Monday, May 28, 2018
HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY! With a What if?
5/28/2018
Hello, Everyone!
I try to keep memorializing our dead heroes in mind on this day, but I also like to use this day to ponder a lot of what ifs too. Like - what if Robert Kennedy had allowed Eugene McCarthy to become the Democratic nominee for President in 1968 after the New Hampshire primary - simply because it was McCarthy, not Kennedy, who dared to challenge President Johnson as an antiwar candidate? I do believe we would have elected Senator McCarthy as our president if Robert Kennedy had supported McCarthy instead of trying to upend him as he did; and Nixon would not have been elected as our President - and the Vietnam War would have ended - probably in a similar stalemate than it did after over 5 more years of war.
That is just one example, however. Things could have always turned out better or worse if we had chosen a different road. And, of course, the future is no different than the past. We can continue down a given road - or we can change and alter our course and perhaps forge a different future than we would have had.
Oh, how things would have been different if Eugene McCarthy had been elected in 1968! What a difference it would have made. Robert Kennedy would not have been assassinated for not having entered the race for the Presidency and might be an old man today for not having obstructed the antiwar sentiment of the day by insisting that he was the better voice for an antiwar sentiment than Senator McCarthy; and a President McCarthy could have altered the way we look at a president.
You see, McCarthy wanted to allow for a kind of "co-presidency" in that he would have allowed his vice president to be almost an equal voice in the Presidency. He did not think that one man should be as powerful as many presidents have been - and as the current president thinks he ought to be. I like that sentiment about not wanting to be all powerful; and so on this Memorial Day, I like to think in those terms - and maybe by thinking it, somehow the future will become that way. It's a thought!
But what did we get by not electing McCarthy? We got 5 more years of war in Indochina, also known as Vietnam. We got a president - Nixon - who considered himself "above the law," though time would prove that he was not because he was nearly impeached for obstructing justice. If we had elected McCarthy, he would have probably altered the Presidency by demonstrating that two heads are better than one in deciding national and security issues. And that would have led to a President Trump being completely unlikely because our nation would have chosen to avoid those who pretend they are the "only one" to decide what's best for America.
Just look at what has happened with our present course of deciding on a president based on the idea that the top dog can best choose alone. What is Vice President Pence doing that has any chance of even suggesting a different course? McCarthy believed that one should not choose alone and Must involve a "co-president" - not a "vice president" who simply rubber stamps what the head honcho might want. One is not better than two; and if we are to be fair in the future, we must elect as our President someone who knows two are better than one and that two in cooperation are far more likely to choose wisely than one who arrogantly expects he alone can decide what's best. It is time for Arrogance in the Presidency to disappear - and it is long past time that a Eugene McCarthy Presidency be chosen and embraced.
Be that as it may, with the future in our hands, let me wish us all a Happy Memorial Day!
Thanks!
Gently,
Francis William Bessler
Laramie, Wyoming