A third-rate ex-Congressman, it appears, has died, which event offers an instructive moment.
Frank McCloskey was unaccomplished in every way, including in his loss in a 1984 congressional race in Indiana to Republican Rick McIntyre. Whereupon Tip O’Niell, House Speaker at the time, convened a committee to re-count the votes, and counted until McCloskey was four votes ahead, and then stopped.
This event, for which pseudo-Congressman McCloskey was most famous, goes sadly unmentioned in his AP obit, but it provides some fodder for rumination.
For 30 years my father, a lifelong Democrat, taught his law students (in Indiana), “If you take the first bribe, you may as well take the rest.” Frank McCloskey, steeped in the petty power-lust that typifies mediocrities of both political parties, took the first bribe. On Sunday, he drew his last breath on earth. What awaits him in the hereafter?
Nothing? His leftist pals would say so, and (among others) the neocon secularists -- hence the supreme importance of his 1984 “victory,” however fraudulent. And perhaps the ultimate accomplishment – maybe they named a post office after him – the secular version of canonization. His was a congressional career totally devoid of any accomplishment, other than a dependable bray to the left when it came time to vote. In the rolls of the near-famous and semi-important, his name will always be accompanied by an asterisk.
But even Socrates believed in an afterlife, and judgment, and eternal justice. And what if – what if … will he see Saint Peter beckoning him? Will he find Charon, the boatman, hauling him to Hades? Who will be counting the votes, this time?
In a brief, profound, eternal moment, Frank will know whether it was worth it all.
One thing sure: Hell is full of committees. They will know their own.