After telling the world I don’t write politics because I’m not in politics anymore, not even on the low level I formerly occupied, I find myself today writing about…politics.  The recent elections have had enough of a hangover effect for me to do so, that is, get two articles out of them instead of one.  That isn’t as good as the Roslyn school scandals used to be, from which I got a dozen pieces, but it’ll have to do. 

Unlike many elections, the sparks didn’t stop flying as soon as the polls closed, with everybody settling back down to normal living, but the excitement continued into another election, the one in the House of Representatives to anoint a floor leader for the winning Democrats.  Mrs. Lugosi, I mean Pelosi, the House Speaker-to-be, wanted one guy and her party wanted another guy.  That’s the way the voting turned out anyway, and now everyone’s waiting for her revenge on the winners.  This is the kind of thing that caused Will Rogers to declare “I am not a member of any organized political party.  I am a Democrat.” 

Mrs. P. campaigned during the election on an anti-corruption platform, but her choice for leader, Mr. Murtha, did not have an irreproachable anti-corruption background himself, which cost him his chance of winning.  The man who did win, Mr. Hoyer, came from Maryland, which meant that Maryland won the honesty prize against Pennsylvania, the home of  Mr. Murtha.  This would come as no surprise to readers of John O’Hara, the Pennsylvania novelist, who enjoyed describing the wheeling and dealing of the politicians thereof.  This doesn’t necessarily mean the Marylanders should get a clean bill, when after all they  produced Spiro Agnew, the man who brought bribery almost inside the doors of the White House.  But which of us is without sin? as the Bible says.

Mrs. Pelosi is now believed to be planning to assign Mr. Alcee Hastings of Florida to the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee on the basis of his seniority there.  The problem with that is that he is a former federal judge who was impeached and removed from office for bribery, with Mrs. Pelosi voting for the impeachment. 

There wouldn’t be any hesitation about rejecting  Hastings’ assignment if it weren’t for the fact that he is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.  Does that make him untouchable?  We don’t know yet. 

If he gets the appointment, it won’t be out of keeping with an old American tradition of cutting some slack for minorities trying to make it in our society.  They aren’t held to quite the same standards as the generality of the population.  In the Nineteenth Century it was the turn of the Irish.  They made Tammany Hall a synonym for crooked politics, but still came off as a crew of lovable rascals of the Robin Hood type, who, after all, only stole from the rich to give to the poor.  They had  real enemies of course, but these eventually overreacted by imposing Prohibition in an attempt to force virtue on the public whether it wanted it or not.  The result was that Irish saloons became a blue-chip investment for anyone with money to spend and Irish politicians got fat off the anti-Prohibition reaction which eventually installed them in office for decades during the Twentieth Century.

The next beneficiaries of American indulgence were the Italians.  If they displayed solidarity with one another in politics, the public accepted it whether or not the parties involved were as clean as a whistle or as shady as a lovers’ lane.  In 1943 Frank Costello, the “Prime Minister” was taped in a phone conversation with Judge Thomas Aurelio, for whom he’d just secured a Supreme Court nomination.   The judge pledged Frank his undying loyalty and Frank preened himself a little about how his word on a deal meant one could “rest assured”.  One could.

That was the first time the phrase “bullet voting” got into print.  It meant that flying squads of Italian activists were transporting voters to the polls to cast just one vote for one candidate without regard for any others on the ballot.  The candidate was Aurelio, who was enabled to win by these tactics in spite of the unanimous opposition of the media, the city administration, Wall Street, Park Avenue and, I guess, Central Park.  He was a judge for the rest of his life.

Costello took a great interest in judges because he never knew when he might be appearing before another one of them and he found it reassuring to be able to look up at the bench and find a familiar face looking back at him. 

All this is history.  So is the 2006 election, from which we have moved smoothly into the run-up to 2008.  This will be the real deal.  Everything will on the table, both Congress and the White House.  If people are looking for time to recover from this year and don’t want to think about ‘08, they won’t be allowed to.  The drums are beating and the candidates are out assailing the voters.  It’s nessun dorma all over again.  No one shall sleep. It’ll all continue for two years straight until parturition occurs and we have a new-hatched President.  Unfortunately, on the basis of past performance he or she seems likely to begin with some monster disruption of the national life to that will crash his administration on the ground before it ever gets off the runway.  Consider  the precedents:

Reagan:  Created an immediate recession by allowing the Federal Reserve to cut the money supply to crush inflation.  (It worked, but the first year was rough.)   All the rest was honeymoon time until the Iran-Contra imbroglio in the second term.

Bush 1:  Made his mistake in his last year when he raised taxes and lost votes.

Clinton:  Started off bad with gays in the military, then with Rube Goldberg health plan cooked up by wife.  Recovered from this but couldn’t stand success and immediately plunged into Lewinsky affair, resulting in impeachment proceedings. 

Bush II:   Everything was going okay until he decided to take out Saddam Hussein.  Survived 2004 election, but Saddam’s revenge came two years later.