Examining Greatness

Sometime Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, people are going to be unhappy with the outcome of the presidential election. Over half of the electorate, in fact.

I confess I don’t know what “Make America Great Again” means. I guess my key questions are, “If we are no longer great, when were we great? When did we start becoming great? Is there a year or event that marks our retreat from greatness? When we were great were things great for everyone, or even almost everyone?” My father thought the 50's were great, but then he was a white male working in corporate America, successfully navigating a path upward through the large group of people who comprised the middle class. I tried to remind him that the time that was great for him wasn’t necessarily that great for everyone. Kind of like my brother who, every Thanksgiving, opines, “Ham, probably the perfect food.” To which I always add, “Unless, of course, you’re Muslim or Jewish.” He response is a shrug. If it’s not his problem, it can’t possibly be a problem, right?

Back in the 1980s I felt lonely and isolated as the Reagan Revolution ushered in a decade of conservatism. I was who the polls said I was, the minority opinion. I said that if you wanted to predict the outcome of an election, find out who I was supporting and pick the other candidate. Of course, Reagan conservatism didn’t resemble anything like what ideologically conservative purists of today envision for the country; I didn’t like the direction he wanted to push the country (backward, IMO), but he recognized that he was the leader of a diverse nation and that slow movement, based on compromise and statesmanship, was not just the proper course, but the only course.

For better or worse, depending upon your POV, he succeeded in his big picture goals and slowed, but certainly did not stop, the progressive (fine, leftward) drift of the country. President Reagan spoke Conservative (and to conservatives) but was, at his core, a centrist, as were his successors, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. At the risk of underestimating him, if George W. Bush had philosophical position, I could never figure it out. He struck me as something of a puppet of the neocons, especially in terms of foreign policy, rather than his own man. Despite the rantings of the alt-right, Barack Obama has also been a centrist. (Center always looks farther to the left or right than it really is if your POV is left or right.)

Hilary Clinton is many things (and if you don’t recognize that your own biases, one way or the other, fuel your perception, why are you even reading this?), but will be, if elected, a centrist. I admit that I do not understand Donald Trump, politically or any other way, because his positions on issues have been all over the map from year to year, decade to decade. His current supporters’ rationalization that he is somehow now a conservative conveniently ignores history. Should he be elected, I would expect a similar roller coaster ride, and not just in the stock market. I do worry that he could tilt the Supreme Court in a direction that sees the past through rose-colored glasses. That alone may be enough to have you vote for or against him. It’s enough for me to oppose him, but there’s more that I might share on my decision in the next day or two. Or not, because I’m not trying to change minds as much as clarify my own thinking.