Monday, January 21, 2008

caucusing on the queen's gambit

Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts... My fondest hope for each one of you—and especially for the young people here—is that you will love your country, not for her power or wealth, but for her selflessness and her idealism.

Ronald Reagan, Republican Party national convention, August 1992,


Less than 3 months later, Reagan's bag man for 8 years and the incumbent President, George Herbert Walker Bush, would be defeated by William Jefferson Clinton, a brilliant hick from Hope, Arkansas. Two days later in Belgrade, working in violation of U.N. sanctions imposed against the brutal regime of Slobadan Milosovic, Bobby Fischer, a gifted mind with a reputation for daring moves and insanity, closed the board on the Soviet Union's last hope at a comeback, and sent Boris Spassky into permanent exile.

These distant events, inauspicious and seemingly unconnected at the time, were brought to light this past week as Republican Dives repeatly attempted to resurrect Lazurus from the dead and the Democrats tried to convince the America public that although they are smart, they hold none of the trepidation sometimes associated with members of the intelligensia.

Reagan as a party icon has been relegated to (depending upon your particular brand of Republicanism), a lifetime of matrimony, neo-con infamy, or napping forever in the Big House with clouds for pillows. In truth, the Great Communicator left behind a polarizing ideology that lacks, despite the feeble arguments of the well-to-do, pragmatism, fiscal responsibility, and a world vision that extends beyond the lower forty-eight.

As for their part, the Democrats still seem to want to dance around being the smart one in the room, driven by a fear of being labelled bookish and therefore by implication lacking the resolve they imagine the public expects of a Commander-in-Chief. They fight over who gets to sing in the church choir, but in truth don't know the lyrics of Precious Lord, Take my Hand without consulting their handlers, the hymnal, or the Ghost of Elvis.

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