying to stoke up some motivation.
We all should get our hands off our noses and get those hands dirty. We have a practical work to do in November. It matters for good, sound, down-to-earth reasons.
It matters who picks the chairman of the Federal Reserve when that appointment comes up in 2018. It matters who will run the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as my first example shows. It matters who will be the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.
There has been enough fear sloshed all over this election already. So far, it has all been about immigrants and terrorists, though. Some other frightening things deserve a mention.
The Chinese stock market could crash. The European Union could break up. Either of those things or others besides could set off a global financial crash. Turkey could besiege a U.S. Air Force base in that country. China might sink some antique Philippine coast guard cutter. A Russian jet buzzing a U.S. Navy ship could get too close and crash into it. A Korean jetliner could get shot down. Who do you want to be president during any of that -- or a couple at once?
Someday, the New Madrid fault is going to give way. We will have a series of earthquakes here like those in 1811 and 1812. We may have a flood like the one in 1927. A tsunami could hit the Pacific Northwest. Another hurricane could hit the coast.
Do not forget the prospect of a pandemic -- something real this time, not like the Ebola scare. Or we could have something more selective like the AIDS outbreak was.
I am not happy about trying to scare people while so many others are doing that already. My point is that walls and immigration restrictions would not protect us from even a significant fraction of the things the president of the United States deals with.
Want to feel safe? Elect a president who can handle anything that comes down the pike.
Our major political parties are terrible at picking candidates. Trump is a loose cannon. Clinton is one of the most distrusted people still able to win an election -- assuming she still can. But hopefully soon, one of the two parties will realize that a sure-fire way to political power is to nominate people the rest of us can stand. That will not happen this year. The question is when.
The problem is not the government. The problem is the people we put in it.
Commentary on 09/15/2018