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FLOPHOUSES AND PENTHOUSES |
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Why do I spend so much time thinking of Rudy Giuliani? Is that a sign he’s going to be President? Do I have the magic touch? Or is it just because I think maybe he should be president and all the other possibilities look as dull as old coins next to new ones? All of this, I suppose, plus the outbreak that I know must be coming -- when he gets tired of being accused of being a New York liberal, a breed he despises, and tells the world he’s been faking it all along. That he really doesn’t give a damn about gay rights, or abortion, or gun control, or sanctuary for illegal immigrants, or any other liberal lunacies, but in New York he had to conform or he would have been buried with a stake through his heart by the Red Brigade who control the city under the leadership of the New York Times.
Even when he did conform, the media masters knew he didn’t mean it and they did their best to ruin him and get the ghettoes to riot against him. They were greasing the skids for his national career when 9/11 happened and changed everything. He still had to leave office because of term limits, but he now left on a high note instead of the low one the Times had planned for him. Unfortunately he still had to take with him the ideological baggage he’d had to carry for them in order to be able to do the job he knew he was born for -- saving New York City from its enemies both in the flophouses and the penthouses.
If he admits his past hypocrisy and reverts to his natural conservative self, he’ll be denounced as a turncoat and an imposter, but underneath I think there’ll be a sneaking admiration for one who would not be cheated of his goal no matter how much dirt he had to swallow to reach it. That’s almost the definition of a tough guy and that’s what Rudy is running as -- a tough guy. George W. Bush is one too and he may emerge from all his troubles as a successful one after all. If so, he will have made determination popular and tergiversation and conciliation and palliation unfashionable. That would be just the atmosphere that would conduce to the election of Ol’ Rough’n Ready Rudy. It could happen.
Give ’em hell, Rudy. Now what about the other pretenders to the throne? There’s one man I think should quit now. That’s Mitt Romney. He simply has no leadership ability. He can’t control his own family. The proof: he has five grown sons, he proposes to be a wartime president and he can’t get a single one of them to put on a uniform and serve the country. Leadership? No way. A leader would have corrected that long ago under threat of shutting his sons out of the White House if they didn’t contribute to his campaign by joining up. Franklin D. Roosevelt knew this. His four sons were all in service before Pearl Harbor.
I wouldn’t want to be a Republican speaking for Romney as the party candidate next year. How do you respond to the catcalls? Bush gets them about his kids and they’re girls. What do you say? That it’s not like WWII, we don’t have a draft, it’s a volunteer army, so the Romney boys aren’t ducking an obligation, they have a right to their choice? Won’t that go over great? That their choice is not to serve their country? Mitt, it just won’t do.
Another bone I’d pick with Mr. R. is his decision to conduct his required missionary work for the Mormons in France, of all places. France has been a Christian country since
496 A.D. when King Clovis took the plunge and got himself baptized along with his whole nation. France became known as the “Eldest Daughter of the Church.” The Mormons were first heard of in 1830. Granted that the Mormons are highly religious and the French aren’t so religious anymore, it still seems as though there is more of a need for Christianity to be propagated in countries such as, oh, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Arabia and others than in one that has been Christian for sixteen centuries.
Moslem countries present a big challenge to Christian missionaries of course, but people like St. Francis Xavier and David Livingston didn’t let that discourage them and took the risks in stride. Of course they were prepared for martyrdom if it came and maybe Mr. Romney wasn’t, but then why go missioning at all if you’re not prepared to wear the martyr’s crown?
In this essay I’m just passing on impressions I’ve been getting of the campaign so far. I still haven’t watched one of the debates in full because I don’t think they mean much at this stage. There’s an old belief that people don’t really concentrate on the presidential election until the World Series is over. This year the Series ran until October 28th, meaning that there were only eight days left before the election. And this was a four-game series, a sweep. If it had gone the full seven games people would have been going to the polls not even knowing who the candidates were. There’ll have to be some rescheduling here, either of the election or the series. That’s America, just one crisis after another.
About my impressions of the other slate of candidates now that I’ve disposed of the Republicans, I really find my reactions being distorted by my taste for comic strips acquired at an early age and never completely lost. That’s why I can’t help thinking of one Democrat as “Hairless Joe” and of another, not yet a candidate, as “Fat Albert.” This is no way to think of distinguished statesmen, but habits are hard to break. I think the holy cause the Demos root for the most, out of so many, that is, universal health insurance, is the one that I’m most inclined to root against. Do they actually propose that we’re going to insure every habitual self-abuser in the land against the results of their debauchery? All the gluttons who live only to stuff themselves to bursting? All the alcoholics, who do it with booze? All the junkies? Once they get insurance they’ll swamp all the doctors with demands for quick fixes to enable them to go on poisoning themselves while escaping the consequences. The intelligent people who live sensibly will be shut out, but they are the ones who will have to pay. The millions of morons for whom they will be paying will get all the benefit, that is, they will live a little longer maybe, but they won’t change their habits. The people who will make a change will be the taxpayers who will leave the country to escape this kind of enslavement. | |
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